A free road is a toll-road with a zero toll

Why so many toll-road investments failed, in Australia and around the world?

Road traffic polution in Australia

Australia has now one motor vehicle for every driving age resident, still the number of vehicles grows much faster than the population, how to stop the race?

As of 2011/2012, circa 17 millions registered motor vehicles for circa 17 millions Australian residents aged 18 YO to 90 YO (data compiled from ABS demographic and vehicles stats)

The earth is over populated, it's a no brainer, can we procreate less, what do our leaders do to halt the proliferation?

Discussion to come, check out this very interesting blog:

http://www.overpopulation.org/

Laurent Fabius, new Minister of François Hollande, accountable or responsible for the 80's blood haemophilia contamination?

Laurent Fabius has just been nominated France's Minister of Foreign Affairs by François Hollande. Not a surprise? Well let's have a quick look at his Curriculum Vitae. He happened to be already Prime Minister of François Mitterrand in the 1980's, just at the time of the contaminated haemophilia blood products scandal which ended up by the trial of several ministers, including himself. Though very few were convicted. The Health Minister of Laurent Fabius was finally convicted. But Laurent Fabius was not...

Check it out: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affaire_du_sang_contaminé
Here is a summary in English: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contaminated_haemophilia_blood_products

Remember how the following Prime Minister of François Mitterrand finished? He committed suicide... with the gun of his bodyguard, a well trained sort of Rambo, former member of these commando forces particularly famous for never ever giving up their own weapon. Unless of course a Prime Minister would ask for one...

Those were the Mitterrand years, including the Rainbow Warrior year, a Greenpeace vessel sunk in New-Zealand under the command of, hum who was it already? Let's not digress.

Back to Laurent Fabius, or should it be back to Mitterrand? Didn't François Hollande say something like after winning this presidency he felt like the worthy successor of the other François? Wake-up France before it's too late!

2012, the fourth year of failed monetary policies

What do politicians of the so-called new and old worlds wait for applying Keynes principles instead of these last years of failing loose monetary policy? The causes of the latest financial crisis have been analysed, described, interpreted so thoroughly that even my retired mum and dad finally understood them. Getting to know what, how and where from should be deemed sufficient to clean up this mess. Well it was not apparently or if it was, no one had the courage to do it. But let's go back to the origins:

Like previous ones, this crisis has its roots in the cheap money readily available from the Fed, in other words loose monetary policy. Cash was flowing with little if any control. The laziest way a society may use this cash is to finance construction of low cost accommodations, simply because it rapidly absorbs unemployment by providing easy-to-fill jobs, or low skills ones if you prefer. The dark side is this building activity does not create value for the economy. Innovation is nil, workers won't gain any useful skills... Meanwhile these new accommodations need owners. Cash is cheap so let's give it to those who need it to buy these cheap houses or flats. And since cash flows faster than accommodations can be built, their price soars and lenders feel safer with the value of their mortgages going up.

Should the process stall, lenders will compete for buyers by offering even cheaper loans, at least for the two or three first years, after all loans rates are variable. Or worse, let's provide buyers with more cash than they need. Anyway real estate prices continue to increase with the mortgage or the insurer covering the difference. Lenders never felt so confident about their risk profile.

Until of course prices growth stops. They will eventually fall, first because there won't be enough buyers to acquire what is continuously built, then because of the increasing foreclosures. Here is the catch 22. Because inflation went up with real estate prices and construction wages from historically low unemployment among others, the Fed intervened to refrain it by increasing the cost of cash, which in turn weighed on households budget and in particular those relatively recent home buyers who just happened to enter in the third or fourth year of their loan with higher instalments to pay (remember the promotional first 2 to 3 years?). Some borrowers start to accumulate overdue loan instalments, foreclosures increase, and we know the following...

Too easy? Of course! Many financiers, brokers, resellers, bankers, consultants and any other kind of intermediaries did bring their own layer of complexity in the process to profit in a way or another from this bonanza. The outturn is nonetheless not more complicated than what this simplistic analysis describes.

What did make this very crisis more painful is a lot more financiers did participate in the game, and with a lot more creativity than before. Call it the investment banks effect. Commercial banks only were supposed to take commercial real estate risks. Well...