Shark Attack 28/12/08

A Monstrously Large White Pointer
I haven't heard of a shark attack for a while, so I have yet to post a shark attack post. One of the things I've been tracking in the news is shark attacks and other  wild-life-encounters-one-would-regret articles. Today's attack news comes from Perth, West Australia.

Brian Guest, 51, was in the ocean south of Perth, Western Australia, when locals reported "something pretty violent" out in the water.
His 24-year-old son raised the alarm as rescuers began a search for Mr Guest, described as an experienced swimmer and diver who knew the area well.
Australia has had one other fatal shark attack in 2008, off the eastern coast.
Surfer Peter Edmonds, 16, was taken by a shark off the coast of New South Wales at Ballina in April.

Witnesses and officials admitted that the latest incident, which happened near Rockingham, to the south of Perth, bore the hallmarks of a shark attack.
Mr Guest and his son were reportedly snorkelling for crabs in familiar waters when they were attacked.
"There was lots of talk among witnesses at the incident location about seeing fins in the water but we can't yet say whether there was definitely a shark out there, though in all probability that's what it is," Mark Valentine, a local police inspector, told the Australian Associated Press.
"Something very traumatic and pretty violent has happened there and we are treating it as a probable shark attack," he added.
Other witnesses reported that a shark had been spotted in the area during the search.
A family friend said Mr Guest's son had been swimming close to his father at the time of the attack although he did not see it happen. He quickly ran ashore to raise the alarm.
He said the family was assuming the worst.

I did blog the Edmonds attack in April on my old blog. One of the things that is becoming apparent to me as I keep track of the shark attacks is that if we are in their habitat more and more, and their food is diminishing due to over fishing, it seems inevitable that we are seeing more shark attacks off our coasts.

One of the prevailing wisdoms of Australian beaches has been that shark attacks are rare, but for years I've thought this wisdom was apocryphal and under-researched. If you keep Google News open as I have in the last few years, there are at least 3-5 shark fatalities in a year off the coast of Australia.

Naturally, surfers and divers are most at risk, but both sports have seen a rise in participation rates so it stands as reasonable to expect these kinds of numbers.

Indeed, Shark spottings and sightings are up.

BEACHGOERS are being warned to be alert for sharks because of a surge in sightings at popular swimming beaches this summer.

So far this month, Surf Life Saving South Australia's aerial patrol has spotted sharks 39 times along the state's coastline - the same number for the entire summer of 2007-08 and more than 2005-06.

In the past week there have been 10 separate shark sightings off metropolitan beaches, including five yesterday.

Swimmers were evacuated from Grange beach yesterday after a 3m bronze whaler was sighted 20m offshore about 12.30pm.

The four other sightings were another at Grange, two at Henley Beach and one at Port Willunga.

There was also a shark sighting at Sydney's Bondi Beach yesterday which saw around 1000 bathers evacuated from the water.

Bondi lifeguard Anthony Carroll was surfing before going on duty when he spotted the shark snacking on fish.

"I saw the dorsal fins and the side fins," he said. "It looked like a jet-ski coming through a wave."

He said the shark was almost black, had a thick girth and was between 2m and 2.5m.

Surf Life Saving SA state manager Shane Daw said the increased numbers could partly be attributed to more fish in Gulf St Vincent.

"We have noticed this year that there are more fish moving through the gulf and obviously that's an attraction and therefore we're asking for people to be conscious and aware that we are still getting a number of sightings," he said.

"We ask them where possible to swim at patrolled beaches so that if there are sightings they can be alerted as soon as possible.

Andrew Fox, who is the son of shark attack victim Rodney Fox, said increased sightings could lead to greater risk of attacks.

Similar warnings of increased sightings before the 2004-05 summer were tragically followed weeks later by the death of Nick Peterson, 18, about 400m offshore from West Beach, SA.

Whatever the reason, the sharks are swimming closer to bathers, surfers and divers. There was even a sighting on Boxing Day at Bondi Beach.

Mr Carroll said he saw the shark about 50m from where they were paddling, in the middle of the bay off Bondi.

"I saw the dorsal fins and the side fins," he said. "It looked like a jet-ski coming through a wave."

He said the shark was almost black, had a thick girth and was between 2m and 2.5m.

The shark alarm sounded about 10.40am and bathers were kept from the water for almost 30 minutes as lifeguards, surf lifesavers and helicopters combed the area for further signs. But the shark was not seen again, a lifeguard said.

I'm placing the over-under for shark attack fatalities in Australian waters at 4 this summer.

Double Your Phil Hughes

Why Settle For One?


To me, an ardent Yankee fan, the name 'Phil Hughes' spells promise. Ever since the Yankees started drafting more high-ceiling talent since 2004, Phil Hughes has been that promise that more home-grown Yankees were on the way. He's shown stretches of that brilliance at the MLB level, but his story is largely yet to be writ. It's going to be interesting and exciting watching Phil Hughes come into his own, hopefully as an Ace-calibre pitcher for the Yankees.

He's even got a blog!

Of course, living in Australia, my sports fandom also extends to Cricket, and this summer I've become aware of another Phil Hughes that is knocking on the elite level of Cricket.

PHIL HUGHES didn't really need a coach. After school each day from age 14 to 17 he'd just drag his father, Greg, down to the oval at Macksville and have him feed the ball machine. Phil knew which shots he needed to work on. Then he'd have Greg wait while he did his fitness program. Alone. Almost every day.

"If we'd had a big weekend away he might miss the Monday, and maybe some Fridays he'd have off," Greg Hughes says. "But apart from that it was a daily ritual. It must have worked: he's scored 53 hundreds so far."

Phil had reason to work hard. Despite his tender years, he knew he had a rare talent. At 12, playing in a 50-over primary schools carnival final, he hit 159 not out, commanding attention similarly to earlier child prodigies Adam Gilchrist, Dean Jones and Michael Slater.

"That's the innings that started off all the talk about him," Greg says. "When Cricket NSW say they knew him from when he was 12, well, that's where that started. It was probably also about when I first realised he could play."

After that game Phil met Merv Hughes. Greg has a photo of the moment and marvels at the coincidence of his son meeting one of the men who now can control if or when he plays for Australia.

The thought of playing for Australia was first realistically conveyed to Hughes by Neil D'Costa, his coach since arriving in Sydney. D'Costa, who mentored Michael Clarke to stardom, planted the idea in Hughes's mind that "in a few years Matthew Hayden is going to retire and you should make that position yours". The pair have forged a solid link and mapped out a plan for Hughes's career.

"We looked at how he would attack his rise in cricket with a mental and technical approach," D'Costa says. "It's working for him - look at how many people said he would fail in his second year. But I don't see any second-year blues."

I started seeing his name in the last few weeks as my Google News kept spitting out this other Phil Hughes to the New York Yankee Phil Hughes. It's a common name and I might have just ignored it; but even when I know it's pure coincidence I want to ask what's in a name? To top it all off The latter Phil Hughes it seems is a New South Welshman. Well damnit, I'd better be rooting for him too, especially if he starts opening for Australia. It's not as if he's a South African or a Kiwi or Pom! :)

So that's my present for this Christmas. I get a second young Phil Hughes to root for in the coming years. I'm warning you all that if things get a litle confusing, well, you read about it here first.

Yankee Hotstove

Oh Look, They Might Have Signed Tex!

In a wild spending spree, the Yankees are reported to have landed Mark Teixeira.

The Yankees have reached an agreement with Mark Teixeira, a free-agent first baseman, on a long-term contract, according to a person in baseball familiar with the matter. The move would represent the third major off-season move by the team and deal a blow to the Boston Red Sox, who had made signing Teixeira the main objective of their off-season.

Late last week Red Sox executives traveled to Texas to meet with Teixeira, 28, and his agent, Scott Boras, and were clearly hoping to emerge from that meeting with a deal. Instead it ended with Boston’s owner, John Henry, stating that the Red Sox were no longer in the bidding, although that was widely interpreted as a negotiating ploy.

As has happened with other standoffs between the Red Sox and the agent, most notably with Johnny Damon, Boras then turned to the Yankees, who until the last 24 hours had not aggressively pursued Teixeira.

In Teixeira, the Yankees get a powerful switch-hitter who is also a standout fielder. He will join Alex Rodriguez to give the team a strong 3-4 presence in the lineup for years to come.

That's just wild. Adding Teixeira into the Yankee lineup looks like this according to the RLYW.

The first and obvious move that a lot of us have been harping on is signing Mark Teixeira.  If the Yankees did that (which they won’t) and moved Swisher to CF, here’s how that would look.

http://www.replacementlevel.com/images/blog_images/2009Lineups/2.jpg

A 36 run offensive upgrade, although replacing Melky in CF nullifies the defensive upgrade Teixeira adds.  Still, it’s around a 3-4 win upgrade overall and probably makes them the AL East favorite.

So the Yankees on paper at least are back to being a 98win team.

UPDATE:

Now this, I like.

Before we go any further, let us state the obvious truth that the Red Sox are not going to collapse. They have a good team with good management and good farm system, and they have the money to compete for any free agent in the business. The Yankees entered this season far more desperate than the Red Sox did, which is why New York now has spent in excess of $420 million on Teixeira, CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett.

Still, exactly what happened here? Did the Sox get used or did they just completely whiff? In the coming hours and days, Sox officials (who thus far have generally declined to discuss any all things Teixeira) will put out their spin on how they got their pockets picked by the Yankees. None of it will be worth a darn. Baseball is a results-oriented business, and the Red Sox seemingly had all of the necessary elements to make this work.

