June 10, 2021 Edition
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The biggest news globally is the G7 meeting agreeing to a global tax regime which will prevent lots of tax evasion and help fund the pandemic.
In the US we see the pandemic ebbing and the US economy recovering and a lunatic judge in California tossing out a 30 year ban on assault rifles saying the are good for home defence and deterring invasion of the US.
In the UK we see the delta virus is growing as a worrying pace!
In OZ the delta COVID strain is off and rolling while the PM is practicing a range of political backflips on a range of policy issues.
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Major Issues.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/closed-borders-are-the-new-protectionism-20210527-p57voy
Closed borders are the new protectionism
The long-term economic damage from hiding behind closed borders is as true for the virus as it is for the trade barriers that kept down living standards until the 1980s.
Saul Eslake Contributor
May 30, 2021 – 12.47pm
This year’s budget papers made the assumption – which the government was keen to emphasise was an assumption, and not a promise or a forecast – that the international borders will remain closed to (almost all) arrivals and departures until mid-2022.
This represents a further delay of about a year from what had been foreshadowed in the 2020-21 budget.
There is a lot of evidence to suggest that most of the money not spent on overseas holidays has been spent within Australia.
It means that Australia will lose 81,000 more citizens and permanent residents than had been assumed in last year’s budget; that we won’t receive many foreign students or visitors for another year; and that those of us who would like to travel overseas (and who aren’t sportspeople or cabinet ministers) won’t be able to, for at least another year.
Closing Australia’s borders to most arrivals from overseas and requiring those who are allowed in to quarantine has clearly helped curtail the transmission of COVID-19. It’s obviously been easier for Australia, as an island nation, to do that than it would have been for countries who share land borders with neighbours.
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https://www.afr.com/politics/porter-comes-to-his-senses-with-tactical-retreat-20210531-p57wsf
Porter comes to his senses with tactical retreat
The former attorney-general had too much to lose to push on to a full trial – both financially and in terms of his reputation.
Michael Pelly Legal editor
May 31, 2021 – 6.34pm
Christian Porter will be very keen to paint the end of his defamation battle with the ABC as a victory. It is nothing of the sort.
Porter had too much to lose to push on to a full trial, both financially and in terms of his reputation. Think of it instead as a tactical retreat.
He would have already spent about $500,000 in legal fees on preparing for the trial and the hearing last week that forced one of his barristers, Sue Chrysanthou, SC, to withdraw from the case because of a conflict of interest.
Those events could have pushed the trial – which had been slated for six weeks from early October – back to early next year, when the government would have been looking to clear the decks ahead of an election due by May.
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‘Second COVID’: Drought in Taiwan triggers Aussie chip crisis
Yolanda Redrup Reporter
Updated Jun 1, 2021 – 8.35am, first published at 5.00am
A global shortage in semiconductor chips is causing so much uncertainty that it is being likened to a second COVID-19 by Australian device makers, which are grappling with surging prices and crippling lead time blowouts.
The shortage has become so severe that chief executives of hardware companies are being forced to radically alter the design of their products to be made with chips that are easier to source, or to consider putting manufacturing on hold or increasing prices substantially.
The most extreme price rise discovered by The Australian Financial Review was for the popular STM32 range of chips (used in many electronics products), which have gone from $2.80 to $100 each on the so-called “grey market” of unauthorised resellers, due to their scarcity.
These chips are now impossible to buy from trusted manufacturers, while many other chips and components, such as flash memory chips, inertial measurement unit chips, bluetooth modules, microprocessors and Wi-Fi modules, have also had extreme price rises.
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ASIC tells activist shorts to tone down the emotion
Jonathan Shapiro Senior reporter
Jun 1, 2021 – 10.16am
The corporate regulator has told activist short sellers to tone down their emotive language and publish their reports on ASX listed companies after market trading hours to allow investors to digest and respond to revelations.
In response to an increase in reports published by short-sellers on listed companies, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission has released a list of what it considers to be best practise with the intention of ensuring better market functioning.
ASIC wants short sellers to release reports “outside normal trading hours, drawing on reliable information and avoiding overly emotive language.
“Target entities should seek a temporary trading halt to provide time to digest and comprehensively respond to the claims of activist short sellers.”
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Disdain for national archives at odds with conservatism
Assistant Attorney-General Amanda Stoker is a busy woman. You could tell last week as she appeared before the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee and treated the National Archives of Australia like something she had unfortunately stepped in.
Irreplaceable archival records falling irretrievably to bits? Well, she said briskly, this was “just part of the ageing process”.
“Time marches on,” Stoker continued, “and all sources degrade over time.”
Imagine had she said this about that consecrated cash sponge, the Australian War Memorial. Imagine had last year’s spray paint been left on Captain Cook’s statue on grounds that a little graffiti never hurt anything.
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China warning, subs fiasco are chilling events for Australia’s defence
The latest China warning to Australia that our defences are “weak” coincides with a disturbing Senate economics references committee report on our submarine fiasco.
In addition the American aircraft carrier the Ronald Reagan will sail from our region to the Middle East this northern summer. That means the US won’t have an aircraft carrier in the Indo-Pacific for months.
Together, these events are chilling.
China’s English language mouthpiece Global Times warns: “Australia’s military is too weak to be a worthy opponent of China, and if it dares to interfere in a military conflict for example in the Taiwan Straits, its forces will be among the first to be hit.
“Australia must not think it can hide from China if it provokes….Australia is within range of China’s conventional warhead-equipped DF-26 intermediate-range ballistic missile.”
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Morrison’s China rhetoric politically motivated: Albanese
Phillip Coorey Political editor
Jun 1, 2021 – 10.30pm
Anthony Albanese will warn miners the Morrison government is threatening their exports with its inflammatory rhetoric towards China which, he says, is motivated by domestic political considerations.
In a speech to be delivered to the minerals industry in Canberra on Wednesday, the Labor leader will build on comments made two weeks ago by opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman Penny Wong in which she accused the government of encouraging anxiety about war with China for domestic political gain.
Senator Wong’s comments raised concerns among regional allies about a fracturing of the bipartisanship towards China.
Mr Albanese will use his Minerals Week speech to highlight separate comments made last month by Defence Minister Peter Dutton and Home Affairs departmental secretary Mike Pezzullo, in which they both “inflamed nationalistic sentiment” by canvassing the prospect of war with China.
Mr Albanese says such rhetoric is a “serious problem with this government that must be of real concern to members of the Minerals Council and other exporters”.
“Scott Morrison has no long-term strategy to deal with a changing China that is pressing its interests more assertively, while finding areas of potential co-operation, including on trade, that are in both our countries’ interests,” he will say.
