Malcolm Surry

THE Fremantle Dockers, now even more firmly anchored at the bottom of the AFL ladder, run around every week with AlintaGas on the back of their jerseys. Is that causing angst for these long-time sponsors? Not a bit of it.

PRIME Minister John Howard is enough of a politician to believe his visit to WA broke the drought – apres moi le deluge and all that.

AUSTRALIAN share prices have so far stood up manfully amid the slaughter on world stock markets.

WESTERN Australian gamblers punted a mere $2.9 billion last year, and lost about $472 a head … a bit less than the cost of a few days in Bali.

BEIJING lost its Olympic Games 2000 bid to Sydney by two votes. That probably did China a favour.

REFORMATION man John Howard may be contemplating the collateral damage inflicted by the deregulation of the airline and telecommunications industries.

SO this is the recession we did not have to have, to paraphrase one former pig farmer. The export engine, fuelled by a highly competitive dollar, has enabled the economy to come through a tough patch.

AUSTRALIAN share prices finished the first half of the calendar year up 9 per cent, with the All Ords at a record 3,425. That knocked the US S&P500 and the MSCI World Index into a cocked hat, with virtually all the overseas markets deep in the red.

IF you thought that 67 point rise in the index during the final few minutes of the trading year was too good to be true, that is because it was. In fact it smelled fishy.The following morning the market opened flat and closed 50 points in the bag.

THE impressively credentialled bronze bull, which stands just around the corner from the New York Stock Exchange, must be finding it increasingly hard to remain virile, with all that flaccid corporate news emanating from inside.

WHAT was the best performing currency in the world last month? It was none other than the Australian dollar. No that is not a misprint. And I am completely sober.

ONCE upon a time, when I was a young man, it was my practice to descend the stairs early in the morning to pick up the milk from the doorstep, and collect the newspaper and the mail from the postbox.

PETER Costello’s decision to shepherd Shell out of its heavy tackle on Woodside brought a cyclone of criticism verging on the hysterical.

THE Australian mainstream media is reluctant to run cheerful business news. But the bearer of bad tidings is guaranteed access to the airwaves.

JOHN Maynard Keynes once observed: “men of self-confessed financial wisdom are wonderfully consistent, especially in their mistakes.”

MIKE Fitzpatrick has come a long way since he played ruckman for Subiaco and captain/coach of Carlton in the amateur footy days.

THE Australian dollar has become an expedient Aunt Sally for irresponsible politicians, but the “big dollar”, as foreign exchange dealers call the greenback, is suddenly looking a little vulnerable.

POPULOUS posturing by pompous politicians is going to infuriate us all the way up to the Federal election.

IF THERE was a prize for the most gutsy little company in Australia, it should go to Balcatta-based Atlas Pacific. If you want to talk high risk, try pearl farming in Indonesia.

THE Australian stock market is still sliding at a sedate pace compared with bourses across the water. Some of our home-grown companies are consummate outperformers. AlintaGas at $3.28 is a country mile over the $2.40 issue price.

UBS Warburg has sent a note to clients spotlighting the flip side of the subterranean Australian dollar.UBS lists 24 companies with offshore earnings to boost their bottom lines.

THE Australian stock market is still sliding at a sedate pace compared with bourses across the water. Some of our home-grown companies are consummate outperformers. AlintaGas at $3.28 is a country mile over the $2.40 issue price.

ACCORDING to a recent survey, only 3.5 per cent of Japanese people trust their politicians. Good Grief ! That’s getting down towards Australian levels.

Wool growers and wheat farmers are finally making some decent money, thanks to the chronically weak dollar.

THE word “correction” has now been officially expunged from stockbrokers lexicons. The Dow Jones Index has lost 18 per cent from its peak in the middle of last year.

BERNARD Swanepoel, chief executive of South Africa’s Harmony Gold Mining group, is arriving in Perth next week. And he is bringing his cheque book.

SOMETHING weird is going on in the bullion markets. The price of gold has jumped US$10 in a week to US$271.

THE otherwise cheerful tone of the bourse was shattered by the thrashings handed out to Perth technology middleweight champion ERG and old pug Orbital Engine Corp.

CANNON to the right of us, cannon to the left, and still into the valley of death trots the ASX S&P 200.

IT is probably just a furphy, but the speculation about a merger between Wesfarmers and the Bank of Western Australia is intriguing. The most ardent BankWest supporters could not claim that institution has set the world on fire since it was listed in...

Arrogant software manufacturers have a habit of releasing new products to the market with operating glitches that they leave the consumers to sort out.

PERHAPS it was inevitable, but it is unacceptable that the takeover bid for Woodside has been turned into a political football.