In what could probably be construed as an act of war, the United States is unleashing The Donald on the friendly folks from down under. This November, The Chump will be heading to Australia for a series of "Think Like a Billionaire" seminars

The Age reports that while promoters declined to say how much Trump is being paid, his usual fee is somewhere in the $1.5 million per hour range. All of this raises an interesting question: What could Trump possibly have to say that's worth $1.5 million per hour? Perhaps he could put together a Power Point presentation on how he actually managed to lose an enormous amount of money operating a casino.

Apparently this is Trump's first visit to Australia. The visit could do wonders for diplomacy as those wonderful folks will now get some idea of what Americans have been putting up with for the past 62 years.

Perhaps we could threaten to send Trump to Iran -- that should put an end to the country's aggression in a hurry.

We should be used to this by now. Yet another money grubbing directive has surfaced from mother eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY), As covered in a story in The New York Times, eBay has decided to test market the strategy of allowing payment for transactions on its site solely through its wanton money portal, PayPal. The company intends to run this test on Australian eBayers. I wonder if our mates Down Under would be willing to tell us how they feel about this strategy?

eBay is claiming that this change in operating procedure will lower the incidences of fraud on the site. That's funny coming from them, when you consider that the worst eBay fraud nightmares generally run through its own PayPal system. I can believe that eBay's own fraud exposure might be cut by funneling everything through PayPal, but that's about eBay's bottom line. It's not about the bottom lines of its loyal patrons. The matter is further examined in this Associated Press article.

BloggingStocks reports that, as it stands right now, PayPal collects 2.9% from every sale which runs through its system in the U.S., plus another .30 cents for any sale under $3,000. The picture gets even gloomier for Australian eBayers, where PayPal charges 4.4% on sales, plus the additional .30 cents. What percentage of eBay Australia's sales currently run through alternate payment means? That's what I want to know.

If this change is enacted by eBay against the entirety of it's operations, it will be just one more step in the inevitable creation of "Wal-Bay", a site where large volumes of foreign made junk will be peddled by a thin crust of well protected sellers. In the meantime, alternate online selling strategies continue to take hold and grow as eBay's own growth has stalled. eBay can fake revenue growth for just so long. It's only a matter of time before things really start to get ugly over there.

In the United States, when you have more children, your taxes go down. For each dependent member of your family, you get a deduction, thereby lowering your taxes. Some argue that this wrongly encourages people to have children; others believe that it's only fair to lower a family's taxes in return for the future taxes the child will pay.

Australia currently has a "baby bonus," under which a family may receive up to A$4,000 per year for dependent children under the age of 5. This is similar to the "earned income credit" in the U.S., under which lower income families may be entitled to receive a refundable income tax credit for each dependent child.

A medical expert in Australia is proposing that the government do the exact opposite. Professor Barry Walters thinks that the government should charge a family A$5,000 (US$ 5,700) for each child they have after a proposed limit of two. And for child numbers three and above, Walters says the parents should have to pay an annual tax of A$800 for life.