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https://www.afr.com/world/asia/cormann-issues-rallying-cry-against-autocracies-20210601-p57x5n
Cormann issues rallying cry against autocracies
Jacob Greber AFR correspondent
Jun 2, 2021 – 12.00am
OECD secretary-general Mathias Cormann kicked off his first hours in the job with a challenge to his membership: it’s time for democratic and market-based nations to rally against autocracy.
In a speech delivered at a virtual OECD ministers’ meeting on Wednesday (AEDT) to mark his takeover from Angel Gurria, Mr Cormann outlined plans to focus the world’s richest economies on sensible climate change action, halt the global race to the bottom on corporate taxes, and tackle the post-virus recovery.
But he also made clear he will watch the growing political, economic and strategic contest brewing between the US and China.
Declaring the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development a “force for good in the world”, Mr Cormann said he will focus on strengthening its reach in the Asia-Pacific region to raise living standards.
“Great power competition will shape the world order in the coming decades,” Mr Cormann said.
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RBA sees skill shortages, but no sign of wages pressures
While business complains the international border closure is causing skills shortages, the RBA is seeing no firm evidence this is showing up in higher wages.
John Kehoe Economics editor
Jun 1, 2021 – 5.23pm
The economy continues to outperform expectations, but the Reserve Bank of Australia wants to be confident that this will show up in wages and inflation before dialling back its extraordinary monetary stimulus.
The monthly RBA board meeting statement by governor Philip Lowe added a new sentence: “There are reports of labour shortages in some parts of the economy.”
Yet while business complains about the international border closure causing skills shortages, the RBA is seeing no firm evidence so far that this is showing up in wages pressure.
Employers may be holding out for the relief valve of international borders reopening to get access to skilled labour, rather than permanently ratcheting up the cost base of their workforce.
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Tomorrow? The future being sold at our weekend auctions
By Shane Wright
June 1, 2021 — 3.50pm
It’s a sign of how unhinged the national property market has become that a friend who bought a house last Friday was told his new home had risen $20,000 in value by Tuesday.
He hasn’t even got the keys to the place but so separated from reality has the national parlour game that is bricks and mortar become that it is showing increasing similarities to a Ponzi scheme.
According to CoreLogic, Sydney’s median house value has jumped by more than 15 per cent since the start of the year. It is now just shy of $1.2 million, and given the way prices are going up, it will have gone beyond that mark by the time you finish reading this article.
It’s not all that different in Melbourne, where the median value is now at $908,000 after adding 9.4 per cent since January 1.
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Why much-hyped growth stocks are so vulnerable to inflation
Banking reporter
June 1, 2021 — 10.15pm
So far 2021 has been a good year for the Australian stockmarket – but not for some of the much-hyped technology stocks.
Afterpay is the prime example: the buy now, pay later juggernaut’s market capitalisation has slumped from $38 billion earlier this year to a (still very healthy) $27 billion today.
So what gives? Have Afterpay’s business prospects really changed so dramatically? Nope.
Instead, the wild swings in its share price illustrate how some of the most highly priced and trendy growth stocks are vulnerable to a risk that is getting a lot of market attention – inflation.
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Is value investing about to stage a major comeback?
By Michael Aked
June 1, 2021 — 10.30pm
The economic recovery is well underway and global sharemarkets are looking for the next big trend.
The fundamentals are in place for Australian shares to shine, with forecasts that the broader market could gain another 5 per cent from its current high over the next year.
Relatively cheap stocks have struggled over the past decade and were hammered during the COVID-19 induced recession last year.
However, current conditions have historically been a time for their day in the sun – and they are rarely as cheap as they are right now.
Our research shows the cheapest quarter of the market commands half of the market’s fundamentals: an average of sales, earnings, dividends, and book value. The prices of these companies’ shares could be pushed higher by a global rotation into these down beaten names.
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Warnings grow louder on niche-market ETFs
By John Collett
June 1, 2021 — 11.00pm
Australian investors have ploughed more than $100 billion into Exchange Traded Funds in an upward swing that seemingly has no end.
However, industry experts warn that not all ETFs are the same and that some of the newer ETFs launched to take advantage of the sector’s popularity may not be what they appear.
Many of the “boring” first generation of ETFs basically tracked the performance of a benchmark sharemarket index, providing broad portfolio diversification.
However, many of the new breed of ETFs – fuelled by the spectacular growth of the sector – are now more extravagant, with their creators targeting specific sectors, industries or smaller niche areas of the market, exposing investors to increased price volatility.
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Best and worst ETFs of 2020 revealed
Aleks Vickovich Wealth editor
Updated Jun 2, 2021 – 12.00pm, first published at 11.15am
Lithium battery and energy storage-themed fund ACDC, operated by the firm chaired by former Rich Lister Graham Tuckwell, was the best performing ETF in the year to March 31, according to analyst Stockspot.
Technology sector exchange traded funds have outperformed over the past year, with the ETFS Battery Tech & Lithium ETF (ASX: ACDC) managed by ETF Securities ranked first, with a 96 per cent return over the period.
Analysis of 200 ASX-listed funds – representing 90 per cent of the booming $100 billion Australian ETF market – by former UBS portfolio manager Chris Brycki, founder of robo-adviser Stockspot, and his team found “broad technology and niche technology themes were the best performers”.
The ACDC fund gives investors exposure to the “megatrend” of energy storage and production and companies involved in the supply chain for lithium batteries, used in electric vehicles, e-bikes and personal electronics.
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Government to dump controversial power to save super reform
Michael Read and Phillip Coorey
Jun 3, 2021 – 9.21am
The government is set to dump a contentious power giving the Treasurer the ability to veto investments made by super funds from its signature super reform package, after Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce announced his opposition to the provision.
The Australian Financial Review understands the government’s decision to drop the power came after Mr Joyce revealed on Wednesday afternoon that he and other colleagues had “a real problem” with the bill’s directions power, which would give the Treasurer the ability to ban investments made by super funds that the government judged were against the national interest.
Mr Joyce’s declaration, which came as a surprise to the opposition Labor Party, confirmed that the government did not have the numbers in the lower house to pass the bill unamended.
Mr Joyce said the Labor Party would be pressured to use the veto power when it next formed government to cancel investments in coal, gas, fracking and the live cattle trade.
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Kabul spy station exit an ‘admission of defeat’
Aaron Patrick Senior correspondent
Jun 3, 2021 – 5.00am
Australia’s spy station in Kabul is likely to be closed with the embassy in the Afghan capital, leading national security experts to urge the government to grant sanctuary to Afghans who spied for Australia.
The Australian Secret Intelligence Service, Australia’s equivalent of the Central Intelligence Agency, has made Afghanistan one of its priorities since the 2001 invasion that removed the Taliban from power, national security and political sources said.
One of ASIS’ successes in the country has been obtaining information about the Haqqani network, a violent insurgent group aligned with the Taliban that kidnapped Australian teacher Timothy Weeks in Kabul in 2017, two sources said.
