August 12, 2021 Edition
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In Australia we have parts of three States in COVID19 lockdowns with Qld seemingly getting better and NSW and VIC getting worse. The situation in NSW is dire and the Government seems to be ideologically paralysed regarding tighter restrictions which are needed to make a real positive difference.
In the US we are seeing both case numbers and deaths rising and starting to reach significant and worrying numbers again in what looks like a fourth wave in the unvaccinated population.
In the UK the news seems pretty good on the COVID front as well as the weather being good so Summer is being enjoyed for now!
Sadly, the Northern Hemisphere Summer is seeing huge and destructive wild fire in both Europe and the US – with many fires being of record intensity and scale. Climate change in action I fear!
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Major Issues.
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YouTube bans Sky News Australia for seven days
Miranda Ward Media writer
Aug 1, 2021 – 3.33pm
Google-owned YouTube has banned Sky News Australia from uploading videos or streaming on its platform for seven days over videos containing COVID-19 misinformation.
Sky News Australia, which boasts 1.86 million subscribers on YouTube, regularly uploads news clips and clips from its other programming – including Alan Jones, who also had his column dropped from News Corp’s The Daily Telegraph last week.
YouTube has suspended the broadcaster for breaching its COVID-19 misinformation policies.
“We have clear and established COVID-19 medical misinformation policies based on local and global health authority guidance, to prevent the spread of COVID-19 misinformation that could cause real-world harm,” a spokeswoman for YouTube said.
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https://www.afr.com/markets/debt-markets/the-debt-fallacies-pierced-by-the-pandemic-20210801-p58esf
The debt fallacies pierced by the pandemic
The powerful monetary response to COVID-19 has revealed that debt and deficits matter less than most of us had been led to believe.
Vimal Gor
Updated Aug 1, 2021 – 4.17pm, first published at 2.27pm
One of the myths blown apart in the global financial crisis and now the COVID-19 pandemic is that governments that own the printing press need taxpayers to finance their spending.
Again, the familiar strains of “Who will pay for this?” or better still, “We are burdening our children,” have arisen as the federal government has been called upon to help get us through this crisis.
These calls ignore the basic fact that governments don’t need taxes to spend. Unlike the rest of us they spend first, tax later, because they can create money that they need never repay.
When the government spends it puts dollars in people’s pockets and creates activity. This in turn should create activity, confidence and most importantly employment. If there is excess capacity in the economy they need not drain all the money back through taxes. They need only drain enough to make sure inflation is kept under control.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/treasurer-dodges-review-of-jobkeeper-waste-20210730-p58ecu
Treasurer dodges review of JobKeeper ‘waste’
John Kehoe Economics editor
Aug 2, 2021 – 5.00am
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has failed to act on “imperative” Treasury advice to set up an independent review of the $90 billion JobKeeper program, despite Parliament’s budget watchdog exposing an estimated $25 billion was paid to firms that did not record the forecast revenue falls.
The largest government spending program in history included $4.6 billion paid to 157,650 firms that recorded increases in revenue in the wage subsidy’s opening three months, between April and June last year, according to the independent Parliamentary Budget Office.
The overpayments would have been several times higher over the program’s full 12 months.
The largesse dwarfs Labor’s stimulus spending on school halls, pink batts and cheques to dead people that the Coalition campaigned against following the 2008 global financial crisis.
Leading economists and corporate governance experts have demanded access to detailed government microdata and better transparency on how much specific firms received in the wage subsidies.
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Why government reforms often do more harm than good
Economics Editor
August 2, 2021 — 12.00am
It always disturbs me to see how few of our econocrats and economic rationalists – “neo-liberals” to their lefty critics – are willing to acknowledge the many cases where, what looked like perfectly sensible micro-economic reform on the drawing board, turned into a disastrous rort in the hands of the politicians.
But that’s not true of one of the great survivors from the reform era. Rod Sims, now chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, who’s an experienced econocrat and formerly a key advisor on the 1993 Hilmer report on national competition policy, has urged increased competition at state as well as federal level.
At the commission’s annual regulatory conference last week, Sims criticised the many privatisations of government-owned businesses that have simply bundled up a public monopoly and sold it to the highest bidder, without doing anything to get some competition into the industry, or even to adequately regulate the prices charged by a now-privately owned monopoly.
“Privatising assets without allowing for competition or regulation creates private monopolies that raise prices, reduce efficiency and harm the economy,” Sims said.
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Housing boom fastest on record
9:28PM August 1, 2021
The residential housing market is undergoing its fastest price boom on record as demand continues to bolster prices.
Compared with previous housing market upswings over the past 40 years, this boom is showing the steepest trajectory for price gains on record, according to property researcher CoreLogic
In the past nine months, homeowners have watched the value of property increase of 14.8 per cent nationally. In contrast, through the last major housing boom between 2012 and 2017, it took 31 months to see the same cumulative increase in values.
The current upswing also dethrones the previous price gains following the May 2019 federal election until the pandemic paused momentum in February 2020. Over that nine-month period, prices rose 6.1 per cent on an annualised basis, taking five capital cities – Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Hobart and Canberra – to record highs
Homeowners are benefiting from the unusual nature of the current cycle, which has been heavily influenced by preference for greater space, which CoreLogic’s head of research Eliza Owen said has been set apart by the broad-based nature of value gains.
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Tudge handed recovery road map to reverse overseas student crisis
Julie Hare Education editor
Aug 1, 2021 – 5.10pm
The Morrison government has been handed a road map to recovery for the $40 billion international student sector that includes giving priority to students from low-risk countries, simplifying the visa process and waiving fees, regulatory relief for some providers and a marketing campaign to reassure students they are still welcome.
The plan, which has been with Education Minister Alan Tudge for more than a week, comes as the government faces increasing rancour over the lack of a national plan to regain dwindling enrolments among international students.
Australia is alone among competitor nations in not having a clearly articulated national plan or strong public support from the national leader, as is the case with Joe Biden in the United States. In Canada, fully vaccinated students are now exempted from quarantine.
The Australian Financial Review understands Mr Tudge was given both a draft 10-year international student strategy and an 18-month road map to recovery that had been developed by a coalition of peak groups and tertiary education executives over a week ago.
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https://www.afr.com/wealth/personal-finance/key-mistakes-with-share-investing-20210729-p58e0s
Key mistakes with share investing
Investing in individual stocks creates an idiosyncratic risk which is difficult to avoid. So do your homework on companies and watch out for red flags.
James Wright Contributor
Aug 3, 2021 – 12.00am
Capital markets have enjoyed a carnival-like atmosphere over the past 16 months. The extraordinary policy stimulus, the development of vaccines and the democratisation of capital markets through low-cost digital broking apps has seen new entrants flood into global stock markets. And generally, investors have enjoyed terrific returns.
However, studies continually show that picking individual stocks that turn out to be winners versus the broader market is an exceedingly difficult task. While in hindsight the success stories appear blatantly obvious, the reality is that the likely winners ahead are almost always either very risky or very expensive.
