(03) 9020 2905It’s chaos out there, Batman! The tiniest things are causing profoundly disturbing events. The “butterfly effect” is thriving.
It’s an outside chance to ruin my Christmas. Aaaarggggh!
The butterfly effect, for those who don’t know, is part of a branch of science known as “chaos theory”. The theory goes that the flap of a butterfly’s wings in the Brazilian Amazon could start a chain of events that causes a cyclone that destroys tourism in Broome and shuts down the Pilbara for a year.
In Gen X language, it’s a “Sliding Doors” moment. (But when it happens to you and me, it will involve people that, I guarantee, will be substantially less attractive than Gwyneth Paltrow.)
Financially, there are disasters on a leveraged scale going on globally because of barely related happenings in faraway places.
It’s every bit as pathetic as Dr Evil and Scott Evil in “Austin Powers”. But because Kim Jong-un, spawn of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il, is suffering from “Daddy issues”, South Korea cops a dozen or so rockets and America’s stock market loses billions.
Banking crisis in Ireland? Australians might need to prepare for potato price hikes. About 222 years after the first boatloads of Irish convicts arrived, another invasion could be imminent as hard-luck-story-telling Irish flee their impoverished homeland. Again.
And because DebtMan has been too busy to go shopping for TVs, billionaire flat-screen flogger Gerry Harvey is about to have a coronary.
Poor Gerry. He’s moaning like a man down to his last $100 million (which he’s not). Reckons it’s going to be the worst Christmas retail period … since Jesus was born. Why? One interest rate rise has killed shoppers.
But Gerry’s not blaming the RBA. And he’s not blaming the CBA, which lifted rates first and highest.
He’s wagging his 71-year-old finger at the other three major banks, who inflicted a “10-day reign of terror” on homebuyers by not quickly announcing how much they were going to punish theirs (and Gerry’s) customers.
That’s right. Gerry is blaming slumping consumer confidence and poor sales at Harvey Norman on the “delayed smack”!
A few weeks ago, I told you how my parents, when my brother or I were naughty, would first send us to our rooms for 5-10 minutes. Then, calmly, came the smack. But I hated that wait for the smack far more than the three seconds of pain from the feather duster walloping my butt cheeks.
Turns out I’m not alone. YOU hate it too.
As does Gerry. The unprecedented 10-day delay in rate increase announcements inflicted serious psychological damage on his customers.
“And it was never ending,” Gerry told The 7.30 Report.
“It was in the media. It was on TV. It was in the newspapers … radio. It was everywhere. And it was intense. And so when you do something like that you have to expect a consumer loss of confidence. It had to happen.”
Like a Blackadder episode, consumers were dropping from a confidence-sapping bubonic plague.
Swathes of his favourite customers are lying bleeding, dying and dead on his showroom floors, right in front of the flat screens they came in to purchase. All because the banks delayed passing on interest rates and the media covered it intensely.
And the stench lingers, according to Gerry, who says Christmas is going to be a lean one for retailers. Awww, so Gerry drops a few million.
But what does it mean? Butterfly effect plus delayed smack equals … you and I getting less Christmas spirit.
Glenn Stevens wakes up feeling chipper on October 5. Positive outlook on the life leads to recommendation that interest rates be left alone. Banks funding costs bubble away for another month. RBA acts on November 2. CBA offers itself up for public slaughter. Competitors put the nation’s homebuyers through agony for 10 days, before announcing that (smack!), they’re still greedy bastards. Glum public shuts wallets.
You know what, DebtKiddies? Daddy is over delayed smacks. And he won’t accept that because Glenn Stevens had a good night’s sleep on October 4 that his Christmas should be ruined. Daddy still wants a flat screen so he can watch the late night news in his office. Just a little one. Go on, make Daddy and Gerry Harvey smile.
Bruce Brammall is the author of Debt Man Walking (www.debtman.com.au) and a licensed financial adviser. bruce@debtman.com.au .