Macquarie has paid more than $18 million to two of its senior executives after a record annual profit.

Hey Gus, on the topic of the economy and lack of it for executives, or totally unrelated.

I hear on the news that consumer confidence has jumped 9% in the last week or two and it's been attributed to the tax cuts in the Budget!

Given that the majority of Australians might get $6 a week or less who on earth did they survey? Costelloe and Howard perhaps? And the tax cuts are not even for this year, mostly. Talk about bullshit.

If that sort of tripe is what drives our economy we are in the deepest of doo dooes. But it does doesn't it, so we are.

Statistics are the most weird things and as you know I'm still working on the Crunching the Numbers in regard to the laws of average on why Johnnee got re-elected when 60 per cent of the people opposed the war in the first place.

How did he manage (so Blair and Bush) to turn that deficit around? Or was that statistic a fake in order to make this country look good in the "morality" stake despite the "hard" decision to go to war? We need to find the chink in the armour of these fibbers.

Consumer confidence is manipulated day to day.
For example having the stock market report as news everyday on the tele is a waste of time and a spoiler of reality.

The real stock trader would not follow what's on the news.

But in order to fill some time we're fed this thing about stats re the stock market and the dollar: "Today the dollar is UP by .05 of a cent..." Does that matter? Even if the Australian Dollar lost 3 cents today it would not make a hoot of difference.

It could lose or gain the same amount again the next day. These values are manipulated by exchange traders who play BIG bucks like some of us might play ten bucks at the roulette of the Crown casino. There is no solidity in these figures except someone has, is and is going to make a hoot of money and the rest of us don't have time to blink.

We have invented all these "control" mechanisms in order to eliminate cheats and the possibility of a crash. So in the process we delude ourselves with figures because things are cooking nicely in the stats department while we're being hammered in the field. And when something goes bad our government will blame external factors but when things are good the government will pat itself on the back. We have created economic monsters out of control.

Illusions! Manipulation! Instead of understanding the processes that create what we do and are, we only look at the skin, the surface which can be painted whichever colour the government wants to choose.

From the SMH

Bank boss gets $6000-a-week tax cut

Macquarie Bank boss Allan Moss will get a huge tax cut under structural changes to Australia's tax regime because he earns an extremely high salary, Treasurer Peter Costello says.

The investment bank, which is nicknamed The Millionaire's Factory, revealed yesterday its chief executive's total pay packet in 2005/06 was $21.2 million.

Mr Costello today told ABC Radio: "I suppose everybody wishes they could have an extremely high salary like that."

He was responding to a comment on radio that it did not sit well with average Australians to learn that Mr Moss' weekly tax cut could be up to $6,000 under structural changes to the tax regime.

read more at the SMH
------------------------
No Mr treasurer, it does not sit well with people earning a pittance that you are giving the rich tax break to the tune of $6 grand a week! Hopefully they will boot you and your upside down fat-pig-trough tax break at the next election... See the cartoon at the head of this line of blogs and the date... Nothing changes...