Even if a winner can be identified, the outperformance generally manifests itself only over longer time periods. Instant gratification is not the norm in capital markets.
So while market theory is based on the premise that capital markets are efficient and information is processed instantly and rationally, behavioural economists would argue that people act irrationally. In a period where markets have been so strong, with minimal and short-lived pullbacks, many new investors have not experienced any losses during their short investment careers. Without the battle scars and haunting losses, it is difficult to develop the skill to temper excessive risk-taking.
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https://www.afr.com/wealth/personal-finance/what-lies-ahead-for-the-aussie-dollar-20210729-p58e0k
What lies ahead for the Aussie dollar
The best time to consider whether hedging is right for your portfolio is when the Aussie dollar has fallen – and that would be now.
Scott Haslem Contributor
Aug 2, 2021 – 2.43pm
A couple of months ago the Australian dollar jumped to 15 per cent above its level just before the pandemic. But since peaking in February at almost US80¢, and holding above US78¢ as recently as May, the little Aussie battler has slumped to just above 73¢.
For those with unhedged exposure to offshore equity markets, the 6 per cent fall in the Aussie dollar has done wonders for protecting portfolios. The mid-June announcement by the US central bank, the Federal Reserve, that interest rates might rise a bit sooner than expected (2023 rather than 2024) sent the US dollar rising (and the Australian dollar lower), while global equity markets also took a hit.
Indeed, recent weeks have seen equity markets stall, challenged, as is often the case, by the threat of change. After a year of sharply recovering growth and ostensibly endless policy stimulus, momentum will peak later this year. New concerns that the pandemic’s delta variant will dent activity have also weighed on positive sentiment. At the same time, more central banks are signalling less stimulus over the coming year.
While this has heightened volatility, we’d argue the risk of a recession in the next two years is low. Still, markets don’t like change, even subtle change. We expect the coming year to embody very strong (but slowing) growth and fading (but still abundant) policy stimulus, and few actual rate hikes before 2023. That still sounds pretty good.
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Evidence of super fund wrongdoing is missing
August 3, 2021
Some Liberal Party concerns with the growth of industry funds are well documented, as is the extraordinary hypocrisy involved.
The government gives people the right to choose which fund to invest their money in and is also aiming to force funds to consolidate to better serve members’ interests.
But the bigger funds are now under investigation for potentially distorting how companies are managed.
As a sidebar the government would be interested to see that already, two fire engine-chasing class action law firms have filed claims against Afterpay in the US in the wake of Square Inc’s takeover bid.
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Porter’s elevation betrays PM’s chilling apathy towards survivors
By Grace Tame
August 4, 2021 — 5.00am
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has just overseen Christian Porter’s assuming of the role of acting leader of the House of Representatives. Amid a burgeoning, pre-eminent mass awakening to the endemic issue of sexual abuse, this decision marks a proverbial slap in the face of our entire nation.
Less than two years ago, the twice-convicted paedophile who abused me and others before me was awarded a doctorate by the University of Tasmania, despite breaking the student code of conduct and being charged and jailed a second time for producing child exploitation material during his PhD tenure.
In light of my own experience, it’s hard to process how an accused rapist – albeit one who will never face prosecution – could be offered one of the highest positions of power in the country by none other than our nation’s leader himself.
Christian Porter has been accused of raping a woman in 1988. Last year, his alleged victim died by suicide. He has denied the accusation.
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Our leaders would do better if their followers were thinking harder
Economics Editor
August 4, 2021 — 5.00am
Much has been said about the failures of Scott Morrison, Daniel Andrews and Gladys Berejiklian in our never-ending struggle to keep on top of the coronavirus. But just this once, let’s shift the spotlight from our fallible leaders to the performance of those they lead. I think we ourselves could be doing a better job of it.
There is, after all, much truth in the saying that we get the politicians we deserve. When we think we’re entitled to have good government served up to us on a plate, we’ve lost sight of the truth that well-functioning democracies require diligent citizens, not just honest and smart politicians.
Perhaps our biggest complaint has been that our leaders and experts keep changing their tune. Why can’t we be told simply and clearly what’s required of us? Why can’t the pollies decide what they want and stick to it?
It’s as though they’re making it up as they go along, chopping and changing when they realise they’ve taken another wrong turn. Hopeless.
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Pentagon using artificial intelligence to predict what enemy will do next
By Michael Evans
The Times
12:50PM August 3, 2021
The US military is testing an advanced artificial intelligence system that it hopes can predict an enemy move days before it is made.
Predicting the future is normally “a mug’s game” but advances in technology and the increasing focus on using artificial intelligence to assist decision-making have opened up science fiction-type possibilities for war.
The US defence department has created an acronym for the computerised crystal ball-gazing, calling it GIDE, or global information dominance experiments.
The aim is to achieve “decision-making superiority”, said General Glen VanHerck, commander of Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defence Command, both of which protect the US homeland from every form of enemy attack.
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‘The furthest attempt’: Indigenous leader welcomes $1.1b Closing the Gap funding
August 5, 2021 — 4.00am
The country’s top Indigenous organisations have applauded the federal government’s $1.1 billion Closing the Gap implementation plan, but warn underfunding of programs and services remains the biggest challenge ahead.
The federal, state, and territory governments reached the historic new National Agreement on Closing the Gap with the Coalition of Peaks last July, aimed at reducing the inequality faced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
The federal government will now hand down its first plan outlining how it will achieve progress on its commitments this morning.
“We have seen governments slowly walk away from the previous closing the gap agreement, our programs were being defunded, and governments were no longer working together,” said Arrernte and Gurdanji woman Pat Turner, lead convenor of the Coalition of Peaks.
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What if humans just can’t get along anymore?
By Farhad Manjoo
August 5, 2021 — 10.03am
At the broadest level, human history is a story about cooperation. Individually, we big-brained, hairless primates are fairly ridiculous creatures, easy pickings for any dad-bod Simba roaming the plains. But get us together and we achieve dominion over land and sky.
Reluctantly, violently, often after exhausting every other possibility, people keep stumbling toward one another to get pretty much everything done. From the family to the village to the city, nation-state and global mega-corporation, cooperation and coordination among groups of increasing size and complexity is, for better or worse, how we all got to now.
But what if we’ve hit the limit of our capacity to get along? I don’t mean in the Rogers way. I’m not talking about the tenor of our politics. My concern is more fundamental: Are we capable as a species of coordinating our actions at a scale necessary to address the most dire problems we face?
Because, I mean, look at us. With the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change, humanity is contending with global, collective threats. But for both, our response has been bogged down less by a lack of ideas or invention than by a failure to align our actions as groups, either within nations or as a world community. We had little trouble producing effective vaccines against this scourge in record time — but how much does that matter if we can’t get it to most of the world’s people and if even those who have access to the shots won’t bother?