Nick Warner, the ASIS director-general from 2009 to 2017, regularly travelled to Afghanistan to meet ASIS intelligence officers there, they said. Mr Warner didn’t respond to a request for comment.
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Universities say their finances ‘not as rosy as the minister thinks’
June 3, 2021 — 12.01am
The new chair of the peak body for Australian universities says the federal government does not fully appreciate the financial stress facing the sector, which was being unfairly criticised for its reliance on Chinese international students.
Professor John Dewar, chairman of Universities Australia and vice-chancellor of La Trobe University, said the financial surpluses posted by some universities for 2020 should not be interpreted as a sign the sector had weathered the COVID-19 storm.
“I don’t think the government appreciates just how tough things are in the sector. While it’s true that some universities have produced surpluses, many have not,” said Professor Dewar, who took the reins of the peak body in May.
“Next year [Universities Australia] is forecasting a further $2 billion loss of revenue, which a lot of universities will only be able to manage by making quite severe savings in their organisations, because they won’t be able to repeat the one-off measures that they took last year. So I don’t think things are as rosy as the [Education] Minister might think.”
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Defence is looking at alternatives to $90 billion French submarines
Updated June 2, 2021 — 5.07pmfirst published at 2.49pm
Defence has confirmed for the first time it is looking at alternatives for submarines if the troubled $90 billion deal with French company Naval Group does not go ahead.
Department secretary Greg Moriarty told a Senate estimates hearing on Wednesday he had been thinking about the issue over the past 12 months although he stressed the government wanted to go ahead with the existing contract.
The government selected DCNS, now Naval Group, in 2016 to build Australia’s new attack-class submarines to replace its ageing Collins class fleet.
Since then, there have been tensions in the relationship over cost and timeline blowouts and disagreements over the commitments to meet local contract requirements.
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Politicians have spent decades dismantling almost the only solution to the pandemic
Economics Editor
June 2, 2021 — 5.30am
It surprises me that, though the nation’s been watching anxiously for more than a year as our politicians struggle with the repeated failures of hotel quarantine and the consequent lockdowns, big and small, and now the delay in rolling out the vaccine, so few of us have managed to join the dots.
Some have been tempted to explain it in terms of Labor getting it wrong and the Libs getting it right – or vice versa – but that doesn’t work. Nor does thinking the states always get it right and the feds get it wrong – or vice versa.
The media love conflict, so we’ve been given an overdose of Labor versus Liberal and premiers versus Morrison & Co. But though we can use this to gratify our tribal allegiances, it doesn’t explain why both parties and both levels of government have had their failures.
No, to me what stands out as the underlying cause of our difficulties – apart from human fallibility – is the way both sides of politics at both levels of government have spent the past few decades following the fashion for Smaller Government.
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Cracking a centuries-old investment riddle
Magellan has joined a 300-year-long quest to ensure that retirees don’t run of out money before they die.
Jonathan Shapiro Senior reporter
Jun 3, 2021 – 11.06am
Given Magellan’s cult-like following among financial planners, every move by the funds management titan is closely watched by its clients, advisers, competitors and even policymakers.
So the launch of FuturePay, Magellan’s eagerly awaited retirement solutions product, certainly generated a fair share of buzz and a healthy debate about its merits.
While the official documents refrained from using the word “retirement”, the marketing pitch is clearly aimed at attracting those who have hung up their working boots but want their savings to deliver an income.
Magellan has made no secret of its desire to solve two well-known problems that have faced retirees for centuries: sequencing and longevity risk.
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Super reforms pass lower house after investment veto power scrapped
June 3, 2021 — 1.19pm
Nationals and crossbench MPs have forced the federal government to scrap a controversial proposal letting the Treasurer intervene in superannuation funds’ investment decisions to get its package of changes to the $3.2 trillion sector through the lower house.
The last-minute amendment to the Your Future, Your Super legislation was introduced after Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce raised concerns on Wednesday that it could hand future governments the ability to block funds’ spending in areas such as coal, live exports and gas on moral grounds.
The Coalition, which has 75 seats in the 151-seat strong House, needed the support of the Nationals and at least one crossbencher for its suite of measures, which it estimates will save workers $17.9 billion over the next decade. Crossbench MPs Bob Katter and former Liberal Craig Kelly had previously flagged they wouldn’t support the bill, in part due to the proposed investment veto power.
The amended bill passed through the House of Representatives on Thursday night by 69 votes to 59 with the backing of Mr Katter and fellow crossbench MPs Rebekah Sharkie, Zali Steggall, Helen Haines and Andrew Wilkie but now faces a battle in the Senate.
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Spin and reality collide on Australia’s road to economic recovery
Economics Editor
June 4, 2021 — 11.35am
There’s more good news this week on the economy’s rebound from the coronacession, but it’s marred by the disheartening return to lockdown in Victoria and by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s inability to stop himself laying it on too thick.
There was a time when the Treasurer’s press release on the quarterly national accounts was full of important but less-obvious facts and figures dug out by Treasury. These days it’s full of spin written by the young political punks in the Treasurer’s office.
The good news, in the “national accounts” for the three months to the end of March, issued by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, is that the economy – real gross domestic product – grew by 1.8 per cent during the quarter, and by 1.1 per cent over the year to March.
Remembering that the economy slipped a fraction in the March quarter of last year – mainly because of the Black Summer – and then contracted by an unprecedented 7 per cent in the June quarter as the nationwide lockdown took effect, this is a fabulous outcome.
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A government that isn’t really in control of anything
The past two weeks of Parliament are not consistent with the Morrison government’s strategy of winning an election based on its excellent management of the pandemic.
Laura Tingle Columnist
Jun 4, 2021 – 3.41pm
It’s true that a global pandemic tends to dominate everything else in the news cycle, and in politics as well.
So given that Federal Parliament has just risen from a two-week sitting, let’s have a look at what else has been happening in Canberra.
Let’s start with what happened in the House of Representatives. And the answer is: not much.
On Thursday, for example, the government introduced the Special Recreational Vessels Amendment Bill, which extends the sunset date for legislation that “allows foreign special recreational vessels (also known as super yachts) to apply for a special licence to operate on the Australian coast, if they choose to opt in to the coastal trading regulatory regime”, the minister introducing the bill, Mark Coulton, told the House.
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https://www.afr.com/wealth/personal-finance/how-to-invest-at-a-record-high-20210531-p57wss
How to invest at a record high
We’ve come to an important juncture for investors, but fund managers have very different views on the outlook for the economy and markets - and on the best way to invest.
Sarah Turner Reporter
Jun 5, 2021 – 12.00am
The ASX’s ascent to a record high has inevitably led to speculation that the gains can’t last. The new peak hit this week followed sharp gains for energy companies riding high on firm oil prices. Banks and miners played their part as well.
