ASX marks the spot
The exchange can still prevent the James Hardie pirates from escaping Australia with their plunder.
In the lather of another demented week in Trumpistan, I remembered Malcolm Turnbull's (very Malcolm Turnbull) observation on the 2015 night he snatched the Australian prime ministership: "There has never been a more exciting time to be alive than today". It just gets truer and truer every year – though I'd probably swap "exciting" for "bracing".
There's another Australian aphorism applicable to present circumstances (including the live federal election campaign which, like most of my fellow countrymen, I'm managing quite successfully to ignore): "Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck," wrote Donald Horne in 1964. "It lives on other people's ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise".
The open question is whether living in a mediocre and insular country is preferable to living amidst the incredible animal spirits of the United States, and all the excess and madness they come with. You could reasonably argue that we're close enough here as it is.