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Has Australia lost its religion, or merely its affection for institutions?
By Mark Stephens
August 5, 2021 — 5.00am
This is the year Australia stops being a Christian nation. That statement will alternately inspire or trigger, depending on your spiritual preference. But as we approach the 2021 census, all trend lines suggest Christianity will dip below 50 per cent adherence in Australia.
On the flip side, the “Nones”, those ticking “no religion”, have skyrocketed above 30 per cent, a proportion that grows higher with younger respondents.
For more than a century, some believers have fondly labelled Australia a “Christian country”. In part, their claim rested on the majority of Australians still identifying as Christian. That majority status has been used to justify everything from prayers in Parliament to nativity scenes at shopping centres.
Now, in this year’s census, the Rationalist Society of Australia is seeking to maximise the number of people ticking “no religion”. Their own research posits that about 70 per cent of Australians do not find religion important in their lives, and only 15 per cent are actively religious.
So what now? Does the move below 50 per cent signal Australians have lost faith in transcendence and signed up for atheism? Should we completely secularise the set list for the 2021 Christmas carols?
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Damaged not destroyed: PM in trouble but could again land on his feet
Award-winning political commentator and author
August 5, 2021 — 5.00am
As Scott Morrison approaches three years as Prime Minister, an achievement in its own right, it is also right that Australians consider whether over that time he has grown into his job or if he has shrivelled.
It’s fair enough to ask if Morrison has proved he is up to it, whether he has the courage, the ability and the wisdom to continue to see the country through these most testing times.
If you believe the polls, more and more Australians are nudging towards saying no: he does not. They question whether he has the physical, intellectual or mental ability or even the empathy to lead, to earn trust, build coalitions, forge consensus, or to be something more than a moneybags, a punching bag or a spokesman for the premiers.
During his tenure Morrison has fallen short on three critical occasions. The first was during the bushfires when he snuck off to Hawaii. He showed no grace and little remorse after he was forced to return by saying people did not expect him to hold a hose, mate.
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Why it’s worth playing the long investment game
Analysis of global bond and equity markets since 1991 reveals some of the secrets to successful investing during good times and bad.
Duncan Hughes Reporter
Aug 6, 2021 – 5.00am
A snapshot of investment returns for the past 30 years reveals the gain from a diversified portfolio and the pain of trying to time markets and buy stocks just before prices go up or sell just before they fall.
A $10,000 investment in US shares at the beginning of 1991 – with income reinvested – would now be worth nearly $218,000 (or more than five times what the equivalent investment in cash would have made), an annual compounded return of about 10.8 per cent.
But someone who invested in US stocks in 2000 – when the dot.com boom was pushing the market to record highs and markets were irrationally exuberant – would have been smashed by the subsequent crash and taken 14 years to achieve a zero return.
The timing is as tricky now for investors, particularly retirees, who are attempting to generate an income from bonds and bank deposits.
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Our dealings with the world have reversed, but don’t get the wrong idea
Economics Editor
August 6, 2021 — 11.45am
One of the most remarkable developments in our economy in recent times is also the most unremarked: after endless decades of running a deficit on the current account of our balance of payments, for the past two years we’ve been running a surplus. Which looks likely to continue.
Because a “deficit” sounds like it’s a bad thing, and the media know their audience finds bad news much more interesting than good news, I guess it’s not so surprising this seemingly good news hasn’t attracted much attention.
But one thing economics teaches is that, contrary to popular impression, not all deficits are bad and not all surpluses are good. It depends on the circumstances. But regardless of whether they regard a current account surplus as a good sign or a bad one, I suspect most economists think there are more important issues to worry about.
This week the Australian Bureau of Statistics revealed a record trade surplus of $10.5 billion in just the month of June.
We recorded a current account surplus of $17.6 billion during the March quarter this year. That compares with a peak deficit of $23.5 billion in September quarter, 2015.
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Death of accountability, one car park space at a time
By Shane Wright
August 6, 2021 — 10.53am
Accountability has become a game for laughs in the federal Parliament.
A Parliament that’s heard prime ministers argue for war. Heard parliamentarians cry for their nation. Apologise for the treatment of Indigenous Australians.
But when it comes to a minister being called on to explain how $660 million of taxpayers’ money was funnelled towards a handful of Coalition-held or at-risk Labor seats in the run-up to the 2019 election, it became something approaching a British Christmas panto.
On Thursday during Question Time – the point of the daily parliamentary proceedings when the executive can be held to account for its actions – the country had to endure Infrastructure Minister Paul Fletcher deliberately read from a 2014 report that pinged the ALP for its own poor treatment of taxpayers’ funds and then apologise for his “mistake”.
He even managed to cite St Augustine of Hippo as if there was some religious glow to his answer.
From the chortles and thigh slapping of government MPs, an onlooker could have believed they had just seen some piece of political mastery.
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https://www.smh.com.au/national/australia-at-its-best-and-worst-20210806-p58gkb.html
Australia at its best and worst
Political and international editor
August 7, 2021 — 5.00am
It was the best of politics, it was the worst of politics. This week Australia saw both. The uplifting and the depressing.
In one field of national policy we saw an impressive case study in intelligent, inclusive, unifying politics. It was politics as problem solving. It was the relaunch of Australia’s effort to move its Indigenous people out of Third World living conditions and to join the rest of the population enjoying First World standards. Otherwise known as Closing the Gap.
In another field, we saw an ugly example of petty, mean-spirited, divisive politics. It was politics as parlour games. It was the Parliament’s approach to the pandemic.
The main headlines announcing the new Closing the Gap plan focused on the federal reparations to be paid to survivors of the ghastly Stolen Generations experience. While this was important, it was only one part of a much bigger ambition unveiled by Scott Morrison.
The redress scheme is a $380 million federal government mechanism. It will give each eligible survivor in a federal jurisdiction a personal apology from a senior federal official, a one-off $75,000 payment in recognition of harms caused by forced removal from family, plus $7000 to pay for healing needs.
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Worrying signs we’re on the brink of a new nuclear arms race
Beijing’s nuclear breakout should dispel any notion that the risk of nuclear Armageddon is long past.
By Alan Dupont
August 7, 2021
There are worrying signs the world is on the brink of a new nuclear arms race. A regional conflict between nuclear-armed states could escalate quickly into a destructive global crisis with catastrophic consequences.
Fear that a conflict between the US and China over Taiwan could go nuclear is shaping the government’s risk assessments, strengthening the case to upgrade our missile defences for critical defence installations and operationally deployed units of the Australian Defence Force.
The immediate cause for concern is China’s apparent decision to build as many as 250 new silos for its nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles in two remote areas of northwest China near the Mongolian border.
Characterised as a “breathtaking expansion” by the commander of US nuclear forces, Admiral Charles Richard, the construction of these missile silos signals a historic shift in China’s nuclear posture from one of minimum deterrence to a robust capacity to survive an adversary’s first strike and inflict major damage in return.