Instead, they got burned.

Hard to say. Tex is a very, very good player on both sides of the ball without being truly exceptional with the bat. I can see why some teams might balk at handing out a dirty big contract to him. Just off the top of my head, his numbers remind me of Todd Helton numbers, but not quite. A quick Fangraphs comparison of the wOBA gives us this graph. He was sort of Helton-like in the first 3 years and last year, but in his 26-27y.o. seasons, he dipped where Helton peaked.

Helton's been in decline since his 31y.o season because of back problems, which doesn't bode well for a 8year contract. Baseball Reference threw up 2 interesting names worth comparing, and they were Carlos Delgado and Willie McCovey.

Delgado has higher peaks and lower troughs through his 28y.o. season. McCovey is closer in alignment, down to the dip at Age 26. McCovery of course stayed reasonably productive until his Age 37 season. Delgado had a slight recovery in his general delcine in his Age 36 season, but in most part he's been a very productive hitter between 28 and 36.

This contract might not be such a bad deal for the Yankees, with the usual caveats for long term deals applying.

One wonders what they're going to do with Swisher, Nady, Damon, Matsui, Gardner, Melky Cabrera going in to 3 outfield spots and DH too. It also rules out A-Rod or Jeter changing positions to 1B down the track. It's going to be very interesting what happens with Jeter when his contract expires in 2010.

Laws Of Australian Cinematics

David Dale's View

David Dale regales us with his three laws of Cinematics:

The First Law of Cinematics: To predict the success of a big budget movie in Australia, multiply its first week's takings by three. The nation's favourite flick this year, The Dark Knight, made $15.9 million in its first week, and ended up with a total of $45.6 million (putting it close to the all-time chart-toppers Titanic with $58m, Shrek 2 with $50m and Return of the King with $49m). TDK sold more than 4 million tickets because it lived up to its hype, just like Kung Fu Panda, which earned $8.3 million in the first week and went on to total $26 million, or Wall-E (from $5.8m to $17.8m).
There were exceptions to the first law this year. Mamma Mia! went from $8.1m to an amazing $31.5m and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull went from $12.3m to a mere $29.5m. They are covered by ...
The Second Law of Cinematics: To tell if a movie will stay hot, examine the dropoff in its second week's takings. If it falls by more than a third, word of mouth must be bad (and the ultimate total, as with Indy, will be less than three times the first week). If it falls by less than a third, w.o.m. will propel it to glorious heights (as with Mamma Mia!). It's ominous news for the teen vampire flick Twilight that its second weekend box office was down 54 per cent on its first weekend.
Now here's a spooky detail: the takings of Australia fell by 33 per cent from week 1 to week 2, and by 32 per cent from week 2 to week 3.

There is thus no way to tell if it will top the $29 million earned by Baz Luhrmann's last epic, Moulin Rouge. We might seek a clue in ...

The Third Law of Cinematics: Australian films never make more than $3 million (Happy Feet and Australia don't count because they are international movies). To put it another way, there are only 300,000 cinemagoers in this country who regard the term "Australian-made" as an incentive.
The most awarded local flick this year was The Black Balloon. It made $2.1 million. The most awarded local flick last year was Romulus My Father, which made $2.6 million. Some people theorise that Australian movies fail because they lack budgets. There may be another issue. Could it be that they fail because they lack story?

Need we say more?

Bail Out Money Turns Into Bonuses

What A Nice Way To Be Rewarded For Failure

A couple of months ago as the bank bail out went ahead, Naomi Klein piped up and said she thought it was a travesty as the bailout money went to pay the bonuses for the executives for these failing banks. She wasn't wrong about it as it turns out.

Banks that are getting taxpayer bailouts awarded their top executives nearly $US1.6 billion ($2.34 billion) in salaries, bonuses and other benefits last year, an AP analysis reveals.

The rewards came even at banks where poor results last year foretold the economic crisis that sent them to Washington for a government rescue. Some trimmed their executive compensation due to lagging bank performance, but still forked over multimillion-dollar executive pay packages.

Benefits included cash bonuses, stock options, personal use of company jets and chauffeurs, home security, country club memberships and professional money management, the AP review of federal securities documents found.

The total amount given to nearly 600 executives would cover bailout costs for many of the 116 banks that have so far accepted tax dollars to boost their bottom lines.

Representative Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services committee and a longstanding critic of executive largesse, said the bonuses tallied by the AP review amount to a bribe “to get them to do the jobs for which they are well paid in the first place.

“Most of us sign on to do jobs and we do them best we can,” said Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat. “We’re told that some of the most highly paid people in executive positions are different. They need extra money to be motivated!”

The AP compiled total compensation based on annual reports that the banks file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The 116 banks have so far received $US188 billion ($275.42 billion) in taxpayer help.

Among the findings:

-The average paid to each of the banks’ top executives was $US2.6 million ($3.8 million) in salary, bonuses and benefits.
-Lloyd Blankfein, president and chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs, took home nearly $US54 million ($79 million) in compensation last year. The company’s top five executives received a total of $US242 million ($355 million).

This year, Goldman will forgo cash and stock bonuses for its seven top-paid executives. They will work for their base salaries of $US600,000 ($880,000), the company said. Facing increasing concern by its shareholders on executive payments, the company described its pay plan last spring as essential to retain and motivate executives “whose efforts and judgments are vital to our continued success, by setting their compensation at appropriate and competitive levels”. Goldman spokesman Ed Canaday declined to comment beyond that written report.

The New York-based company on December 16 reported its first quarterly loss since it went public in 1999. It received $US10 billion ($14.65 billion) in taxpayer money on October 28.

-Even where banks cut back on pay, some executives were left with seven- or eight-figure compensation that most people can only dream about. Richard D Fairbank, the chairman of Capital One Financial Corporation, took a $US1-million ($1.46 million) hit in compensation after his company had a disappointing year, but still got $US17 million ($25 million) in stock options. The McLean, Virginia-based company received $US3.56 billion ($5.2 billion) in bailout money on November 14.

-John A Thain, chief executive officer of Merrill Lynch, topped all corporate bank bosses with $US83 million ($122 million) in earnings last year. Thain, a former chief operating officer for Goldman Sachs, took the reins of the company in December 2007, avoiding the blame for a year in which Merrill lost $US7.8 billion ($11.4 billion). Since he began work late in the year, he earned $US57,692 ($84,500) in salary, a $US15-million ($22 million) signing bonus and $US68 million ($100 million) in stock options.

Like Goldman, Merrill got $US10 billion ($14.7 billion) from taxpayers on October 28.

The AP review comes amid sharp questions about the banks’ commitment to the goals of the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), a law designed to buy bad mortgages and other troubled assets. Last month, the Bush administration changed the program’s goals, instructing the Treasury Department to pump tax dollars directly into banks to prevent wholesale economic collapse.

The program set restrictions on some executive compensation for participating banks, but did not limit salaries and bonuses unless they had the effect of encouraging excessive risk to the institution. Banks were barred from giving golden parachutes to departing executives and deducting some executive pay for tax purposes.

I'm tempted to quote the whole damn article but I will refrain.

I went to see Walk-offHBP play baseball and I ran into a guy who now works for JP Morgan in Sydney. Naturally I asked him how he was finding the GFC, and he told me that JP Morgan was relatively fine so far. He said that he wasn't senior enough in the chain to be targeted for cuts, and he wasn't junior to be cut out of hand. In short, he was being paid about what the bank could afford for the work he does - which he jokingly said was nothing too serious.

"But some of these senior guys getting $5m a year? Who the hell is worth that in any market? Seriously, they should be paying me that. Now. Like, as in, He's going to work hard, pay him as much as we got. This old fart who's over it and isn't hungry? Fuck him off quick."

Then he stepped out to bat and drew a walk on 5 pitches. It was pretty cool. Our old club philosophy was OBP, walks and waiting for 3-run homers, which did happen as I watched. That's another story. :)

Back to the point, which is: some of these dufuses who had their shareholders duped are running off with tax-payers money for their friggin' bonuses. Get that. You've run your company into the ground through idiotic management, asked for government money by the truckload and instead of using it fix the company, you pay yourself a bonus! A BONUS! For what?

One never ceases to be amazed.

The Wages Of Fame

At Least It's Not Famous For Being Famous

Pleiades forwarded this little article about how Nicol Kidman is going to spend this festive season in the US because she's been devastaed by the bad reviews for 'Australia'.

A close friend said the Oscar winner was upset at not celebrating daughter Sunday Rose's first birthday in Sydney.

"She's been so upset by all of it," the friend said. "It really has devastated her."

Although Kidman has received some positive reviews for her role as Lady Sarah Ashley in the Baz Luhrmann epic - including from respected ABC critic Margaret Pomeranz - much of the media attention, at home and abroad, has been negative.

"People seem to to be really going for her; I don't quite get it," Kidman's friend said.

"Many of Australia's own critics gave her strong praise in the role - why are we ignoring what our own critics are saying? It seems very unfair - and it is very distressing for Nicole."

Even longtime allies of Kidman have been on the attack. Deborah Thomas, editorial director of Australian Women's Weekly, ridiculed her on Channel Nine's Today show last week for saying she had only used sunscreen to keep her face looking youthful. Thomas urged Kidman to be more open about any cosmetic procedures she might have had.

