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CBA gets daring in hot market English news and easy articles for students of English NEWS.au The Blueprint With every day, with every passing hour, the power of the state mobilizes against Wikileaks and Julian Assange, its titular leader. The inner processes of statecraft have never been so completely exposed as they have been in the last week. The nation state has been revealed as some sort of long-running and unintentionally comic soap opera. None of it is very pretty, all of it is embarrassing, and the embarrassment extends well beyond the state actors – who are, after all, paid to lie and dissemble, this being one of the primary functions of any government – to the complicit and compliant news media, think tanks and all the other camp followers deeply invested in the preservation of the status quo. Meanwhile, the diplomatic cables slowly dribble out, a feed that makes last year’s MP expenses scandal in the UK seem like amateur theatre, an unpracticed warm-up before the main event. It’s this triviality which has angered those in power. You know what Terms of Service are?
Bank funding costs shrink to three-month low Australia's largest banks are taking advantage of an easing in Europe's sovereign debt crisis that helped drive yield premiums on the nation's financial bonds to the lowest in more than three months. Westpac sold $2 billion of five-year notes on March 6, paying 20 basis points less than a similar-maturity offering by National Australia Bank last month, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Australian banks have boosted unsecured debt sales to $US20.5 billion this year, up 23 per cent from the same period of 2011, the data show. Borrowing costs are falling as European leaders make progress toward solving the region's fiscal crisis and after higher-than-expected relative yields on covered bonds roiled the market for unsecured financial debt. Spreads on bank debt globally narrowed 98 basis points to 270 in the same period. Advertisement “The banks have taken advantage of a window that opened over the past few days,” said Gus Medeiros, a senior credit analyst at Deutsche Bank. Funding needs
Assange The Oz - Don't shoot messenger Elizabeth Cook's artist impression of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's appearance at Westminster Magistrates Court in London, where he was denied bail after appearing on an extradition warrant. Source: AP WIKILEAKS deserves protection, not threats and attacks. IN 1958 a young Rupert Murdoch, then owner and editor of Adelaide's The News, wrote: "In the race between secrecy and truth, it seems inevitable that truth will always win." His observation perhaps reflected his father Keith Murdoch's expose that Australian troops were being needlessly sacrificed by incompetent British commanders on the shores of Gallipoli. Nearly a century later, WikiLeaks is also fearlessly publishing facts that need to be made public. I grew up in a Queensland country town where people spoke their minds bluntly. These things have stayed with me. WikiLeaks coined a new type of journalism: scientific journalism. Democratic societies need a strong media and WikiLeaks is part of that media. We are the underdogs.
Harvard Business Review: Happy versus crappy GRETCHEN SPREITZER and CHRISTINE PORATH If employee happiness isn’t a priority in your organisation, it should be. Happy employees produce more than unhappy ones. They routinely show up at work, they’re less likely to quit, they go above and beyond the call of duty and they attract people who are just as committed. Moreover, they’re in it for the long haul. So what does it mean to be happy in your job? Across industries and job types, we found that people who fit our description of thriving demonstrated 16 per cent better overall performance (as reported by their managers) and 125 per cent less burn-out (self-reported) than their peers. We’ve identified two components of thriving. The two qualities work in concert; one without the other is unlikely to be sustainable and may even damage performance. However, the combination of vitality and learning leads to employees who deliver results and find ways to grow. Some employees thrive no matter the context. The costs of incivility are great.
2010-12-04: NSW Supreme Court Solicitor Peter Kemp: Letter to Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard By Peter Kemp, Solicitor of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, on 2010-12-04 Dear Prime Minister From the Sydney Morning Herald I note you made a comment of "illegal" on the matter of Mr Assange in relation to the ongoing leaks of US diplomatic cables. Previously your colleague and Attorney General the Honourable McClelland announced an investigation of possible criminality by Mr Assange. As a lawyer and citizen I find this most disturbing, particularly so when a brief perusal of the Commonwealth Criminal Code shows that liability arises under the Espionage provisions, for example, only when it is the Commonwealth's "secrets" that are disclosed and that there must be intent to damage the Commonwealth. Likewise under Treason law, there must be an intent to assist an enemy. Those offences remain unclear and the Swedish prosecutor Ms Ny appears to be making up the law as she wants. An Australian citizen is apparently being singled out for "special treatment" Prime Minister.