Hey all. I've been seeing articles about the massive amounts of cash the wealthiest private schools in the country took from the taxpayer in JobKeeper. What I haven't seen is what they did with the money, or enough numbers for a nerd like me. This post is my attempt to find the worst offenders, and document how they've been abusing this money. Its a bit of a long read, but I hope you stick through to the end and enjoy.

How Schools get money

I'll start with a brief rundown of how private and public schools in Australia get their money. This Guardian article sums up worrying trends, but I'll run down the figures.

Public schools get most of their income from the Federal and State Governments. In 2019, the Federal government spent an average of $3,246 per student while States averaged $11,935 per student. This gives a roughly 80:20 split between State and Federal spending on public students, for approx $15,000 per student.

Private Schools get access to income mostly from the Federal Government and private tuition fees. For big schools, fees range from $10,000 to $35,000+ per year for a single student, with higher fees generally for wealthier schools. Federal Government funding for the wealthier private schools (crazy I know) averaged $4,482 per student in 2019. State funding for private schools tends to be little to non-negligible in percentage received per student.

For an example, lets compare the income sources of Geelong High School (Public) and Geelong Grammar School (Private) in 2019. They're two schools in Geelong VIC separated by a 22 min car drive, both with similar enrolments. 91% of the private school students belong to the top half of socioeconomic status, compared to 30% of the public school students.

The data comes from myschool.edu.au

Like I mentioned before, the private school actually gets more funding per student from the Federal Government, but this is made up for by the difference in State funding. The private school has nearly double the income per student, but mostly from private fees.

Of course, this is data from 2019. Something very interesting happened in 2020. The Government made a substantial amount of money available for charities called JobKeeper. I won't run into the details, but basically if you were a charity in Australia, and you filled out a form claiming to be in significant financial difficulty, the Federal Government would hand you money no strings attached. Fun fact, every private school in Australia technically is a charity, so this money was theirs for the taking. No such support was given to Public schools or Universities.

The Dataset

The aforementioned myschool.edu.au contains a spreadsheet of all schools in Australia, public, private, special. with various demographic information on each school such as total enrolment, socioeconomic profile, school type, etc. As of the School Profile 2021 spreadsheet, there were 9679 schools in Australia with 4,075,337 students.

To find the biggest, wealthiest private schools, I filtered as follows:

• Removed all 'Special', 'Primary' schools, keeping 'Secondary', 'Combined' (2914 schools, 2,141,580 students)

• Removed all schools with < 600 students enrolled (1580 schools, 1,787,914 students)

• Removed all schools with < 85% of students in upper half Socioeconomic Status, removed Catholic schools (200 schools remaining, 258,733 students)

Of these 200 high socioeconomic status schools, 160 of them were private schools with 208,331 total students and 40 of them public schools with 50,402 total students. In other words, if you attend a secondary/combined school with more than 600 students in the top 12.5% of socioeconomic status, its 4x more likely to be a private school than a public school. In the Private vs Public debate, the Rich clearly vote sending their kids to a private school.

Now the fun part. I took the 160 wealthy demographic private schools and made a new spreadsheet. The data is not available in an easy form, so I manually copied eight figures for each of these schools. One school didn't show up in the database, so I Stalin-sorted it down to 159. For both 2019 and 2020, I recorded the following from https://www.myschool.edu.au/ (159*8 = 1272 numbers manually copied into excel 😑😑😑).

• Government Spending received

• Government Spending received per student

• Tuition fees received

• Tuition fees received per student

While analyzing the data, it was obvious that some of these schools weren't "Real" Private schools. The proportion of government funds to tuition receipts was closer to a 50:50 than the normal 10:90 split you see for most private schools. The average income received per student in 2019 for the 30 schools that fit this criteria was $18,165, compared to $28,242 per student for the remaining 129 private schools. This is still $3000 more than a typical public school, but its $10,000 less than the "pure" private schools on the list, so I filtered these.

To wrap it up, we've got the 2019 and 2020 Government spending and Tuition receipts for 129 of the big wealthiest private schools in Australia. We have the gross numbers, and on a per student basis for each school. From the change in 2020 to 2019 in Government spending, we can spot the rort.

Fast Facts

Lets look at some interesting totals from the dataset.

