17 Jan 13 at 12:16 pm
“So your argument is that investors prefer investing in countries which do not enforce laws protecting their citizens from harm, economic or social. Makes sense from their perspective. But I don’t think it prudent for any Western country to lower their standards to become the new Latvia or Zimbabwe.”

… Er, I don’t think that is Davidson’s argument at all… You just made that one up yourself.

Anyway, be that is it may, we will continue. How can a digging up a resource “harm” anyone M0nty?….. A one square kilometer hole in the ground on a 7,682,300 sq km continent?

Explain this “harm” in which people suffer.

….If they never dig up a resource, they never benefit from it. So if someone else digs it up….. Where is the harm to them?

If this someone else digs it up and the benefit is to the economy….. Where is the harm to “the people”?

If “the people” dig it up for themselves and benefit…. Where is the harm.

Show me the fukin’ harm M0nty. Because I’m damned if I can see it.

Just about everything protected by the law in Australia is protected by convention and not the constitution, right down to freedom of speech (yeah, yeah, we have some pissweak High Court ruling partially upholding an inalienable right. Wow.) The only thing the Australian constitution gives you, other than pretty much freedom of religion, is an election every few years.

But I don’t think it prudent for any Western country to lower their standards to become the new Latvia or Zimbabwe.

You mean the Latvia that despite seeing some big drops during the GFC, has consistently grown over the last 3 years?

You also mean the communist basket case called Zimbabwe? I’d say ALP policies aren’t that far from Mugabe already. Not quite there completely but it really doesn’t take much to go from functioning, wealth and freedom creating, free-market to socialist ‘utopia’.

Even Australian citizens have no certainty with this regime. As a land owner, you have no certainty, no real right to use that land which you own to create a livelihood. You must bow to the regime to use your own property.

The Maxwell Szulc case in WA in which an Australian farmer/land owner is being jailed for 15 months for daring to clear firebreaks on his land… Read JoNova’s site for the details.

… Yep. Regime explains it nicely. Labor’s Australian Regime….. They’re probably quite proud of it you know….

I was going to say the mining companies have almost certainly inceased the sov risk component (which used to be very low for Oz) in their corporate WACC’s, but you have to be a spreadsheet jockey to understand why that is important.

Why Austerity Works and Stimulus Doesn’t

The starkest contrasts are Latvia and Greece, two small countries hit the worst by the crisis. They have pursued different policies, Latvia strict austerity, and Greece late and limited austerity.
…
Yet Latvia’s economy grew by 5.5 percent in 2011, and in 2012 it probably expanded by 5.3 percent, the highest growth in Europe, with a budget deficit of only 1.5 percent of GDP. Meanwhile, Greece will suffer from at least seven meager years, having endured five years of recession already. So far, its GDP has fallen by 18 percent. In 2008 and 2009, the financial crisis actually looked far worse in Latvia than Greece, but then they chose opposite policies. The lessons are clear.

Zee truth hurts m0nty, doesn’t it?