Aggregated Awareness

Here's a plethora of Australian or Global news from Australian sources, or news about Australia from external sources:

Here's a plethora of Australian or Global news from Australian sources, or news about Australia from external sources. Some of these stories we agree with, some of which we think is total BS. But they are here for your 'news consumption' pleasure nonetheless:

"Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy." - Franz Kafka

From the US news site, ProPublica, comes this report showing that 26 US States are now borrowing funds from the Federal Government in order to continue paying Unemployment Insurance to their constituency. The 26 States are doing this because their respective State level Unemployment Trusts have run out of money to pay claims, and are thus, relying on a US Federal Government handout.

From the prodigious Antal E Fekete via his blog comes this latest essay for inquiring minds. In it, he explores the concepts behind the floating exchange rate regime that the world has lived with, since the US, under President Nixon reneged (ie. defaulted) on it's international gold obligations on the 15th August, 1971.

The exploration of the floating exchange rate regime by Professor Fekete comes to the conclusion, that it is a scheme to embezzle the US Dollar balance of surplus nations. This is achieved by luring the surplus nation to revalue their currency upwards against the US Dollar, as China is being asked to do now, and Japan had been asked to do previously.

From Michael Cembalest of JP Morgan via Paul Kedrosky's blog via Tyler Durden of the Zerohedge.com blog, comes this informative little tidbit regarding investor ownership of gold as a percentage of assets.

During the last bull run in gold back in the early 1980's, investible gold as a percentage of global financial assets was in the 17% range. During the current bull run, and taking numbers from the end of 2009, investible gold as a percentage of global financial assets is around 4%.

From Reuters comes a commentary on the effects of the Chinese Labour strikes on various parts of the global economy.

In April & May, we saw suicides by several workers over wages, at FoxConn, manufacturer of the Apple iPhone, Dell & Hewlett-Packard computers amongst other electronics equipment.

This was followed up in late May & June, with strikes at Japanese auto manufacturers in China such as: Honda, Toyota, and Nissan, amongst others.