Although China’s arsenal is still dwarfed by those of the US and Russia, its nuclear breakout could double the number of its nuclear warheads. The expansion is part of a disturbing global trend that reverses the late Cold War momentum towards nuclear arms reductions. There are continuing tensions over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. Tehran is inching its way towards becoming the 10th nuclear weapons state despite the Biden administration’s efforts to resurrect a nuclear deal abandoned by Donald Trump. And Russian military planners seem to believe it is possible to win a limited nuclear war in what has been dubbed an “escalate to de-escalate strategy”.
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When saying and doing nothing is good advice
Rodney Horin
1:46PM August 6, 2021
The Hayne Royal Commission into the Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry, which made headlines 2½ years ago, rightfully castigated many financial institutions that were charging clients “fees for no service” – in other words they had failed to deliver services to clients despite charging fees for those services.
Financial advisers today face a similar and not-unrelated conundrum – convincing ASIC that advice to “do nothing”, so clients maintain their current positioning in the market, is indeed valuable advice, and often more valuable than telling clients to buy or sell shares.
Many clients understand that “stay the course with your current portfolio” is advice worth paying for, but some do not. “How,” they argue, “is telling me to do nothing good advice? I’m already doing that. I don’t want to pay ongoing fees on a portfolio that doesn’t change.”
What such people fail to realise is that many of the world’s great fortunes have been made by investors who undertook thorough research (or took advice from an adviser) before investing for the long-term in companies with consistent earnings growth and good management, and then riding for years the resulting increase in share prices, ideally receiving dividends along the way.
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Coronavirus And Impacts.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/vaccine-targets-a-mirage-20210801-p58eub
Why vaccine targets are merely a mirage
Australia’s woeful performance in vaccination leaves the country exposed to grim months of economic devastation and rising hospitalisations.
Jennifer Hewett Columnist
Aug 1, 2021 – 5.42pm
Australia is mired in magical thinking. Thanks to political wrangling through a fractious national cabinet on Friday, Australia has now come up with official national vaccination targets. That doesn’t guarantee those goals in a 2021 timeframe – or even well into 2022.
It’s more than a dispirited Sydney beginning to appreciate the promised end of lockdown in four weeks is a political mirage. The more unpalatable facts come with the daily numbers – another equal-record 239 cases reported on Sunday with only 80 confirmed to be in isolation the entire time.
There’s clearly no prospect, no “pathway” to those out in the community falling towards zero over August in any imaginable setting or even the likelihood of further tightening of restrictions by the NSW government.
The speed of the sudden, sharp lockdown of south-eastern Queensland in response to a handful of cases should produce much better results but no certainty in a population where vaccination remains so low. Optimism that Queensland’s three-day lockdown will end on schedule is evaporating, with another nine cases reported Sunday.
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It’s safe to move on from one-size-fits-all borders
Arbitrary caps and mandatory quarantine for even very low-risk arrivals is irrational . And a lost opportunity to bring back stranded Australians and foreign students.
Nathan Grills and Tony Blakely
Aug 2, 2021 – 5.00am
Australia’s low vaccination coverage is holding back the reopening of our domestic and international borders. And it will be some months before 70 per cent of adults will be vaccinated – the target set by the government on Friday before international arrival caps return to what they were a couple of months ago, along with increased capped entry of student, economic and humanitarian visa holders.
At 80 per cent adult vaccine coverage, caps on returning vaccinated Australians will be abolished, there will be an increased cap for student, economic and humanitarian visa holders, new travel bubbles will be opened, and other loosening of borders will occur.
The National Plan launched on Friday is a good skeleton. However, it needs further nuance when fleshing it out.
The good news is that we can already safely and strategically open or relax borders restrictions with select low-risk countries. The plan talks about differentiation of rules by country of origin (“safe countries”) once we get to 80 per cent vaccine coverage.
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Authoritarian laws for the common wealth and health
12:00AM August 2, 2021
Nations are hastening their return to normal life by mandating vaccination in employment and for community activities. In the US, the Biden administration announced on Friday that millions of federal employees and contractors must be vaccinated or face restrictions including masks, weekly testing and travel bans. The UK says vaccination will be a condition of entry to nightclubs and other crowded venues, and possibly for university students to attend lectures. Other nations are considering like measures.
Many Australian organisations and businesses are calling for an equally forceful response. This would introduce a level of individual control not before seen in Australia for medical treatment. It can, though, be justified as a proportionate response to the emergency. Individual liberty and choice must be limited for a time to promote the wellbeing and health of the whole community.
The prospect of mandating vaccination has provoked a loud counterreaction. Some have protested on the streets, others have taken to social media. Some again are threatening legal action in the High Court on the basis the government would overstep its powers. None of these are likely to deter our leaders from taking the steps necessary to protect us.
When it comes to the law, our governments can take whatever measures are needed to combat the pandemic. They can make vaccination a condition of interstate travel or to avoid hotel quarantine. People can be denied entry to public places or events, or to cinemas or restaurants. Unvaccinated people can be segregated and forced out of employment in aged care, health or aviation.
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Australia has moved from victory to calamity in pandemic battle
Expats have always lived in fear of ‘the call’ to see an ailing relative or attend a funeral. Now it’s nearly impossible to do either in both directions.
Lucie Morris-Marr
Aug 3, 2021 – 3.56pm
You could call it our rather naive last supper, as we tucked into our seafood Christmas platters back in December – an entire nation, including 1.2 million British-born expats, feeling quietly smug regarding our tough coronavirus response.
In the preceding months, we’d seen our total COVID-19 death tally leap from around 100 to 900 due to a hotel quarantine breach in Melbourne, but we knew we were still the envy of the globe, along with our New Zealand neighbours.
On a personal level, having moved here from England 15 years ago to work as a senior editor on Marie Claire Australia, the relief was twofold and profound; I’d just been given a clean bill of health after a year-long bowel cancer fight.
It had been a mixed tape from hell, enduring 600 hours of chemotherapy amid two long Melbourne lockdowns, while juggling home schooling.
The Australian policy of issuing swift stay-at-home orders, even for just a handful of cases, was harsh, economically and mentally, yet had proved highly effective since the start of the pandemic last March.
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Deaths, hospitalisations part of living with COVID-19
Phillip Coorey Political editor
Aug 3, 2021 – 7.04pm
A mostly vaccinated Australian society must learn to live with people being hospitalised and dying from COVID-19 at levels equivalent to a flu outbreak, all while resisting severe lockdowns and border closures, modelling by the Doherty Institute reveals.
In the worst case, almost 2000 people could still die each year with a 70 per cent vaccination rate, but that could be reduced to as few as 16 with low-level restrictions and effective testing, tracing, isolation and quarantine arrangements.
The unvaccinated would be overwhelmingly affected.
“We do need to accept that there will be cases. We need to accept that there will be hospitalisations, there will be ICU admissions and there will be deaths,” Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly said.
