Archive for the ‘Australian dollar’ Category

Brandi Glanville: Adrienne Maloof dating boytoy Sean Stewart makes me vomit.

Brandi Glanville is now going after rival Adrienne Maloof’s love life.

The outspoken “Real Housewife” slammed her costar’s romance with her much younger beau, Sean Stewart.
“I’m sorry, it’s just — yikes, it’s a bad visual for me, the whole thing,” Glanville said of Maloof, 51, dating Rod Stewart’s 32-year-old son.Glanville said that there’s “nothing wrong” with May-December relationships in general but added, “It’s just those two people.”
“It just makes me want to throw up in my mouth a little and swallow it,” she said.

The 19-year age difference between the pair doesn’t bother Maloof. The divorcee confirmed Page Six’s report that she’s dating Stewart and said in January, “Age is just a number.”

2012 Olympics: Australia, Japan Criticized For Olympian Gender Discrimination

Australia — Men up front, women in the back.
Not so fast, Olympians.Sports governing bodies from Japan and Australia are being skewered following complaints that male Olympic athletes flew business class to the London Games, while the women sat in the cheap seats.
Japan’s world champion women’s football team took exception to flying economy while their male counterparts sat in business en route to the games.
“It should have been the other way around,” Japanese soccer star Homare Sawa, the 2011 FIFA women’s world player of the year, said after arriving in Paris after the 13-hour flight, with just the short hop to London left. “Even just in terms of age we are senior.”
The Japan Football Association said the men’s under-23 Olympic team members flew in business class because they are professionals. The women, however, are likely be the bigger draw at the games. Only months after the devastating earthquake and tsunami hit Japan last year, they brought a sliver of joy to their country by winning their first World Cup title.
The Australian women’s basketball team has also been more successful than the men, earning the silver medal at each of the last three Olympics.
On Friday, Basketball Australia said it would make sure the flight flap doesn’t happen again.”(We will) review our Olympic travel policy with the goal of ensuring there is equity between travel arrangements for the men’s and women’s teams attending future Olympics,” the basketball governing body said in a statement.

Roubini group tips budget shortfall.

AUSTRALIA economy will probably miss its growth targets and the government will struggle to deliver a key election pledge to plug an estimated $37 billion shortfall in revenue and spending that is required to deliver a budget surplus in the next fiscal year, according to Roubini Global Economics.

Because of China’s slowdown, corporate revenues from the resources industry would be weaker than anticipated, which meant the Australian government was unlikely to achieve its aim of a wafer-thin budget surplus in 2012-13, said Michael Manetta, an economist focusing on Southeast Asia at RGE.

“It doesn’t look likely to me that they will be able to close the gap fully,” Mr Manetta said.

He said a soft housing market and the risk of a higher jobless rate would affect growth, exposing an error by the Reserve Bank in holding rates above 4 per cent to hold off inflation.

“All these little things could easily weigh down on revenues growth in the next fiscal year and make it very difficult to reach a balance budget target. I’m sceptical,” Mr Manetta said.

In recent weeks, the RBA has signalled that it is comfortable with the economy’s overall direction, even with a strong exchange rate hurting companies operating outside the booming mining sector in areas such as tourism and manufacturing.

Mr Manetta said the RBA’s assumptions that the economy would grow at trend — or market expectations of about 3.5 per cent — were optimistic and that 2.6 per cent was more likely.

He said that meant a rate cut in April and a second one shortly after was expected.

“We are expecting at least two more rate cuts,” he said. “We think (the RBA) was overly optimistic of their assessment of the economy in February and we think there’s going to be a realisation of that.”

RGE is headed by Nouriel Roubini, who gained prominence for warning of a major credit bubble ahead of the global financial crisis.

On employment, New York-based Mr Manetta said Australia’s 5.2 per cent jobless rate could tick higher and he highlighted falling participation rates as a worrying sign.

“We see the unemployment numbers out of Australia as worrisome,” he said. “That official unemployment number is masking what we see as more underlying slack in the labour market.”

Still, Mr Manetta expects the Australian dollar to remain above parity, boosted by strong inflows into government bonds.