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In this week we are seeing that Trump is increasingly realising that it will be a really uphill struggle to win the election with the virus totally out of control, the China issue worsening and the US economy tanking. Who would elect someone who brought you all this!
In the UK the loosening policy is being put on hold for a few weeks to see if the balance can be restored and the daily case numbers fall.
In Australia all eyes are on Victoria and how
is it coping. It will be weeks till be will know if the latest moves have
worked. The Stage 4 restrictions are really dramatic and repressive and you wonder what more can be done it this does not work. Elsewhere we have the Commonwealth ramping up support while admitting that the financial damage is worsening by the day. We also now seem to have a new National Cyber Strategy led by Minister Dutton. I hope they know what they are doing.
Sadly the virus is upending the world. I fear we are all in this for the very long term…
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Major Issues.
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Australia's move in South China Sea could help tip balance
Emma Connors South-east Asia correspondent
Jul 26, 2020 – 4.32pm
Sydney/Jakarta | Renewed support from the United States and Australia for ASEAN countries has piled on the pressure for China to agree to a new set of rules that would check its aggressive expansion in the South China Sea.
Australia’s mission to the UN declared on Friday that “Australia rejects China’s claim to ‘historic rights’ or ‘maritime rights and interests’ as established in the ‘long course of historical practice’ in the South China Sea”. The wording echoes a declaration earlier this month by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stating that China's claims to offshore resources in the area are unlawful.
The hardening of the ANZUS allies' position comes four years after a 2016 tribunal finding that China's South China Sea claims are incompatible with the international rule book set out in the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
Australia's statement drew a predictably contemptuous response from China's nationalistic Global Times. In an article titled "Australia unwisely boards US leaky boat to meddle in South China Sea", the author described Australia's UN statement and recent naval exercises in the area as reckless provocations.
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https://www.afr.com/markets/equity-markets/ugly-start-for-a-woeful-earnings-season-20200723-p55eos
Ugly start for a 'woeful' earnings season
Sarah Turner Reporter
Jul 26, 2020 – 2.53pm
A dire earnings season is set to kick off this week, with investors to get their first taste of how the COVID-19 pandemic is devastating the profits of many Australian companies.
"This earnings season is clearly going to be woeful," said Monik Kotecha, chief investment officer at Insync Funds Management. "We're in a period of dislocation and it's obviously very different from previous periods, as this was a forced shutdown."
Mr Kotecha was referring to government policies in March of ordering people to stay at home. Restrictions have since been lifted in most states apart from Victoria, which re-entered lockdown about two weeks ago due to a second wave of infections.
Dividends will be down by more than 20 per cent from the previous year.
— Jason Teh, chief investment officer at Vertium Asset Management
Against this backdrop, earnings for companies are expected to fall by 20.5 per cent in fiscal 2020 ( the 12-month period that ended on June 30) according to AMP Capital.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/why-it-s-the-wrong-time-to-be-an-a-bear-20200725-p55fh3
It's the wrong time to be an $A bear
Even with the fiscal response to COVID-19, Australia’s standing versus the rest of the world has improved sharply. Australian dollar bears should beware.
Grant Wilson Contributor
Updated Jul 26, 2020 – 1.08pm, first published at 12.38pm
Amid the doom and gloom let us say something positive today: Australia remains on track to make a remarkable transition from a net debtor to a net creditor.
This may sound perverse. Certainly if you had tuned in to the three major credit rating agencies this past week you would have drawn a different conclusion.
The Economic and Fiscal Update also highlighted a rapid increase in borrowing.
Gross debt, for example, is projected to increase to $851.9 billion, or from 35.4 per cent of GDP at June 30, 2019, to 45 per cent of GDP at June 30, 2020.
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https://www.afr.com/wealth/investing/why-2020-is-the-year-of-the-bond-market-20200726-p55fnc
Why 2020 is the year of the bond market
Geoff Parrish Contributor
Jul 27, 2020 – 10.59am
This year will be marked in history by a pandemic that had devastating effects on global health and economic activity to individuals and nations across the world. In financial markets, the effects of the pandemic prompted a rollercoaster of volatility that highlight the fundamental role of bonds in investment portfolios.
Making the case for bonds just 12 months ago would have been a difficult task. In June last year, the sharemarket was experiencing its 11th straight year of growth after the GFC – the S&P/ASX 200 was just 500 points from its all-time record of 7145.
Equities were on an unbelievable bull run. Investor portfolios had not been tested in any serious fashion for more than a decade.
When markets feel at their best is perhaps when it is most paramount for investors to keep a perspective on their long-term goals.
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If wars of the future are about influence, Australia needs to be better armed
By Malcolm Long
July 28, 2020 — 12.00am
Australia’s disappearing media presence in the Asia-Pacific makes us increasingly vulnerable. As we wrestle with our deteriorating relations with China and seek to strengthen our engagement with other countries, effective international communications by Australia have gone missing in action.
Since 2013, following substantial government funding cuts, the ABC has reduced its spending on Radio Australia and its international television and online services by more than two-thirds, to about $11 million a year. At the same time, China is investing billions in new global communications initiatives. Russia, Japan, Germany, France and the BBC each spend hundreds of millions annually.
In the past Radio Australia was recognised globally as an almost textbook model of how to do multilingual international broadcasting, successfully blending entertainment, education and highly valued independent news coverage. At its height, tens of millions of people around our region trusted RA to provide an honest, objective view of what was going on in their countries and the world.
Over the decades, Radio Australia produced content in Hindi, Bahasa Indonesian, Japanese, Thai, Khmer, Vietnamese, Burmese, Mandarin, Cantonese, French, Dutch, German, Tok Pisin (pidgin English) and English. Now content is produced only in Mandarin, Bahasa Indonesia, Tok Pisin and English. China Radio International broadcasts in 65 languages.
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https://thekouk.com/item/704-climbing-the-covid-mountain.html#.XyC6WDpAlfY.twitter
Wed, 29 Jul 2020 | Stephen Koukoulas
TEN ECONOMIC STEPS THAT FORM A PATHWAY TO THE TOP
THEKOUK and EVERALDATLARGE OUTLINE A WAY FOR THE PEOPLE OF AUSTRALIA TO CREATE AND MAINTAIN SUSTAINED PROSPERITY
Covid19 has opened a door for Australians to positively accept significant changes that will lead to a shared good. This rare opportunity enables us to achieve sustainable economic and social goals that create a new ‘normal’ as our way of life.
These Ten Steps are presented as non-partisan recommendations to the Australian Parliament in the firm belief that, if they embrace them, the Australian economy and society will be greatly enhanced after the Covid19 pandemic has passed.
*A job for you if you want one.
A significant increase in part time and casual employment can be created that
will enable you to enjoy a more creative and peaceful lifestyle and to live
longer and better. The traditional age at which you would have been expected to
retire will become obsolete as a result. An access age for pension and
superannuation will become your choice. This will enable you to remain in paid
work for as long as you want to, on a basis that you choose, while boosting the
productivity and growth of Australia.
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APRA orders banks to slash dividends
Jul 29, 2020 – 9.04am
The prudential regulator has dashed investor hopes for a relaxing of its guidance on dividends and has instructed banks to reduce payout ratios to below 50 per cent for the rest of the calendar year.
In a letter to banks dated today Australian Prudential Regulation Authority chairman Wayne Byres tells the banks to moderate payments to shareholders in light of the many demands the virus crisis is placing on bank capital.
The edict will have an immediate impact on the hip pockets of millions of shareholders who buy the banks for dividends, with most Australian banks regularly paying out between 80 per cent and 95 per cent of their annual profits annually.
Mr Byres sets out the prudential regulator's expectations in three bullet points saying bank boards should "seek to retain at least half of their earnings when making decisions on capital distributions," "conduct regular stress testing" and "make use of capital buffers to absorb the impact of stress."
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An independent fiscal authority would accelerate the recovery
With monetary policy at the RBA's self-imposed limits, new depoliticised policy tools are needed to manage the post-pandemic economic cycle.
Paul Bloxham Contributor
Jul 29, 2020 – 2.55pm
With the Reserve Bank of Australia at its own self-perceived monetary policy limits, Australia needs new thinking about how to manage the economic cycle.
This could involve new policy tools for the RBA or serious consideration about setting up an independent fiscal authority.
As is well understood, the COVID-19 crisis has ended Australia's world-beating 29-year long boom.
What is less well understood is that the exceptional aspect of Australia's economic performance over the past 29 years was not the persistence or the strength of its growth.
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Climate Policy
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No entries in this section.
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Coronavirus And Impacts.
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'Long-term scarring': Young people will suffer their entire working lives from COVID-19
By Shane Wright
July 26, 2020 — 11.55pm
The coronavirus recession will scar the employment prospects of people in their 20s and 30s, with research warning they may become trapped in low-paying, low-skilled jobs for years.
The Productivity Commission, in a report to be released on Monday, found work for young people would be scarcer, and taking on lower-quality jobs to get employment was likely to have long-term consequences for careers development.
The Productivity Commission found many young workers could face long-term consequences in the form of occupations lower on the jobs ladder and lower salaries than they might have expected in the early part of the century.
Young people have suffered the largest increases in unemployment, and the biggest falls in jobs, since the advent of the pandemic.
In June, the jobless rate for those aged between 20 and 24 soared to 13.9 per cent, with almost 150,000 jobs disappearing since the start of the year. Among people aged 25 to 34, the unemployment rate has climbed by almost 3 percentage points to 7.5 per cent, with 164,000 jobs gone.
