Amateur hour in the Treasurer's office

Is it just me or are we all a little disappointed in the Coalition at the moment.
Frankly, I'm shocked by the rubbish coming out of the Treasurer's office at the moment

1. The debt ceiling.Requesting a $500 million increase when $400 million would have been enough. Especially after badgering the government over their debt, to turn around and request an increase is a pretty bad look.

2. Secondly, the idea that the commonwealth should invest 10% in a losing industry like Airlines (through Qantas) is a very outdated idea that has no place in a modern government's policy. The industry is competitive enough and there are better things to spend $500 million on.

2. The rejection of the Graincorp deal. This is very much politics over the national interest. It is mentioned in Hockey's statement

"A further significant consideration was that this proposal has attracted a high level of concern from stakeholders and the broader community. I therefore judged that allowing it to proceed could risk undermining public support for the foreign investment regime and ongoing foreign investment more generally. "

If that isn't code for "We don't want to lose the Farmers support", I don't know what is!

As for the premise that 85% of exports from East Coast Farmers go through GrainCorp's logistical network, I say, big woop. There is the "WEST" coast Farmers as well, and the West Coast actually is the biggest exporter of their grains, not the East Coast, of which 66% of the harvest actually flows into domestic supply.

So just a red herring. It's a pretty sad result all up as the Grains industry would have got a $200 million capital injection from ADM straight away, which is badly needed for those East Coast markets that lag behind the more efficient West Coast industry.

Sad day when politics get in the way of foreign investment. A rookie mistake by Hockey.

Clean Energy Finance Company is optimistic!

Was reading with interest today  regarding the Clean Energy Financial Companies claims that getting rid of it will cost the budget 200 million a year.
Seriously! First of all, according to the CEFC's own 2013 annual report, they made a grand total of $147,000 out of interest income from a single loan of $50,000,000. That is a yield of 0.2%! Go you good thing.

I presume they are talking about investments made after the reporting date. If you look at the annual report again, we have the following investments made after the reporting date.

87,000,000 (July)
353,000,000 (July)

Takes us to a grand total of $490,000,000. There must be another $46 million flying around then to take it to the amount mentioned by Broadbent and co of $536 million. This still leaves another $400 odd million in the kitty though (as in July Treasury paid a nice withdrawal of $811 million from the special account) which i presume is just sitting in Cash account at the moment earning nothing.

But we won't know the quality of these loans until the next annual report. But how can the board of this company say they can get a yield of 7% based on 4 months of investment???? This is purely the company board (and executives) trying to keep their directors fees/salary intact for another year.

Do you ever get the feeling that Jessica Hart thinks she is God's gift?

2010 : "If you see me, or another model, in a bar wait until you are spoken too before you speak,”

2013 : "I think what you find is that for a lot of us, we've been working for 14, 15 years; what it takes to make it here comes from experience and confidence and knowing how to be confident with yourself" (when dissing Taylor Swift)