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NSW COVID-19 cases could double without intervention: expert
David Marin-Guzman and Michael Read
Aug 4, 2021 – 1.17pm
NSW has experienced its third-worst day of infection since the latest outbreak began, and one expert has said daily case numbers were on track to double without tougher restrictions.
The state reported 233 new cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday. At least 47 were in the community while infectious and there were two more deaths, including a man in his 20s.
Premier Gladys Berejiklian said she expected case numbers to get worse and believed they had not reached their peak.
Wednesday August 4th: New South Wales has recorded 233 new local cases of COVID-19, following two new deaths including a man in his 20s.
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Berejiklian can’t bear to say the obvious: lockdown isn’t ending soon
There is no way the NSW lockdown can end or restrictions significantly be eased by August 28 unless authorities are willing for those case numbers to jump.
Jennifer Hewett Columnist
Aug 4, 2021 – 5.34pm
Gladys Berejiklian concedes the obvious. She knows “it’s little consolation” to people in lockdown that case numbers of the delta virus would have been worse without it. But in her “humble opinion”, the peak is yet to come in Sydney given the number of infected people still in the community.
She is far less willing to concede the obvious conclusion. There is no way the lockdown can end or restrictions significantly be eased by August 28 unless she is willing for those case numbers to jump.
Instead, she keeps talking about having more “options” about easing restrictions if vaccination rates rise and case numbers infectious in the community fall by then.
But at most, these options can only amount to minor adaptations of some restrictions in certain areas of Sydney or NSW regions.
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Delta variant challenges China’s costly lockdown strategy
By Huizhong Wu and Joe McDonald
August 6, 2021 — 6.40am
Beijing: The Delta variant is challenging China’s costly strategy of isolating cities, prompting warnings that Chinese leaders who were confident they could keep the coronavirus out of the country need a less disruptive approach.
As the highly contagious variant pushes leaders in the United States, Australia and elsewhere to renew restrictions, President Xi Jinping’s government is fighting the most serious outbreak since last year’s peak in Wuhan. The ruling Communist Party is reviving tactics that shut down China: Access to a city of 11.5 million people has been cut off, flights cancelled and mass testing ordered in some areas.
That “zero tolerance” strategy of quarantining every case and trying to block new infections from abroad helped to contain last year’s outbreak and has kept China largely virus-free. But its impact on work and life for millions of people is prompting warnings that China needs to learn to control the virus without repeatedly shutting down the economy and society.
Zhang Wenhong, a Shanghai doctor who became prominent during the Wuhan outbreak, suggested in a social media post that China’s strategy could change. “We will definitely learn more” from the ongoing outbreak, he said, calling it a stress test for the nation.
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Tudge waiting for 80pc vaccinations to allow overseas students return
Julie Hare Education editor
Aug 5, 2021 – 5.57pm
Education Minister Alan Tudge has refused to put a “hard deadline” on when international students can start to re-enter the country despite figures showing a 33 per cent decline in new enrolments.
Once national vaccination rates reached 80 per cent, which was expected by Christmas, Mr Tudge said the government would be in a “position of having more open borders”.
“We are still well-positioned to be able to bring international students back and have our commencement numbers start to accelerate again quite rapidly,” Mr Tudge told a Times Higher Education Live event on Thursday.
Mr Tudge is under increasing pressure from the business community and the university sector to provide a national plan for the return of overseas students. Australia is the only major destination country for international students that has not released a post-COVID-19 recovery plan for the $37.5 billion sector.
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Global Covid cases top 200 million
By Marc Bastian
AFP
4:58PM August 6, 2021
The number of Covid-19 infections recorded worldwide passed 200 million on Thursday, an Agence France-Presse count showed.
The grim milestone was posted as China pledged to provide two billion vaccine doses this year to combat surging infections caused by the Delta variant.
The more infectious strain is driving a resurgence in the pandemic, especially in the Asia-Pacific region where Thailand, Indonesia and Japan continued to set records.
The number of daily new cases globally has jumped 68 per cent since mid-June, AFP’s tally shows.
But as more of the world gets vaccinated – particularly in wealthy countries – deaths have risen at a slower rate, up 20 per cent since July, the data show.
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Climate Change.
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What ministers must do to save the National Electricity Market
Preserving market driven signals to invest in electricity is a big deal for Australia. Energy ministers have to stop working at cross purposes.
Tony Wood Contributor
Aug 2, 2021 – 6.00pm
The Energy Security Board has recommended the most significant reforms to the National Electricity Market since the latter was created more than 20 years ago.
These present Angus Taylor with the biggest opportunity and challenge he has faced as Federal Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction.
Australia’s energy ministers created the Energy Security Board (ESB) as recommended by the Finkel Review into the security of the National Electricity Market (NEM) following the South Australian state-wide blackout in 2016.
Sadly, despite widespread support from the electricity industry and its customers, the ministers failed to implement its signature recommendation: a National Energy Guarantee (NEG) that would have integrated emissions reduction and energy policies. One arm of this recommendation, the obligation on retailers to contract for reliability (RRO) did survive, but it had been badly wounded.
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Europe on fire: scenes of destruction and rescue from Turkey and Greece
Climate scientists say 2021’s onslaught is hitting harder and in places that have been spared global warming’s wrath in the past. This week fires roared through Greece and Turkey, darkening the sky and sending evacuees scrambling.
August 5, 2021
Scorching heat, low humidity and strong winds have fed fires in Turkey and neighbouring Greece. In the last two weeks, fires in Turkey have burnt more than three times the area affected in an average year, as a European fire agency said, and Greeks have been forced to evacuate beaches to avoid the advancing flames. Last week fires tore through Italy and the Mediterranean island of Sardinia, creating scenes of glowing red night skies.
Climate scientists say this year’s onslaught is hitting harder and in places that have been spared global warming’s wrath in the past. Wealthy countries such as the US, Canada and Belgium are joining poorer and more vulnerable nations on a growing list of extreme weather events that scientists say have some connection to human-caused climate change.
The vulnerability is on full display in Turkey and Greece this week - as evident in the photos.
Greek
authorities ordered villages near the site of the ancient Olympic Games in the
western Peloponnese to be evacuated on Wednesday as wildfires raged across the
country, destroying swathes of forest and buildings, and sending hundreds
fleeing.
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World to hit temperature tipping point 10 years faster than forecast
Jacob Greber Senior correspondent
Aug 6, 2021 – 5.00am
Key Points
· There is a greater than 50 per cent chance temperatures will rise above 1.5 degrees in the next 10 years.
· The 1.5 degree threshold is predicted to be a climactic tipping point.
A long-overdue report by the world’s climate scientists will on Monday reveal that global warming is accelerating faster than thought, with temperatures set to punch through the critical 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold by the early 2030s, a decade earlier than anticipated just three years ago.