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https://www.afr.com/world/europe/borders-can-t-stay-closed-forever-who-tells-world-20200728-p55g0s
Borders can't stay closed forever, WHO tells world
Hans van Leeuwen Europe correspondent
Jul 28, 2020 – 3.18am
London | Border closures can't last forever and domestic measures are the only way to curb COVID-19, the World Health Organisation has said, as the European pandemic's gathering second wave threatens a new round of quarantines and travel restrictions.
The WHO's message blunt message is a warning to countries like Australia, which seems set on keeping its borders shut to the end of 2020 and beyond, and also to countries like Britain, which caused chaos this week by suddenly imposing a quarantine on arrivals from Spain.
And it came as airline stocks tumbled in Europe in response to the prospect of a second wave of COVID-19 infections and any ensuing lockdowns or quarantines, which could clip the wings of a nascent recovery in tourism.
"Continuing to keep international borders sealed is not necessarily a sustainable strategy," Mike Ryan, head of WHO's emergencies program, told a press conference on Monday (early Tuesday AEST).
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'Dickensian conditions' await future learners if international student income is lost
By Lydia Lynch
July 27, 2020 — 7.54pm
The next generation of Australian university students will be educated in conditions reminiscent of a Charles Dickens novel if international students remain locked out of the country, a Queensland parliamentary inquiry has heard.
Without the revenue of international students, universities will not be able to afford new buildings, quality academics and groundbreaking research, the vice-chancellors of the state's two biggest tertiary institutions - the University of Queensland and Queensland University of Technology - have warned.
A trial set to welcome some foreign students back to Queensland has stalled as the second wave of coronavirus lashes Victoria, casting more doubt over the financial future of the state's universities.
Earlier this month, UQ was in the final stages of a plan to bring international students back to the state and was ready to spend $2000 per student to help cover the cost of flights and hotel quarantine.
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It is about time our leaders took higher education seriously
With the qualified exception of the Higher Education Contribution Scheme — commonly referred to as HECS — higher education policy in Australia has been a series of rolling disasters for almost half a century.
From the crazy decision by the Whitlam government to make higher education “free” to the recent proposal to radically alter funding for different courses and the prices paid by students, it has been wall-to-wall bungles.
The creation of a unitary system in the late 1980s in which the former colleges of advanced education and teachers’ colleges were renamed universities was both misguided and botched. Many of these CAEs and teachers’ colleges were a step up from country high schools but with older students.
Arguably, we have never fully recovered from this senselessness. We now have 37 public universities ranging from world-class to unsatisfactory. Most attempt to be clones of one another, pretending to be research as well as teaching outfits, but just a handful of the institutions has research credibility.
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Deniers of COVID reality must do one thing: get a grip
What a pity COVID-19 cannot read all those websites and blogs saying it’s really just like a bad flu season and the world has massively overreacted.
In fact, the virus is rampaging around the world, successfully reproducing itself at ever-increasing rates. A million new cases in four days. Heading towards 17 million cases globally, well over 650,000 deaths.
It’s surging in some places — Brazil (2.5 million cases, 90,000 dead) and India (1.5 million cases, 33,000 dead).
In other places it is staging a stunning comeback — Spain, California, Texas, Florida.
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https://www.afr.com/property/commercial/going-airborne-how-to-virus-proof-the-office-20200728-p55g7m
Going airborne: how to virus-proof the office
Some building owners are investing in cleaner air as fears grow about the potential transmission of the virus through air-conditioning systems.
Ryan Ori
Jul 28, 2020 – 2.23pm
There's an invisible obstacle to reviving the economy from the coronavirus pandemic.
Potential transmission of the virus through air-conditioning and heating systems is the latest issue employers and building owners are focusing on as they prepare for more people to head back to office towers and other non-residential buildings, whether they're office workers or school teachers and students.
Research on the coronavirus continues to evolve, and there's no clear consensus from public health agencies on how great the threat of airborne illness is compared with close personal contact. The World Health Organisation only recently acknowledged the potential for airborne transmission.
As a precaution, some building owners in the US are making big investments towards cleaner air. Changes to heating and cooling systems are being made late in construction or soon after a building's completion.
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https://www.afr.com/life-and-luxury/travel/is-it-really-safe-to-fly-20200728-p55g7w
Is it really safe to fly?
Fiona Carruthers and Mark Ludlow
Jul 28, 2020 – 5.10pm
Health specialists say people are at risk of contracting the coronavirus while flying after a number of passengers aboard Jetstar and Garuda flights were told to immediately self-isolate on Tuesday by NSW Health.
There has been debate over the perceived safety of air travel given planes have not been at the centre of super-spreader cases or clusters, leading many airlines – including Qantas – to book full rows of passengers, without leaving the middle seat free for social distancing.
Even the United States' Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advises on its website that "most viruses and other germs do not spread easily on flights because of how air circulates and is filtered on airplanes".
Australia's former Chief Medical Officer, Brendan Murphy, said last month that short-haul domestic flights were low risk.
A Qantas spokesperson said the national, state and territory chief medical officers had endorsed the approach taken by airlines.
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'Sledgehammer' border approach will spell end for some businesses
Sally Patten BOSS editor
Jul 29, 2020 – 9.53am
Leading directors are worried by the hit to the economy from the second lockdown in Melbourne and say federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg should be in no hurry to repair Australia's eye-watering budget deficit.
One top director also urged state governments to stop shutting their borders in response to the spread of the virus, labelling it a "sledgehammer" approach.
"It's certainly a big setback," Jillian Broadbent, a director of Woolworths, Macquarie Group and chancellor of the University of Wollongong, said of the second shutdown in Melbourne and the Mitchell Shire, which began on July 8.
Christine Bartlett, a director of of insurer TAL, Sigma Healthcare and Mirvac said: "I am a black hat. The second wave in Victoria has taken us all aback in terms of speed. Actually I am quite pessimistic.
"There are bright lights around mining, and thank goodness we have that. The banks have done an amazing job supporting people with loans and mortgages, but at a certain point that will become a much more difficult conversation. A lot of companies won't make it through the next six months."
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NAB to crack down on 'debt vultures' as financial stress surges
By Clancy Yeates
July 29, 2020 — 12.15am
National Australia Bank has vowed to stop dealing with unlicensed debt management firms, which promise to help people in financial trouble but have been labelled "debt vultures" by consumer advocates.
As the number of borrowers in financial distress surges due to the coronavirus pandemic, NAB will on Wednesday announce a crackdown on unlicensed fee-charging debt management firms.
National Australia Bank group executive Rachel Slade: "As more Australians seek help it is important that we no longer deal with unlicensed, fee-charging debt management providers."
These are operators that charge an upfront fee to consumers, proposing to help them negotiate with lenders, repair their credit file, restructure debts, or arrange repayment plans.
NAB said about one in 10 of its customers in financial hardship engaged these operators, but the debt management firms' services could also be obtained for free through financial counsellors.
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Low rates long-term threat to retirement funds
By Kirsten Temple
July 28, 2020 — 10.44pm
One major casualty of the coronavirus pandemic may be the cost of your retirement.
Although superannuation balances are looking a lot healthier than they were in March, longer-term returns will be increasingly hard to come by.
The Reserve Bank of Australia’s decision to cut interest rates to a record low supports the economy and is great for mortgage holders but not for those relying on investment returns.
You need only look at the interest rates paid on bank term deposits or the yield of bond funds to know that retirees will struggle to get much income from the more stable cash and bond components of their retirement pot.
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Investors need to prepare for market's phase three
By Graham Parkes
July 28, 2020 — 10.00pm
Investment markets have been through an extraordinary times as investors deal with a one in 100-year event – the COVID-19 crisis.
One of the most important ways for investors – big and small – to navigate their way through this minefield is to have a mental framework within which to contextualise and understand what is going on – and to develop some sort of road map for the future.
The S&P/ASX200 Index dropped 36 per cent from top to bottom from late February until the end of March, before snapping back more than 30 per cent.Credit:Peter Rae
It is key to understand there are three key phases of this market, covering where we have been, where we are now and where we might be going.
Phase 1 – Pandemic begins
Involved the COVID-19 virus turning into a worldwide pandemic and the associated waterfall declines in sharemarkets around the world as businesses and entire industries shut down.
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https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/pm-ponders-pandemic-leave-as-economy-fears-grow-20200729-p55gfa
Team Australia splinters as economy fears grow
Phillip Coorey Political editor
Jul 29, 2020 – 6.59pm
The federal government is considering an expansion of paid pandemic leave to prevent the further spread of coronavirus, as Scott Morrison expressed growing concern at the national economic impact of the crisis from Victoria.
These concerns about what the Prime Minister called the "Victorian wave'' were compounded on Wednesday when Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk closed her borders to everyone from greater Sydney from Saturday onwards.
The decision, prompted by a chain reaction of events that began in Victoria, both blindsided and dismayed the NSW and federal governments, as well as the business community.
As NSW recorded 17 cases on Wednesday, Mr Morrison hailed his home state as the benchmark state for being able to live with the virus without killing its economy. In Victoria, there 295 new cases and 87 aged care homes had patients with infections.
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http://medicalrepublic.com.au/nsw-risks-losing-control-as-outbreak-spreads/32346
30 July 2020
NSW risks losing control as outbreak spreads
Clinical Communicable Disease COVID-19 Public Health
NSW is on a knife edge after recording more than 150 COVID-19 cases over the last 14 days, a worrying sign the situation could spiral out of control.
The wide geographic spread is of particular concern, as it would rule out ring-fencing as a possible approach to containing the spread of the virus.