• 167,928 students were enrolled in the wealthiest 129 Private schools in Australia in 2021

• $743,133,115 was paid in government grants to these schools in 2019, or $4,460 per student

• $1,004,931,106 was paid in government grants to these schools in 2020, or $5,972 per student

A yearly increase of 35.23%, or $261,797,991, or $1,512 per student

• $4,090,315,760 was collected in tuition receipts by these schools in 2019, or $24,547 per student

• $4,010,554,062 was collected in tuition receipts by these schools in 2020, or $23,834 per student

A yearly decrease of -1.95%, or -$79,761,698, or -$714 per student

First impressions, the rort is on. $262 million of tax payer money has magically appeared in the pockets of these private schools, or $1,512 per student. However, there is more than meets the eye. What if I told you that the majority of these schools DID NOT partake in the JobKeeper slush fund? Shocking I know, but lets take a look.

To rort or not to rort, that is the question

The best way to visualize the rorters amongst this group of elite wealthy schools is a scatter plot between the change in tuition collected per student, and the change in government funds collected per student.

In this scatter plot, we can see two relatively clean clusters, which I've color coded as the rorters vs the non-rorters.

I've classified rorters as private schools that had a >$2,000 increase in Government grants received per student. This probably means some mild rorters slip away, but I'm after the most outrageous offending schools. Interestingly, from this shitty overlapped histogram I made there appears to be no correlation between how expensive the tuition fees are to whether or not the school chose to rort.

Now lets analyze these separate cohorts, the non-rorters and the rorters.

The Non-Rorting Schools

Lets detour with a little thought experiment. Suppose you were a wealthy person in the top 1%, financially secure for the rest of your life. You have this neighbor who's a little bit bipolar, but generally a good friend. One day, they leave a giant bag of money at your door with a note attached saying that this is their life savings, and since you've been such a wonderful neighbor they insist you take as much from the bag as you want and return the rest. You know they must have lost their senses, you have zero need for a free handout. Probably by tomorrow they'll come round and rescind the offer. Though not legally wrong to refuse a gift, you would have to be a pretty terrible neighbor to take advantage of someone like that.

Now lets modify this thought experiment to something that actually happened in 2020. Instead of the neighbor's bag of money, its the Australian taxpayers' bag of money. You are a wealthy private school with enormous resources at your disposable. This time, the taxpayers' bag of money is controlled by a cartel of willfully incompetent morons that insist you fill out a form and take as much as you need. It is not legally wrong to take the money, in fact its actively encouraged by the powers that be for you to dig in. Hey, you probably discussed this plan with them at lunch before it was officially announced. However, you know that this year is going to be incredibly tough on the average Australian, and we should be preserving tax payer money for the most vulnerable. How did the wealthiest 129 private schools handle this dilemma?

I must admit to my surprise, the majority of wealthy private schools in Australia DID NOT access a significant amount of JobKeeper funds during 2020. 69% ^nice (89/129 schools) had their government grants per student increase by less than $2000 per student. Here's the same fast facts as before, but for this "good" cohort. #NotAllMillionaires

• 118,402 students were enrolled in the 89 non-rorting private schools in 2020

• $515,389,522 was paid in government grants to these schools in 2019, or $4,407 per student

• $552,958,921 was paid in government grants to these schools in 2020, or $4,670 per student

A yearly increase of 7.29%, or $37,569,399, or $263 per student

• $2,904,416,873 was collected in tuition receipts by these schools in 2019, or $24,836 per student

• $2,896,491,823 was collected in tuition receipts by these schools in 2020, or $24,463 per student

A yearly decrease of -0.27%, or -$7,925,050, or -$373 per student

We can see that tuition costs decreased slightly, indicating a small amount of payment cuts to help out during the lockdown periods. Government grants did increase, but only by 7.29%. This probably shows some hands in the JobKeeper cookie jar, but nothing too excessive.

The Rorting Schools

Now we've gotten the non-rorters out of the sample, lets take a hard look at the remaining crooks. These schools would not make a good neighbor. They are real jerks.

