Bloomberg reports on the Swiss mining company which has suspended investment in Australian coal plants.
I’ve often wondered why the Russian government allowed the oligarchs such as Roman Abramovich to walk away with billions of dollars worth of what is basically an asset belonging to the people. Sure, pay him millions or even tens of millions for developing the resource but billions seems like a lot. He then gives the money to moronic footballers rather than it going to the deserving people where it belongs. (Funny how what used to sound common-sensical now sounds downright socialist).
The same thing is happening in Australia and a Swiss company seems to think it can dictate to the Australian people what does or doesn’t belong to it. I have a solution. Whatever resources or commodities have actually grown in the ground since you’ve owned it, you can develop at a lower tax rate. So if you’ve owned the land for 10 years and it’s taken 30 billion years for the resource to develop; ok you get the picture.
I guess what I’m saying is that there should be a fair price for entrepreneurship and that too much greed (like we’ve seen in the investment banking world) can bring the system crashing down. As Adam Smith famously said; the only two things which can defeat the Free Market model are Greed and Abuse of Credit.