It comes as the Queensland government has closed its borders to arrivals from Greater Sydney after declaring the area a hotspot. People returning to Queensland from this area must quarantine in hotels for two weeks from 1am Saturday August 1.
NSW in the ‘red zone’
The state recorded 19 new cases in the 24 hours to 8pm on Tuesday, but watching the fluctuations in daily numbers doesn’t necessarily paint an accurate picture of the spread of this virus.
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National recovery is stumbling over parochial politics
Four looming state and territory elections are making leaders shut their borders first and worry about the consequences later.
Phillip Coorey Political editor
Jul 30, 2020 – 8.00pm
Among the various global forums with which Scott Morrison has conversed since the coronavirus pandemic began, the most eclectic has been that known as the First Movers group.
The group was formed by Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and includes Australia, Denmark, Norway, Greece, the Czech Republic, New Zealand, Israel and Singapore.
To qualify, countries had to move early to close borders and implement other measures that enabled them to successfully suppress the spread of the virus and minimise the economic impact.
On Wednesday afternoon, the group held its fifth hook-up so far. The mood was the most sombre yet as leaders swapped notes on the second waves most were now variously experiencing.
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Key to treating Covid-19 will be found in our DNA
Science is coming to grips with the key question in the COVID-19 crisis: why do some of us develop severe disease requiring intensive care while others have mild or asymptomatic infections? The solution to that question is not in the virus itself, it’s in the way our immune system reacts to the virus.
Understanding why we have such varied immune responses is the most powerful tool for developing effective treatments.
Many of history’s great plagues stem from microbes that leapt from animals into humans. But their severity is based on our individual immune reaction.
Each of us has six billion letters in our genome and, between any two individuals, there are three million letter differences. These variants are what make us unique and can also significantly change how we respond to pathogens such as viruses.
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Leaders need to change gear for a much longer war
This was supposed to be all over by July. Now governments are in mourning for plans that did not go to timetable.
Laura Tingle Columnist
Jul 31, 2020 – 5.12pm
Long before Australian governments imposed the first lockdowns on the country or closed state borders earlier this year, a lot of Australians voted with their feet.
First, in the days when we were watching the coronavirus as something that was happening in China, it was places like Sydney's Chinatown that felt it: suddenly the bustling restaurants were empty.
Then it became more widespread as people opted to work from home, even if they hadn't been told to do so.
That period where the federal government seemed to be dithering seems like a lifetime ago now, doesn’t it?
But remember when Scott Morrison kept warning people that they might not like what they wished for when it came to closing down the economy, and seemed to prevaricate about shutting down large gatherings while asserting he would go to the football that weekend?
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In the midst of battle, the monetary policy war may be over
By Shane Wright
August 1, 2020 — 12.01am
When an army runs out of ammunition, it lays down its weapons and surrenders.
The Reserve Bank is not an army but it finds itself in a similar situation to the British at Yorktown or the French at Dien Bien Phu. All that's missing is the white flag which the RBA will never fly.
The Australian economy is driven by two equally important arms - fiscal policy (the government) and monetary policy (the Reserve Bank).
No one can doubt the efforts of the Morrison government, and to a lesser extent the states and territories, to alleviate the economic fallout from the coronavirus recession.
The federal government is this year expected to run the largest budget deficit since World War II, shovelling tens of billions of dollars a month into the pockets of businesses and workers to keep the economy afloat. Deficits are tipped to run for years, with nominal debt likely to race through $1 trillion sometime in 2022 or 2023.
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The ascent of Scott Morrison, from Trump's mini-me to national leader
Peter Hartcher
Political and international editor for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age
July 31, 2020 — 7.01pm
It was no coincidence. Scott Morrison put baseballs caps on his head to look more like Donald Trump. He proposed to move Australia's Israel embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem to act more like Trump. He modelled a piece of coal in Parliament to seem more like Trump holding up his "Trump digs coal" placard.
He warned darkly about "negative globalism" to sound more like Trump's anti-globalist populism.
He complained about Australian "elites" breeding resentment to mimic Trump's condemnation of America's "corrupt elites". He derided people living in "the goat's cheese circle of some parts of our capital cities" in homage to Trump's class warfare.
Morrison disdained science, refusing to meet former fire chiefs ahead of the bushfire season, to imitate Trump's rejection of science. He stayed away from a UN climate change summit in New York to show solidarity with Trump's decision to avoid addressing it.
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The twin baggage of pride and ideology impeding the pandemic strategy
George Megalogenis
Columnist
August 1, 2020 — 12.00am
Australia can no longer consider itself a global role model for managing the coronavirus. Our reputational loss, due entirely to the surge in infections and deaths in Victoria, was confirmed this week in these two sobering comparisons. Our average daily caseload now exceeds Italy’s, and is approaching that of the United Kingdom, according to the Financial Times’s coronavirus tracker.
But the rest of the world will probably forgive us this slip. Australia’s death rate remains thankfully low – just under eight for every one million people. In Britain it is 677; in Italy 581.
It is important that our leaders, and the hundreds of thousands of workers on the frontline, maintain this perspective. Australia is still managing the pandemic better than most nations for the simple reason that the first wave didn’t overwhelm our health system. Our death rate of eight per million remains in touch with our Asia Pacific peers: four per million in New Zealand, five in Singapore and six in South Korea, according to the Worldometer website.
Nevertheless, the Victorian outbreak, and the rolling threat it poses to NSW and Queensland, must be viewed as a catastrophic policy failure. Responsibility starts with Victoria’s mismanagement of hotel quarantine.
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What risk does Victoria pose to other states?
Jill Margo Health editor
Aug 2, 2020 – 7.11am
Just how much risk does the COVID-19 situation in Victoria pose to the rest of the country?
The experts are divided. Some say it’s like a bushfire, generating erratic embers that could cause serious spread beyond its borders.
Others say it is not uncontrolled, it's largely concentrated in aged care facilities and that states such as NSW and Queensland are managing the ember attacks.
Professor Emma McBryde, an infectious diseases physician and epidemiologist engaged in global modelling, believes the situation in Victoria does pose a notable risk and is also causing a shift in mood and responsibility.
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'Looming' COVID-19 emergency in disability support homes
By Wendy Tuohy
August 2, 2020 — 12.00am
Residents and workers in group homes for people with disabilities face "a looming emergency" due to lack of training in use of personal protective equipment and inadequate preparation to combat coronavirus infection.
Outbreaks of COVID-19 similar to those in 87 Victorian aged care homes were likely in the disability care sector unless nurses were brought in for training, according to the director of the Disability Institute at the University of Melbourne, Professor Anne Kavanagh.
She said it was "extremely worrying" that many disability support staff working in close contact with clients, and sometimes also working in aged care facilities, had received no training in COVID-19 infection control.
Unless "trained medical staff are brought in to work alongside them", Professor Kavanagh said "we will have another aged care crisis and people dying who don't need to be dying". In Victoria there are about 535 group homes and 2500 residents.
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Royal Commissions And The Like.
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There are no entries in this section.
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National Budget Issues.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/australia-to-taste-deflation-with-record-cpi-fall-20200726-p55fko
Australia to taste deflation with record CPI fall
Sarah Turner Reporter
Jul 27, 2020 – 12.00am
Australia has had a rare taste of deflation, with a second-quarter plunge in the headline consumer price index set to smash records after the COVID-19 pandemic crushed demand for a wide range of products and services.
Childcare, petrol, rents and healthcare premium deferrals, and travel bans, will all contribute to a steep fall in prices in the June quarter, with alcohol and tobacco among the few products set for an increase.
The country's pandemic-induced lockdown during the June quarter restricted people to their homes, limiting demand for petrol and travel.
The virus also brought job losses, with the unemployment rate rising to 7.4 per cent in June, a 22-year high. The unemployment rate is expected to increase further, with the official forecast for unemployment to hit 9.25 per cent by Christmas,
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Walk the talk on Reagan-Thatcher supply-side rhetoric
What those who care about Australia’s future as a fair and prosperous country should really fear is that the Treasurer’s name-checking of Reagan and Thatcher turns out to be mere rhetoric, rather than a prelude to a genuine reform agenda of Hawke-Keating (and Howard-Costello) dimensions.
Jul 27, 2020 – 12.00am
Josh Frydenberg’s highlighting of The Australian Financial Review’s call for a Reagan-Thatcher style supply-side revolution to repair the budget deficit, repay public debt and restore Australia’s lost prosperity by building a stronger economy and growing jobs has led to a predictable outbreak of partisan paranoia.
Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan are “figures of hate” for those on the left, as the Treasurer put it yesterday, because they were the two Western leaders who profited from the 1970s discrediting of the Keynesian consensus and presided over the triumph of democratic capitalism over Soviet communism in the 1980s.
No one needs to support everything about Thatcherism and Reaganism. But historical accuracy requires all to recognise that Australia’s salvation from its long postwar decline was delivered by a Labor government pursuing much the same orthodox policy agenda – supported by the OECD and the International Monetary Fund – of market competition, limited government and lower taxes without destroying the social fabric of what actually became both a fairer and more prosperous country. That saved Australia from becoming the “poor white trash of Asia”.
For many on left, the Treasurer’s rhetoric foretells a scorched-earth “neoliberal” ideological assault on all the big government activities that make Australia a freer and fairer nation. But such scare-mongering bears little resemblance to the actual supply-side revolution on both both sides of the Atlantic, let alone in Australia.
