The financial headlines have been particularly dramatic lately, filled with doom and gloom about market downturns and potential crashes. Opening my favourite news apps each morning feels like stepping into an anxiety-inducing echo chamber of market pessimism. But let’s take a deep breath and look at what’s really happening.

My balanced portfolio is down about 2% - hardly the bloodbath some are describing. Year to date, international shares are still up by 10-11%, and Australian shares have delivered a modest 4% gain since July. These aren’t numbers that should be keeping anyone awake at night.

Reading about someone’s decade-long mix-up between their Unique Student Identifier and Unique Superannuation Identifier struck a chord with me today. The story highlights how easy it is to get tangled up in Australia’s maze of administrative acronyms and identifiers.

The bureaucratic overlap between USI (Student) and USI (Super) is exactly the kind of system design that makes me want to bang my head against my standing desk. Why do we insist on using the same acronym for two completely different identifiers? It’s like naming two different Melbourne train lines “Western” - it’s just asking for confusion.

The recent collapse of the Albanese government’s proposed superannuation tax reform for balances over $3 million highlights a persistent problem in Australian policy making: the inability to design sustainable, long-term financial solutions that can withstand public scrutiny.

Standing at my local cafe in Brunswick this morning, listening to fellow patrons discuss the news, it struck me how the debate around this policy proposal missed the mark entirely. The fundamental issue wasn’t about targeting wealthy superannuants - most reasonable people agree that super shouldn’t be a tax haven for the extremely wealthy. Rather, the policy’s fatal flaw lay in its implementation.