According to the new.com.au coronavirus tally open on my smart phone right now, there are 5,599 coronavirus cases in Australia, 311,544 in the USA, 126,168 in Spain, 124,632 in Italy, 96,092 in Germany, 90,848 in France, and 82,558 in China. A few days ago, the number in China, according to that website, was 82301, and …
Author Archives: Ernest Zanatta
Bread and Circuses OR… The $7 Trillion Question
I was watching a video presentation last night by a very pessimistic investment advisory service to which I subscribe. They don’t exactly say to buy Gold, Guns, Toilet Paper, Tinned Food, and Banjos (well, they are pretty keen on Gold at least), but they did point out a few numbers which are a little more …
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Skin in the game – putting a toe back in
The share market’s ups and downs fascinate me, and have ever since I got my first minuscule parcel of Mayne Nickless shares almost 24 years ago. Staying out of the market bugs me a lot – it is like not having any red wine in the house, a state of affairs which is quite askew. …
Olive Harvest Beckons….
I have an olive tree in my front garden. It was a housewarming gift 17 years ago from my then boss. Most years, I get some olives. Last year, they were very puny in size. This year, I just had a look at the ripening fruit and as you can see from the photo, there …
Wikipedia’s Fake News about the Pandemic?
I have two sources I read regularly about the pandemic. One is the news.com.au website and the other is the wikipedia page on the corona virus pandemic. I have noticed an interesting discrepancy. As of a minute or so ago, the News site says that there are 189,633 cases in the USA, and 4,864 cases …
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April Fools’ Day has been cancelled
It occurred to me around 4pm, when I was writing my duty manager’s report for the day (I am mostly working from home, but being in the office on Wednesdays and Thursdays to cover any spot fires which might come up), that it was April 1st, and that I had not seen any April fools …
The Problem with Financial Journalists
I knew a chap at uni who later went on to become a financial journalist. We did not exactly get along well. Probably at least partly, if not mostly, my fault. But not entirely. When he got his own byline in the business pages of one or other of the Fairfax papers, I remember reading …
Entering Lockdown, well, sort of….
Much as I prefer to believe that the coronavirus pandemic is not cause for concern, things are getting weirder and weirder. Whilst we are not now in lockdown per se, we are not meant to leave our homes except to go to work/study, the doctor, the supermarket, or exercise. Work has made this a bit …
First World Problems
It’s a bit amusing to read that people are not happy about bring quarantined in five star hotels. Free of charge. It might be a lot boring, but it’s better than where I usually stay when travelling. I do hope they have plenty of books to read – I always carry a stash of books …
On The Beach?
It was through Nevil Shute borrowing the name for his 1950s post-apocalyptic novel On The Beach (which was almost immediately filmed with Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner and Fred Astaire) from a passage in the poem The Hollow Men that I first discovered T.S. Eliot when I was 15: In this last of meeting places We …