The faster trajectory in the planet’s average temperature gains means the timeline for governments and businesses to plan for an uncontrolled surge in catastrophic fires, floods and droughts is narrowing to less than a decade.
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) much-anticipated report on the latest physical science on climate change follows a year-long delay caused by COVID-19 and is now set to paint a stark backdrop ahead of global talks in November.
IPCC authors are expected to warn there is a greater than 50 per cent chance the world’s temperatures will rise above 1.5 degrees Celsius within the next 10 years, according to sources briefed on the report’s contents.
In 2018, the IPCC said the threshold was likely to be breached between 2030 and 2052, which put the mid-point a decade later than it now expects in its core scenario.
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Critical ocean system may be heading for collapse due to climate change, study finds
By Sarah Kaplan
August 6, 2021 — 3.10am
Human-caused warming has led to an “almost complete loss of stability” in the system that drives Atlantic Ocean currents, a new study has found – raising the worrying prospect that this critical aquatic “conveyer belt” could be close to collapse.
In recent years, scientists have warned about a weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which transports warm, salty water from the tropics to northern Europe and then sends colder water back south along the ocean floor. Researchers who study ancient climate change have also uncovered evidence that the AMOC can turn off abruptly, causing wild temperature swings and other dramatic shifts in global weather systems.
Scientists haven’t directly observed the AMOC slowing down. But the new analysis, published on Thursday in the journal Nature Climate Change, draws on more than a century of ocean temperature and salinity data to show significant changes in eight indirect measures of the circulation’s strength.
These indicators suggest that the AMOC is running out of steam, making it more susceptible to disruptions that might knock it out of equilibrium, says study author Niklas Boers, a researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Science in Germany.
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US sets electric vehicle sales target of 50% by 2030
By Katy Stech Ferek and Ben Foldy
The Wall Street Journal
4:46PM August 6, 2021
US President Joe Biden made dual moves to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, imposing tougher fuel-efficiency standards on carmakers and challenging them to drastically ramp up sales of electric vehicles by 2030.
Mr Biden on Thursday (friday AEST) signed an executive order setting a target for electric vehicles, hydrogen-fuel cell and plug-in hybrid vehicles to make up 50 per cent of US sales by 2030 — a voluntary goal that carmakers said necessitated federal support for vehicle charging stations and consumer tax incentives.
Separately, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed new rules that would require carmakers to achieve a fleetwide average fuel-efficiency equivalent of 52 miles per gallon by the 2026 model year, using an industry measure that takes into account both fuel efficiency and emissions reductions.
The current requirement for that model year is 43.3mpg under rules set in 2020 by the Trump administration. Carmakers would be allowed some increased flexibility to use credits they banked in past years by surpassing their goals to comply with the rules, the agency said.
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Royal Commissions And The Like.
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No entries in this section.
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National Budget Issues.
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Stay the course despite rising interest rates
Investors need to consider how bonds fit into a diversified portfolio and the role they play in overall asset allocation.
Geoff Parrish Contributor
Aug 2, 2021 – 12.00am
How quickly things can change. While the path to rising interest rates still exists, markets have turned their attention from higher yields to renewed concerns around the spread of the delta virus variant and questions on global growth momentum.
Australian 10-year government bond yields started 2021 at about 1 per cent; jumped to nearly 2 per cent as markets repriced inflation, robust economic growth and potentially sooner-than-expected central bank tightening; and nosedived back to 1.2 per cent this week.
So what now? Here are three things to focus on: with market timing, stay the course with your investment objectives and risk tolerance; bonds as a ballast; and rising rates, when they do occur.
The year-to-date pendulum swing in bond yields, and more rapid drop in the past month, highlights how difficult it is to project and time market moves in the short term by all market participants. In just two weeks in February, yields rose over 70 basis points (59 per cent) as investors scrambled to position for higher yields on expectations of strong growth due to economic reopening, reflation and uncertainty around the support governments and central banks would continue to provide.
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https://www.rba.gov.au/media-releases/2021/mr-21-14.html
Statement by Philip Lowe, Governor: Monetary Policy Decision
Number 2021-14
Date 3 August 2021
At its meeting today, the Board decided to:
· maintain the cash rate target at 10 basis points and the interest rate on Exchange Settlement balances of zero per cent
· maintain the target of 10 basis points for the April 2024 Australian Government bond
· continue to purchase government securities at the rate of $5 billion a week until early September and then $4 billion a week until at least mid November.
The economic recovery in Australia has been stronger than was earlier expected. The recent outbreaks of the virus are, however, interrupting the recovery and GDP is expected to decline in the September quarter. The experience to date has been that once virus outbreaks are contained, the economy bounces back quickly. Prior to the current virus outbreaks, the Australian economy had considerable momentum and it is still expected to grow strongly again next year. The economy is benefiting from significant additional policy support and the vaccination program will also assist with the recovery.
The economic outlook for the coming months is uncertain and depends upon the evolution of the health situation and the containment measures. Beyond that, the Bank's central scenario is for the economy to grow by a little over 4 per cent over 2022 and by around 2½ per cent over 2023. This scenario is based on a significant share of the population being vaccinated by the end of this year and a gradual opening up of the international border from the middle of 2022. The Board also considered a range of other scenarios, with the main source of uncertainty being the health situation.
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Reserve Bank’s QE sends monetary policy back to the future
Tackling inflation or secular stagnation is going to require the central bank to return to deregulated framework of the 1980s, designed to make politically unpalatable decisions possible.
Stephen Grenville Contributor
Aug 3, 2021 – 3.04pm
The 2008 financial crisis brought fundamental changes to US monetary policy, which over time have transformed monetary policy elsewhere, including in Australia.
Paradoxically, this has taken monetary policy part-way back to the multi-dimensional activist framework of the pre-1980s regulated era.
Ironically, the looming challenges of either inflation or secular stagnation is one deregulation sought to solve: to establish a monetary framework which allows politically unpalatable policy decisions to be made.
Pre-deregulation, monetary policy worked largely by restricting the growth of bank balance sheets through restraining the growth of central bank “base money” and by requiring the banks to hold statutory reserve deposits and liquid assets and government securities.
These mandated holdings meant that banks were funding a good part of the government’s budget deficit.
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SOMP: Economy forecast to bounce back in 2022
August 6, 2021
The Reserve Bank of Australia expects the economy to grow by a robust 4.25 per cent next year, with the unemployment heading down to 4 per cent by the end of 2023, but the conditions for a rise in interest rates would not be met until 2024.
In its quarterly Statement on Monetary Policy, published on Friday, the central bank says the economy entered the current lockdowns in a position of strength and, assuming the nation’s Covid-19 vaccine rollout gathers pace, the recovery will be driven by strong consumer spending and adequate fiscal support.
“Recent outbreaks of the Delta variant across Australia, and the resulting lockdowns, have introduced a high degree of uncertainty to the outlook for the second half of this year,” the RBA said.
