Pericles just because Barnaby Joyce does not endorse a sight does not make the stats wrong.Our banks derivative exposue has been published in Bloomberg.The Commonwealth Bank for the first time this year refuses to disclose their exposure to derivatives.Why?

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Address a topic like this on most blogs usually results in moronic non response.The general public have been dumbed down by our education system and that is the sad out come.
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Not so, Arjay. You're expecting people to understand a topic which can take years of learning at university level and then years on the job as an economist/money shuffler. Not forgetting that new ways of doing things crop up on a daily basis. Most people are too busy just trying to make ends meat and look after their families.

Some of us know a little more but not enough to start or contribute to threads in a forum where none know any more or are interested in fighting a system so intrenched to everyone's daily lives(more than an Alabama tick) that changing it would scare the hell out of them. Not to mention getting anything truthful on the subject is akin to finding chook teeth on the moon!

Max Keiser is a Bitcoin whore, a charlatan like every other presstitue out there. He makes his money by spinning you the best financial doom story he can find. He sprinkles it with a bit of truth, avoids mentioning an alternative scenario and then pushes his latest barrow (being Bitcoin at the moment) to get the preppers, as many of them as possible to tune into his next prophecy of doom.

Most people know the system is fracked, Arjay. But none, not even the gurus know how to fix it. It's a matter of ridding the wave as far as you can into shore, hopefully far enough in that you can swim the remainder and plant your feet into some solid ground and take it from there. Get yourself some solid ground Arjay, so you can help a few to shore when the event happens!

That's an interesting distinction, individual.

>>Pericles, You make it sound like the rich pay a higher rate of tax. A bit deceitful there aren't you ? The wage earner can't write off expenses.<<

You seem to have defined "rich" as someone who does not earn a wage, but you also must know that within the wage system, tax is graded so that the poor pay less as a percentage than the higher paid. So, point one, in the case of wages, the rich do pay tax at a higher rate than the poor.

Point two. In order to "write off expenses", as you describe it, you need to have made some kind of investment, and to have actually spent that money. Those payments find their way into the taxable income of others, reducing the income of the investor, and increasing the total tax take.

This avenue is equally open to the "poor", by the way. I personally know people who have started businesses with nothing more than the sweat of their brow, who have the ability to "write off expenses", but who are still, by any measure, not at all rich.

And Arjay, we've been over this before. Many times.

>>Our banks derivative exposue has been published in Bloomberg<<

And what exactly did they say about it?

>>The Commonwealth Bank for the first time this year refuses to disclose their exposure to derivatives.Why?<<

Wrong. Here's their annual report.

http://www.commbank.com.au/about-us/shareholders/pdfs/annual-reports/2012_Commonwealth_Bank_Annual_Report.pdf

Both derivative assets and derivative liabilities are published, on page 97.

Derivative Assets: $38,937 million
Derivative Liabilities $39,221 million

A net exposure of [gasp] $284 million, around 0.7% of their net asset base.

You see this as a screaming headline: "Commbank has $80 billion in derivatives!"

Which is of course literally true, but a meaningless number on its own.

To be fair to Arjay... maybe he believes that net exposure is held against his Commonwealth Bank account and they'll take $284m out of it in the event of a 'collapse'?

In which case he should threaten to move his account to another bank - then time how quickly bank reps take in grovelling with offers to retain his business.

(Here's a fun game: at an ATM whilst the machine is 'churning' check out the receipts poking from the bin or lying around... I award myself points for finding ones where the account balances are less than the amount I'm withdrawing.)

WMTrevor Pericles does not want to believe. http://www.rba.govt.au/publications/bulletin/2012/dec/5.html BIS Semiannual survey on 6 Aussie banks.Over the Counter Deivative exposure a whopping $17 trillion.That link is correct but won't work.Just google RBA Aust OTC Derivative Markets

The CBA did not reveal the truth.http://cecaust.com.au/main.asp?sub=releases&id=2013_02_22_CBA_hiding.html

The link is correct Arjay once you change the '.govt' to the correct '.gov'... then it works.

By the way, did you read the explanation in the RBA Bulletin's "Box A: Understanding the Three Measures of Market Size"?