Market frenzy over inflation; Labor MP assault charges; AI means higher AND lower airfares

Market frenzy over inflation; Labor MP assault charges; AI means higher AND lower airfares

News in brief

In federal politics, Labor MP Luke Gosling has been charged with two counts of assaulting the Northern Territory’s administrator, David Connolly.

 

Optus is being sued by its regulator over its fatal Triple Zero outage in September last year, with the Australian Communications and Media Authority alleging it breached laws more than 1000 times.

 

Football Australia has been approached by the world governing body, FIFA, regarding its controversial plan to sell a 20 per cent stake in the commercial rights to the men’s and women’s football World Cup to private investors, and offered a $29 million payout.

 

AI is ruining one of travellers' greatest joys – stumbling across a cheap seat on an international flight. Airlines have long relied on analysts to devise pricing rules, such as increasing fares by 20 per cent once a flight is a quarter full. But AI is making the job more efficient, with fewer cheap seats being available.

 

Making money from social media was once about building an enormous follower base and then working with brands. That’s no longer the case with influencers with as few as 500 followers now making money.

Fear-o-meter

Freaky Friday news:

 

Rebekah ‘Bek’ Nutter has just swum further underwater on a single breath than any woman in Oceanic history – at 232 metres, it’s more than the length of 4 x Olympic-sized swimming pools – at age 44.

 

In just one month, the Newcastle mum-of-two has broken six records at two freediving world championships in Budapest and Serbia, arriving home with medallions and a strong message.

 

“I really want women in their forties and fifties to hear this – I’m doing the best work of my life right now.

 

“We get told that the big adventures belong to younger people. That is rubbish! But coming home with two National and Continental Records feels surreal!”

 

Bek, who only started breathwork and freediving four years ago to calm her “busy mind” represented Australia in two freediving world championships and broke six records – 4 are Oceania continental records and 2 x Australian national records

Fear & Greed Q+A today

On whether it's time to dump stamp duty for property transactions:

 

“Stamp duty is an inefficient tax. The main issue is the distortions it creates in the property market. It discourages mobility, it discourages downsizing, it increases the cost of transactions, it adds extra friction every time somebody buys or sells a property, and all of those things make it quite problematic when it comes to housing markets.

 

It also creates a situation where people don't necessarily move into the homes that best suit their needs because the cost of moving is simply too high. From an economic perspective, that's a very inefficient outcome.

 

Overall it would be better to shift to a land tax system. The challenge is that state governments rely very heavily on stamp duty revenue and they've done extremely well from it over recent years. Stamp duty revenue rises when house prices increase and when transaction numbers increase, so it's been a very lucrative source of income."

In a volatile 48 hours for financial markets, the US Federal Reserve’s inflation fighting credentials wobbled, one of the world’s biggest tech companies, Meta, came under fire for spending too much on AI, US President Donald Trump launched into an expletive-ridden blast at Iran followed by further attacks on the country, bond yields soared and equity markets fell.

 

Perhaps the question with the biggest ramifications is how serious the US Federal Reserve is about fighting inflation. The Fed voted 9-3 to keep the benchmark rate unchanged. The three votes were for a hike.

 

The Fed didn’t give forward guidance leaving markets to question whether, or to what degree, the Fed will eventually see a need to hike rates down the track.

 

The new chair, Kevin Warsh, seemed to be saying in the press conference afterwards that the market will do the hard work on rates. Warsh, of course, is a Trump appointee and the President has been pushing the Fed to cut rates.

 

As a result, bond yields soared. US borrowing costs hit their highest level since 2007 – the global financial crisis. That flowed through to other asset classes. The S&P500 fell 1.5 per cent while the tech-heavy Nasdaq ended down more than two per cent.

 

Amid all that, two of the world’s largest companies, Meta and Microsoft, reported earnings. Meta’s share price fell 7.5 per cent on lower-than-expected earnings and higher costs. The reason: massive spending on AI infrastructure.

Greed-o-meter

	City	Cheap date index USD
1	Geneva	475
2	Zurich	468
3	Tel Aviv	425
4	Oslo	377
5	Copenhagen	376
6	London	370
7	Stockholm	362
8	New York	359
9	Luxembourg	345
10	Helsinki	343
11	Dublin	340
12	Sydney	335
13	Los Angeles	332
14	San Francisco	326
15	Paris	323

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If it feels like going on a date is expensive, spare a thought for the romantics in Switzerland - according to Deutsche Bank, a 'cheap date' in Geneva costs $US475. That's a lot more than in Sydney, which is Australia's most expensive city for the same 'cheap date'. For the record, the index defines this 'cheap date' as: one bottle of wine, one pair of jeans, one dress, two coffees, a meal for two in a mid-range restaurant, two cinema tickets, two transport tickets one-way, and a 5km cab fare.

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Source: Deutsche Bank Research Institute