Then, it's the usual claim that she's a tall poppy. It probably is the tall Poppy syndrome but I sort of think she called it on herself.

I've been thinking about this quite a bit because I don't think I know many people who keep can keep a straight face when you tell them "Nicole Kidman is a great actress". It's really interesting because in Sydney where I live at least, there's a feeling that people can see right through her acting to see her. People who are otherwise positive, nice, normal people scowl their faces and tell me how awful she is and then unleash an anecdote about just how awful she is in real life.

What to make of it? I have a few anecdotes. She was this girl who would get on the school bus last and declare to the entire bus she was going to be famous star; she was the woman who slept with producer Terry Hayes to get a plum role, then dumped him for a bigger fish; She is absolutely mean and condescending to shop attendants and receptionists (I've heard this from about 5-6 people who have served her); she sacked her Australian agent June Cann from the airport by phone as she left for her first big USA film 'Days of Thunder'; Her contribution to a Tsunami relief telethon was a poster of herself form 'Moulin Rouge!' with her autograph which was then auctioned and then raised a paltry 3-digit figure- and this was from Australia's richest woman; and that's just some of the more memorable accusations against her person.

All this vitriol in the people in her hometown has got to be invidia -envy of the worst kind. I mean, I get it. She's a dreadful human being to people she doesn't know, she's a hopeless narcissist to people who meet her casually, and yet people who work with her tell you she's quite a nice in person, really. Well, that sounds like a typical movie star.

So when people see her on the screen in Sydney, there's this groan of recognition. She is like a mirror that reflects everybody's own narcissism and desire to be more beautiful through cosmetic surgery and the greedy, greedy desire to be rich AND famous and be lauded for it. Just how the hell did she do it? It must have been through evil, underhanded means, a pact with the devil - or scientology and Tom Cruise -  whatever it took. The bitch! Thus people walk out of the cinema riven with self-loathing. It's particularly bad on the North Shore where she grew up, exactly because she represents what can only be described as: 'There but for the Acts of the Devil go I'.

That's got to be envy. Is it fair? No. is it understandable? Entirely. All the same, Kidman really hasn't done enough to make her hometown forget the slights. One of the rules of success is that you don't get to "go home to Kansas". Because there are people waiting with knives of envy back in Kansas for Dorothy-Judy Garland. It's sort of surprising that somebody who was smart enough to marry Tom Cruise without a pre-nup can't figure out why her hometown thinks she's awful.

Me? I don't like her at all because I too see the preening  North Shore girl in everything she does, so it doesn't matter what she seems to be doing as an actor, her being and presence mitigates against me actually seeing the performance as anything but crafted and forced. She's always seemed like she was playing "Nicole Kidman the actress doing her acting thing"predicated  in just about everything I've seen. Her much lauded work in 'To Die For' worked because we could accept that this character was totally in line with who I thought I saw. i.e. it worked because it was the closest thing to what we saw of her.

She's played interpreters and foreigners, a scientist, and a brain surgeon (at 23!) and none of them seemed to reflect on my own experiences of being an interpreter, a foreigner or even a medical student. In that sense her career has been an exercise in demolishing credibility rather than building it.  She's played sirens who are dispyronic and housewives with little charm. What do you make of an unconvincing actress who seems to make a cold charmlessness her trade mark signature thing?

The fact that she would want her hometown to love her, accept her and  embrace her is actually a little pathetic.

Baz Mounts Defense of 'Australia'

Because Evidently It's Not Speaking For Itself

Baz Luhrmann is sounding like he's not enjoying the roasting. Here's a Reuters article on the director's perspective on his own film.

"A lot of reviewers like 'Australia.' And we're making people cry; I know because they write to us," he told the Hollywood Reporter during an interview at the Four Seasons Hotel. "But there are those that don't get it. A lot of the film scientists don't get it. And it's not just that that they don't get it, but they hate it and they hate me, and they think I'm the black hole of cinema. They say, 'He shouldn't have made it, and he should die.'"

I think the people are crying because it's more like an onion than a proper tear-jerker. But we'll let that pass.

Asked why he thought the reactions were so passionate, he replied: "I know what it's about."

The movie's detractors, he said, were used to movies that were neatly defined.

"This is not (simply) a romantic comedy for 40-year-old women or action movies for 17-year-old boys, and that's not OK with some people. It's not OK for people to come eat at the same table of cinema. But you look at movies like 'Gone With the Wind' and Old Hollywood classics, and they don't fit in any box.

"Corny Hollywood movies from the '40s freak out (the film scientists)," he added.

It's a real drag that Baz Luhrmann went out and made a very big movie without a target audience, armed with the faith that a retread of a Hollywood movie from the 1940s would transcend the need for defining a genre, all the while he post-Modernistically pilfered cues from the said 1940s film.

While I'm no film scientist, I am at least a student of my craft. When I saw shorts on the Kidman/Letterman interview, I noticed he crossed the line not once but twice in a span of 30seconds. I'm sorry but if you can't get your basics down like that, while working with a professional crew, then should you be entrusted with a $197million budget?

It's not that he's made a very broad, general film with a mixed genre - those things have places in the world, but they tend to have smaller audiences  because it takes a lot more effort from the audience to understand how the genres are getting mixed. It is the fact that Luhrmann can't tell a story without throwing his camera around and trying to invent a new angle to shoot a 2-hander scene. Dare I say it, he's actually not properly schooled in how to direct a scene for camera.

This results in his films being nebulous, unfocused and largely confusing. He is the opposite of David Mamet's tenets where you should simply stick to the story as tightly as you can.

Years ago when he suddenly burst on to the world with 'Strictly Ballroom', I was a student at AFTRS. The 'Strictly Ballroom' promotional tour rolled into the school cinema and got its screen to much adulation from the  teaching staff. I was struck by several things:

- How poorly directed Strictly Ballroom actually was.

- How the teachers and admin staff embraced it anyway because the story was good enough and simple enough.

- How the AFTRS staff embraced the film, even though Luhrman was from NIDA and not the AFTRS. The guy had nothing to do with AFTRS.

Now, the third thing was possibly the weirdest thing, because it relates back to the first. One of the things that film school inevitably does to you is give you a grounding in the basic needs of directing for camera. If it didn't/doesn't, you should burn it down and start again. Certainly, in my time, as wobbly as it was, that culture lived and breathed at AFTRS.

So here was a film that failed to meet the kind of technical standards that second year novices were meeting, getting critical acclaim. Worse still, the AFTRS educators were willing to turn a blind eye to all these faults for which they would have roasted their own students and praise the film to the sky. It was a surreal moment. Yes, I'm talking about you, John O'Hara, Paul Thompson, Helen Carmichael, Marion Ord, Brian Hannant! - Just in case you're googling your own names.

But it got me thinking: If NIDA could produce successful film makers who didn't know anything about the technical things the AFTRS was imparting to its own students, and the AFTRS's job was just to produce the crew who would work on these films, What EXACTLY WAS THE POINT OF HAVING A DIRECTING DEPARTMENT? What was the point of even having AFTRS?  It seemed incredibly self-defeating for AFTRS's teaching body to embrace the success of the film in spite of all its abundantly clear faults. The sort of faults with which it would roast its own students

Understand this: All the students knew (and understood) that it was a deeply flawed film, and yet we all shrugged and furtively caught each other's disbelieving glances as the AFTRS teachers lauded its success. It was one of those. "WHAT THE FUCK?!!!!" moments that make you re-assess everything about what you are doing. What exactly was the point of proper film technique?

What exactly is the point of any technique to do anything? Why bother learning a single-handed backhand? Why bother learning correct finger - position for scales? Why learn how to cast and reel properly? Why learn technique in anything, when the novice world just doesn't notice? Or was it just a case of double standards?

I don't have an answer to this double standard. I have no answer as to how these things happen. But let's face it, there's Baz Luhrmann making his dirty big Hollywood Blockbuster, partly on Australian tax Payers' money - still, clearly ignorant of the basic basics of film making. And the joke is on me (and others), because there is nobody from my year at AFTRS that has directed a Hollywood film. What, exactly, was the point of having AFTRS, if this was going to be the outcome?

Those people should have been quaking in their shoes when Baz Luhrmann emerged, instead of lauding its success; because his very career poses serious questions about Filmmaking in Australia. In my book, the one that I got from AFTRS, it's questionable that Baz Luhrmann should have been allowed to make that film; no, he shouln't have to die except in the box office; and I'm not being mean-spirited when I say that.

Don't Do A Bond Movie, Baz

Done Their Dash

Here's something interesting. 'Ostraya' might have been the last hurrah, rather than the next wave.

Luhrmann admits that executives at 20th Century Fox, the Hollywood studio behind the film, were having problems marketing it to audiences because of its mix of slapstick comedy and intense drama.

"Fox are having trouble selling it," he said.

"They're having trouble making a trailer that can sell tickets.

"I'm scared and fearful of this. Will everyone get it? No. But I've been amazed by the variety of audiences who are intensely emotional in reacting to it."

Luhrmann said while he had no definite projects in the pipeline at the moment, one day he planned to "take that James Bond film".

"That'll be fun," he said.

Kidman also reiterated her desire to reduce her acting workload in favour of focusing on being mum to her baby Sunday Rose.

"I have to say I'm not that interested in making films any more," she told the newspaper.

"I know I'm not meant to say that, but that's where it is for me now.

"I'm 41 years old and very happy being in Tennessee with my baby and with my husband.