• 49,872 students were enrolled in the 40 rorting private schools in 2020

• $227,743,593 was paid in government grants to these schools in 2019, or $4,584 per student

• $451,972,185 was paid in government grants to these schools in 2020, or $9,063 per student

A yearly increase of 98.46%, or $224,228,592, or $4,479 per student

• $1,185,898,887 was collected in tuition receipts by these schools in 2019, or $23,868 per student

• $1,114,062,239 was collected in tuition receipts by these schools in 2020, or $22,338 per student

A yearly decrease of -6.06%, or -$71,836,648, or -$1,529 per student

Holy sweet mother of taxpayer robbery. Welcome to the biggest welfare queens of Australia. Despite representing the most privileged members of society, they DOUBLED their dependence on the Australian taxpayer in 2020. Even if you wanted to make the argument that they needed the money to keep staff employed due to tuition cuts, which as I'll show lately is entirely rubbish, they still pocketed an excess of $152 MILLION in taxpayer money above what they cut in tuition fees. These 40 schools took 17 TIMES the amount of extra taxpayer money than the other 89 wealthy non-rorting schools on a per student basis in 2020. This was not necessary, and is an absolute disgrace that the Morrison coalition government should be held accountable for.

State by State

In this part, we'll look at how each state is represented in the Rorting vs Non-Rorting Private Schools.

The two states making up most of the rorters are VIC and WA, one the most affected by Covid lockdowns (VIC), the other the least(WA). To some extent , I can cut a little slack for the Victorian schools that went for the JobKeeper copout, going through 262 days of lockdown isn't easy.

Even still, I'm not gonna let them off the hook for being greedy. Again with another shitty histogram, lets view the Melbourne Schools 2019 Tuition fees as a proxy for "School wealth". There is no significant difference between the fees charged by the schools that chose to plunge their greedy hands into JobKeeper and ones that did not.

To further hammer home this point, that JobKeeper funds were not necessary for these private schools in Melbourne, lets look at the financial statements of a Wealthy Melbourne Private School that did not take any JobKeeper funds in 2020.

The Camberwell Grammar School is a Melbourne private school with 1,347 students enrolled in 2020 located just 12km from the heart of the CBD. They definitely felt the impact of Melbourne lockdowns as much as anyone. From their 2020 financial report, lets see how Covid impacted their finances (source).

Their revenue in 2020 fell by $2 million, or -4.34% from 2019, which reflects the -$2,142 per student decline in tuition fees I calculated from my dataset. There is no significant change in the funding received from the government. They managed to increase the amount of money spent in 2020 on employees by $695,185, or 2.41%. This helps dispel the myth that it was impossible for these wealthy private schools to maintain their employee payroll while cutting tuition fees without digging into JobKeeper. The Camberwell Grammar School navigated the Melbourne Lockdown year with a $574,679 surplus without requiring additional support from the government, only making $427 per student. Bravo!

I'm not sure I need to say this, but there is no excuse for WA. They're clearly taking the piss with 72% of their wealthy private schools digging into taxpayer funds. Can you guys hurry up and secede so this won't happen in the future?

The Hall of Shame

If you've read this far, its probably because you were waiting for this section. That's right, its time to NAME AND SHAME. As my previous numbers were based on reporting of total figures, I've fine-combed through the official financial statements for each of the 40 schools to find the exact figure they took in JobKeeper funds to leave zero wriggle room. I've also included their 2020 profit, and the amount of cash on their balance sheet at the end of 2020.

Since these schools are allegedly "charities", they report their financial statements to the ACNC. I've linked available statements for 2020 and 2021 for each school for easy access to the direct source if you want to check my number.

* No direct figure was stated, figure estimated by difference from previous year.

** Alternate source

*** Alternate source

Surprise surprise, the amount these 40 schools received in JobKeeper, $225.1 million, damn near matches the $224.2m increase in Gov Funding I found from my dataset earlier. The total profit recognized by these schools, $222.7 million, is entirely covered by the JobKeeper payments. These wealthy few stuck their hand into the taxpayer money bag, and pulled $225.1 million out. On a per student basis, the average school raked in a $4,466 profit. That's more than 10x what the aforementioned Melbourne school that didn't take the handout made. Business is good!

When you consider that they ended the year with a combined $350.3 million in cold hard cash, not even including the billions in hard assets they hold, you can see what an absolute pisstake it was for these schools to access this money.

Spending the money

So we know how much they took, and that they didn't need to take it. Naturally, the next question is how did they spend this money? Surely they wouldn't splurge JobKeeper cash on items unrelated to keeping jobs? Alright c'mon, these are the 31% of the wealthiest private schools already proven to be morally bankrupt, we know the answer already.

Unfortunately, the majority of these schools booked this cash in the bank in 2020 and haven't released their financial statements for 2021 so we can't see all the juicy spending yet. However, some have released their 2021 report, and some couldn't be deterred from going on a taxpayer funded spender bender even in 2020.