These sectors of the market are the ones most closely tied to the recovering global economy. The Australian economy outperformed in the March quarter, GDP data out on Wednesday showed. The 1.8 per cent growth figure surpassed economists’ expectations.
“Markets are responding to the recovery in growth, which is being driven by interest rates, which are low, and will probably stay low. And then, at the same time, massive fiscal stimulus applies,” says Stephen Bruce, director of portfolio management at Perennial Value Management.
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Stocks to deliver the best year in a decade
Richard Henderson Markets reporter
Updated Jun 4, 2021 – 4.52pm, first published at 4.22pm
Investment strategists have ratcheted up their outlooks for Australian shares and now expect blue chips to soar beyond their record highs to deliver what could be one of the best years in decades.
Strategists from JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, and Commonwealth Bank have all increased the levels they forecast the ASX 200 to hit by the end of the calendar year as the index joins equity markets in the US and Europe to trade at record levels.
At the high end of the estimates sits VanEck, the exchange traded fund manager, which this week pushed its forecast for the benchmark to 8000 points, 10 per cent above the benchmark’s record high reached on Friday.
The new year-end target implies a 21.4 per cent gain for 2021, which would mark the best year since 2009, when shares lurched back from the depths of the financial crisis, and the second-biggest annual return in the past two decades.
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Morrison turns down the snark on the states that could erase his majority of one
Columnist
June 4, 2021 — 5.29pm
The penny might finally have dropped for Scott Morrison this week. The Prime Minister’s state-of-origin approach to the pandemic – praising the response of Liberal states, yelling at Labor states – poses a serious threat to his government’s long-term survival.
The risk is that his reflective blame-shifting will encourage Victorians, and perhaps even West Australians, to identify with their state governments at the next federal election. If one or both states vote as a bloc, they will cancel the Coalition’s super majority in regional Queensland and gift federal power to Labor through the backdoor of COVID tribalism.
That Morrison senses this danger now can be seen in his willingness to switch from snarky critic to collaborator after the Victorian Labor government called for a lockdown bailout and for the establishment of a quarantine facility outside Melbourne paid for by the Commonwealth, and run by the state.
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‘Right-wing backlash’: Church group to make religious freedom an election issue
June 6, 2021 — 12.00am
Freedom for Faith, a lobby group run by law professor Patrick Parkinson, is organising a “religious freedom weekend” for June 11-13. Priests will use sermons to preach the need to protect religious freedom and parishioners are being urged to lobby their MPs about the urgency of the issue.
The group has also secured a meeting this week with Senator Cash, who has re-engaged with the issue after the pandemic put it on the backburner last year under predecessor Christian Porter.
As it stands the Religious Discrimination Bill would prohibit discrimination based on faith and provide greater freedom to individuals such as Israel Folau, as well as religious organisations and charities, to act on their beliefs.
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Coronavirus And Impacts.
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The lab leak theory, like the virus, won’t go away
After 3.5 million deaths, a question persists: did COVID-19 escape accidentally from a Wuhan institute rather than leaping from bats or pangolins to humans?
Ross Douthat Contributor
May 30, 2021 – 3.02pm
On Long Bets, a website where prognosticators test their mettle by playing for real (or at least proceeds-donated-to-charity) stakes, there is an open bet between British astrophysicist Martin Rees, a noted worrier over apocalyptic possibilities, and Harvard University’s Steven Pinker, famous for his vaulting optimism.
For Rees to win, the following prediction must be vindicated: “A bioterror or bioerror will lead to one million casualties in a single event within a six-month period starting no later than Dec 31, 2020.”
The bet was made for the 2017-20 period; you will notice that its time frame has expired. And yet it remains unsettled, pending a resolution of the question that the Western media has finally decided to take seriously: did COVID-19 somehow escape accidentally from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, rather than leaping from bats or pangolins to its human Patient Zero?
So if you’re wondering how much the so-called lab leak hypothesis really matters, and what’s actually at stake, there’s one answer: the $US400 that Rees bet against Pinker on the self-destructive capacities of the human race.
There are other answers, too, before we get back to what the wager represents.
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https://www.smh.com.au/national/it-is-a-race-and-the-vaccine-rollout-is-crucial-20210530-p57wei.html
It is a race - and the vaccine is our only hope
By Jeremy Howard and Nick Talley
May 30, 2021 — 12.48pm
If Australians don’t get vaccinated soon, we may succumb to a massive wave of COVID-19 we won’t be able to stop. That’s because the new COVID-19 variant that first appeared in India, B.1.617.2, is so transmissible that lockdowns and masks may not be enough to stop the spread. Regions such as Taiwan which previously had the virus under control are losing the battle.
Those claiming the vaccination program is “not a race” fail to understand the urgency of beating the virus. Apathy can kill Australians and jobs.
New research shows that COVID-19 is even more deadly than previously thought, with latest estimates showing nearly a million deaths in the US and possibly more in India.
The lockdown in Melbourne is a grim reminder that our quarantine system remains leaky. That’s due to a lack of response to the fact that COVID-19 is airborne, despite the pleas of hundreds of scientists and doctors.
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World Health Organisation gives Covid-19 variants new names
· NCA NewsWire
Covid variants now have new names based on the Greek alphabet.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) announced a new naming system for the key Covid-19 variants on Tuesday in a bid to make them simpler to say and remember.
Under the new naming system for key variants, the UK variant, the B.1.1.7 strain, has been renamed Alpha.
The South African strain, B.1.351, is called Beta, the Brazilian strain, P.1, is known as Gamma, and the Indian strain, B.1.617.2, is called Delta.
The WHO convened a group of scientists and other virus experts to come together and consider “easy-to-pronounce” and “non-stigmatising labels”.
“This expert group convened by WHO has recommended using letters of the Greek alphabet, i.e. Alpha, Beta, Gamma, which will be easier and more practical to discuss by non-scientific audiences,” the WHO said.
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New economic model needed for Victoria to bounce back
Writer
June 4, 2021 — 5.30am
At first glance, Victoria’s economy appears to have performed as well over the past decade (from 2009-10 to 2019-20) as it had done over the previous one.
Economic growth, as measured by real gross state product (GSP), averaged 2.4 per cent per annum, only slightly below the 2.8 per cent per annum it had averaged between 1999-2000 and 2009-10; 0.1 percentage points per annum above the national average (as against 0.3 percentage points below the national average over the preceding decade); and better than for any other part of Australia except for Western Australia and the ACT.
But on closer inspection, it becomes apparent that, over the past decade, Victoria’s economic growth had become increasingly dependent on population growth, to a much greater extent than any other state or territory.