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Impromptu stress test is hurdle for bank dividends
Karen Maley Columnist
Jul 27, 2020 – 12.00am
Banks will find out soon whether they have a green light to resume paying dividends, and, if so, how big a sweetener they can provide to long-suffering shareholders.
In recent weeks, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority sent an identical questionnaire to all the banks, which asked them to detail how their loan portfolios will perform in a situation where the jobless rate remains elevated, and the recovery from the coronavirus-induced recession is halting.
"It will give APRA an insight into the state of the loan books", one banker explained. "It's being taken extremely seriously in the banks."
Bankers believe that the answers they provide will be used by the regulator to determine whether particular banks will be permitted to pay a dividend and the amount of capital that can be returned to shareholders.
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https://www.afr.com/property/commercial/tower-values-to-tumble-as-rents-crumble-20200724-p55f99
Tower values to tumble as rents crumble
Nick Lenaghan Property editor
Jul 27, 2020 – 12.05am
The values of Sydney's top office towers could plummet by as much as 30 per cent over the next few years as demand for space weakens, vacancy rises and rents drop sharply, according to Goldman Sachs.
The bleak outlook is driven not by the potential impact of the pandemic on the CBD office market, but the sharp pullback in values and rents due to a cyclical downturn that was already well under way before the coronavirus outbreak, Goldman Sachs analysts said in a recent client note.
Their view sharpened with the release this month of JLL's June quarter figures on office vacancy and overall take-up space which, the Goldman Sachs analysts said, points to "a more rapid and severe contraction in Sydney and Melbourne demand than we had expected".
"There is much debate at present re: the potential longer-term structural implications of COVID-19 on office space demand," Ian Randall and his colleagues wrote.
"We believe investors should be far more concerned by the severe cyclical downturn in office rents and values that has commenced."
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Treasurer's inspiration from Thatcher, Reagan has merit: Economists
By Mike Foley
July 26, 2020 — 5.35pm
The inspiration Treasurer Josh Frydenberg draws from Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan will scare Australian workers according to Labor, but some business leaders and economists argue policies championed by conservative leaders are not without merit.
Mr Frydenberg again referred to the former United States president and ex-British prime minister during an appearance on the ABC's Insiders on Sunday, saying they "dealt very successfully with the challenges that they faced, particularly stagflation".
"Thatcher and Reagan are figures of hate for the left because they were so successful," he said.
Australia's economy has been battered by the coronavirus pandemic. Government is forecasting unemployment to reach 9.25 per cent by December, and the budget deficit to reach a record $184.5 billion this financial year. There is fierce debate on both sides of politics about how to stimulate recovery.
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'Trickle-down fantasy': Stimulus tax cuts face fresh attack as $28b cost revealed
By David Crowe
July 27, 2020 — 12.00am
Faster tax cuts for millions of workers would cost up to $28 billion over the next three years, according to a parliamentary analysis that escalates a row over whether the Morrison government should embrace the plan.
The tax cuts would cost at least $12 billion in their first year if the government acted on Liberal calls to bring forward the changes to lift economic growth.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has confirmed the moves are on the agenda for the federal budget due in October, saying they could help improve household spending at a time when aggregate demand is under pressure.
Mr Frydenberg said he took inspiration from former United States president Ronald Reagan and former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, telling the ABC's Insiders on Sunday they "cut red tape and cut taxes and delivered stronger economies".
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This is why we don't need to panic about record budget deficits
Ross Gittins
Economics Editor
July 27, 2020 — 12.05am
Despite the great majority of economists – including Reserve Bank governor Dr Philip Lowe – telling Scott Morrison and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg not to worry too much about a record blowout in the budget deficit at a time of a once-in-a-100-year pandemic, it’s clear many people – including many members of the Parliamentary Liberal Party – are very worried.
So much so, they think it’s a more pressing problem than sky-high unemployment. In consequence, the government’s nerve has cracked. The unspoken message from last week’s policy announcements and budget update was: we’re prepared to spend a further $22 billion to turn the feared "fiscal cliff" in September into a less precipitous fall, but after that all you’ll get to help the economy is the airy objectives and cold comfort of "reform".
When the Economic Society of Australia polled 50 leading economists recently, 88 per cent of them agreed that governments should provide ongoing budgetary support to boost demand during the economic crisis and recovery, "even if it means a substantial increase in public debt".
In a speech last week, Lowe said the budget blowout might seem quite a change to people used to low budget deficits and low levels of public debt. "But this is a change that is entirely manageable and affordable and it’s the right thing to do in the national interest," he said.
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Banks are enjoying the cheapest money in history, RBA’s Chris Kent says
The Reserve Bank’s interventions through the COVID-19 recession and a major influx of cheap deposits have pushed the funding costs of the Australian banks to their cheapest levels in history, RBA assistant governor Chris Kent has said.
Speaking at a Kanga News event on Monday morning, Dr Kent outlined the central bank’s “unprecedented” responses to the early phases of the pandemic in March, when the global health crisis threatened to spill over into a financial crisis.
Dr Kent described how a collapse in sharemarkets around the world sparked an investor rush to cash which threatened to freeze up the trade in financial instruments.
Central banks including the RBA stepped in to inject liquidity into the banking system, and bought Commonwealth and state bonds to ensure a rational market and keep prices from tumbling.
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https://www.afr.com/chanticleer/the-15b-pointer-to-profit-seasons-great-reset-20200727-p55fs3
The $15b pointer to profit season’s Great Reset
The write-downs we've already seen from the ASX 100 show what's coming this earnings season. Investors should watch closely, as they're bigger than COVID-19.
Updated Jul 27, 2020 – 12.27pm, first published at 12.12pm
The next month is going to tell us everything – and nothing – about the true outlook for Australia’s biggest companies.
The economic damage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic means many investors will try to look through the earnings numbers presented by chief executives during the annual August earning season, which starts in earnest on Wednesday.
While earnings for the six or 12 months to June 30 might give us a feel for the resilience of a particular company to COVID-19, the conditions that businesses have faced since late February have been so far removed from the “normal” economic patterns of recent years that it will be hard to use 2020 results as a guide to a group’s real, long-term potential.
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Coronavirus recession is going to hit poor hardest
I was on Sydney Harbour a few weeks back to celebrate my birthday, on a weekday, and was a little surprised to learn, as I enjoyed a few beers in the late afternoon, that my nautical friend was “working from home”. I had taken the day off work.
But it was cause to reflect on the extraordinary boon the coronavirus recession has been for at least some professional workers, not only in terms of flexibility but also in pay. WFH is the defining economic shift of 2020. Often a source of amusement — #WFH is a social media phenomenon — the trend has enormous implications for inequality.
Australian Harvard economist James Stratton believes about 40 per cent of our workforce can feasibly work from home, but overwhelmingly in professional and higher-paid sectors.
If that’s true, more people are now working from home than in the office.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/deflation-arrives-for-first-time-in-22-years-20200728-p55gbv
Deflation arrives for first time in 22 years
Matthew Cranston Economics correspondent
Jul 29, 2020 – 11.46am
Australia recorded annual deflation for the first time since March 1998 after headline inflation fell to -0.3 per cent in the year to June.
Prices on childcare, rents and lower fuel costs all contributed to a 1.9 per cent fall in the June quarter headline inflation - the biggest quarterly fall since the Australian Bureau of Statistics started keeping records in 1948.
Child care costs plunged 95 per cent in the quarter, automotive fuel fell 19.3 per cent, and preschool and primary education fell 16.2 per cent. The rental component of the CPI, which accounts for nearly 7 per cent of the CPI basket, fell 1.3 per cent.
"Excluding these three components, the CPI would have risen 0.1 per cent in the June quarter," ABS chief economist Bruce Hockman said.
The Reserve Bank's preferred measure of inflation - the annual trimmed mean - slipped -0.1 per cent in the quarter to 1.2 per cent.
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June building approvals hit eight-year low, falling 4.9%
Building approvals for June dropped much more sharply than expected, falling 4.9 per cent to hit the lowest level in eight years.
ABS data published in Thursday show approvals sank almost 5 per cent during June. Analysts had expected a a 2.8 per cent decline.
Among the states, NSW led the slump in approvals, falling 14.8 per cent during the month.
Nataionally, private home approvals were the worst hit, down 5.7 per cent, while private sector dwellings excluding houses were down 5.3 per cent.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/virus-shock-to-budget-not-over-yet-20200730-p55h0e
Virus shock to budget not over yet
Jul 31, 2020 – 12.00am
The federal government's economic recovery outlook has already been dashed only a week after its budget update, due to a looming harsher lockdown in Victoria and tighter Queensland border restrictions weighing on business activity and hurting confidence across the country.
As Victoria's Premier Daniel Andrews announced a record-breaking 723 new daily COVID-19 cases, 13 further deaths and new health restrictions on regional Victorians, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Thursday, "we can't rule out further restrictions or limitations to stem this outbreak."
Chief health officers from the federal and state governments discussed the possibility of stage four restrictions in Melbourne, which would shut down most commercial activity except essential businesses such as supermarkets and pharmacies.
The Australian Health Protection Principal Committee was due to provide advice late on Thursday to Mr Andrews ahead of his scheduled talk with Mr Morrison.
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'We give money to people on their say so': ATO admits no checks on early super access
By Shane Wright and Clancy Yeates
July 30, 2020 — 11.55pm
People are using cash from the Morrison government's early access superannuation scheme to pay down mortgages or put deposits on a home as the Tax Office admitted it has not made a single eligibility check on any of the three million Australians who have dipped into $28 billion in savings.
