Tim Treadgold

Andrew Forrest and his Fortescue Metals Group are determined to build a new iron ore mine in the Pilbara, but the closer an outsider looks at the financial structure being created

Some time in the past, when gentlemen were gentlemen, an agreement is said to have been reached between the chaps (now dead) who ran The West Australian newspaper, and their frien

Amid all the plenty of the resources boom there is a little cloud of gloom that doggedly follows a certain class of Perth investor; true believers in buying local.

Watching cash sounds about as exciting as watching paint dry, but for the rest of 2006 cash will be the big topic in every market for three reasons: its price; in the form of inte

As the financial year crawls to a close on Friday, Briefcase thinks it timely to ask two simple questions.

Feeling poorer? Don’t worry, you’re not alone.

What is it about politicians and pipelines? First we had Colin Barnett promoting a water pipeline, or canal, from the Kimberley.

Mad scientists are normally the people associated with bizarre experiments.

The investment world is loaded with theories about how to get rich. This week, Briefcase will explore three. Quick, slow and easy – in that order.

Brisbane motorists got a bit of a shock last month. They discovered that the toll for using a proposed new road tunnel would not be the $2 per trip promised, but $4.

It’s a brave man who calls ‘game over’ these days, especially in Fremantle.

Mrs Briefcase is a canny shopper.

China so dominates talk about the resources boom that its great Asian rival, India, gets little more than lip service.

What do Alan Carpenter, Mark Creasy and Rob de Crespigny have in common, apart from the fact that their surnames begin with C?

Quiz time: What does the mining industry want, but can’t get, and the wine industry has, but wants to give back?

Tell a boy (of any age) to not do something and everyone knows the result. He does it, whether he’s a boy of five or 55.

Curious things have happened in Perth in recent weeks. The most interesting is the boom in uranium shares.

Australia’s two-speed economy, which has the resource-rich states of Western Australia and Queensland, dramatically outperforming the southern manufacturing states, has just got w

The ‘what if’ question posed last week is entertaining people in places far higher than that occupied by Briefcase.

Economists are born pessimists. That’s why some of them are warning that the boom times being generated by China’s demand for commodities will not last.

On March 16 last year, someone paid $5.50 for a parcel of shares in Fortescue Metals Group. It was the peak price on the day.

Are Australia’s major goldminers profitable, or not?

Oh dear. It looks like we’ve inherited a premier who is having big ideas and wants to do things, a very dangerous combination.

Hands up anyone who expects the stock market to rise between now and Christmas?

It’s not often you can easily pick the best or worst investment on the stock market. Right now, however, the worst stands out like sore thumb.

Australia’s great grape glut is causing wine producers no end of pain. But in Western Australia there seems to be a variation emerging on that theme – the great grape shortage.

If a man in a pub offered to sell you the Sydney Harbour Bridge for $50,000, would you write out a cheque on the spot?

Steel, in case hot-headed speculators playing the Australian stock market had not noticed, is essentially made by blending two materials – iron ore and coal, with a bit of limestone tossed in, plus nickel and other stuff for speciality steels.

It's difficult for young investors to see financial booms as the events that sow the seeds of financial busts.

‘Everyone makes money in a boom’ and ‘every deal is a winner’ are statements that ought to be consigned to that list of other great lies, such as the ‘cheque is in the mail’ – a point that close observers of the deals of 2005 will have noted.

‘Unintended consequences’ is one of those marvellous expressions which, when translated, simply means we have no idea what will happen after we change the rules.