Government and disaster

Ross Gittins, in his column this week talked about how much we seem to distrust the government because we don’t want to pay extra taxes to help flood victims, even though we are very willing to give money voluntarily. And yet Julie Bishop this week complained that the government isn’t doing enough, because some Australians might [...]

Read Full Post »

The smell of gunpowder

It’s New Year’s Eve in Munich, and we’ve just gone for a stroll in the fading winter light. Everywhere around us was the smell of gunpowder. From the small stash of fireworks we bought at the supermarket that morning, and were attempting, at great risk, to light despite not understanding the German instructions. From the [...]

Read Full Post »

Riskiness

A few weeks ago, the Penguin family had a very enjoyable time at Rocket Car Day, in inner-city Sydney. Our car, the Silver Surfer, won its heat, and was a respectable third place in its repechage final (also in the SMH here). The day was very enjoyable. It was entirely frequented by inner-west geeks (or [...]

Read Full Post »

The insurance cycle

The insurance cycle is something that is well known to general insurers (property and casualty, if you are in the US). For many classes of business, the price of insurance fluctuates much more than the underlying cost. The general consensus is that it is about availability of capital. If the insurance market as a whole [...]

Read Full Post »

Buying insurance

It’s a truism in the life insurance industry that “life insurance is sold not bought”.  Meaning that you people very rarely go out and seek opportunities to buy a life insurance policy without someone actively trying to sell it to them. Life insurance agents aren’t well liked, because they are trained high pressure sales people. [...]

Read Full Post »

Warning: Actuarial post ahead – mortality statistics

This week, the ABS released the annual mortality statistics – the analysis of all the people who died in Australia in 2008.. Overall, at a population level, the “standardised death rate” (deaths per 1,000 population, adjusting for a standard age structure) was 6.0 per 1,000 people – the same as 2007. But splitting it down [...]

Read Full Post »

Why is Australia doing so well?

By world standards, the Australian economy is doing very very well. Our unemployment rate was 5.8% in October, up from 4.3% a year ago. No banks have been bailed out.  In May 2009, two Australian banks were in the world’s top 20 by market capitalisation (where Australia has around 1% of world GDP).  While the [...]

Read Full Post »