"I obviously have creative blood in me and it needs to come out in some way but I just don't have that burning desire any more.

"I'm not saying I'm never going to work again, but I'm at peace with whatever happens, which is a nice place to be at this stage of my life."

I swear it reads like Baz is blaming ALL the failure of 'Ostraya' on Nicole Kidman - which he probably isn't, but how exactly are we to interpret all this?

I don't know about Kidman's semi-retirement. She is in a position to do whatever she likes.It's also the case that she's hit that age where she can't easily be the romantic/sexual interest of the story, which means she'll be paid less.

As for Luhrmann's claim that he would "take that Bond movie", you'd have to say, "Don't".

Let's face it, the Bond Movie this time around spanked Baz's movie into oblivion at the Box Office. I hardly think Luhrmann is in a position to be dismissive about Bond Movies in general. If your auteur work wasn't good enough to take on a Bond Movie when given the marketing support of a major studio, then how good could you possibly be working for another franchise project? It's pretty galling to think that having made a bunch of largely cruddy films, Luhrmann thinks he's up to doing a Bond Movie.

Narnia In Ostraya

Pleiades gave me the heads-up on this as usual. The first Narnia flick was shot in NZ in the wake of the Rings trilogy. Now there's a rumour that the third might come to Australia.

A surge of Hollywood interest in Australia as a filming location could lead to another coup: the next Chronicles Of Narnia film.

Following The Lion, The Witch And The Wardobe and Prince Caspian, filming for The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader was to begin in Mexico next month, much of it at the Baja Studios water tank that was used for Titanic and Master And Commander.

But difficult conditions, including a rise in violence associated with a drug war, are believed to have led Disney and Walden Media to hunt for a new location to shoot the reputed $US100 million ($150 million) movie.

SiT hears that film industry officials in NSW and Queensland are chasing the movie and the Sunshine State is favoured to win because of the water tank at Warner Roadshow Studios on the Gold Coast. The Dawn Treader needs studios, beaches, jungles and other locations for a five-month shoot.

Well why not? We haven't had much Hollywood fare for the crews since the heyday of Star Wars 2&3 and the Matrix series. What really shits me in all of this is that when these things get made, these Film Offices strut about as if they've accomplished something truly great, when all they've done is set themselves up as the lowest bidder.

A Win For Barbie

Mattel has won its case against the company that poached one of its designers, who took his designs of a certain Bratz range of dolls to Mattel's competitor. It's all a bit weird, but here's the link thanks to Pleiades.

The ruling sent shockwaves through toyland as the industry gears up for its busiest time of the year. In June, sales of Bratz in the US reached $3.1bn (£2.1bn) since their launch in 2001. Sales of Barbie, still America's most popular toy, fell by 15% in 2007.

The ruling comes three months after Mattel, the makers of Barbie, won a copyright case in which it argued that the Bratz concept had been developed by one of its designers. A jury agreed that Carter Bryant had come up with the original designs while at Mattel and had taken them to MGA, which launched the Bratz line in 2001. The jury awarded Mattel $10m for copyright infringement and $90m for breach of contract.

Judge Stephen Larson's ruling effectively places the Bratz brand under the control of Mattel.

Judging from the brief description, it's actually interesting that it took so long! You'd think the horse had bolted a long time before and won a couple of trophies by now.

Mailbox Funnies

This one from Pleiades is pretty cute.

Governmentium has a normal half-life of 2- 6 years. It does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places.

In fact, Governmentium's mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes.

This characteristic of morons promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a critical concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as critical morass.

It's a little ideological. If you thought that was funny, try this. Dick Cheney thinks he and his boss did a good job while in office.

Cheney displayed no regrets and gave no ground to his many critics within America and around the world. He summed up his record by saying: "I think, given the circumstances we've had to deal with, we've done pretty well."

He told ABC News he stood by the most controversial policies of the Bush administration, and urged president-elect Barack Obama to think hard before undoing them. Asked about the use of torture on terror suspects, he replied: "We don't do torture. We never have. It's not something this administration subscribes to."

Later in the same interview, Cheney was asked whether the use of waterboarding in the interrogation of the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks, Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, had been appropriate. He replied: "I do."

Waterboarding is a technique that induces the sensation of drowning, and is widely regarded as a form of torture. It was used on three high-level al-Qaida suspects, including Mohammed, but has since been banned by the US.

Dick, I think I'd like to know what you mean by 'pretty' because I'm not sure I can stand by your definition of 'pretty well'.

Like A Film School Movie

Ideologically Straitjacketed

Years ago, the Dude from Audio Darnok and I went through our own little hell at AFTRS. It was just one of those things where we wanted to make a science fiction action movie and the School Administration at the top level just didn't want us to make such a film. Flat out hated it. Wanted it buried - and they did just that.

I caught up with the Dude from Audio Darnok by phone tonight and had a long chat. He was particularly interested in pointing out the gap between Heath Ledger's performance in 'The Dark Knight' and the genral market malaise surrounding 'Australia' by Baz Luhrmann, which hasn't received much critical support for the Golden Globes.

The Dude pointedly said he hadn't gone to see 'Australia' exactly because, just looking at the shorts brought back bad memories of AFTRS.

He said, "It just looks like the sort of film that institution would back. It has an Aboriginal kid and a bucket loads of landscape shots and it's got Nicole Kidman playing a strong-willed woman and it would be exactly the kind of film the Film School powers that be would back, and give money to so that it would get shot on 35mm, and look glossy. You know the films I'm talking about - worthy on the surface, but dead boring to the masses."

Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about, I told him.

"So these people got what? 40million dollars from Tourism Australia to do a tie-up and then Baz Luhrmann's production company is going to get a 40% rebate? But it's going to lose at the box office. It's the same old story. They keep making decisions on projects from a very parochial, narrow basis that has nothing to do with whether it s a good story or not or the sort of movie that would be thrilling or exciting or moving. None of that."

Yep, I said. It's pretty bad.

"Seriously, I'm not going to see that film. I'll wait until it's free to air on TV, and I'd still find a reason to miss it."

People hate 'Australia' the movie, not just  for what it is, but what it represents, and who it represents.

From The Mailbox

More Fodder For Thought On The 'GFC'
There are some ancient names in this one sent in by Pleiades. It's a pretty interesting read, seeing that it comes from somebody who has had a lot to say about all this for some time.

Greenspan presided over not one but two financial bubbles. After the high-tech bubble popped, in 2000–2001, he helped inflate the housing bubble. The first responsibility of a central bank should be to maintain the stability of the financial system. If banks lend on the basis of artificially high asset prices, the result can be a meltdown—as we are seeing now, and as Greenspan should have known. He had many of the tools he needed to cope with the situation. To deal with the high-tech bubble, he could have increased margin requirements (the amount of cash people need to put down to buy stock). To deflate the housing bubble, he could have curbed predatory lending to low-income households and prohibited other insidious practices (the no-documentation—or “liar”—loans, the interest-only loans, and so on). This would have gone a long way toward protecting us. If he didn’t have the tools, he could have gone to Congress and asked for them.

Of course, the current problems with our financial system are not solely the result of bad lending. The banks have made mega-bets with one another through complicated instruments such as derivatives, credit-default swaps, and so forth. With these, one party pays another if certain events happen—for instance, if Bear Stearns goes bankrupt, or if the dollar soars. These instruments were originally created to help manage risk—but they can also be used to gamble. Thus, if you felt confident that the dollar was going to fall, you could make a big bet accordingly, and if the dollar indeed fell, your profits would soar. The problem is that, with this complicated intertwining of bets of great magnitude, no one could be sure of the financial position of anyone else—or even of one’s own position. Not surprisingly, the credit markets froze.

Here too Greenspan played a role. When I was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, during the Clinton administration, I served on a committee of all the major federal financial regulators, a group that included Greenspan and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. Even then, it was clear that derivatives posed a danger. We didn’t put it as memorably as Warren Buffett—who saw derivatives as “financial weapons of mass destruction”—but we took his point. And yet, for all the risk, the deregulators in charge of the financial system—at the Fed, at the Securities and Exchange Commission, and elsewhere—decided to do nothing, worried that any action might interfere with “innovation” in the financial system. But innovation, like “change,” has no inherent value. It can be bad (the “liar” loans are a good example) as well as good.

The rest of it is pretty far-reaching too. I never understood the 'Alan Greenspan as banking hero' that played out during his tenure, partly because banking isn't as exciting as making a film, but also because he always came across as a patriarchal bore. It's sort of interesting to see him getting discredited in the throes of the GFC.

Poring Over Madoff's Books?

This one also came in from Pleiades: Good Heavens, isn't that a bit like reading a Science Fiction novel in search of the Unified Field Theory?

Harbeck, who has been with SIPC for 33 years, said this will most likely become the biggest fraud case that SIPC has handled. He has fielded dozens of calls since Madoff's confessed the scam and was taken into custody, and projects is office will continue to be flooded with questions from investors.

"This is absolutely heartbreaking," he said. "Their faith was abused, and investors who put virtually all of their financial assets with Madoff are near ruin. The simple fact of the matter is there is no precedent for this."

A variety of investors have been identified as having lost money in the scam, including Spain's Grupo Santander SA, Britain's HSBC Holdings PLC and New York Mets owner Fred Wilpon. More victims emerged Tuesday, including Rye Investment Management, of Rye, New York, which lost $3.1 billion, almost all of its clients' funds, and Austria's Bank Medici, which had two funds with $2.1 billion (1.5 billion euros) invested with Madoff.