The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age has learned one lender has seen a 10 per cent increase in the number of customers who are up to $25,000 ahead on their mortgages, compared with last year.
The ATO revealed on Thursday it was only now beginning a preliminary examination of eligibility for claims, four months after the federal government allowed people to withdraw up to $20,000 from their retirement savings if they found themselves in financial hardship as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
To use the scheme, people must have been made redundant, suffered a 20 per cent cut in working reduced hours, become unemployed or eligible for welfare assistance such as JobSeeker, Youth Allowance or Parenting Payment.
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JobKeeper: PM warned 1 in 10 businesses won’t survive after support ends
Hundreds of businesses are teetering on a knife edge with many warning the PM they may not survive once JobKeeper support is pulled.
July 30, 2020 8:16pm
Hundreds of “zombie” businesses have warned the government they will close their doors when the JobKeeper cash runs out.
In a shock finding based on a survey run by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, one in ten companies currently securing the wage subsidy have revealed they plan to shut up shop when the wage subsidy runs out, forcing workers on to the unemployment queues.
The warning underlines fears that JobKeeper is propping up hundreds of “zombie” businesses that can no longer survive in the post-COVID economy.
It follows claims that every job ‘saved’ by the scheme is actually costing taxpayers $100,000 because so many of the jobs will disappear when the $1500 wage subsidy is phased out.
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https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/andrews-asks-pm-for-financial-lifeline-20200731-p55haj
Andrews asks PM for financial lifeline
Patrick Durkin, John Kehoe, Hannah Wootton and Andrew Tillett
Aug 1, 2020 – 12.00am
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews is urging Prime Minister Scott Morrison to extend full JobKeeper payments to the beleaguered state and help fund cash grants for the retail, hospitality and tourism sectors as businesses brace for a longer lockdown they say they cannot afford.
Emergency talks between the state and federal leaders come amid a focus on "mystery cases" of COVID-19 driving a worrying rise in Victoria's community transmission, and calls to lock up or trace one in four residents not at home despite testing positive for the virus.
After listing a record-breaking two-day case increase in new cases and deaths across the state, the Victorian government will analyse transmission data and decide this weekend if tougher but more targeted restrictions are needed, with the current six-week lockdown almost certain to be extended.
"We could not open up with these numbers; we could not open up with even half these numbers," Mr Andrews said, after revealing on Friday 627 new daily virus cases and eight more deaths.
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Young Australians ramp up their early superannuation claims
By Shane Wright
August 1, 2020 — 12.00am
Australians are increasing the size of early withdrawals from superannuation accounts by almost $500 each, with young people rushing to access their nest eggs since the new financial year.
Amid concerns that people who lose their job towards the end of the year will have to wait for JobSeeker support because they are sitting on their super cash, figures show people with the smallest balances withdrew more than $4 billion in the first three weeks of 2020-21.
The Morrison government is defending the scheme, announced as part of its response to the coronavirus pandemic, which enables people to withdraw up to $20,000 from their super if they are in financial hardship. People could withdraw $10,000 before July 1 and another $10,000 in the first half of the new financial year.
The Australian Tax Office this week revealed that despite more than 3 million applications, it has not checked any to see if they meet financial hardship guidelines such as the loss of a job. The government originally expected 1.5 million people to withdraw $27 billion but now believes up to 4 million will take out $42 billion.
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Reserve Bank to the rescue as debt emergency looms
The fact that Australia is now in deflation is bad enough, but two other recent bits of data suggest that “fiscal cliff” doesn’t come close to describing what’s coming, and the government and the RBA will need to change course, radically.
Specifically, the RBA’s balance sheet will have to be used to backstop government income support.
The Federal Reserve is now fully monetising the US budget deficit — not by buying bonds directly from the US government, but after they’ve been laundered briefly in private ownership. It’s Modern Monetary Theory in practice. It’s here to stay and the same will eventually happen here, after some kicking and screaming perhaps.
The two bits of data …
First, the digital credit reporting agency CreditorWatch reported that the average invoice payment delay in June was out to 49 days, more than triple what it was a year ago. Some industries are more than 60 days overdue and “financial and insurance services” is out to 75 days.
Second, Morgan Stanley commissioned a survey of mortgagors as part of some research on the impact of the coronavirus, and found that 55 per cent of them have received some form of income support.
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Sydney and Melbourne suburbs are splintering down income lines
By Shane Wright
August 1, 2020 — 11.59pm
In real estate parlance, location is everything.
And when it comes to your income, location in Sydney and Melbourne is just as important.
Divisions between the suburbs are nothing new. The eastern suburbs of both cities have always been home to people with better incomes and higher levels of wealth than those in their west.
But the latest release of tax statistics from the ATO shows the gap between the haves and have-nots is growing. Those in higher income suburbs are drawing further away from lower income areas, in part due to policies aimed at boosting the overall economy.
Two years ago Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe warned that low wages growth diminishes "our sense of shared prosperity".
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Health Issues.
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27 Jul 2020 2:00 PM AEST
Vale RACGP President Dr Harry Nespolon
The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners President Dr Harry Nespolon has passed away following a nine month battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 57.
The RACGP Board, on behalf of all members and staff, has extended its deepest condolences to his partner Lindy, children Ella and Hannah, as well as his many friends and colleagues.
Dr Nespolon was elected RACGP President in July 2018 promising to bring about significant reforms and “make life better for our members”. He succeeded on both fronts.
RACGP Board Chair Christine Nixon said despite his deteriorating health Dr Nespolon was able to achieve so much.
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Heart infection fears for coronavirus sufferers
Scientists have raised a strong possibility of direct viral infection of the heart caused by COVID-19, saying ongoing cardiovascular disability could be the next wave of disease caused by the pandemic.
Two studies published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Cardiology documented the presence of SARS-CoV-2 within the heart muscle and associated inflammation.
That led scientists to conclude that heart damage was not an secondary symptom of COVID-19 but may be as a result of direct viral infection of the heart muscle.
The first study found that in 100 German patients who had recovered from COVID-19, 78 had abnormal heart readings on cardiac magnetic resonance imaging and 60 patients had signs of heart inflammation, independent of pre-existing conditions, severity and overall course of the acute illness, and the time from the original diagnosis.
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Coronavirus: Hospital breakthrough removes the fear factor
A story of globally significant medical ingenuity has emerged from the rubble of Australia’s second coronavirus wave, as doctors and nurses use a local invention to better treat patients and protect staff.
Western Health and Melbourne University this year helped create a world-leading ventilation hood that is placed over victims, with the twin benefit of protecting staff and improving treatments.
Associate professor Forbes McGain has received the results of an initial study into the effectiveness of the hood, which is designed to contain the droplet spread of the coronavirus.
Dr McGain, who works for Western Health, said the study feedback from the first 20 patients had been “overwhelmingly positive”.
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Alzheimer’s blood test beckons
A simple blood test to detect Alzheimer’s disease is one step closer after scientists accurately predicted the presence of the neurodegenerative disorder in the brains of sufferers by measuring concentrations of a protein biomarker in the blood.
The research has excited neuroscientists around the world who now believe a blood test to detect Alzheimer’s disease could be widely available within two years.
Three separate studies reporting on advances in blood tests that detected abnormal versions of a form of protein in the blood, called the tau protein, were presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Chicago. One of the studies indicated that a blood test could detect changes in the brains of people who would go on to develop Alzheimer’s disease 20 years before the onset of symptoms.
Currently, the methods used to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease are costly and invasive. They include imaging techniques that use radioactive substances, called PET scans, and collecting fluid from the spines of patients.
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https://www.ausdoc.com.au/news/illness-lingers-many-covid19-patients-just-cant-shake-it
The illness that lingers: Many COVID-19 patients just can't shake it off
Professor Tania Sorrell says even in milder cases, some patients are still battling symptoms such as fatigue months after diagnosis
31st July 2020
Evidence of the long-term health effects of COVID-19 is emerging in Australia as some patients struggle to fully recover from their illness.
Professor Tania Sorrell, director of infectious disease services at Sydney’s Westmead Hospital, says that intensive care patients not only face the common complication of muscle atrophy, but also lasting damage to organs as the virus attacks their lungs, heart, brain, and kidneys.
Even in milder cases, patients still battle symptoms such as fatigue months after diagnosis.
Australian Doctor: What do we know so far about the long-term health effects of COVID-19?
Professor Sorrell: The first thing we know is that the sicker you are with the acute disease, the more likely you are to have long-term consequences and the longer they’re likely to last.
In terms of intensive care, patients who have been on a ventilator are likely to require additional rehabilitation because of major loss of muscle mass and weakness.
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Aged care crisis: 'A tragedy unfolding in slow motion'
Victoria's entire health system will be at risk if it cannot control the virus raging through its aged care homes.
Michael Bleby and Carrie LaFrenz
Aug 1, 2020 – 12.00am
The daily numbers read like a tragic brain-teaser: 560, 683, 769, 804, 913, 928. Total COVID-19 infections in Melbourne's aged care homes rose this week, irregularly, scarily. And as they did, a separate, deadlier, pattern emerged – seven, five, four, seven, 10, four – tolling the number of new deaths from those cases.
The numbers from Victoria's health department may not have been predictable, but for Joe Ibrahim the situation was.
"It was a tragedy unfolding in slow motion that we did see and predict well in advance – but we failed to act," says Ibrahim, a consultant physician in geriatric medicine and the head of Monash University's Health Law and Ageing Research Unit.
"What we’ve got is a virus that’s occurred and taken absolute advantage of a system that is failing. It’s a bit like getting on the Titanic as it’s sinking, thinking you can patch it up with some duct tape and all will be good."