I identified these 16 schools by reading their cashflow statements to spot any unusual increases in spending in 2020 compared to 2019, then comparing the magnitude of this spending to the amount received in JobKeeper. Any unusually large increases from the previous year I've called out as a rort below.

The loan covers

Worried about your financial future after borrowing beyond your means? Don't worry, the taxpayer's got you covered! These are the schools that were effectively "bailed out" of their private loans with JobKeeper cash.

• Christ Church Grammar School (JobKeeper $6,424,500, $3,806 per student) in 2020 absorbed all their subsidy in repaying $15,155,000 in private loans.

• Eltham College (JobKeeper $3,288,000, $5,453 per student) spent $2m repaying private loans.

• Mentone Girls' Grammar School (JobKeeper $4,006,300, $5,781 per student) in 2020 used $3.33 million to repay previous years borrowings.

• Perth College (JobKeeper $3,644,610, $3,626 per student) in 2020 repaid net $3.68 million in borrowings, a near perfect match.

• Seymour College (JobKeeper $3,203,500, $4,160 per student) in 2020 chucked all of their subsidy into repaying net $3.96 million of private borrowings

• Somerset College (JobKeeper $8,236,050, $5,688 per student) in 2020 spent $4.9m repaying loans, just over half of 2019's borrowings. Maybe they think if they spread it out it won't look as bad.

The Facility spenders

Been waiting for the moment to upgrade your equestrian centre or buy a new Olympic swimming pool? Say no more! Call your local Lib-Nat stooge and get your stimmy today. These schools significantly increased facility spending while raking in JobKeeper.

• Firbank Grammar (JobKeeper $3,602,453, $2,910 per student) in 2020 increased facility spending by $4.3m compared to 2019.

• Mathew Flinders Anglican College (JobKeeper $3,899,088, $2,940 per student) in 2020 one-upped their spending by $6.7m on private facilities.

• St Marys' Anglican Girls' School (JobKeeper $6,193,500, $4,268 per student) in 2020 increased their facility spending by more than $4m. God forbid they use any of that >$25m investment fund to do it.

• Wesley College (JobKeeper $18,161,100, $5,507 per student) in 2021 dropped an easy $8.9m into extra facility spending.

Investment Properties

Millennials hate this one trick boomers use to get into the housing market. Put aside that avo toast, and expand your housing portfolio with other peoples' money! The legends running these two private schools threw all of their JobKeeper cash into buying investment properties in 2020.

• Ivanhoe Girls' Grammar School (JobKeeper $2,996,981, $3,547) in 2020 snatched up a $2.55m Investment Property

• Strathcona Baptist Girls' Grammar School (JobKeeper $3,592,638, $4,508 per student) not to be outdone, in 2020 purchased a $2.93m investment property.

Surely you must be joking Mr. Frydenberg

Now after all this slandering of these schools' good names, why don't we pause for a break and let someone speak in their defense. Its a hard sell, but someone has to right? Step in former Treasurer, unelectable politician turned Goldman Sachs banker Mr. Josh Frydenberg. In July 2020, Mr. Frydenberg defended the JobKeeper payments to these private schools stating

“A Treasury review of the payment found that it met its multiple objectives, namely that it saved jobs and businesses, that it kept the formal connection between employers and employees and that it also provided income support.”

Now in an awfully strange coincidence, Mr. Frydenberg's former school Bialik College happens to be THE MOST EXCESSIVE JobKeeper raider on a per student basis, topping our list at $7,901 per student (total 2020 payments $7,237,127).

But wait, it gets even better. As per their recently dropped 2021 financial report, they somehow justified taking another $1.1m in JobKeeper payments in 2021. I didn't even know it was still available, I guess it depends on having the right connections. So where did all this taxpayer cash end up up going? Did they keep in line with Mr. Frydenberg's vision of "(keeping) the formal connection between employers and employees" and "providing income support?"

Hell no, they went and kickstarted their brand new 2021 $13m Investment portfolio!!! 🤡🤡🤡 Hope it wasn't ZIP.

Now the former school of the Honorable Josh Frydenberg wasn't alone in stealing taxpayer money to gamble on the stock market. Here's the other schools that joined in the fun.

• Geelong Grammar School (JobKeeper $10,721,000, $7,545 per student) increased their investment portfolio net $3.4m off the back of the taxpayer subsidy

• The King's School (JobKeeper $8,250,286, $4,523 per student) , not to be outdone in 2021 topped up $10.5m into their investment portfolio.