I've seen some critiques that suggested that those who placed money with Madoff were screwed because they were essentially 'greedy'. It's soothing to find that I didn't get ripped off because I wasn't greedy like the wealthy set, but that can't be true, can it? It's just that I didn't have money to throw at him.

I've been trying to figure out our notions of greed and propriety and money and I've been thinking that perhaps we're focused too much on the moral dimension of "greed is good/bad" thinking.

There's a big difference between say, a bad player like Centro or Babcock and Brown, and a fundamentally criminal Bernie Madoff who deliberately went about deceiving with a Ponzi Scheme. So if you backed the cowboys like Centro and lost tonnes of money, well, that's greed but it can't be the same thing as being swindled out of your money.

It's a bit harsh to judge the profit motive as being negative - after all, why would anybody get out of bed and go to work if it was not going to benefit them any?Clearly couching this in terms of greed being good or bad alone isn't going to cut it.

Germaine Greer Savages Baz Luhrmann

First, there's Germaine Greer Having a spray about 'Australia'.

The scale of the disaster that is Baz Luhrmann's Australia is gradually becoming apparent. When the film was released in Australia in November it found the odd champion, none more conspicuous than Marcia Langton, professor of Australian indigenous studies at Melbourne University, who frothed and foamed in the Age newspaper about this "fabulous, hyperbolic film". Luhrmann has "given Australians a new past", she gushed, "a myth of national origin that is disturbing, thrilling, heartbreaking, hilarious and touching". Myths are by definition untrue. Langton knows the truth about the northern cattle industry but evidently sees as her duty to ignore it, and welcome a fraudulent and misleading fantasy in its place, possibly because the fantasy is designed to promote the current government policy of reconciliation, of which she is a chief proponent.

Reconciliation is the process by which Australians of all shades forgive and forget the outrages of the past and become one happy nation. State and federal governments have pumped money into reconciliation and created a new class of Aboriginal entrepreneurs who accept the values of the property-owning democracy and are doing very well out of it. Luhrmann's fake epic, set in 1939, shows Aboriginal people as intimately involved in the development of the Lucky Country; the sequel would probably show Nullah, the Aborigine boy who narrates the film, setting up an Aboriginal corporation and using mining royalties to build a luxury resort on the shores of Faraway Bay.

Unfortunately for the reconciliation gravy-train and all aboard it, Luhrmann's lack of faith in his own invention is obvious. The hero, played by Hugh Jackman, is a drover, whose job is to collect cattle from the stations and drive them wherever they have to go. For the film to work at all we are required to believe that he is ostracised by his peers, simply because, years before the film begins, before the 1914-18 war, he married an Aboriginal woman, who, obligingly, died childless. The most respected drover of central Australia in this era was Matt Savage, otherwise known as "Boss Drover", a white man whose marriage to an Aboriginal woman lasted 40 years and produced many children who rode with their father. In case that should sound romantic, Savage was known to say, "I got her young, and treated her rough, and she thrived on it." Savage would have been considered beyond the pale by some, but not by the drinkers in a bar on the Darwin waterfront, but then no amount of blandishment would have got Boss Drover into a white tuxedo to dance at Government House, as the drover does in this film.

Here's the SMH article about her spray.

I tend to think Ms Greer is more upset at how critics have fallen over themselves to embrace a pretty ordinary film. Can't really blame her. She's usually even more venomous and harsh, but we'll settle for this review.

Arctic Ice Melts Past Point Of No Return

Global Warming News

Pleiades sent in this link.

Scientists have found the first unequivocal evidence that the Arctic region is warming at a faster rate than the rest of the world at least a decade before it was predicted to happen.

Climate-change researchers have found that air temperatures in the region are higher than would be normally expected during the autumn because the increased melting of the summer Arctic sea ice is accumulating heat in the ocean. The phenomenon, known as Arctic amplification, was not expected to be seen for at least another 10 or 15 years and the findings will further raise concerns that the Arctic has already passed the climatic tipping-point towards ice-free summers, beyond which it may not recover.

The Arctic is considered one of the most sensitive regions in terms of climate change and its transition to another climatic state will have a direct impact on other parts of the northern hemisphere, as well more indirect effects around the world.

Although researchers have documented a catastrophic loss of sea ice during the summer months over the past 20 years, they have not until now detected the definitive temperature signal that they could link with greenhouse-gas emissions.

However, in a study to be presented later today to the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, scientists will show that Arctic amplification has been under way for the past five years, and it will continue to intensify Arctic warming for the foreseeable future.

Computer models of the global climate have for years suggested the Arctic will warm at a faster rate than the rest of the world due to Arctic amplification but many scientists believed this effect would only become measurable in the coming decades.

However, a study by scientists from the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) in Colorado has found that amplification is already showing up as a marked increase in surface air temperatures within the Arctic region during the autumn period, when the sea ice begins to reform after the summer melting period.

Arctic Ice is also a cause much celebrated by the deniers because, well, the ice grows back in the winter, thus showing 2 things:

1) they don't understand what Global Warming is.

2) They seem to think it's just that once the ice is gone it's meant to be gone forever.

I think the joke goes that the Russians would welcome Global Warming, what with the extensive coastlines on the north that they would be able to turn into sea-side condos. It might just end up under-water if things keep going the way they are going.

Madoff's Fund Was A Pyramid Scheme

So Much For That

The guy who used to run the NASDAQ was also running a pyramid scheme disguised as a hedge fund. The resulting losses are upward of US$75b.

Madoff, arrested last week in the US on charges of presiding over possibly the biggest fraud in Wall Street history, had for decades been above suspicion.

Even now, as investigators try to understand how the 70-year-old Madoff lost as much as $US50 billion ($75 billion) of international investors' money, his firm's website remains bizarrely serene.

"The Owner's Name is on the Door'', reads the site, praising Madoff's personal touch, a philosophy of accountability that "harks back to an earlier era in the financial world.''

"Clients know that Bernard Madoff has a personal interest in maintaining the unblemished record of value, fair-dealing, and high ethical standards that has always been the firm's hallmark,'' the site proclaims.

That is the sales pitch that helped make the man friends called Bernie a modern American success story, rising from his job as a Long Island beach lifeguard to chairman of the Nasdaq stock market and pillar of the ultra-wealthy country club set.

People trusted Madoff and he kept them happy with astonishingly consistent returns on the money they trusted him to invest - about 1% a month, without a hitch.

Indeed, Madoff was a genuinely talented money man. He is credited with helping to revolutionise the shift in trading from telephones to computers, making deals within seconds rather than minutes, and ushering an era of ever greater stakes and profits.

But Madoff's scam in the end was not about creating wealth as much as creating the impression of wealth.

Clients didn't realise that the returns they liked so much were in fact cannibalised from other clients' principal.

And as long as no one asked for their principal back, the secret remained unexposed.

Over the decades, Madoff managed to dupe everyone from giant foreign banks to private clients in the United States, many of them stemming from the tight-knit Jewish community in the Long Island suburbs and Florida.

A columnist for The Wall Street Journal says Madoff lured his victims with a "mysterious allure and sense of exclusivity''.

Oy Vey. :)

The Australian Financial Review had more on this article. It seems any time an investigator went to talk about his fund, he'd tell them he couldn't elaborate on the model because it was proprietary. The stock markets are taking huge hits as the list of his victims grows, including Fred Wilpon, owner of the NY Mets.

Madoff and Wilpon have had a close personal and financial relationship for more than two decades, and Wilpon entrusted Madoff with hundreds of millions of dollars to invest, according to several people with knowledge of their relationship. But Madoff’s investment firm has collapsed in what federal authorities are describing as a $50 billion Ponzi scheme, and questions are being raised about whether the fraud could harm the Mets’ status as a big-payroll franchise.

Bob DuPuy, the president and chief operating officer of Major League Baseball, said Saturday that he and Commissioner Bud Selig had spoken with Wilpon on Friday. DuPuy said that all three believed that the fraud case would have no effect on the Mets’ operation.

But interviews Saturday with several people with knowledge of Wilpon’s business dealings revealed concern about significant problems that Wilpon and the Mets could encounter because of the reported fraud. Although it is unclear how much money Wilpon may recoup, any significant financial loss by a team owner raises questions about how those losses may affect the franchise.

“Any fraud that has been committed against Fred is something of deep distress to all of us and we feel very badly about the entire matter, but we all believe that this will not affect the team,” DuPuy said in a telephone interview.

Wilpon invested his own money and that of his investments firm, Sterling Equities, with Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities. That company had a long track record of strong and steady returns, but Madoff was arrested Thursday morning by federal agents at his apartment in Manhattan and later charged with securities fraud for operating what the authorities were portraying as the biggest Ponzi scheme in financial history.

DuPuy said that the Mets were a separate entity from Sterling Equities and Wilpon’s other investments.

“The Mets are completely self-sufficient, and we have confidence that none of the other investments will affect the team,” DuPuy said. “They have been one of our most successful franchises on and off the field, and they are going into a magnificent ballpark next spring, and we expect it to be business as usual.”

Wilpon bought the Mets in 1980 in a partnership with Nelson Doubleday and became the team’s principal owner in 2002, when he bought Doubleday’s share of the team. The losses that Wilpon has sustained as a result of the Madoff fraud case could hamper his ability to pay back debt related to that buyout.