Over the 10 years to 2019-20, Victoria’s population grew at an average annual rate of 2 per cent – a significant step up from the 1.5 per cent per annum pace over the previous decade, and a similar margin above the national average (whereas during the first decade of the 21st century, Victoria’s population had grown at almost exactly the same rate as the national average).
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Australia’s education advantage evaporating as borders stay shut
Julie Hare Education editor
Jun 3, 2021 – 5.29pm
Interest in Australia as a study destination plummeted immediately following the federal budget announcement that borders were unlikely to fully reopen until next year, according to IDP Education’s Andrew Barkla.
And although global demand remains surprisingly strong, Australia’s position as the third-largest destination is quickly evaporating as students, unwilling to put their plans on hold for another year, elect to study in countries with more welcoming policies, such as Canada, the US and the UK.
“We believe that we need to have a government that sends a clear message as to how and when the borders will open,” IDP chief executive Mr Barkla told the Universities Australia conference on Thursday.
“Australia is losing significant demand share relative to competitors. Primarily that is due to the fact that we have no clear plan that we can communicate to our markets as to the approach Australia will take to reopening borders and enabling international students either to reengage with their studies or to begin their studies for the first time,” Mr Barkla said.
“That’s very different from other competitive marketplaces.”
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/this-economic-recovery-is-different-20210603-p57xqm
Why this economic recovery is different
The repair of household and business balance sheets thanks to government stimulus payments during the pandemic leaves consumers and companies well placed to further drive the economic recovery.
John Kehoe Economics editor
Jun 4, 2021 – 2.20pm
The sharp economic downturn last year and rapid rebound, confirmed in this week’s national accounts, are like no other recession and recovery in history.
Government health restrictions shut down business activity in response to COVID-19 last year. Yet with the virus largely suppressed and the economy – except Victoria – now largely open, hundreds of billions of dollars in stimulus payments to business and households are underwriting what the Reserve Bank of Australia has termed an economic “snapback”.
Economic output is a bit above pre-pandemic levels, though there is still more lost ground to make up and unemployment needs to fall below the current 5.5 per cent.
The secret to Australia’s world-leading V-shaped rebound is the strength of the balance sheets of business and households.
Incredibly, during the biggest recession since the Great Depression 90 years ago, business profits and household incomes both rose. Profits of non-financial corporations increased almost 10 per cent last year, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Household incomes jumped nearly 6 per cent in 2020.
In past recessions, such as in the early 1990s, business and household balance sheets were shattered – weighing for years on the economic recovery. But this time, the massive $291 billion stimulus from the Morrison government was largely given in cash payments to business and households.
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COVID wave sweeps across south-east Asia with jabs in short supply
June 5, 2021 — 2.15pm
Kapit is a remote area - until a road from the city of Sibu 110 kilometres away was finished late last year, the only way to get there was a two-hour-plus speedboat ride on the Rejang River.
Malaysia’s worst outbreak of the pandemic has stretched far and wide, even exceeding India over the past fortnight in cases per million people before the nation was forced into a two-week lockdown.
In Sarawak, doctors report insufficient testing and a painfully slow vaccine rollout are major concerns, as is the mental health of medics working around the clock. They are also expecting another wave in two weeks as a result of Tuesday’s Gawai festival, held by the Dawak community to celebrate its rice harvest.
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Climate Change.
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Iceland's glaciers lose 750 km2 in 20 years
· AFP
Iceland's glaciers have lost around 750 square kilometres (290 square miles), or seven percent of their surface, since the turn of the millennium due to global warming, a study published on Monday showed.
The ice's retreat over the past two decades is almost equivalent to the total surface area of Hofsjokull, Iceland's third-biggest ice cap at 810 square kilometres.
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Royal Commissions And The Like.
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No care, no responsibility: Morrison government’s stark pandemic failures in aged homes
Political and international editor
Of all the Australians who’ve died of COVID-19 so far, three-quarters died in aged care homes. That’s 685 people dead in aged care homes out of a national COVID death toll of 910. Specifically, the 685 people died in aged care homes subsidised and regulated by the federal government. All deaths were last year.
When an outbreak occurs, we know the grim reaper comes calling at the aged care homes first, and it’s there that he reaps fastest and most unforgivingly. So, naturally, you’d assume the federal government would have taken special precautions. To make sure they’d put extra protections in place against any recurrence. Surely the Morrison government would have a plan for vaccinating the old folks in the aged care homes as a priority, and surely it would have a plan for vaccinating the workers in those homes.
After all, that’s how the virus got into the homes last year – in 84 per cent of the infections in aged care, it was inadvertently carried in by the staff.
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National Budget Issues.
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Top economists think much further ahead than Morrison and Frydenberg
Economics Editor
May 30, 2021 — 2.00pm
If Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg are looking for ideas about what more they could be doing to secure our economic future – after all, they’ll be seeking re-election soon enough – they could do worse than study the views of the 56 leading economists asked by the Economic Society of Australia to comment on this month’s budget.
Two points stand out. First, almost all of the economists were happy to support the budget’s strategy of applying more fiscal stimulus to get unemployment below 5 per cent. They were pleased to see the government abandon its preoccupation with surpluses and debt.
As Professor Fabrizio Carmignani, of Griffith University, said, “the good thing about this budget is that it was not about repairing the deficit and debt accumulated in 2020”. Professor Sue Richardson, of Flinders University, said: “the debt and deficit mantra was never justified”.
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Housing booms rolls on with 2.2 per cent value lift in May
The rampaging housing market is powering through concerns about a resurgent coronavirus outbreak in Melbourne, with home prices rising nationally by 2.2 per cent in May.
Housing markets around the country are seeing the benefits of low interest rates and easy credit with May’s rise even stronger than in April when home prices lifted by 1.8 per cent, according to CoreLogic’s national Home Value Index.
But the May rise was weaker than the 32-year high recorded in March, when values surged 2.8 per cent, as affordability concerns start to put a brake on some markets.
Dwelling values were split with Sydney up 3 per cent in May and Melbourne rising 1.8 per cent. Brisbane was up 2 per cent and Adelaide rose by 1.9 per cent.
Perth homes increased in value by 1.1 per cent, while Hobart leapt 3.2 per cent and Darwin was up 2.7 per cent. Canberra rose 1.7 per cent.
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https://www.rba.gov.au/media-releases/2021/mr-21-09.html
Statement by Philip Lowe, Governor: Monetary Policy Decision
Number 2021-09
Date 1 June 2021
At its meeting today, the Board decided to maintain the current policy settings, including: the targets of 10 basis points for the cash rate and the yield on the 3-year Australian Government bond; the parameters of the government bond purchase program; and the rate of zero per cent on Exchange Settlement balances.
The global economy is continuing to recover from the pandemic and the outlook is for strong growth this year and next. The recovery remains uneven, though, and some countries are yet to contain the virus. Global trade in goods has picked up strongly and commodity prices are mostly higher than at the start of the year. However, inflation in underlying terms remains low and below central bank targets.