“Activity will contract in the September quarter and some job losses are expected. Towards the end of this year, the economy is forecast to rebound from this setback as restrictions ease, as it has from previous lockdowns.
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By Shane Wright and Jennifer Duke
August 7, 2021 — 5.00am
Leading economists expect interest rates to start increasing before wages growth and inflation meet the Reserve Bank’s targets and are confident the country will bounce back from coronavirus-related lockdowns.
But most of the 22 economists in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age Scope survey are tipping the improvement in the economy won’t be shared by the federal budget, predicting back-to-back deficits of more than $100 billion. Some are not expecting the budget to ever get back into surplus.
The RBA has said it believes wages growth has to get back above 3 per cent so inflation will be “sustainably” within its 2 to 3 per cent target band before it can consider lifting official interest rates. Wages growth has been below 3 per cent since 2013.
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Health Issues.
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https://www.smh.com.au/money/insurance/new-health-insurance-boost-for-the-young-20210730-p58efu.html
New health insurance boost for the young
By John Collett
July 31, 2021 — 10.30pm
Many young people who are still living at home may not be shut out of private health insurance because of its perceived high cost and poor value for too much longer.
Federal government legislation was passed by Parliament in June that implements a measure contained in the 2020-21 budget to improve the affordability and access to private cover for younger people.
The change will allow young adults who are still dependent on their parents to remain on mum and dad’s private cover for longer.
Insurers will be able to increase the age at which children can remain on their parents’ private health insurance from 24 to 31.
The health insurance industry is being consulted on the change and is working on the design and pricing of policies. The change is voluntary for insurers, not mandatory.
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International Issues.
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China’s leaders agree to greater control over data, offshore listings
Michael Smith China correspondent
Aug 1, 2021 – 3.42pm
China’s leaders have pledged tighter supervision of overseas share listings as a crackdown on technology companies, rising geopolitical tensions and the country’s worst COVID-19 outbreak since Wuhan last year add to a growing list of concerns for foreign investors in Chinese assets.
President Xi Jinping chaired a regular meeting of the Communist Party’s top decision-making body, the Politburo, late last week. Reports from the meeting suggest the government is planning to further tighten state control over the private sector.
Changes to regulations allowing Chinese technology giants to list overseas were among the decisions flagged. At the same time, executives from the country’s biggest technology companies, including Alibaba, Tencent and TikTok-owner ByteDance, were called in by regulators for a briefing on complying with new data security laws.
China’s increasingly heavy-handed approach to the previously under-regulated technology sector, regardless of the short-term impact on markets and listed companies, has raised alarm bells for investors in New York, London and Sydney.
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Is it safe to venture back into the Chinese market?
Last week’s brutal slide in the country’s tech and education stocks has caused a rift among fund managers.
Karen Maley Columnist
Aug 2, 2021 – 5.00am
After last week’s brutal sell-off in Chinese education and tech stocks, investors are asking themselves whether this is an opportune time to start wading into the Chinese market.
Certainly, some of China’s best-known tech stocks – such as Alibaba and Tencent – are now trading at a hefty discount to their recent peaks.
Alibaba closed at $US195.19 in trading last week in New York, down 22.8 per cent from a year ago, and 36 per cent below the peak it hit last October.
Similarly, Tencent Holdings finished last week at $HK479.00 in Hong Kong trading, down 10.5 per cent for the year, and down around 38 per cent from its January high.
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‘Hybrid attack’: Belarus sends Iraqi and African migrants streaming across Lithuania’s border
By Reis Thebault and Robyn Dixon
August 2, 2021 — 11.09am
Brussels: Europe’s newest migration crisis is unfolding in one of its most unlikely places.
Lithuania, a Baltic nation less than a third of the size of Britain with fewer than 3 million residents, hasn’t been known as a destination for undocumented immigrants: Each year, the country sees roughly 70 people unlawfully cross its border with Belarus.
But in June, authorities apprehended more than 470 people along the 675 km border. In July, the number skyrocketed to more than 2600, consisting mostly of immigrants from Iraq and sub-Saharan Africa. Officials expect the numbers to grow in the coming weeks.
This new flow of people did not begin organically, Lithuanian and European Union officials say. Instead, they say, it is the result of an audacious plan by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko to weaponise migration in response to EU sanctions.
“The growing number of illegal migrants crossing the border between Lithuania/EU and Belarus is a hybrid attack orchestrated by the Lukashenko regime,” Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda told The Washington Post in a statement.
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China’s tech crackdown has wiped out trillions - and could shut a crucial door to the US
Senior business columnist
August 3, 2021 — 12.00pm
China’s crackdown on its big technology companies blindsided foreign investors and has cost them more than $US1 trillion ($1.4 trillion) of paper and real losses this year. It may also have closed down, or at least threatened, China’s access to international markets, particularly the US.
Late last week, in response to China’s decision to “reform” its private education sector – it banned the $US100 billion industry from making profits, which ignited a wipeout of the value of the shares in companies in that sector – the US Securities and Exchange Commission froze all initial public offerings of Chinese companies.
The SEC’s chairman, Gary Gensler, said the Chinese government’s actions, including its decree that effectively all foreign listings by its tech companies would be subjected to cybersecurity reviews, were relevant to US investors and that his staff had been directed to require additional disclosures from Chinese companies before approving their prospectuses.
He raised specific concerns about the structures – called variable interest entities (VIEs) that Chinese companies use for US listings, saying many investors might not be aware that they were actually buying shares in shell companies based in tax havens rather than the underlying business.
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https://www.afr.com/technology/no-china-isn-t-retreating-from-capitalism-20210804-p58fsz
No, China isn’t retreating from capitalism
Market crackdowns tend to coincide with record highs on a price-to-book basis. They can be read as interventions to cool overheating share prices. Ideology does not come into it.
The Lex Column
Aug 4, 2021 – 1.56pm
Lions of stone flank the doors of some traditional Chinese homes in hopes they will stop spiritual threats from entering. The state media is playing guardian too, condemning video games with the loaded phrase “spiritual opium”.
Investors regard this as a death threat to a lucrative industry. They should remember that such broadsides may prove as perilous as stone lions.
Shares in Tencent, which gets 30 per cent of total revenues from games, fell as much as 11 per cent on Tuesday. A crackdown that started with fintech and spread to private tutoring and property is claiming another sector.
Some Western commentators will interpret this as evidence China is drawing back from capitalism.
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America has hit its debt ceiling, and the ‘X-date’ looms large
Senior business columnist
August 5, 2021 — 12.51pm
The US Treasury has started emergency cash conservation measures after the government reached its debt ceiling on Monday. The Biden administration is now facing an intense partisan brawl as it seeks to head off a US default on its debts.
To say it upfront, it’s pretty unlikely that the US will actually default, however technically, on its $US28.5 trillion ($38.6 trillion) of borrowings. There has been regular congressional wrangling over the debt ceiling in the past, most notably in 2011 during the Obama administration when the Republicans refused to raise it without significant spending cuts. But there’s never been a default.
