Financial planning

Yea! We've just had the Budget announced in Australia, to the inevitable wailing of baffled interest groups and the whirring of spin placed on it by competing political groups. Did I mention there's a national election coming up within months?

So this made me think of the terms which have entered the English language from the finance and banking industries recently (no, not embezzlement, theft or fraud, they're much older). I love quantitative easing, and I should love it still more if I were the head of the Treasury or equivalent and could order the printing of a few more millions of currency. And, yes, I know Governments don't just print more bank notes, they issue bonds, but it would be such fun to be able to yell "Start" instead of "Stop the presses"...

Image: australia.edu

The result of rogue traders, those aberrant (according to the self-regulators) people who work outside accepted norms in the stock markets of the world, was the 'GFC', the global financial crisis, which we're still fighting our way out of now. And the Occupy Wall Street movement of protest against the practices of our most respectable gamblers, sorry, I mean stockbrokers, was hardly surprising.

Still, despite the patchwork economy (some bits are doing better than others. That's a surprise) we do seem to be on the up and up. Especially the genius who invented upcharge, a euphemism for whacking an extra fee on a transaction.

And the idea of crowd funding seems very positive indeed. You get to use your own judgement to provide micro-finance to new ventures. Yes, you're still taking a punt on the outcome, but at least some new ideas may get funding previously unavailable.

So, back to the Budget.

The Australian economy has been judged the best run in the world for the last few years and, as a nation, we're finally trying to give the disabled in our society a slightly fairer go. I think this is a good thing and a bit more tax for the purpose is well worth it. But the bottom line (that one's older, too) is that, as a nation, we've got money to allocate. We do argue over how to divide it, but that's normal for our lucky country. 'First World problem', then.

Miranda