Sovereign bond yields have been steady recently after increasing earlier in the year due to the positive news on vaccines and the additional fiscal stimulus in the United States. Medium-term inflation expectations have lifted from near record lows to be closer to central banks' targets. The 3-year government bond yield in Australia is consistent with the Board's target and lending rates for most borrowers are at record lows. The Australian dollar remains in the upper end of the range of recent years.
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GDP figures show Australia’s economy has recovered from pandemic
· NCA NewsWire
Australia’s economic activity has recovered from the pandemic, with latest figures revealing the nation’s strong rebound from the virus.
National gross domestic product for the March quarter rose 1.8 per cent and was fuelled by a big surge in private investment and housing.
“With 1.8 per cent growth in the March quarter 2021, Australian economic activity has recovered to be above pre-pandemic levels and has grown 1.1 per cent through the year,” ABS head of national accounts Michael Smedes said.
Private investment contributed 0.9 percentage points to the growth, with machinery and equipment investment recording its strongest quarterly rise since 2009.
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GDP: Economy grows faster than expected
Australia’s economy expanded faster than expected in the March quarter as unprecedented fiscal and monetary policy stimulus continued to fuel a strong rebound from the Covid-19 pandemic.
The economy rose 1.8 per cent in seasonally adjusted terms compared to the December quarter, exceeding a 1.5 per cent rise expected by economists.
Year-on-year growth of 1.1 per cent also beat the consensus estimate of 0.6 per cent.
December quarter growth was revised up to 3.2 per cent on quarter and minus 1 per cent on year, a little stronger than growth of 3.1 per cent and minus 1.1 per cent first recorded.
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Health Issues.
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Five reforms that will make private health more sustainable
Despite the entire health sector reaching a post-COVID-19 crossroads, the budget kicked significant change to private health insurance down the road, again.
Terry Barnes Contributor
May 30, 2021 – 1.03pm
In the run-up to the federal budget, there was chatter that the Morrison government would make a significant statement on private health insurance reform.
Industry watchers hoped federal Health Minister Greg Hunt would turn his decisive COVID-19 leadership to long overdue structural reform of a sector crucial to the healthcare choices of 12 million Australians, their premiums subsidised to the tune of $7 billion per year.
What Hunt actually delivered on budget night disappointed. The only solid reform announced addresses a genuine rort that needlessly adds to premiums; the cost of prostheses and medical devices for privately insured patients.
Benchmarking artificial hips and the like to public hospital prices makes excellent sense and will limit the creative gaming of the private health insurance Prostheses List by surgeons and middlemen, including private hospitals buying prostheses wholesale.
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Covid-19 vaccine could soon be needle-free
The Covid-19 vaccine could soon be needle-free after a breakthrough by University of Queensland scientists who successfully administered the jab through “patch” technology in mice.
The technology, developed in collaboration with biotechnology company Vaxxas, has the potential to significantly ramp up the nation’s vaccine rollout to regional and remote areas as it is not reliant on cold chain storage requirements.
Scientists say the approach is much more user-friendly than a needle, using a simple “click” applicator that is pressed against the skin to administer thousands of microscopic projections. The projections are dry-coated with vaccine to deliver an immune response to cells just beneath the skin’s surface.
Leading virologist David Muller said the patch had produced strong immune responses against SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes Covid-19) as well as against multiple variants.
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‘This has never been seen before’: Common illnesses wiped out in fight against COVID-19
By Lucy Carroll
June 3, 2021 — 12.09pm
Cases of common illnesses have hit record lows as hygiene measures used to stop the spread of COVID-19 have put the brakes on the transmission of many childhood viruses and diseases.
As few as three cases of whooping cough were recorded in NSW last month, compared to 565 in May 2019. More than 1000 cases of the highly contagious infection were recorded in the same month in 2011.
Only 110 cases of stomach flu, or rotavirus, have been recorded up to May this year. More than triple that was recorded in the same period in 2019. Cases of measles have been wiped out in NSW, with none recorded after the pandemic hit in March 2020.
Professor of infectious diseases at the Australian National University Peter Collignon said closing international borders, hand washing, social distancing and other health protocols have interrupted the --transmission of many other illnesses, not just COVID-19.
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Why health insurers are sitting on top of a $1.8bn pile
Given the bucket of money that is shared between doctors, private hospitals and insurers, there is always some sort of row going on in private health insurance.
Today it is about the $1.8 billion in members’ money that insurers are sitting on top of in order to provide for suspended claims during the pandemic for when they eventually come through.
Provisioning for future claims was required by health insurance regulator APRA. Listed health insurer NIB, headquartered in Newcastle, has made provisions for $60 million.
As Australia recovers, claims have not returned as fast as expected and private hospitals now accuse insurers of sitting on a pot of gold that risks ending up with shareholders.
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International Issues.
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China struggling to control financial bubbles as money flows
By Sofia Horta e Costa
May 31, 2021 — 6.43am
China’s battle to maintain order in financial markets is getting tougher as money floods into everything from commodities to housing and stocks.
In May alone, the government vowed to tackle speculation in metals, revived the idea of a property tax, oversaw hikes in mortgage rates in some cities, banned the mining of cryptocurrencies and played down calls within the central bank for a stronger yuan.
Authorities are zeroing in on the risks of assets overheating as they maintain a relatively loose monetary policy to support the economic recovery from the pandemic. Targeted intervention is likely to weigh on pockets of China’s financial markets as the Communist Party seeks to avoid volatility in the run up to the July 1 centenary of its founding.
“The policy trend is now focused on ensuring financial stability,” said Alex Wolf, head of investment strategy for Asia at JPMorgan Private Bank. “Beijing will want to resolve bubbles risks at the outset, in a targeted manner, using strong rhetoric and small adjustments to policy. That appears to be enough for now.”
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‘I sound like an idiot now’: Capitol rioters blame Trump campaign
By David Klepper
May 30, 2021 — 11.19am
Providence: Lies about the election helped bring insurrectionists to the Capitol on January 6, and now some who are facing criminal charges for their actions during the riot hope their gullibility might save them - or at least engender some sympathy.
Lawyers for at least three defendants charged in connection with the violent siege say they will blame election misinformation and conspiracy theories, much of it pushed by then-president Donald Trump, for misleading their clients. The attorneys say those who spread that misinformation bear as much responsibility for the violence as do those who participated in the actual breach of the Capitol.
“I kind of sound like an idiot now saying it, but my faith was in him,” defendant Anthony Antonio said, speaking of Trump. Antonio said he wasn’t interested in politics before pandemic boredom led him to conservative cable news and right-wing social media. “I think they did a great job of convincing people.”