The losses could also hurt Wilpon’s ability to help the Mets weather the current economic downturn. Many sports leagues, including Major League Baseball, are bracing for lower revenue next season as consumers cut back on discretionary spending.

Perhaps most troubling is the possibility that losses incurred by Sterling Equities could put pressure on Wilpon to raise money by selling other assets. Because Sterling invested money directly with Madoff, Wilpon may have to come up with money to reimburse some of his own investors for losses. That may cause him to sell valuable assets, including a portion of his ownership in the Mets.

That's not good at all.   Instead of offering any insight as to how these things work, I'd like to share with you an article that shares my disbelief at the people who put their money in with this man.

I keep reading that many people, mostly insiders from enclaves of extreme wealth and privilege, are calling Bernard Madoff's implosion a "tragedy." This actually sickens me because it exposes just how serious the crisis of morality is among America's elites.
It is not a "tragedy" to me that so many people with so much money and privilege were suckered by someone like Madoff. I think it is just a combination of laziness, stupidity and greed. That is not tragic to me. It is pathetic.

Madoff was making 1% per month, year after year with no losses and nobody else on Wall Street or anywhere could explain his returns. Even Madoff didn't explain it.

Plenty of people openly told the SEC and the media that he had to be either running a Ponzi scheme or doing something else illegally. Nevertheless, so many of these "sophisticated" investors piled their money into his fund. Many of them invested a huge percentage of their personal net worth, charitable trust, inheritance or future bequests to their heirs. What were they thinking?

Many were just following their friends. Many were lazy. Many were stupid. Many were greedy. None of them stopped to think that Madoff's returns were literally impossible unless he was doing something illegal.

Tale of the tape says, throw the guy in prison and throw away the keys!

UPDATE: The Economist has this article, also worth a read.

Even so, the affair has—like the subprime-mortgage debacle—exposed a stunning lack of due diligence. Droves of investors who should have known better tossed in billions, preferring to keep their fingers crossed rather than ask awkward questions of a firm whose investment strategy was vague and opaque. Even within his own group, Mr Madoff’s money-management business was a black box: no one but he had full access to the accounts. As a broker-dealer, it was able to clear its own trades, a privilege that should give pause for thought. Worse, questions had been hanging over the operation since the mid-1990s. Some institutional investors have long steered clear of Mr Madoff, unable to understand how he spun his gold, or uneasy that his books were audited by a tiny, three-person accounting firm.

The SEC, which seems to have been taken aback by the scale of the malfeasance, can hardly hold its head up high either. It did not get round to examining the books of Mr Madoff’s money-management business, even though he registered it with the commission in September 2006—though it did probe the market-making arm and found that it had violated some technical rules.

For an agency that is fighting for its life, that is unfortunate. Even before this scandal the SEC was on the back foot, having stood by as the big Wall Street investment banks it was charged with policing ran amok. In its defence, the commission argued that its primary role was investor protection, not prudential regulation. Now it has been shown wanting in its core competence—though, with 11,000 fund managers to oversee, not to mention the boom in mortgage-related cases, some may think it inevitable. Congress is next year expected to revamp America’s dysfunctional system of financial regulation. One option, already proposed by Hank Paulson, the outgoing treasury secretary, is to fold the SEC’s responsibilities into a new set of agencies.

The sloppy regulators and credulous investors whom Mr Madoff duped must now hope that he has pulled off one last deceit: exaggerating the scale of the losses. Even in these accident-prone times $50 billion sounds like an awful lot for one man to lose. But it is just about possible if he levered up his bets with borrowed money or supercharged them with derivatives (which he is known to have used to reduce volatility). But even if the fraud extends no further than the $17 billion under management, it will go down as a humdinger. Indeed, it makes Charles Ponzi’s promise in 1920 to double investors’ money in three months—which caused losses equivalent to around $160m in today’s money—look like a trifle. Perhaps from now on it should be known as the “Madoff scheme”.

What can one say but Spinche!

The Knives Out

You Win Some, You Lose Some

The Sydney Morning Herald is playfully writing that Nicole Kidman is under siege by the critics.

Nick Curtis from London's Evening Standard fired the first salvo, condemning her English aristocrat Lady Sarah Ashley as "a showcase for her worst acting tics, all her prissy pouts and expressions of 'Botoxed' startlement". Kidman's "Barbie-perfect bosom, bottom and ironing-board hips" did nothing for Curtis's libido. The actor has a"curiously sexless screen presence", he fumed.

This, remember, is the same woman who gave London a dose of "pure theatrical Viagra" when she appeared in the buff in The Blue Room in 1998.

Curtis's bitter ad hominem attack is almost benign compared to a frothing column by Melanie Reid from The Times. She wrote that Kidman is "exquisitely accomplished at being awful" and that women - all women, apparently - do not like her because she cannot act and looks "frozen, brittle and vapid".

As a thesis it's a bit thin. Kidman has won an Oscar. And if women hate her because she isn't a brilliant actor why don't they chuck eggs at Sandra Bullock and Andie MacDowell?

For a start Jennifer Anniston and Sandra Bullock are much more charming than 'Our Nic'. I think it very unsuprising that a lot of people are expressing a great deal of Kidman-Hate. The defense that she won an Oscar would only serve to irritate those whodislike her more - most likely because they probably thought the Oscar was largely undeserved.

I myself think an Oscar is not a barometer of talent, but a prize for navigating the jungle of Hollywood successfully, and Nicole Kidman sure has done that very well. Did Kidman deserve that Oscar as an indication of talent? Not in my opinion. But I'd be the first to say that anybody with such scant acting talent who could rise to the top of the Hollywood system deserves much recognition. Why not give her a golden statue?

Occasionally I get asked why I think so many people hate Nicole Kidman, and I have to say it is because she comes across as cold and charmless. There's no saving grace because there's no saving charm. All I see is somebody who is earnestly acting, but never ceasing to be 'Nicole Kidman, Movie Star'. It's an unfortunate function of her hailing from the Sydney North Shore.

Yes, We Are All Paying For It

Suddenly the SMH noticed that Baz Luhrmann's company is going to get the 40% rebate on the $197m movie.

AUSTRALIAN taxpayers will end up paying for close to 25 per cent of the production costs for the movie Australia, thanks to a tax deal between director Baz Luhrmann and the Federal Government.

Arts Minister Peter Garrett has defended the Producer Offset scheme, which allows Luhrmann to claim back 40 per cent of his production expenses at the end of this tax year. The rebate was 12.5 per cent before Australia was made.

"It's not only Australia but a range of other motion pictures that will qualify," Mr Garrett said. "That's a really good thing because it means we're seeing significant investment in the Australian film industry, but also in the ancillary services such as transport, technicians, the staging, hotels - all of the expenses that can happen in and around a film.

"It's providing significant investment and economic boosting into our economy."

While Australian taxpayers have been unaware about how much public money will go towards the making of Australia, US publication The Hollywood Reporter has hailed Luhrmann's ingenuity in raising funds from the Australian Government.

"Luhrmann also had another miracle up his sleeve. This time, instead of making the sun come out, he made it rain - dollars," said American film critic Shannon L. Bowen.

"Before Australia went into production, the Australian Government had already planned to increase its film production rebate from 12.5 per cent to 15 per cent," the report said.

But Australia producer G. Mac Brown told the influential industry magazine: "Baz was able to convince the Government that Australian-based productions would get a higher incentive of a 40 per cent rebate, which is a huge difference."

A flop, and yet so rewarding for Baz Luhrmann, is what they're saying between the lines. This 40% rebatething just got a lot harder to sell to the people.

Short Films?

They Just Don't Talk To One Another

One of the many issues raised with the new Screen Australia organisation is the cutting of the Short Film fund. The argument is that the short films are necessary to nurture future film makers. The problem with short films however is that they NEVER make their money back. There just isn't a large enough market on the planet.

The one reason you would make a short film is to at least have a dry-run to experience what it is to make a film. Better that a director has experienced the rigors and problems in a shorter format with less risk than to go into a feature film completely cold.It's a worthwhile investment.You'd think the Federal Government would be interested in making such investments if it's going to hand over 103million dollars a year to Screen Australia to make Australian films with Australian talent.

The funny thing is that Federal government already hands out money for such a purpose, and it's called AFTRS. That's right, the Australian Film and Television School - alma mater to Peter Weir, Gillian Armstrong, Jane Campion and PJ Hogan. That place. Yes, my alma mater too. It's the one place where the budding film maker can chance his talent and work his skill on short films; and it's all Federally funded.

The even funnier thing is that in my day, when one came out of this school. one then went to the various funding bodies to find that one *didn't* have enough experience to be considered for funding. This has bothered me for a long time because the ramifications ae that the time I spent at AFTRS learning and honing  my craft was and is to all intents and purposes, irrelevant to other Federal and State Film agencies. It just doesn't make sense.

Yet, there it was. You had to have a feature film credit to be able to apply for some of these grants. Now, back at Film School, but film school bureaucracy thwarted and resisted any and every attempt by the students to combine their budgets to make one big feature film.

This was because part of the guidelines of AFTRS was that it should not compete with the main industry. This was because if AFTRS chose to compete with the main industry, it had enough infrastructure to eclipse whole portions of the industry. In other words, it was a pretty competitive piece of the industry, just by its existence.

Yet, in a clearly uncompetitive move, AFTRS removed itself from the feature film market by becoming a sort of short-film studio. Having gone down that way, it is well qualified to continue producing short films for budding film-makers. It is what it is ideally placed to do.

