Personal Finance

Measures of happiness tell us less than economics of unhappiness

John Quiggin, The University of Queensland This article is part of a series, On Happiness, examining what it means and how it might be achieved in the 21st century. All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. – Tolstoy, Anna Karenina Money doesn’t buy you happiness, but it does…

The upside of anger: why workers should express their emotions

By Peter Jordan, Griffith University Anger has traditionally been considered an emotion to be avoided at work as it is often linked to a lack of personal control. Anger at work is often seen as unprofessional; an uncontrolled response linked to tantrums and illogical behaviour. As a result, organisational norms have tended to support the…

The world has fresh water, but it’s full of poison

By Peter Fisher, RMIT University Images of the typhoon-ravaged Philippines were terribly confronting, vividly conveying what an angry planet can dish up. But amid the destruction and death, an important point was largely missed: the world’s freshwater supplies are being degraded by a seemingly endless sequence of extreme events. While infrastructures such as dams, sewerage…

Right to know: the ‘nation’, the ‘people’ and the Fourth Estate

By Martin Hirst, Deakin University We might forgive politicians for putting the “national” interest before the “public” interest. But when the news media makes the same mistake, it is time to be worried. The Guardian and the ABC rightly pursued the story of Australia’s spying activities on both Indonesia and Timor Leste. Not only have…

Billionaire says middle class is being decimated

By Ron Hera, Hera Research, LLC Please find below an interview with Mexican billionaire Hugo Salinas-Price, Founder, Director and Honorary President of Grupo Elektra, which owns businesses in the television industry, the telecommunications sector, banking and financial services, and other industries. Born in 1932, Mr. Salinas-Price became a follower of Austrian economics at a young…

Top 10 shorted stocks template

The technique of profiting from a price fall is called short-selling, otherwise known as “shorting,” “to go short” or simply “short.” Basically, short-selling is the reverse of how we’re traditionally taught to invest, to buy at the lowest possible price and sell at the highest. When shorting, you aim to jump in at a high…

Template – Market Wrap

Summary  Close  Movement  % Change  All Ordinaries        All Industrials        50 Leaders       Market Turnover         $A  Market Wrap Steven Daghlian, CommSec Market Analyst

Personal bankruptcies up in Dec qtr

Personal bankruptcies in the December quarter were up only slightly from a year before. There were 6,770 new bankruptcies in the December quarter, an increase of 2.1 per cent from the pervious December quarter, the Insolvency and Trustee Service Australia (ITSA) said on Thursday. ITSA is the federal government agency responsible for administering and regulating…

Self-managed super funds and tax exemptions on pension assets

I am over 70, but my wife is only 62 and we are both retired. We have a SMSF that commenced in 2005 from which we both draw a pension. Each year I have donated funds to my wife’s super in order to claim the Co-contribution. Apparently this means that the SMSF is in both…

Investing for your child’s future

Future generations are going to need all the financial assistance they can get as government financial support for education, home ownership and retirement looks set to become just a bitter sweet memory. We sought advice from financial planners concerning the Dos and Don’ts of when, how and why to invest for children. Why consider children’s…