After Joe Biden’s victory in last year’s presidential election, Trump and his allies repeatedly claimed that the race was stolen, even though the claims have been repeatedly debunked by officials from both parties, outside experts, courts in several states and Trump’s own attorney-general. In many cases, the baseless claims about vote dumps, ballot fraud and corrupt election officials were amplified on social media, building Trump’s campaign to undermine faith in the election that began long before November.
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China to allow couples to have three children to boost birthrate
Bloomberg News
Updated May 31, 2021 – 6.22pm, first published at 6.17pm
Hong Kong | China will allow all couples to have a third child in a bid to arrest the shrinking birthrate and ageing population that are risks to the country’s long-term economic prospects.
“Allowing every couple to have three children and implementing related support policies will help improve the population’s structure,” the Xinhua News Agency reported, citing a Politburo meeting held on Monday. It was not clear when the move would take effect, although the meeting was to discuss major policy measures to be implemented in the five-year period which started this year, according to Xinhua.
China has been gradually reforming its stringent birth policy that limited most families for many years to only having a single child, with a second child allowed since 2016. However, that did little to reverse the declining birthrate and further relaxation of the limits is unlikely to lead to a sustained increase.
The Politburo also said that China “will prudently lift the retirement age in a phased manner,” according to the report of the meeting presided over by President Xi Jinping. The increase in the age at which people can retire was included in the current five-year plan although there were no details.
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Woke boardroom preening a threat to democracy
Staff at defence giant Lockheed Martin, which sells Hellfire missiles and fighter jets among other war devices, apparently have banned Pepe the Frog, a cartoon character associated with Donald Trump supporters, in internal communications. “It is offensive and does not align with our core values and corporate policies,” its Slack committee wrote.
US companies seem to have the same core values these days: making profits, preferably thanks to regulations that stifle competition, while striking virtuous woke poses. “Companies like ours must speak up as allies to the Black Lives Matter movement. We stand with those seeking justice and equality,” Coca-Cola chairman James Quincey said following George Floyd’s death last year.
Fewer than half of Americans are favourable to BLM, according to a Politico poll, which is unsurprising given the movement, however laudable its aims, fuelled mass civil disobedience and destruction across the US last year.
Delta Air Lines recently condemned Georgia’s Republican government for reforming voting rules, changes supported, in some cases overwhelmingly, by most Georgians, according to polls.
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https://www.afr.com/world/asia/china-s-wolf-warriors-bristle-at-pandemic-blame-20210601-p57x1a
China’s row with Australia is a warning to the world
There is a risk that if China feels newly cornered over COVID-19, it will once again respond with aggression. The drive to understand how the pandemic began is necessary. It is also dangerous.
Gideon Rachman Columnist
Jun 1, 2021 – 11.55am
The slump in relations between China and Australia sounds like a small detail in the great picture of world affairs. But this is a corner of the canvas that merits close attention.
It provided an early indication of China’s extreme sensitivity to international calls for an inquiry into the origins of COVID-19.
The deterioration in the relationship between Beijing and Canberra has been startling. Back in 2014, President Xi Jinping gave a speech to the Australian parliament hailing a new trade deal and the “vast ocean of good will between Australia and China”. But over the past year, China has imposed tariffs and other measures on Australian wine, food and coal, and Chinese officials have accused the country of racism and war crimes.
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Cambodia, China’s closest ally in south-east Asia, looks to ‘reset ties’ with US
June 1, 2021 — 3.54pm
Singapore: Cambodia has indicated a desire to shift out of the shadow of Chinese patronage and pursue a closer relationship with the United States amid a landmark visit to Phnom Penh by US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman.
Increasingly viewed as a vassal of China in its pursuit of regional hegemony, there are signs emerging of discomfort from within the one-party south-east Asian nation about its over-dependence on the superpower.
The visit of Sherman, scheduled for Tuesday, coincided with a column from Cambodia’s state-owned news agency highlighted on social media by Prime Minister Hun Sen. It said it was “time for the US and Cambodia, in China’s shadow, to reset ties”.
At the same time, Cambodian Defence Minister Tea Banh defended Beijing’s financial backing for the upgrading of its naval base in Sihanoukville, slamming claims China would in return be given priority access to the key strategic port on the Gulf of Thailand.
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Why Jeremy Grantham’s worried about markets and housing
Notorious bear Jeremy Grantham worries several highly speculative pockets of the market have already peaked and the “pessimism termites” could eat away to broader confidence.
Jun 2, 2021 – 12.10pm
For Jeremy Grantham, the co-founder of global fund manager GMO and arguably the world’s most famous bear, the past year has been very different.
During what he admits has been an “overprivileged existence,” Grantham has been able to spend more time communing with nature, reading, researching and relaxing.
“I was reduced to worrying about rather small things like amortising my tie supply. If I could wear three at a time I would,” he joked during a video interview at the Morningstar Investment Conference on Wednesday.
But as the world emerges from the pandemic, the bear is coming out of hibernation. And he doesn’t like what he sees in the market.
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The woes of China’s ‘bad bank’ point to deeper problems
Senior business columnist
June 3, 2021 — 11.59am
The fate of China’s giant “bad bank,” Huarong Asset Management, remains unresolved, underscoring the dilemma China’s authorities confront as they try to clean up an over-leveraged corporate sector riddled with bad and questionable lending.
Huarong triggered something of a panic in China’s debt markets earlier this year when it failed to issue its financial results.
The state-controlled vehicle for managing bad debts, established in the late 1990s along with three other similar vehicles to deal with the mountain of toxic debt China experienced after the Asian financial crisis, has been meeting interest payments on its debts with the help of liquidity provided by state-owned banks as the central authorities try to decide how to deal with it.
Their crackdown on leverage includes a state willingness to allow companies — even state-owned companies — to default in order to start lowering the level of moral hazard in their system, hence the dithering over the fate of a company, majority owned by China’s Ministry of Finance, with deep links into the financial system and economy.
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PIMCO’s Dan Ivascyn spells out inflation risks
One of the biggest risks in equity markets is bond yields rising too significantly and too quickly, PIMCO chief investment officer Dan Ivascyn has warned.
The $2.2 trillion investment management firm is also watching for an inflation “head fake” that could roil markets later this year.
Inflationary pressures, meanwhile, will push Australia’s core CPI to a peak of 3 per cent, with the near-term risks skewed to the upside, Mr Ivascyn told the Morningstar Investment Conference on Thursday.
Likewise, inflation in the US would also peak around the 3 per cent mark, higher than PIMCO had initially anticipated.
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https://www.afr.com/chanticleer/the-problem-with-pimco-s-inflation-head-fake-call-20210603-p57xuv
The problem with PIMCO’s ‘inflation head-fake’ call
Inflation talk is everywhere and that in itself could help push up the risk of an inflation shock.