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God's waiting room: where the vulnerable care for the frail
As people fear for elderly relatives in rest homes, let's hope the coronavirus at least finally sparks solutions to the problems in the for-profit model of aged care delivery.
Fiona Carruthers Travel editor
Jul 31, 2020 – 5.34pm
Anyone with a family member in residential aged care right now understands the agony of the daily COVID-19 nursing home count, as you anxiously monitor new outbreaks, learn which homes have yet more cases, and digest fresh horror stories of what went so wrong.
Many of us haven't seen nor hugged parents and grandparents for months now. But as much as I worry about how my dad is doing with the extremely limited family visits over the past four months, I feel for the staff on the frontline and the added burden they are shouldering.
Over the past few years, I've witnessed first-hand how this faceless army of more than 235,760 aged care workers step up when distraught families have lost the ability to cope with the high-care needs of ageing loved ones.
The fact aged care workers are paid, on average, $23 an hour doesn't get so much airplay in the glossy nursing home brochures. That's not much above the 2020-21 minimum wage of $19.84 per hour.
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Aged care tragedy exposes fragile system
The aged-care tragedy being played out each day in the newspapers at least is highlighting a reality the sector has been talking about for years — the system is fragile and in a matter of years faces a deluge as demographics translates into more people over the age of 80 needing its services.
It can’t really be classed as an upside from COVID-19, but reality is being played on the front pages each day.
The latest figures from the Aged Care Finance Authority says that, at an operational level, aged-care services have $14.4bn in current assets and $35.4bn in liabilities, which on any reading spells insolvency.
There is what some insiders decry as an “Olympic Games of finger-pointing” going on as everyone blames someone else for the problems and somehow someone has to take the leadership in working out what to do next.
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Cost-effective to screen all women for breast cancer genes: study
By Caitlin Fitzsimmons
August 2, 2020 — 12.00am
Genetic testing for all women over 30 would prevent millions of deaths from breast and ovarian cancer globally and be cost effective in medium and higher income countries.
That is the conclusion of international research published in the journal Cancers, looking at the economic case for population-level screening for the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes.
Breast cancer is the most common cancer in Australia and these gene mutations are known to cause 10-20 per cent of ovarian and 6 per cent of breast cancers. The genes were made famous by Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie who had a double mastectomy in 2013 after losing her mother to cancer at 56 and discovering she had the BRCA1 gene.
Melody Caramins, a Sydney-based genetic pathologist and ambassador for Pathology Awareness Australia, said the BRCA genes made a woman 85 per cent more likely to develop breast cancer in her lifetime. This risk could be mitigated if known, through risk reduction surgery, increased screening or preventative medication.
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International Issues.
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Despite the polls, wobbly Joe is not home and hosed yet
Uncertainty over how Joe Biden might handle the economy and China means Donald Trump's re-election in November can't be ruled out.
Alexander Downer Columnist
Jul 27, 2020 – 12.00am
There are now just 3½ months until the United States presidential election. Joe Biden has a solid lead in the polls, and pundits are increasingly predicting he will win.
He may, but I’m not quite so sure. This is a period of great uncertainty and between now and November 3 there will be many unexpected events. We don’t know what will happen to the COVID-19 numbers, nor is it easy to predict the trajectory of the economy. In a close race, those events and the way they are managed by the two candidates could be crucial turning points.
Then there is the campaign itself. So far, Donald Trump has had to cancel public gatherings and Joe Biden has barely emerged from his home. Once they get into debates and the competition intensifies, expect that to change public perceptions.
Biden will become a better known quantity, and that may not be to his advantage. It’s not just that he is 77 years old but that in spontaneous interviews, as distinct from planned set-piece presentations, he is waffly and imprecise.
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Australia is now tied to Trump's bellicose anti-China rhetoric
The AUSMIN talks in Washington this week will mean Australia becomes further entangled in stirring US rhetoric about the need to combat China's Communist Party.
Jennifer Hewett Columnist
Jul 26, 2020 – 5.58pm
This week’s AUSMIN talks in Washington will tie Australia ever more tightly into the Trump administration’s bellicose rhetoric about China amid the accelerating moves towards even more open confrontation.
The Morrison government’s publicly expressed views of China’s behaviour have already sharpened dramatically, of course, under an increasingly brittle veneer of bilateral diplomacy with its key trading partner.
Australia’s earlier insistence that the steady ratcheting up of restrictions on everything from foreign investment to domestic interference is not aimed at any one country has become the equivalent of a political in-joke.
Australia understands the mutual antagonism between the US and China will be just as pronounced if there's a Democratic administration.
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Why Australia hasn't given up on a rules-based world order
Putting 'negative globalism' talk aside, strategic shocks are forcing Canberra to think about an international system that can protect sovereignty and prevent great power conflict.
Ben Scott Contributor
Jul 27, 2020 – 12.00am
Has Australia given up hope for an international order based on rules?
Facing a stormier world, Canberra has clung ever-tighter to the concept of the "rules-based international order". That phrase first appeared in a Defence White Paper in 2009 and was repeated 56 times in the 2016 version. But in this month's Defence Strategic Update it was overtaken by references to the "grey zone".
Supporting the rules-based international order risks looks increasingly quixotic if that order is giving way to murky grey-zone competition. After warning last year of the dangers of "negative globalism", Prime Minister Scott Morrison launched the strategic update by noting "the institutions of patterns of co-operation … are now under increasing – and I would suggest almost irreversible – strain".
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https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/protests-explode-across-the-us-20200727-p55fpa
Protests explode across the US
Gregory Scruggs and Christian Davenport
Jul 27, 2020 – 9.36am
Seattle | Protests in several major cities across the US turned violent at the weekend, as weeks of civil unrest and clashes between activists and authorities boiled over, sending thousands of people teeming into public squares demanding racial justice.
From Los Angeles, to Richmond, to Omaha, police and protesters clashed in another tumultuous night that saw scores arrested after demonstrators took the streets and police in some cities dispersed crowds with tear gas and pepper spray.
In Austin, a man was shot and killed in the midst of a downtown rally. In Richmond, a truck was set ablaze outside police headquarters. Outside of Denver, a Jeep sped through a phalanx of people marching down an Interstate, when a shot was fired injuring a protester, police said.
The focal point of the protests continued to be in the Pacific Northwest, where a week of clashes between activists and federal agents in Portland, Ore. pumped new energy into a movement that began in the wake of George Floyd's death in police custody in Minneapolis over Memorial Day weekend.
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Shattered illusions: how the bubble of American exceptionalism is bursting
Writer
Updated July 25, 2020 — 11.33amfirst published July 24, 2020 — 9.56pm
Solicitors are not permitted, boomed the voice out of loudspeakers every few minutes the morning I arrived at Los Angeles International Airport 20 years ago. What do these people have against lawyers, I wondered. But then, the ’90s had been the golden age of lawyer jokes; banning solicitors didn’t seem the worst idea in the world.
In my hand at baggage collection was an American $20 bill procured from a currency exchange in Sydney before getting on the flight, with which I planned to buy a bottle of water. (This was back when passbooks, not PayWave, were how most people banked.) “Don’t wave money around,” whispered my world-weary brother, who’d been living in the States for a year. I still remember the jolt that ran through me, and the lesson I carried forward: America was a place where you needed to be alert. It was August 2001.
I’ve been thinking about that day at the airport recently, after hearing a friend’s observation that America is not a rich country, but rather a poor country with a lot of rich people in it. Suddenly a lot of things made sense. Why renewing your driver’s licence here is a Hobbesian obstacle course more difficult than even the trickiest parallel park. Why your healthcare is tied to the benevolence of your employer. And why, if US states were countries, they would, at the time of writing, make up 13 of the world’s worst COVID-19 outbreaks – alongside Panama, Kazakhstan, Kuwait.
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Thatcher, Reagan still point the way to a brighter future
The post-COVID years could be very grim without the transforming economic growth that the former British and US leaders became famous for creating.
Tom Switzer Columnist
Jul 27, 2020 – 1.34pm
Josh Frydenberg and I have a lot in common.
We were born in the same year (1971). In the late 1980s and early ’90s, we represented our states in national sports (Josh, Victorian tennis; me, NSW athletics.) In 2009, we contested federal Liberal Party preselection (he convincingly won Kooyong in Melbourne; I narrowly lost Bradfield in Sydney).
We are, moreover, great admirers of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, two of the greatest political leaders in modern history.
Speaking on the ABC’s Insiders on Sunday, the Treasurer said he drew inspiration from the British prime minister (1979-90) and US president (1981-89). The reason why Thatcher and Reagan were “figures of hate for the left”, Frydenberg argued, is because they successfully prosecuted economic reform in the 1980s.
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Huawei ban is just the start of the great decoupling
The escalating cyber wars mean the days of Australian R&D funded by and collaborating with both China and the US are over.
Dirk van der Kley Contributor
Jul 28, 2020 – 1.57pm
Australia now faces uncomfortable decisions as the world rushes toward substantial decoupling of technology. After years of inching toward a partial separation of the tech systems in China and the US, both sides hastened the tempo in the last few months.
The Chinese government and Chinese companies know that developed markets are becoming increasingly difficult because of security concerns around their tech products.
As Simon Lacey, the former vice-president of trade facilitation and market access at Huawei, writes, “In China, it [Huawei] had to demonstrate unwavering loyalty to the goals of the Communist Party leadership. Outside China, it had to argue that it had little or nothing to do with the Chinese state.” This is proving untenable in developed democracies.