What Screen Australia ought to do is farm out the short film programme to AFTRS and in exchange, they should preferentially draft the talent coming out of AFTRS in a low budget feature film programme. If they don't, then you have to ask why they should even continue to have the AFTRS any more.

You know it makes sense. FFC and AFTRS should have done it years ago, but they didn't. They just don't talk to each other, do they now?

Yankee Hotstove

AJ Burnett Signs For 5 Years

AJ Burnett is an interesting choice. Out of the Lowe/Burnett/Sheets troika, he is the most capable strikeout pitcher. The thing about a strikeout pitcher is that he is less affected by the vagaries of the defense behind him, and so goes in some ways to address the problem of bad defense the Yankees have got, even if it is a small fraction.

Derek Lowe might have been the more conservative choice given how durable he has been, but he is older too. Ben Sheets on the other hand is 2 years younger but with a much worse health record than Burnett. Being a ground ball pitcher, he would have been affected greatly by playing in front of the Yankee infield defense.

Going back to the RLYW's wonderful CAIRO projection chart of the Free Agents, the Yankees have added CC's 5.5 and Burnett's 3.7wins on to the pitching ledger. Of course Moose is retired and Pettitte might not come back at $10m per year to be a No. 4-5 starter, in which case they're losing 6.1 wins out of the 9.2 gained.

That's not counting on how many wins above replacement that might come out of CMWang, Joba and Hughes. This CAIRO projection sheet has them at about 2.1, 2.9, and 1,4 respectively. So the front end starters are a combined 6.4 +9.2=15.6 wins above replacement at this moment in time. In a sense, that is just how good the 2 pitcher additions are, relative to what they already have.

There is a lot of noise out in the bloggosphere that the Yankees need a bat to go with all this, and so are pushing for a Teixeira deal. Considering Mark Teixeira is a 4 win above replacement investment for about 180m 6 years, it seems this is the smart-money move afterall.

Car Bail-out Collapses

Rigor Mortis Sets In

The US car manfacturers hit a hurdle in their bid to get bailed out.

A $US14 billion ($20.8 billion) emergency bail-out for US car makers collapsed in the Senate Thursday night after the United Auto Workers refused to accede to Republican demands for swift wage cuts.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he was "terribly disappointed'' about the demise of an emerging bipartisan deal to rescue Detroit's Big Three automakers.

He spoke shortly after Republicans left a closed-door meeting where they balked at giving the automakers federal aid unless their powerful union agreed to slash wages next year to bring them into line with those of Japanese carmakers.

Republican Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio, a strong bail-out supporter, said the union was willing to make the cuts - but not until 2011.

Reid was working to set a swift test vote on the measure Thursday night, but it was just a formality.

The bill was virtually certain to fail to reach the 60-vote threshold it would need to clear to advance.

Reid called the bill's collapse "a loss for the country,'' adding "I dread looking at Wall Street tomorrow. It's not going to be a pleasant sight.''

The implosion followed an unprecedented marathon set of talks in Washington among labor, the auto industry and lawmakers who bargained into the night in efforts to salvage the auto bailout at a time of soaring job losses and widespread economic turmoil.

"In the midst of already deep and troubling economic times, we are about to add to that by walking away,'' said Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd, the Banking Committee chairman who led negotiations on the package.

Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, the Republican point man in the talks, said the two sides had been tantalisingly close to a deal, but the union's refusal to agree wage concessions by a specific date in 2009 kept them apart.

The autoworkers' contract doesn't expire until 2011.

"We were about three words away from a deal,'' said Corker. "We solved everything substantively and about three words keep us from reaching a conclusion.''

There you go. It doesn't seem right any which way does it?

It's one thing to be bailing out banks in order to shore up the financial sector; it's another thing entirely to be spending public money on bailing out large, failed corporations.

Then, there's the issue of the sort of corporations that are getting bailed out: These are manufacturers of cars that mostly did not heed the signs that petroleum prices might go up; they're also the corporations that obstinately refused to countenance Global Warming and Climate Change in the face of mounting evidence. Instead, they ideologically produced a certain kind of large, gas-guzzling car that flew in the face of such concerns.

Naturally the market turned its back - much like how the Australian market has turned its back on Australia films, I might add - and now they've hit a rough patch and so they want government money to help them along.

These corporations also have a layered management system, with an astounding number of executives and managers and whatnot pulling down enormous salaries. In a time when companies have been getting leaner, these top execs for these companies have been pulling down huge salaries that are disproportionate to their own productivity.

And now, these companies want the Unions to give up the agreement they made that covers them until 2011, just so that the House Republicans can feel good about themselves. It's a right schmozzle.

Then, the Union won't negotiate; they'd rather see the company go down. There's something incredibly bloody-minded about that too.

Add onto the list the Republicans who are insisting on the Unions taking a pay cut, or else they'll just let the suckers all go down. I know that the Big 3 US Car  manufacturers are asking for an obscene bail out, but it's sure as hell not the fault of the unions they are where they are.

Colour me unimpressed with all of it.

What They're Saying

Gimme A Break. No, Seriously A Real Break

I got a fax from Pleiades today with an article about Dr. Ruth Harley and her outlook on the Australian Film industry, which I would love to link to but can't - it's behind their registration wall. I will however quote some bits from it, that caught my eye:

"It's not a basket case," Harley says in her first expansive interview since commencing November 17.  "I think it's enormously vibrant. People keep asking me will 'Australia' rescue the film industry. Well, it doesn't need rescuing. The right question, is how can films get to Australian audiences much more effectively."

Australian filmmakers are on notice. It is no longer OK to spend public funds obtained as either direct investment, tax breaks or state incentives on films that appeal only to immediate family and good friends.

"Connect with audiences" is the new catchphrase mouthed by Harley but originally mandated by arts minister Peter Garrett.

I got that far and went for my vomit bag. Seriously folks, I've been saying this for years, and it's like the establishment that hands out money has never taken notice of its importance until their job securities were threatened. It was only then that they thought having an audience tat actually liked the films they kept dishing up was a good idea. It's a nice thing that their jobs were threatened, and that motivated them to think straight for once, but this stuff is 20 years behind the curve.

I don't know what's more disappointing: that it has taken this long for these people to realise that it's show business that they're in and that they need to put on shows that the market likes; or the fact that they think the previous bunch of filmmakers who made these boring films that alienated the audiences are suddenly going to be capable of delivering these audience-friendly product.

Isn't it more te case that having shunned the talent to make commercial films for oh, TWENTY FIVE YEARS or so, that they're now wanting a commercial kind of talent to matter. Well the commercially talented have given up on the film bureaucrats years ago and only talk to them to see if they can sneak in something commercial under the guise of something that is inherently NOT. How perverse is that?

Still, brand Australia has some barriers to overcome. A survey by the FFC found most people consider Australian Films something they have to watch at School. The beginning og hte effort to overturn this prception is the release this week of Screen Australia's investment guidelines, thefirst announcement overseen by Harley.

Of Screen Australia's total appropriation of$ 103million it will spend 60 million funding films, television, children's drama, and documentaries, and $10million will be allocated to project development, which has long been viewed as the weak spot of the film sector in particular.

Back in the day, I never thought it was bad to have to watch an Australian film at school. It was quite the treat. It was exciting and a world full of promise, whether it was 'FJ Holden', 'Breaker Morant', 'Sunday Too Far Away', "Gallipoli', or 'The Year of Living Dangerously'. The industry used to make relevant, interesting films. Somewhere along the way, successive generations of film bureaucrats strangled the industry to the point where we are starting all over again.

It happens, and I'm okay with it - provided they don't keep making the same mistakes. The definition of stupidity is repeating the same procedures and expecting different results.

I'm just waiting to see a sign that "it ain't so, Joe".

UPDATE:

Of course the bit that I forgot to mention was this little bit:

Without the release of Baz Luhrmann's 'Australia', total domestic box office share would be 0.9%. it's lowest ebb since records began in 30 years ago.

Ouch. If the domestic market is willing to support you at less than 1%, then you have to say that there's something wrong not only with the product but the marketing as well as brand recognition.

I've been pondering some of this for a day and I have to say it comes back down to 30years of mismanagement by the people who controlled the money flow into the business.

Now, I understand that ATO hated 10BA because it helped make shonky films that never saw the light of day - because they were always meant to be loss-leaders. And the Funding bodies never got asked to be accountable for Box Office returns for the better part of the same 30years.

That really doesn't leave us with the picture of a thriving industry trying to make a buck - and heaven forbid that artist-types should want to succeed, or for that matter, make entertaing movies - because that would show up just how bad the government-sanctioned boring filmmakers really are.

It's almost worth nuking and starting again.

Yankee Hotstove

Here Comes The Hefty Lefty

It's looking like the Yankees are getting their man in CC Sabathia. Reports are coming out that they're close to inking a deal.

There was little chance Brian Cashman would return from California without a deal last night. And he delivered.
The Yankees are still working on the details but it will be for seven years and $161 million with an opt-out clause after 2011 and $69 million. That clause is protects Sabathia should his wife and kids dislike New York. But the Yankees will go to great lengths to make sure that is not the case.

So that's that. I've come to accept that after the horror stretch between 2004 and 2007, the Yankees are better placed than most to hand out long contracts to pitchers.