Jun 3, 2021 – 4.35pm
It might be years before we know if consumer prices are going to go higher, and perhaps more importantly, stay higher. But right now one thing is clear: inflation talk has never run hotter.
Thursday brought another crescendo.
First came the thoughts of BlackRock co-founder Larry Fink, who declared an inflation shock could be on the way, as markets and policymakers who have become used to three decades of weak inflation are presented with a very different scenario.
Then came Dan Ivascyn, the chief investment officer at bond manager PIMCO, who was beamed into an investment conference run by Morningstar with the message that inflation we’re seeing in the United States is transitory, just like the Federal Reserve says.
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Why you shouldn’t ignore the AMC share frenzy
By Mohamed A. El-Erian
Updated June 4, 2021 — 7.40amfirst published at 7.30am
It has only been a few months since Reddit-enabled retail investors, or what some unflatteringly refer to as the “retail mob,” embraced GameStop and drove its valuation to the moon only to be frustrated by a sudden change against them in the rules of the game.
Today, it’s all about AMC Entertainment Holdings, whose skyrocketing value this week has already overcome what would normally curtail investor enthusiasm. The similarities are notable, as is the broader message about what is happening to the investment landscape.
Both phenomena involve an investment thesis, effective amplifiers and lots of cash to invest and borrow on margin.
The thesis for GameStop was to exploit a few massively offside hedge funds that, believing the business was structurally impaired for a long time, had shorted wildly, amounting to an eye-popping 140 per cent of the outstanding shares, according to some reports.
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It’s China that’s fighting to contain COVID’s fallout now, not the West
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
June 4, 2021 — 5.15am
The democratic West did not lose the pandemic after all. The US may well emerge in better fundamental shape from the events of the last 18 months than Xi Jinping’s China. This is an enormous geopolitical upset.
It was universally assumed after waves one and two that the chaotic, ill-prepared states of North America and Europe had suffered an irreparable blow to their collective prestige, and a concomitant loss of global economic caste. We can see in hindsight that they suffered neither.
Jiang Jinquan, Xi’s propaganda chief, declared that Beijing’s success in stamping out COVID-19 with seemingly minimal economic damage had shown “the superiority of China’s political system”. The Communist Party believed that China’s sorpasso had been pulled forward by a decade and was henceforth unstoppable.
Kishore Mahbubani, the prophet of Eastern ascendancy, said COVID marked the definitive start of the Asian Century. The pandemic would accelerate the shift to a “China-centric” global system where the enfeebled white man would have to learn his new place. Deference to Western societies and values would be “replaced by a growing respect and admiration for Eastern ones”. It made sense at the time.
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Xi Jinping plots propaganda war to make China ‘lovable’
· The Times
China must assert itself more effectively on the world stage to strengthen its voice and status, President Xi Jinping has told the country’s leaders.
The remarks, made by Mr Xi as he addressed a session of the ruling party’s 25-member politiburo this week, come at a time when China’s global image is being battered over human rights controversies at home, the crackdown in Hong Kong and its response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Although the propaganda machine has become more forceful in recent years, Mr Xi said Beijing must build a more sophisticated “strategic communicative system with distinct Chinese characteristics” to lead global public opinion.
With the right communication tools, China would have more friends and be seen around the world as “credible, lovable and respectable”, Mr Xi claimed.
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https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/us-economy-adds-559-000-in-may-wages-rise-20210605-p57yby
US economy adds 559,000 in May, wages rise
Olivia Rockeman and Reade Pickert
Jun 5, 2021 – 4.19am
US job growth picked up in May -- along with worker pay -- and the unemployment rate fell, signalling firms are making some progress filling a record number of openings as the economy powers up.
Payrolls increased by 559,000 last month after a revised 278,000 gain in April, according to a Labor Department report on Friday (Saturday AEST). The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists was for a 675,000 rise. The jobless rate dropped to 5.8 per cent, while the labour participation rate was little changed.
“On the surface, yes, the jobs numbers were strong, a half million jobs is obviously a good thing, but given where we are in the economy, all else equal it could have been stronger,” Michelle Meyer, head of US economics at Bank of America, said. “The fact that it wasn’t is likely a function in large part to supply constraints and labour shortages.”
Employers are pressing to get headcounts in line with a resurgence in demand. May was an inflection point in the reopening of the economy because of increased coronavirus vaccination rates, more social activity and fewer business restrictions across most of the US.
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Ministers, Facebook hail G7 plan for 15 per cent minimum corporate tax globally
AFP
Finance ministers from wealthy G7 nations on Saturday pledged to commit to a global minimum corporate tax of at least 15 per cent, rallying behind a US-backed plan aimed in particular at high-tech multinationals.
“We ... commit to a global minimum tax of at least 15 per cent on a country by country basis,” an official statement said at the conclusion of their London meeting.
The G7 hopes to reach a final agreement at the July gathering of the expanded G20 finance ministers group, it said.
Facebook welcomed the G7 pledge, its vice-president of global affairs said Saturday.
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Yellen tells G7 to keep spending, says inflation will pass
Andy Bruce and David Lawder
Yellen told a news conference after G7 finance ministers met in London that they needed to invest in a fight against climate change and inequality, even after putting their economies “back on track” from the enormous hit of the pandemic.
Her comments placed a different emphasis on fiscal support than the joint statement by the G7 finance ministers, which also stressed the need to ensure long-term sustainability of public finances once the recovery takes hold.
“Most countries have fiscal space, and have the ability to put in place, fiscal policies that will continue promoting recovery and deal with some of the long run challenges that all of us face when it comes to climate change and inclusive and sustainable growth, and we urge countries to do that,” she said.
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Kennedy’s Camelot still has the power to inspire hope
“Don’t let it be forgot
“That once there was a spot
“For one brief shining moment
“That was known as
Camelot”
— Camelot by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe
Caroline Kennedy, daughter of president John F. Kennedy and wife Jacqueline, is being mentioned as under consideration by President Joe Biden to be the next US ambassador to Australia. The name Kennedy still elicits far more than mere passing interest.
There is an exhibition of photographs at the Australian Catholic University in North Sydney from the John F. Kennedy library in Boston that covers the period of Jack Kennedy’s rise in US politics through the brilliant inauguration in 1961 to the dreadful events in Dallas, Texas, in November 1963. The exhibition has toured Australia previously but is now on permanent display, having been opened by the US consul general in Sydney, Sharon Hudson-Dean. The question that might reasonably be asked is: How is the Kennedy mystique so powerful six decades later? The answer is to be found in the magical word: Camelot.
Jacqueline Kennedy was determined in December 1963, having just buried her slain husband, to immortalise his administration. To do this, she invited a journalist from Life magazine, Theodore White, to the family compound at Hyannis Port in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, for an interview.
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I look forward to comments on all this!
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David.
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