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Hedge Clippings | 28 February 2025
This week we're going a bit off-piste. Trump or Musk fans might not want to read further.
Back when Hedge Clippings was still in short pants (a long, loong time ago!) he had a favourite Aunt who used to recite Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, and the two characters that come to mind in particular are Tweedledum and Tweedledee. For those less familiar with Carroll's work, T'dum and T'dee were two near identical characters, reminiscent of the current day Tweedle'Donald, and Tweedle'Elon.
For the musically inclined, Bob Dylan even recorded a song entitled Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, (possibly not my favourite Dylan track) on his appropriately entitled 2021 album, Love and Theft:
Tweedle-dee Dum and Tweedle-dee Dee
They're throwing knives into the tree
Two big bags of dead man's bones
Got their noses to the grindstones.
Living in the Land of Nod
Trustin' their fate to the Hands of God
They pass by so silently
Tweedle-dee Dum and Tweedle-dee Dee.
Well, they're going to the country, they're gonna retire
They're taking a street car named Desire
Looking in the window at the pecan pie
Lot of things they'd like they would never buy
To be fair, while the current day US versions of the Tweedle Twins aren't identical, it seems they're thinking the same way, motivated by the same things, and importantly, massive fans of each other.
There's no doubt that the US had or has major issues with a soaring size of government, a massive immigration problem, and was being used as a source of funds for the unfortunates in the rest of the world. Who knows how the whole Donald as POTUS, and Elon's DOGE shows will end up, but it has certainly provided fodder for the media, and consternation for those adversely affected.
Meanwhile back to Australia, and there's no doubt we're in full election mode. Albo still seems to be fumbling and fluffing around, while Jim Chalmers is proving to be polished and assured. One thing seems certain to us; whoever wins the election, Albo will be heading to his new Central Coast beachfront and retirement soon after, while Marles and Chalmers battle it out for the top job. Albo can probably thank the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd switcheroo chaos of 2010 to 2013 for the fact that his colleagues haven't dumped him already.
This week's CPI data for the month of January, showing CPI ex volatile items rising to 2.9%, up from 2.4% last October, won't encourage the RBA to cut again, partly as they'd rather wait for the more reliable quarterly numbers which are not due until April 30th, or might encourage the government to go for an April election in between time. Assuming the election hasn't already been called, the Federal budget is due on March 25th. However, press speculation today in the Nine/Fairfax press suggests the strong possibility of an economic update in place of the budget, and thus an early April, pre Easter trip to the polls.
By then Donald will have determined if we're friend or foe (given our defense ties and Pine Gap in particular, we're hopefully friends), and perhaps, (a big perhaps) some sense of normalcy might have returned to the world.
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