Tag: Shares

Oil & Gas

‘Gas cartel shoots Australia in the head’ – Origin to control imports too – Michael West

Cartel behaviour

I knew the gas cartel had been too quiet for too long. Something had to be brewing, and what a doozy it was.

Unique in the world for energy producers, the east coast of Australia has no domestic reservation regime for its gas reserves.

Even now, amid a spaghetti bowl of regulation and price controls, there is still no effective domestic reservation.

Over the past decade, this has allowed China-beholden foreign capital to create a gas export cartel that has:

  • delivered the east coast economy perpetual gas and electricity price shocks;
  • hollowed-out industry;
  • derailed decarbonisation;
  • ripped hundreds of billions of out of the economy;
  • built cheap China weapons while robbing us of the capacity to build our own;
  • forced Aussie households and businesses to subsidise pan-Asian households and businesses;
  • cost five prime ministers their jobs, and
  • delivered a completely unnecessary inflation shock that is destabilising a sixth.

It’s not like it doesn’t matter or anything. Yet nobody cares, and the mainstream media never writes about it.

As AusSuper plays chicken with Brookfield’s $20b bid for Origin Energy, Origin is quietly putting the chokehold on gas imports too

Source: ‘Gas cartel shoots Australia in the head’ – Origin to control imports too – Michael West

Nitwittery

Elon Musk says he would reverse Twitter’s ban on Donald Trump. | Media Matters for America

Elon Musk Twitter

Trump will abandon his own failed site and it’s shareholders

Ads account for 90% of Twitter’s revenue, and now that advertisers know exactly what Twitter would look like under Elon Musk’s leadership — they should be terrified

Source: Elon Musk says he would reverse Twitter’s ban on Donald Trump. | Media Matters for America

Coal

Desperate Dalrymple: Brookfield dumps coal port on mums and dads in ASX float as Queensland moots bail-out – Michael West
Brookfield, Dalrymple Bay Coal Terminal, DBCT

They often call selling roadkill on the stock market as offering a share shouldn’t be better called a dead or dying parrot. Remember Howard’s 2nd tranche of Telstra shares?

The giant coal port Dalrymple Bay is up for sale. The financial engineering wizards from Brookfield want out. Brookfield’s debt is humungous, and green hydrogen is looming as a mortal threat to coking coal. They can’t offload it to professional investors, so they are now targeting the mums and dads for a float on the ASX, while even angling for a bail-out by the Queensland Government. Michael West reports on one of the trickiest financial juggling acts you will ever see.

Desperate Dalrymple: Brookfield dumps coal port on mums and dads in ASX float as Queensland moots bail-out – Michael West
Economy

Veteran investor Jim Rogers says next bear market will be ‘the worst in our lifetime’

American businessman Jim Rogers has a bearish outlook for global markets.

The veteran investor says that’s because even more debt has accumulated in the global economy since the financial crisis, especially in the US.

via Veteran investor Jim Rogers says next bear market will be ‘the worst in our lifetime’

Capitalism

Australia’s shopping centre king, Frank Lowy, hangs up in his crown

For more than 50 years, Lowy was the innovator in retail property.

Around 2009, the legendary investment adage went something along the lines of: if you invested $1000 dollars when Sir Frank floated Westfield in 1960, you would be worth about $148 million.

For more than 50 years, Lowy was the innovator in retail property.
For more than 50 years, Lowy was the innovator in retail property. Photo: Louie Douvis

But if you invested in Westfield 18 months ago, you would have lost money even if you accepted the $10-a-share offer now on the table.

Australia’s shopping centre king, Frank Lowy, hangs up in his crown