Alan Kohler is one of Australia’s most experienced commentators and journalists. Alan is the founder of Eureka Report, Australia’s most successful investment newsletter, and Business Spectator, a 24-hour free business news and commentary website. He also hosts Inside Business, a half-hour Sunday programme on the ABC, is the finance presenter on the ABC News - and producer of the nightly graph (or two).
Private equity investors are looking to coal mines for their next big win. If they can turnaround chronic mismanagement they'll set an example for other industries.
The bond market is understandably jumpy about what Ben Bernanke says tonight but the Fed is unlikely to abandon its control of the 'biggest bond bubble' in history.
Kevin Rudd's camp has employed crude methods to promote the worthy cause of a post-union party – inadvertently adding an ironic twist to Labor's misogyny concerns.
Labor is due for a comeuppance at the election but Julia Gillard's political failings are just one of the party's crimes to come out of this wayward parliament.
The next evolution of BYOD shifts focus from device management to application management and ensures that the enterprise footprint on a personal device is limited to enterprise data and applications and nothing more.
Better battery technology lies at the heart of taking wearable devices mainstream and a little push from the likes of Apple and Samsung won't hurt either.
As Russia and its allies block climate talks there's hope that America might finally do something. Elsewhere, Warren Buffett continues to back renewables, it's the end of a solar era in Italy, Japan shows signs of slowing down and the EU carbon price lifts again.
With the Pope concerned about global warming and a Queensland church installing solar panels in the shape of the cross, there's hope that religious communities will soon be pushing for action on climate change.
CEOs outline changing views on corporate spending and profits, their economic expectations and political dissatisfaction, including advice for Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott.
UK-based Zeebox wants to be the intermediary for all social media-television interactions. It will not only have to lure viewers, but the networks themselves.
David Hirst knew economic madness when he saw it and did his best to warn of the Armageddon headed for Wall Street. His powerful voice for sanity and common sense will be greatly missed.
Paul Krugman’s criteria for evaluating economic predictions are solid. If only he could apply them to forecasts outside his own neoclassical tradition.
Conventional economists like Ben Bernanke were tricked by low volatility preceding the financial crisis. But a period of tranquility is normal before an economy is sucked into a treacherous vortex of debt.
The current ‘booming market’ involves almost the lowest level of housing sales volume since 2002. It’s almost certainly a reason why last week’s ABS data showed prices petering out.
Data since 1975 shows Australia's economy largely controls politicians, not the other way around. Running a budget deficit will not drive inflation to devastating levels.
It may be that debt crises, and not only instability, are an unavoidable characteristic of capitalism unless some mechanism is added to reduce levels of accumulated debt.
Current house price rises are coming entirely from speculators rather than owner-occupier investment. And there's limited potential for further gains... unless one possible loophole is exploited.
There are astounding, yet slightly different, correlations between margin debt and share market moves in the US and Australia. It reveals the varied fragility of each country's rally.
The rapid rise in markets over the last year should theoretically boost GDP and consumer confidence. But look closely at the data and a different, and troubling, picture emerges.
As it turns out, Paul Krugman applies a standard equilibrium interpretation to the IS-LM model. But its creator used the 1975 US depression to show he couldn't accept this.
The European Union’s demand for Cypriot funds will ripple across the continent, stirring Europe’s far right and becoming a major turning point in the campaign to return to national currencies.
Even John Hicks, creator of the IS-LM model, felt obliged to abandon equilibrium thinking in circumstances where today's champions of his model do not.
The IS-LM economic model favoured by Paul Krugman only works if the economy is in equilibrium. As soon as you acknowledge this isn't the case, it fails.
Paul Krugman's praise of the IS-LM model as a way to harmonise two seemingly incompatible views about what determines interest rates, involves its own irreconcilable logic.
Paul Krugman is championing John Hicks' IS-LM model as an explanation of today's economic crisis. It's an unrealistic theory that time should have weeded out.
When John Maynard Keynes said we're all dead in the long run, it's obvious he was criticising modelling of the economy as if it's in continuous equilibrium.
It's true a 'slower fall' in mortgage debt is putting short-term, upward pressure on house prices. But forecasts of a 10 per cent rise would require mortgage debt to hit an unlikely 2-3 per cent of GDP this year.