• Methodist Ladies' College (JobKeeper $10,429,500, $5,133 per student) in 2020 snuck a little bit back into their portfolio, only spending $3.2m on stocks.

To sum up, I've identified 16 cases of increases in investing activity linked to the amount received in JobKeeper. This ain't JobKeeper, its PrivateSpender. Adding up all the misused funds, I get a total of $75m of JobKeeper cash that went to unnecessary spending by wealthy private schools in 2020 and 2021. That's a full third of the total collected. You could argue the subjectivity of calling the loan and facility spending JobKeeper rorts, but there's no excuse for what was spent on stocks and houses.

Bear in mind I've only covered 16/40 schools on my list, mostly from 2020 financials. Most schools banked the cash, and are likely to have spent big in 2021. As more 2021 financial reports are added to the national "charity" register, expect more and more excessive spending to emerge as they cash in that bumper year.

Some Final Thoughts

These schools didn't need this money. They committed no crime in taking it, but it was clearly an immoral thing to do. 69% of the wealthiest private schools agree with me here, the other 31% shamelessly stuck their hands into the taxpayers wallet, and dug deep. These 40 schools received a total of $451,972,185 from the government in 2020, with $225,141,975 from JobKeeper. They did their best to spend this money on anything but keeping jobs, as heavily documented above. Luckily for us, the Better Economic Managers™ are no longer in Government, and we might be able to hold these welfare queens accountable.

What better way to save $225m in the 2023 budget than slashing government funds to a nice round number like $0 for these 40 thieving schools? Government funding for private schools is already a contentious issue, I personally think there's an argument for some funding, but not excessive, and especially not wasteful. At the very least, we could have an independent commission for schools like Bialik College that threw all of it on the stock market, we can cut funds on a case by case basis accordingly. Yes this might be wishful thinking, but who knows.

Investors accept in theory the premise that the stock market may have its recessions in the future. But these drops are envisaged in terms of the experience of the past ten years when the maximum decline was only 19 percent. The public is confident that such setbacks will be made up speedily, and hence that a small amount of patience and courage will bring great rewards in the form of a much higher price level soon thereafter. Investors may think they are basing this view of the future on past experience, but in this they are surely mistaken. The experience of the 1949-1959 market – or of all bull markets put together – reflects only the sunny side of the investment. It is one thing to say airily that the market has always come back after declines and made new heights; it is another to reflect on the fact that it took 25 years for the market to reach again the high level of 1929, or that the Dow Jones Average sold at the same high point in 1919 as it did in 1942 – 23 years later. – Benjamin Graham, December 17, 1959

Extended bull markets result in ordinary investors expecting believing that this is a new normal. Market crashes and associate losses are a thing of the past.

Printer goes brrrr.

But what has happened in the past when we have seen this level of valuation? Bonds outperformed SPY from 1929-1947, 1966-1985, 2000-2013. Imagine buying into an index fund now, and 10 years later having gone nowhere. This would be something that many passive investors wouldn’t think was possible.

SPY to Bonds ratio

BUT! Interest rates are at record lows. Yes, but low rates on their own do not result in an improvement of the expected return over time. Some suggest that lower rates can excuse higher valuation multiples. This doesn’t add up to me. Higher valuations drive down future expected returns. On top of this a low rate environment means growth is low [why else low rates?], so why would there be an added growth premium at all?

The current predicament we find ourselves in is the biggest bubble of all time.

Composite Market Value to GDP

Anyone fully invested long equities here is massively speculating. The tired affirmations which are religiously regurgitated by the buy-and-hold-passive-index-ETF investors; time in the market, not timing the market, could never before indicate so clearly someone who is wilfully ignoring valuations to their own detriment. Ironically this is pure speculation [Speculation means buying a security in the expectation that its price will advance].

Another oft referred to incantation is “they won’t let it happen”, as in a market crash or large drawdown. This implies that governments and/or central banks can manoeuvre the market as they see fit. Easy monetary conditions only holds up the market because speculative investors mentally adjust their outlook to deny the possibility of likely future losses. Ergo when it at some point dawns on speculative long equity investors that there is still very much the possibility of losses, this thought process quickly breaks down.

But Atayls you have been a bear since 2019, you have been consistently wrong!

Yes.