The other thought that occurs to me is that they probably did mak the right decision last year in keeping Hughes and whatever else and not trading for Johan Santana. As of today, the rotation goes CC, Wang, Joba, Hughes, Kennedy and they might yet sign one of Lowe/Burnett/Sheets and Pettitte, which would still displace both Hughes and Kennedy, but Pitchers always get hurt. Nobody's 5-man rotation goes through a season intact. Pitching depth is essentially the *it* factor in a long season.

Contrast that with the alternative of Santana, Wang, Joba, and then having to sign 2 out of 3 of Lowe/Burnett/Sheets, with no depth behind, it's a better call.

The Lowe/Burnett/Sheets smorgasbord is interesting because each have something to offer. Lowe is durable, the others are not. Burnett is a strikeout machine, a notch above the other two. Sheets has had one season that towers over anything the other two have on offer, and that was recent. Each project to about 3 wins above replacement - as does Andy Pettitte.

I think after the Carl Pavano experience, the Yankees would be inclined to go for Lowe.

The Rumors That Persist

Here's one that I found amusing:

12:49 p.m. — Dodgers, Yanks talk trade

As the Dodgers try to resolve their infield, they are again talking to the Yankees about a trade for second baseman Robinson Cano. The teams have resumed their discussions about Cano at the winter meetings, according to one source.

The Dodgers also are interested in Yankees center fielder Melky Cabrera, and the Yankees likely would want outfielder Matt Kemp and pitching in return.

The Dodgers' interest in Cabrera is a sign that they might not be confident of Andruw Jones making a strong return in 2009. The Dodgers also need to find a match for Juan Pierre, who has requested a trade.

Right... So the Dodgers are after Cano. The Yankees have said they won't deal Cano unless they get something special. After all, you can't really grow 2Bmen that hit on trees. I doubt the Dodgers get their man.

What's interesting is the Melky for Matt Kemp and pitching deal. I can't believe that Ned Colletti would ponder this for a moment. Yeah sure, Melky might rebound, but his OPS has been deteriorating for 3 years and he's only 24. It could be a case of swapping disappointments. If I were Cashman, I'd do this deal.

I thought trading Juan Pierre on the other hand was a lost cause and that guy shouldn't be on a MLB roster at all. A quick look here says he's not quite as bad as I thought. His K/BB ratio is way above league average. He has a decent batting eye and excellent footspeed which has translated into roughly just below league average wOBA.

I can't imagine there would be any takers immediately because he comes with the "Lost Joe Torre's support" tag, but it's not like he's as worthless as people are making out. He'd make a decent pinch hitter off the bench as well as an excellent pinch runner.

'Australia' Sinking

So Much To Bitch About With Just One Film

I'm a little surprised at just how much vitriol is out there for the Baz Luhrmann film. I keep getting sent links by people that basically talk about how much they hate the damn thing.

Here's a link sent in by Pleiades:

It is not unusual for film reviewer Mark Naglazas and me to disagree about movies, sometimes in these pages. As a fan of Baz Luhrmann’s work — in particular Romeo and Juliet and Moulin Rouge — I was disheartened to read Mark’s scathing review of the talented director’s highly-promoted offering, Australia, the day after its release.

Unfortunately, I’m going to have to disagree with Mark again. Australia, the movie, is far, far worse than anything he wrote. It would be a mistake to be seen to praise through faint damnation.

I’ll leave it to the experts to critique the movie’s fairly obvious failings as a piece of cinema. Save to say that Baz’s slightly campy, almost burlesque treatment that made the two films I liked quirky and interesting, just doesn’t translate to the sprawling epic he has attempted here. It jars.

Some of the stereotypes are cringe-making and there are enough repetitive cattle stampedes to make you call in the RSPCA.

And I just wish Baz would get over those movies of his youth and attempt something less derivative. The intrusion throughout Australia, the film, of Judy Garland and Somewhere Over The Rainbow, for instance, is quite peculiar.

Listening in around the traps, one is hearing that there was enormous pressure put upon many a reviewer so that they would not put out a negative review. Which explains the Rob Dowling review that went missing (and was salvaged here) .

People I know to be good film reviewers have either been muted in their response or quite opaque as to what they really thought. 3.5 Stars out of 5 has got to be one of the worst outcomes for this film. It's going to be up nobody's alley. Notably, both Margaret and David were handing it out, so it must have stunk big time. for those two.

The Deposed Treasurer of the Howard Fiasco years, Peter Costello, has his take here in the SMH.

The Japanese aircraft fly over the island on their way to bomb Darwin, while a priest frantically tries to give a radio warning. It is obvious the island is meant to be Bathurst Island, where Father John McGrath of the Catholic mission saw the aircraft which attacked Darwin on February 19, 1942. He radioed Darwin, but was ignored. Although most women and children had been evacuated, the attack killed about 250 people and created widespread panic.

In the movie, Japanese troops invade the mission island and come looking to kill the half-caste children. In reality, no Japanese troops landed anywhere near the Tiwi Islands or Darwin. If the Imperial Japanese Army had invaded, they wouldn't have worried too much about indigenous (or indeed any other) children. But they didn't land. It just didn't happen - not in Australia, the history.

It is OK to invent things in movie fiction. But this movie wants to look historical. It ends by telling us that the policy of assimilation ended in 1973. (Nobody ever explained what that policy was.) It tells us the Government apologised to the stolen generations in 2008 (which solves the indigenous problem).

Not that I'm a big fan of Mr. Costello, he does make the point that the Japanese invasion angle is totally mangled.

ThatActionGuy sent in this one from USA Today:

The film tries to address the racial prejudice of the time, which is laudable, but the portrayal of aboriginal people as uniformly kind and mystical beings seems counter-effective.

Most of the characters, major or minor, seem one-note and cartoonish, particularly the villainous cattle baron played by Bryan Brown, who does everything short of twirl his mustache.

The tone of the movie shifts inconsistently from humor to romance to pathos to social commentary. The dialogue is derivative at best. Characters utter such lines as, "You got no love in your heart, you got nothing. No dreams, no story. Nothing."

Luhrmann co-wrote the script with Stuart Beattie, who wrote the three Pirates of Caribbean movies, which might explain why Australia feels so superficial and lacking in dimension. Like the last two Pirates movies, Australia is ambitious more than awe-inspiring, grandiose rather than grand, full of spectacle but not spectacular.

Talk about damning. The upshot of all this is that the at is out of the bag and it's a mangey moggie at that. It's box office a flop as well as being hailed as an artistic failure and an utterly crap piece of movie-making. Surprise, surprise!

While I'm At It...

This article in the SMH pissed me off.

All up, the FSU estimates there have been almost 5000 jobs lost in the finance industry since the start of the year, most of them in Sydney. Surprisingly, it appears even this may be an understatement. The chief economist at JPMorgan, Stephen Walters, puts the losses at closer to 19,000, based on company briefings to analysts and media reports.

As the CBD vacates, there is a lingering sense of unreality about it all. Job losses are like the elephant in the room that everyone is gossiping about but no one wants to talk about publicly. Those still ironing shirts are keen to avoid the spotlight, while the newly unemployed, instead of protesting on the street, are quietly going about the business of putting the Mosman home on the market, auctioning the Audi and offloading the holiday house at Palm Beach. Tail between legs, they're retreating homewards to start living the simple life, or start writing that novel they always knew they had in them.

It's the silent recession, which, unlike other recent recessions, is coming from the top down, rather than the bottom up. But it in the end it will catch up with everyone.

Well, it's nice that it's happening "Top Down" for a change, having lived through a couple at the bottom end myself. I've learnt to be a little cynical about how these things go. I mean let's face it, just this once it's punching the very people who caused such a finacial meltdown, right in the face. It's not like they didn't have it coming.

Meanwhile, Australia has lost some of its biggest spenders. Fewer corporate luncheons mean fewer waiters and chefs. Fewer people catching taxis in the CBD means fewer taxi drivers. Fewer luxury purchases means fewer retail assistants and so on.

These former high-flyers also played an important role in inflating and maintaining property prices in well-located inner-city areas. It is not clear how much longer house prices in these areas can hold up against the tide of new properties coming on to the market. There are 312 properties currently listed for sale in Mosman, complete with their own "French Provincial-inspired terrace" and "breathtaking Middle Harbour views". One three-bedroom villa is advertised ominously as "for definite sale".

Enter the Government's hastily constructed "economic security strategy", consisting mostly of pre-Christmas cash bonuses for families and pensioners. It is a multibillion-dollar attempt to prime the economy's pump. Problem is, it works best if the money is spent.

Pensioners, with their relatively low levels of debt and higher proportionate spending on food, are likely to spend most of it but a large amount of the goodies for families are likely to go straight into paying off credit card or mortgage debt.

Wait just one minute there Ms Irvine! That reads like it's some kind of great tragedy that a pack of financial wannabes and fake-it-till-you-make-it animals who have been pulling down way too much more money than they deserved for years, are being turfed out of their ill-gotten houses. I'm not much of a class warrior but this just sucks. They're only getting what's coming to them.

As if that's not insulting enough, the paragraph about pensioners spending most of the government hand out while families pay credit card debts just floored me. It's like Ms Irvine thinks that the only way to run the economy is to have the rich living it high on the hog and the rest of the peasants scrambling for scraps in one big trickle-down effect.

Well, fuck you Ms Irvine, and fuck your faux-capitalist cronies with a cricket bat. A real capitalist does not fear the downturn, the bear market, or the possibility that they might lose their shirt, tyring to get a good product out there. Your friends losing houses in Mosman are nothing but pretenders - better that they're dispatched by the 'GFC'.