Tim Treadgold

It’s not easy to feel sympathy for Perth’s super-rich as they watch their fortunes shrink, but the problems of Gina Rinehart, Andrew Forrest, Kerry Stokes, Angela Bennett and Stan Perron are a powerful pointer to the problems facing everyone in Western Australia.

For the best ringside seat at a bruising encounter don’t buy a ticket to a boxing event, sign up for an iron ore forecasting conference which will, for the first time since prices crashed, put the big boys of the industry on the same podium as the small producers.

Psst … looking for a bargain? Here’s a way to buy $1 for less than $1 by acquiring a fistful of shares in Mt Gibson Iron.

Money is moving out of iron ore but where it goes next is the more interesting question, because it seems that some investors are developing a taste for agriculture – a shift that might prove to be a case of leaving the frying pan to land in the fire.

The big get bigger and the small get crushed.

Verbal and financial volatility is the best way to describe what’s happening in Western Australia today.

Karl Simich and Mark Bennett are justifiably annoyed at having the companies they run added to an investment blacklist; but behind their frustration there is an enormously serious issue for every member of a superannuation fund – and that, in theory, is every working and recently retired Australian.

If Western Australia’s small iron ore miners thought all the bad news about falling prices was in the open, they got a shock this week when the two biggest producers, BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto, launched a war of words, complete with threats of fresh expansion programs.

The next move in US interest rates will be up, which will have an effect worldwide – including on Australia’s residential property market.