The fall and fall of BHP
Our politicians, having woken up from their usual slumber and discovered to their dismay that there are some undeserving ordinary citizens who have saved enough in their self-managed superannuation funds to equal or even exceed these fat-cats' non-contributory parliamentary super pay-outs, acted with uncommon speed to put a limit on those funds.
Anything in excess of this newly-imposed and quite arbitrary limit needs to be taken back out of the superfunds by 30th June or else be taxed at a higher rate as well as attract nasty fines.
Funny how this reminds me of the Burmese military junta who in 1975 stopped my employers, TOTAL - Compagnie Française des Pétroles, from ordering company cars for our expatriate staff - moi included - from Germany which, as they had rightly guessed, wouldn't have been Volkswagen Beetles. Only the president himself and his generals were allowed to drive through Rangoon's maddening traffic in shiny Mercedes limousines, and so we had to settle for Peugeot 504s from France.
Well, thanks to the calamitous state of the world and ever-nosediving commodity prices, the share market (and BHP) has been in a downward trend since late January. Yesterday's sharp drop really put the knife into it, which saves me from doing any transferring-out to comply with our politicians' fit-of-jealousy threshold. Thanks for small mercies!
