In my opinion, retailers are suffering under the weight obscene commercial rents... these rents are owed to hghly leveraged investors who in turn owe money to the banks...who are Hoovering up all the wealth of the customers, the retailers and the commercial real estate speculators. The customers are currently exerting their pressure by buying overseas. Next it'll take 'the Retailers' to exert pressure on their landlords to lower rents (or they'll move elsewhere) The major retailers (Myer, David Jones, Woolworths etc including the banks I might add), all used to own their own properties but sold them off under the Harvard business school model. The landlords won't be able to exert any pressure on the banks to lower their rents because they're too highly leveraged...so they're going to have to 'take a burn'. The banks will end up with the properties plus a decade of seriously inflated payments under their belts. the banks can't lose...and are the real villians in this saga! P.S. them...and the Harvard Business School
The internet? Really? Welcome to the 21st century SBS. It ain't new and it's here to stay... News flash news flash 1925, automobile industry now rival exports of horse manure
And instead of the government managing the business environment to support Australian businesses all the want to do is clip the transactions. Now if Gillard/Swan had offered them a bigger commission for their trouble . . . . we could have been paying real taxes to Visa for the privilege of using their card to buy stuff online. It is indeed interesting that Visa turned down the government's offer of partnership, because in any other sector that would infer a guarenteed (and very corrupt) monopoly. I guess they just thought the online payment genie was too far out of the bottle. Ahhh . . . enter the NBN and the government's great big new gate.
