Self-sacrificing Stokes. Kerry Stokes is certainly a generous man. Now the federal government will give him a huge rebate on the Seven TV network’s licence fees, he won’t feel the pain of a lower dividend from West Australian Newspapers, of which he controls about 24%. WAN produced a 15.4% fall in first-half net profit and cut its interim dividend by 4c a share to 19c, from the 2009 payout of 23c — a cut of 17%. There were signs of an improvement in the December quarter, but the West Australian’s weekday sales fell 2.5% in the December quarter from the same period of 2008, and 2.7% for the Saturday edition. The promised improvement in circulation has yet to appear. Stokes’ other plaything of the moment, Consolidated Media, is due to report its interim result later in the week. Seven has 22% of Cons Media; James Packer the majority 45% share.

Banana bank. Remember back to December when Westpac surprised by adding a bit to the Reserve Bank’s rate rise of 0.25%, and then ham-fistedly tried to explain it in terms of storms and bananas? Well, today Westpac confirmed that it is knee-deep in bananas. More than knee-deep; drowning in them. The bank produced a first-half trading update and disclosed that cash profit (the best measure of banking profits) jumped 33% in the first quarter, from $1.2 billion to $1.6 billion. That puts it on course for profits of well over $6 billion. The takeover of St George is the major driver, along with lower dodgy loans. That means its earnings will challenge those from the Commonwealth, which earned $2.9 billion in the half year (a record). Westpac is also heading for a record. Don’t expect many references to that.

Top Gear, top money. The Nine Network’s Top Gear gambit starts tonight with a two-hour special that consists of one new Top Gear program and a second one tacked on the back to take us up to the Winter Games. That special, from 2006 (all the cars are old), has already been seen on SBS. If you look at the episodes tonight, gaze and wonder at Jeremy Clarkson. The London Daily Mail reported last month Clarkson earns close to £2 million a year. “Jeremy Clarkson has sparked controversy after it was revealed that he had pocketed another £830,000 from Top Gear in addition to his estimated £1 million BBC salary,” it said. That’s more than $A3.5 million, which doesn’t put him in Eddie McGuire’s class but Clarkson at least works hard on TV for his money. The Daily Mail says Clarkson’s deal with the BBC allows him to make money from merchandising and overseas sales bearing the Top Gear brand. Top Gear producer Andy Wilman, who guards the program’s “independence” from commercial influence, is also in on the same structured deal. No amount was reported for him.

Now that’s what I call deflation. Consumer price deflation in Japan is about 1.1%, 1.5% for the so-called core items excluding fresh food and energy. But in the wide economy, it’s a very worrying 3%, according to growth figures for the December quarter, which were out yesterday. The Japanese statisticians said the GDP deflator, a broad indicator of price trends through the economy, fell to a record low 3 % year-on-year in the December quarter, from the more “moderate” fall of 0.6% in the September quarter. Japan’s GDP rose a seasonally and price adjusted 1.2% (4.6% annually). But on an unadjusted nominal basis, GDP was up an annualised 0.9% in the October-December period, or 0.2% from the previous quarter. In the 2009 calendar year, Japan’s GDP slipped 5%. In 2008 it fell 1.2%.

Vampire squid in Greek waters. The great Vampire squid of Wall Street (aka Goldman Sachs) has been fingered in the Greece debt drama. Days of rumours climaxed in recent days with the investment banks named as doing a swap deal a few years ago that allowed Greece to understate its debt and gave it a extra money to play with. Now the Financial Times has provided more details (and new deals) including the revelation the deals were off the national government’s accounts in a special purpose vehicle (such as those used by the likes of Citigroup and UBS, which nearly sent those banks broke and forced them to be rescued). The FT said Italy and Portugal used similar arrangements with the aim to keep debt under the EU limit of 3% of GDP. In other words they fiddled the books. The deal with Goldman Sachs and other investment banks was arranged under the previous socialist party government of Greece from 2000 to 2004. According to reports Goldman Sachs got fees of $US300 million for the deal, which produced $US1 billion in new borrowings for the government to use. Goldman Sachs was rumoured in January to be trying to interest China in bailing out Greece. The old help create the problem, and help solve the problem, and take the fees along the way.

No comfort from Europe. Greece has been told by the European Commission it has to do more to get its deficit down by 4% this year. EU finance ministers this morning met to discuss Greece’s plans. There’s increasing doubt the country has the will to cut, or the inclination, when in the past it has gone the fudge and debt juggle. The emerging concern is the use of derivatives, such as the one involving Goldman Sachs. The FT reported Greece had raised €355 million in 2001 by securitising air traffic control fees due from international airlines using Greek air space. Another involving BNP and Deutsche Bank and two big Greek banks involved the securitisation of future fund transfers from the EU to Greece. That raised €2 billion back in 2001. These deals turned income into debt by allowing Greece to have the money before it received the fees and grants. Financial alchemy. No wonder Greece is in a mess. It should be considered in the same light as AIG, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns, a basket case that should fail. Instead it will be bailed out, eventually, just as Citigroup, AIG, Goldman Sachs, Lloyds, RBS and Bank of America (and other banks) were.

Right b-stards. The FT‘s agony aunt, Lucy Kellaway, will get letters on this column with comments such as “insensitivity is essential to survival in business”. (Actually, I think it’s pretty important for survival in life, too — but that’s another story.) “… I’m not arguing that emotional intelligence is altogether a bad thing. It is lovely in a friend, and may arguably be good in a spouse. In a boss what is needed is not to be out-and-out emotionally stupid, but mildly emotionally dyslexic.” But the mail will really fly on this remark: “If one wants proof that emotional intelligence is a disadvantage at work one only needs to look at women in corporate life. They are supposed to be great at reading emotion, and yet seem unable to make it to the top in any great number. My new emotional dyslexia theory fits the facts much better. There is evidence that autism (chronic emotional illiteracy) is simply an extreme version of the male brain. This means that the average man, armed with his mild emotional dyslexia, has a most unfair advantage in being well equipped to sail through a day in the office and sleep like a baby in his bed at night.” Does that also describe Greece’s attitude to financial rectitude? Whoooooo!