Adventure Ausrama Blog

Banks are to significantly cut the return on money invested. This is not surprising considering the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) is cutting interest rates. As the banks follow the RBA down, which they are not obliged to do, they must cut outgoings on term deposits for example. Considering banks make 60 per cent of their funds from various savings products, it is no wonder cutting what they pay out is on the horizon. If rates fall much lower people will be drawing out their savings and hiding their "loot" under the bed. Customers are borrowing less because the bar for loans has been pushed too high. Well, perhaps that is a good thing. Australians were condemned for not saving enough; now they are criticized for not borrowing enough. With an election date already set the government will push for full RBA flow - ons in the popular media. This does not look good for retirees who rely on money put aside in investments for their retirement. Money is getting cheaper in ...

Glenn Stevens the Governor of the Reserve bank says he supports a check on the National Broadband Network. You can't really take this man seriously. He obviously just said it to give a non-partisan, either party approach to government. Getting the Coalition off his back was his main aim. After all this time, he says this now. It is obviously late, very late indeed, with the legislation to change the structure of Telstra going through parliament at this very moment. The Labor Government wants to stop any further investigation into the full cost of the NBN, particularly now at the end of parliamentary sitting. It wants to go away and breath a sigh of satisfaction. All government projects end up costing more than was budgeted. The Coalition knows this and if it can keep the pressure for financial investigation going it is on a winner. Though, what it can achieve by this is unclear. Labor surely has support to pass anything that is needed to get this monster of a project up and running...