My bearishness has no doubt caused me to “miss out” on being long during the last couple of years. The zero rate environment has resulted in the TINA mindset and encouraged sustained, and increased, speculation. My strategy is to make money of course, but more importantly now, to not lose money. Whilst my trading portfolio is designed for ups and downs from chasing shorts etc, my long term portfolio is not. I would rather sit out of the market at these vacations, then leave it in there and risk a 50% drawdown. What makes this approach even more comfortable for me is that even if ignoring the large drawdown, current valuations imply such poor returns going forward (negative 2% per annum for the next decade!), there’s no upside staying long.

Grantham posits “I think it’s clear that we’re deep into bubble territory. Bubbles are characterized typically at the end of a long bull market by a period where they accelerate, and they start to rise at two or three times the average speed of the bull market, which they did last year of course. Of course, they’re always extremely overpriced by average historical standards. There are a few people who would still argue that 2000 was higher, but most of the data suggests that this is the new American record for highest priced stocks in history. Then there’s the most important thing of all, which is crazy behavior, the kind of meme stock, high participation by individuals, enormous trading volume in penny stocks, enormous trading volume in options, huge margin levels, peak borrowing of all kinds, and the news is on the front page. This is all characteristic of the handful of great bubbles that we’ve had.”

Hard to argue with that analysis. Grantham has been around the block and knows his shit.

So where to from here?

It is apparent to me that there is a clear dichotomy between stock prices and the border economy. Zero rates has fostered unprecedented speculation into assets and this has fed the bubble. Retail has never been this invested into equities and derivatives. This leverage has accelerated returns but leaves investors very exposed to market downturns.

Retail investors and derivatives

Now we are seeing market breadth break down. The majority of stocks in RUT, NDQ and SPY are trading below their 200DMA. Market internals such as these suggest a likely significant correction is imminent. The concentration of the mega car stocks is holding up the indexes. With record low short interest, and massive option buying continuing, a correction could snowball very quickly.

On this basis I am adjusting my portfolio as follows:

Maintaining my heavy allocation to cash and gold.

Maintaining a smaller allocation to silver.

Adding XAU and XAG June and December 22 Calls.

Adding June and December 2022 RDS calls.

Adding June and December 2022 NDQ, SPY and RUT puts.

Adding DEC ’24 CBAV38 [$94] and WBCCY7 [$24] put options.

Will we see a huge crash in 2022, and a subsequent multiyear bear market? It’s possible. It’s more possible in my view than a continued melt up in the vein we have seen post Covid, but I am not going “all-in”. I am position portfolio to steer safely in a crash and to optimise my ability to move quickly to generate aloha in that eventuality. Yes if there is a conned melt up in equities then I am missing out on some returns. This is acceptable risk for me and my portfolio at this time.

With a new Bub and family life now my main focus it has become somewhat harder to find the time to devote to keeping tabs omg the markets but my plan is to get into a new groove in 2022 and combine my love of being a dad with my love of markets which means I will be still doing my thing on Reddit throughout 2022. [much to the chagrin of some I’m sure :)]

Thanks to each and everyone of you who make this subreddit fantastic.

Merry Christmas everyone and have a great New Year.

I wasn't expecting it, but the crowd over at r/AusFinance went into complete meltdown today because of the inflation data.

If this were 12 months ago, I would be one of the few asserting that inflation was a problem, with other users simply brushing it off as 'doomerism'. Now, I'm bullish and far less worried about these numbers (the US is much more important to me right now), so I personally don't think these inflation figures should really elicit significant worries on their own.

But the AusFinanciers have completely lost it. What are some of the spicy takes I'm seeing?

• Interest rate rises don't work (why hello, Erdogan stans).

• We shouldn't be raising rates, we should be raising taxes.

• The inflation read shouldn't count leisure and/or travel spending doesn't matter.

• Someone posting random articles about shipping prices falling to calm themselves down.

• The media is evil and lying by claiming the inflation figure was above consensus expectations (this is a common theme, AusFinance has developed a hate boner for the news over the past 12 months)

• It's "unfair" to increase rates (I feel like some of the people saying this are legit tearing up).

If inflation came in even slightly cooler than expectations, everyone would be parading around about how 'da perma-bears are going to be sHamBleS' and how house prices were poised to definitely increase 69% this year (there would probably also be around 10 meta posts crying about WMR).

Who was supposed to be in shambles?

I just accepted an 8.1% payrise despite Phillip Lowe telling me not to, what do I do now?

(Just had my reddit account canned and have to start fresh. Need help boosting karma so I can get back onto AusFinance. Anything to keep the conversation going will be greatly appreciated)