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Thatcher and Reagan? He must be Joshing us
Ross Gittins
Economics Editor
July 29, 2020 — 12.00am
Don’t worry about Maggie: our conservatives prefer punishment to "reform". If your citizen-strength bulldust detector isn’t pinging like blazes, you need a new one. And if Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg have a fraction of the courage of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, I’ll eat the hat I’m not yet bald enough to need.
Speaking from experience, Frydenberg is like the fat man whose eyes are bigger than his belly and orders more than he can eat. He wanted to give his hardline Liberal backbenchers a thrill by invoking the holy names, but he and his boss don’t have the appetite for tough “reforms”.
The truth is that only conservatives of a certain age (and failing memories) hanker after the glory days of Thatcher and Reagan. No one else wants to return to the halcyon era of privatisation and deregulation because by now most people realise how lacking in halcyonicity those things are.
In any case, all the obvious reforms have already been made. When you’ve privatised Telstra, Qantas, the Commonwealth Bank, the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories and much else, what’s left? Selling off Australia Post?
The further you go down that road, the more dubious and distasteful your sell-offs become. The more recent privatisation of Medibank has effectively opened private health insurance provision to profit-seeking companies, adding a further problem to all that sector’s other life-threatening ailments.
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Too big to fail: How the Fed averted another financial crisis
Stephen Bartholomeusz
Senior business columnist
July 28, 2020 — 11.57am
It is clear with hindsight that the US Federal Reserve Board’s decision in March to throw the kitchen sink at whatever the coronavirus would do to financial markets provided a turning point for the US financial system, and prevented it from breaking.
That begs the question of what might have happened had the Fed not acted so quickly and emphatically to pour liquidity into the US and global financial systems. A number of post-mortems on what was happening at the epicentre of market action have suggested the Fed averted another financial crisis.
A research paper published by the Fed itself this month said that that a sudden $US100 billion ($140 billion) tightening of liquidity in the market for Treasury securities created a moment equivalent to the collapse of the big US hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management in 1998.
The paper said the decline in liquidity was significantly smaller than what had occurred when Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008 and precipitated the global financial crisis, although who knows what might have happened had the Fed not intervened.
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Trump's $US1 trillion rescue deal is too small to succeed
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
July 29, 2020 — 10.04am
The US economic rebound has stalled. The Census Bureau estimates that the total number of employed workers across America is now lower than in early May.
The rush to reopen without an east Asian or German tracing regime has been an economic policy blunder of the first order. It risks turning a manageable shock into something more dangerous. That is why the US dollar is in freefall and why gold has hit an all-time high.
The new Household Pulse Survey designed to capture what is happening in the US labour market in real time shows that 128 million people had jobs over the working week from July 9 to July 14, down seven million from a post-COVID peak in June. This is an even darker message than the data on initial jobless claims, which has also rolled over.
The New York Fed's weekly output index has stalled. The V-shaped recovery pocketed by Wall Street has not in fact materialised.
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Gold price set to blast through $US2000 as economic risks grow
By Russel Chesler
July 28, 2020 — 10.00pm
The price of gold is set to blast through US$2000 an ounce as economic risks mount, with huge debt burdens and bankruptcies potentially overwhelming global economies, forcing more capital into the relative safety of physical gold and gold mining stocks.
The gold price, which slipped only marginally at the onset of the coronavirus, has risen more than 30 per cent since late March to $US1963 ($2745) an ounce.
Continued strong inflows into gold Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), along with strong demand for physical bullion, including retail coins, indicates both institutions and individuals are turning to the precious metal as a store of value and a hedge against uncertainty.
"Investors are normally reluctant to hold gold, as it doesn’t generate yield compared with stocks or bonds," says IBISWorld senior industry analyst James Thomson.
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Coronavirus: Global government debt will hit record highs in 2020, IMF says
Global public debt will surpass 100 per cent of world GDP this year, the highest level in recorded history as governments commit close to $US11 trillion ($15.4trn) to support their economies through the health crisis, the International Monetary Fund has said.
IMF chief economist Gita Gopinath and Fiscal Affairs Department director Victor Gaspar said in the face of the COVID-19 recession, “a massive fiscal response has been necessary to increase health capacity, replace lost household income and prevent large-scale bankruptcies”.
But this “unprecedented spending”, which in advanced economies they estimate is worth nearly 9 per cent of GDP, has contributed to global public debt climbing past the post-World War II peak to over 100 per cent.
Government borrowing as a proportion of world economic output is now at its highest in data going back to 1880, the IMF said.
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Payne sensibly says no to Pompeo's coalition of the willing
Australia has avoided joining the Trump administration's new cold war. But big questions about handling the escalating US-China rivalry remain unanswered.
Hugh White Contributor
Jul 29, 2020 – 1.38pm
Marise Payne was right when she said, before heading off for Washington this week, that this year’s annual AUSMIN meeting was set to be the most important in years.
It turned out to be very important indeed, because it answered one of the most momentous foreign policy questions Australia has faced for generations: Will we follow America's lead in launching a new cold war against China? But it left some other big questions unanswered.
The Trump administration was reportedly keen for the Australia-US Ministerial Consultations to take place face to face despite the pandemic, presumably because it expected the answer to be "yes". If so, it must be bitterly disappointed, because the response from our Foreign Minister was a polite but very firm "no".
Her US counterpart, Mike Pompeo, has been calling on countries, including Australia, to follow Washington’s lead in fundamentally repudiating its current relationship with China. Payne said plainly that Canberra would not do that.
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Virus surge starting 'to weigh' on US economy: Jerome Powell
Ann Saphir and Howard Schneider
Jul 30, 2020 – 4.13am
Washington | The surge in US coronavirus cases and the restrictions aimed at containing it have begun to weigh on the economic recovery, the head of the Federal Reserve said, pointing to an apparent pullback by consumers and a slowdown in the rehiring of furloughed workers, particularly by small businesses.
"We have seen some signs in recent weeks that the increase in virus cases and the renewed measures to control it are starting to weigh on economic activity," Fed chairman Jerome Powell said in a news conference following release of the US central bank's latest policy statement.
The United States "has entered a new phase in containing the virus, which is essential to protect both our health and our economy".
Powell's comments, made via videoconference, confirmed what many economists and other analysts have maintained in recent weeks as coronavirus infections exploded in a number of southern and southwestern states, dimming hopes for a quick economic rebound.
The Fed's policy statement on Wednesday (Thursday AEST) directly tied the economic recovery to resolution of a health crisis whose direction remains much in doubt. More than 150,000 Americans have died from COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the novel coronavirus.
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Gold's day will come, but markets are wrong to bet on wild inflation
Inflation expectations are shooting up, but at the same time the Fed is holding down nominal rates by financial repression. Gold will have its day of glory but don't jump the gun.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Jul 30, 2020 – 9.30am
Gold was "wrong" a decade ago. Prices surged to an all-time high on breathless talk that dollar debasement and promiscuous printing by the US Federal Reserve would ignite roaring inflation.
I still have a currency note for 1,000,000,000 Zimbabwe dollars kindly sent to me by a reader at the height of the gold bug fever in 2011.
But the great inflationary blow-off never happened. Those who held on to their gold bars with sacred conviction watched gold prices drop 40 per cent over the next three years, even as equities marched higher in the Bernanke-Draghi-Carney bull market.
The US dollar did not collapse. The Fed's broad dollar index touched bottom in May 2011 and then embarked on a vertiginous climb to a 30-year high. It was the Chinese yuan that instead ran into trouble, forcing the People's Bank to burn through $US1 trillion ($1.4 trillion) of foreign reserves to defend the currency.
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The contrasting world views of Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo
It matters that the US President and his secretary of state have radically different world views. The President is transactional. Mr Pompeo moralises.
Janan Ganesh Contributor
Jul 30, 2020 – 10.17am
Here follow some excerpts from a speech about China by Mike Pompeo last week. The US secretary of state chose as his setting Richard Nixon’s presidential library in California, whether in honour or repudiation, it was not always clear.
“The free world must triumph over this new tyranny”; “the sweet appeal of freedom itself”; “freedom-loving nations of the world”; “the free world is still winning”; “it’s time for free nations to act”. Perhaps fearing that he had buried the lede, Mr Pompeo named the speech itself “Communist China and the Free World’s Future”.
Now, resist for a moment the cry of double standards. To judge by the administration’s foreign policy, “free” nations include Saudi Arabia and Russia. Set aside, also, that jarring venue. China was not free when Nixon, the dry realist, employer of Henry Kissinger, enlisted it as a counterweight to the USSR.
There is a presidential mouth in which the “F”-word is even harder to imagine. It just happens to belong to Mr Pompeo’s boss.
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China’s transformation, once so exciting, turns ugly: a note from Peter Hartcher
Peter Hartcher
Political and international editor for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age
July 29, 2020 — 6.07pm
The sight made me do a double take. A man on a bicycle was pedalling carefully along a Beijing street with a billiard table balanced delicately across the bike's rear rack.
He teetered slowly along with his preposterous load, the table filling the entire width of the lane, its sturdy legs barely clearing the road surface.
I watched for as long as I could, waiting in vain for him to tumble. He must've had a lot of practice. I was even more amazed in the days following when I saw others doing exactly the same.
It was the mid-1980s, it was my first trip to China and I was witnessing a new craze.
Paramount leader Deng Xiaoping instituted China’s “open door” to the world policy in 1978, and among the many foreign practices that came in through the door were the games of billiards and pool.
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Independence actually: Marise Payne's unmistakable message to the US
By Matthew Knott
July 29, 2020 — 11.27am
Washington: Marise Payne is a natural diplomat: calm, conflict-averse and doggedly on message. To the frustration of many journalists, Australia's foreign minister rarely slips up in interviews or strays far from official government talking points.
So Payne's remarks following the Australia-US Ministerial (AUSMIN) talks in Washington stood out for their bluntness. While she may have been on Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's home turf, Payne was determined not to appear as a hapless pawn in America's increasingly tense stand-off with China.
Pompeo came out swinging against the Chinese Communist Party, blasting its "malign" activities in the Indo-Pacific region and praising the Morrison government for refusing to yield to Beijing and pushing ahead for an independent investigation into the origins of the coronavirus.
"It is unacceptable for Beijing to use exports or student fees as a cudgel against Australia," Pompeo said.
The Secretary of State's focus on China was no surprise. Pompeo has long been a China hawk and last week gave a fiery speech in which he called for the formation of "a new alliance of democracies" to counter China's rising power.
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QAnon: The online cult that is a danger in the real world
· The Times
Earlier this month, General Michael Flynn, former director of the US Defense Intelligence Agency and national security adviser, took an al fresco oath of loyalty with family and friends and posted it on Twitter, using the hashtag TakeTheOath. At the end of the oath, they vowed, in a phrase that sounds like an overtranslation from The Three Musketeers: “Where we go one, we go all.”
Readers may not know what many of those reading, retweeting or “liking” the general’s video know: that the phrase and the hashtag indicate his support for an online conspiracy theory network that is becoming a cult. It’s known as QAnon. You’ll see its supporters at rallies for Donald Trump, and if you look for its #WWG1WGA abbreviation online you’ll find tens of thousands of references. YouTube offers a cornucopia of QAnon videos. A full range of QAnon merchandise featuring the letter Q and, often, a rabbit is available at all good Amazon sites near you. There are even QAnon candidates in US elections. The president of the United States retweets contributions from QAnon activists.
A decade ago I published a book about modern conspiracy theories. I had studied dozens of them, from the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion (guess who the infernal plotters were in that one), to “9/11 was an inside job”, via the hidden bloodline of Christ. On the way I looked at “the government is poisoning us” memes, baby sacrifice themes, beliefs in a secret world government, Manchurian candidates, Obama being an undercover Kenyan, accusations that the Clintons had taken to murdering their aides and that the Queen is actually running the world’s banks. All were absurd but some were actually demented. Now imagine one gigantic, compendium theory which puts all of these together – that’s QAnon.
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US economy shrinks 9.5 per cent in June quarter
Reade Pickert
Jul 31, 2020 – 3.17am
Washington | The US economy suffered its sharpest downturn since at least the 1940s in the second quarter, highlighting how the pandemic has ravaged businesses across the country and left millions of Americans out of work.
Gross domestic product shrank 9.5 per cent in the second quarter from the first, a drop that equals an annualised pace of 32.9 per cent, the Commerce Department's initial estimate showed on Thursday (Friday AEST). That's the steepest annualised decline in quarterly records dating back to 1947 and compares with analyst estimates for a 34.5 per cent contraction.
Personal spending, which makes up about two-thirds of GDP, slumped an annualised 34.6 per cent, also the most on record.
The figures lay bare the extent of the economic devastation that resulted from the government-ordered shutdowns and stay-at-home orders designed to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus that abruptly brought a halt to the longest-running expansion.
While employment, spending and production have improved since reopenings picked up in May and massive federal stimulus reached Americans, a recent surge in infections has tempered the pace of the recovery.
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Donald Trump floats idea of delaying election
Amy Gardner and John Wagner
Jul 31, 2020 – 3.36am
Washington | President Donald Trump drew immediate rebukes from Republicans and Democrats alike on Thursday (Friday AEST) after floating the prospect of delaying the November election and claiming without evidence that widespread mail balloting would be a "catastrophic disaster" leading to fraudulent results.
The suggestion represented Trump’s latest, and most dramatic, attempt to undermine public faith in US elections, which have grown more regular as polls have shown his political fortunes declining.
The President has attacked mail voting nearly 70 times since late March in interviews, remarks and tweets, including at least 17 times this month, according to a tally by The Washington Post.
"With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE per cent FRAUDULENT Election in history," Trump tweeted. "It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???"
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Doctors and nurses dying as coronavirus cases surge in Indonesia
By James Massola and Karuni Rompies
July 30, 2020 — 4.52pm
At least 70 doctors and 50 nurses have died from coronavirus in Indonesia, with hundreds more contracting the disease while fighting the pandemic.
The Indonesian Medical Association estimates between 200 and 300 of the country's 160,000 doctors had been infected by the virus. In the second week of July alone 14 doctors died from the disease.
The National Nurses Association said that at least 300 of the country's 1.3 million nurses have contracted the disease, but cautioned the figure could be higher. In both instances, accurate data is not readily available.
The associations are calling for regular testing of medical workers, guaranteed access to personal protective equipment (PPE) and greater education to slow the spread of the disease.
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Gold's rally tells us the world economy is in trouble
By Steven Frank, Vivien Lou Chen and Elena Mazneva
July 31, 2020 — 8.25am
It's easy to forget now but there was a time early on in the pandemic when the price of gold was in freefall.
It was a curious thing, what with the virus sparking a collapse in the global economy, and it would prove in time to be one of the great head-fakes in the recent history of financial markets. For the pandemic of 2020 would soon show itself to be the driving force behind one of the most ferocious rallies the gold market has ever seen, resulting in it hitting a new record high this week.
The virus has unleashed a torrent of forces that are conspiring to fuel relentless demand for the perceived safety from turmoil that gold provides. There's the fear of further government-ordered lockdowns; and politicians' decision to push through unprecedented stimulus packages; and central bankers' decision to print money faster than they ever have before to finance that spending; and the plunge in inflation-adjusted bond yields into negative territory in the US; and the dollar's sudden decline against the euro and yen.
All these things, when taken together, have even triggered concern in some financial circles that stagflation - a rare combination of sluggish growth and rising inflation that erodes the value of fixed-income investments - could take hold across parts of the developed world.
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https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/the-nightmare-on-pennsylvania-avenue-20200731-p55h7t
The nightmare at the White House
Has any previous president failed his big test as thoroughly as Trump has these past few months?
Paul Krugman
Jul 31, 2020 – 9.27am
Every worker's nightmare is the horrible boss — everyone knows at least one — who is utterly incompetent yet refuses to step aside.
Such bosses have the reverse Midas touch — everything they handle turns to crud — but they'll pull out every stop, violate every norm, to stay in that corner office. And they damage, sometimes destroy, the institutions they're supposed to lead.
Donald Trump is, of course, one of those bosses. Unfortunately, he's not just a bad business executive. He is, God help us, the president. And the institution he may destroy is the United States of America.
Has any previous president failed his big test as thoroughly as Trump has these past few months?
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https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/america-and-its-face-mask-furies-20200730-p55gvq
America and its face mask furies
The United States is the most scientifically advanced country in the world. But Donald Trump has turned a simple precaution into a political and cultural wedge.
Thomas Friedman Contributor
Jul 31, 2020 – 10.43am
The summer of 2020 could be remembered as one of those truly important dates in American history. Everywhere you turn you see parents who don't know where or if their kids will go to school this fall, renters who don't know when or if they will be evicted, unemployed who don't know what if any safety net Congress will put under them, businesses that don't know how or if they can hold on another day — and none of us who know whether we'll be able to vote in November.
That is a lot of hot, molten anxiety building up beneath our economy, society, schools and city streets — just waiting to blow the top off our country — because we have so failed at managing the coronavirus. We have 25 per cent of all recorded infections in the world, and we're only 4 per cent of the world's population.
In the ultimate irony, Vietnam, which has a little less than one-third of our population but has reported only 416 cases and no deaths, is feeling sorry for us.
How did we get so inept?
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'Obstruction to democracy': Hong Kong delays election by a year
By Eryk Bagshaw
Updated July 31, 2020 — 9.19pmfirst published at 5.19pm
Australian MPs from across the political spectrum have labelled Hong Kong's decision to disqualify a dozen pro-democracy candidates from local elections and a delay in the local poll as an unacceptable obstruction to democracy.
Hong Kong's government announced on Friday night the September elections would be delayed by a year, as the city attempts to suppress a second surge of COVID-19 and the popularity of opposition candidates surges.
The Hong Kong government triggered an emergency order to postpone the elections.
Chief Executive Carrie Lam said the government had the backing of Beijing after warning the city could see a large-scale community coronavirus outbreak. Hong Kong has recorded consecutive days of more than 100 infections.
“The announcement I have to make today is the most difficult decision I’ve had to make in the past seven months,” Lam said on Friday.
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Millions in US face financial ruin as emergency jobless benefits end
By Matthew Knott
August 1, 2020 — 12.29pm
Washington: Tens of millions of Americans face financial devastation after losing access to emergency US$600 ($840) per week payments because Democrats and Republicans failed to agree on a new coronavirus relief deal.
The average unemployed worker will lose 61 per cent of their benefit, with laid-off workers in some states losing up to three quarters of their income, after the emergency payments expired at midnight on Friday (Saturday AEST).
Both Democrats and Republicans say they want to continue to provide extra relief to the unemployed, but have been unable to reach agreement on how generous the support should be and how long it should extend for.
Economists have praised the emergency payments as the main reason many Americans have not fallen into poverty during the pandemic despite losing their jobs.
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I look forward to comments on all this!
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David.
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