However, looking at the debt brawls of the past, expect to see some brinkmanship manoeuvres again this time.
The 2011 impasse was ultimately resolved, with Democrat concessions, it did lead to Standard & Poor’s downgrading US government debt for the first time in history.
There were also government shutdowns in 2013 and 2018 – the government closed down non-essential services, closed national parks and federal institutions and sent federal employees on forced leave – and a 35-day shutdown in 2018 over Donald Trump’s demand for $US5.7 billion of funds for his controversial wall on America’s southern border.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/foreign-affairs/a-new-era-of-chinese-state-control-20210805-p58g87
Bubble finally bursts for Chinese capitalism
It’s capitalism but not as we know it. After decades of allowing growth to run rampant, Xi Jinping is cracking down on China’s technology titans in a bid to regain state control.
Michael Smith China correspondent
Aug 6, 2021 – 3.01pm
When Deng Xiaoping declared “to get rich is glorious” four decades ago, he put China on a turbo-charged trajectory towards rapid wealth creation unparalleled in human history.
China’s former leader, who oversaw the birth of China’s socialist market economy in the late 1970s, fostered a system that would lift the country out of extreme poverty and spawn a generation of business tycoons.
Despite the contradictions of a hybrid economic model that embraced capitalism without eroding Communist Party ideology, China’s new breed of private conglomerates and their wealthy owners thrived for years.
That was until the internet arrived and caught everyone off guard. China’s technology titans, unrestrained by market regulations, amassed so much power and wealth they were slipping outside Beijing’s control. At the same time, foreign capital was flooding into companies such as Alibaba, Tencent and Didi Chuxing via multibillion-dollar listings in New York, Hong Kong and Shanghai.
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https://www.afr.com/politics/how-to-conserve-the-spirit-of-1776-20210805-p58g9k
How to conserve the spirit of 1776
The modern right has a choice between 19th-century European-style reaction and holding on to the virtues enshrined in the American Revolution.
Bret Stephens Contributor
Aug 6, 2021 – 12.27pm
In 1990, V.S. Naipaul delivered a celebrated lecture on the subject of “Our Universal Civilisation”.
The Berlin Wall had fallen, liberal democracy was ascendant, and Naipaul wanted to reflect on what the universal civilisation – by which he meant the West – meant for someone like him, a Hindu son of colonial Trinidad who had made his way “from the periphery to the centre” to become one of the great novelists of his time.
Naipaul meant his lecture as a celebration of the West. But he sensed an undercurrent of disquiet, which he found expressed in Nahid Rachlin’s 1978 novel Foreigner. The book is about an Iranian woman who works in Boston as a biologist and seems well assimilated to American life. But on a return visit to Tehran she loses her mental balance and falls ill. The cure, it turns out, is religion.
“We can see that the young woman was not prepared for the movement between civilisations,” Naipaul observed, “the movement out of the shut-in Iranian world, where the faith was the complete way, filled everything, left no spare corner of the mind or will or soul, to the other world, where it was necessary to be an individual and responsible.”
I’ve been thinking of Naipaul and Rachlin while reading Sohrab Ahmari’s new book, The Unbroken Thread. Ahmari, now the op-ed editor of the New York Post, is a friend and former colleague with whom I’ve had a political falling out.
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Taliban kill Afghan media chief in Kabul, take southern city
By Kathy Gannon and Tameem Akhgar
August 7, 2021 — 3.06am
Kabul: The Taliban ambushed and killed the director of Afghanistan’s government media centre on Friday in the capital, Kabul, the latest killing of a government official just days after an assassination attempt on the country’s acting defence minister.
The slaying comes amid significant Taliban advances. In a major but symbolic victory, the Taliban on Friday appeared to have taken their first provincial capital – the city of Zaranj in southern Nimroz province. The government, however, claimed there was still fierce fighting around key infrastructure in the city and that Zaranj had not fallen.
But the Taliban posted images on social media showing insurgents inside the local airport and posing for photographs at the entrance to the city. Nimroz is sparsely populated in a region that’s mainly desert and Zaranj, the provincial capital, has about 50,000 residents. The province’s governor, Abdul Karim Barahawi, fled Zaranj for refuge in the peaceful Chahar Burjak district, where the local ethnic Baluch population has given him protection.
The Taliban have been surging for months in Afghanistan, taking swaths of land as US and NATO forces complete their final pullout from the country by the end of the month. The battles intensified lately as the Taliban laid siege to provincial capitals in southern and western Afghanistan, after capturing district after district and even seizing several key border crossings.
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Biden offers safe haven to Hong Kongers in US
By Paul Handley
AFP
4:06PM August 6, 2021
Joe Biden announced on Friday AEST that Hong Kong citizens in the US who fear for their safety amid the political crackdown back home will receive temporary safe haven.
The US President said the move recognised “the significant erosion” of rights and freedoms in Hong Kong by Beijing.
“By unilaterally imposing on Hong Kong the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, the People’s Republic of China has undermined the enjoyment of rights and freedoms in Hong Kong,” he said.
Mr Biden cited the “politically motivated arrests” of more than 100 opposition politicians, activists and protesters on charges under the national security law, including allegations of secession, subversion and terrorist activities.
More than 10,000 others have been arrested in relation to anti-government protests, he said.
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Iran could build nuclear bomb ‘within 10 weeks’
By David Rose
The Times
3:55PM August 6, 2021
Israel has warned that Iran could produce a nuclear warhead within 10 weeks as Ebrahim Raisi, a hardline judge known as the “butcher of Tehran”, was sworn in as President.
Mr Raisi, 60, took the oath of office late on Thursday in front of MPs, regional leaders and foreign dignitaries, as well as senior figures from militant groups including Hamas and Hezbollah.
In his first speech as President he said the “power of the Islamic Republic in the region brings about security” but that force would only be used against “threats made by dominating powers and tyrants”.
He insisted that Iran was not attempting to create “forbidden” nuclear weapons, despite suggestions by Israel that it was “about 10 weeks away” from acquiring the materials for a warhead.
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Five ways the markets have it wrong on China
Tim Davies
3:09PM August 6, 2021
Chinese equity markets have again seen heavy selling pressure over the past month following a series of policy announcements from the Chinese government targeting anti-competitive behaviour in its domestic economy.
Western commentators have been quick to label each of these announcements as further proof that President Xi is seeking to tighten his power grip on the country, favouring state-owned entities to ensure he remains head of China for decades to come.
But commentators are misinterpreting Beijing’s policy goals. In each and every case there is an explanation misunderstood by investors.
Ant’s cancelled IPO: Alibaba’s financial and payments subsidiary, Ant Financial, announced in mid-2020 its plans to raise $US37 billion by listing on the Shanghai and Hong Kong stock exchanges in November 2020.
Demand from retail investors alone to acquire shares in Ant surpassed $US3 trillion. However, on November 2, the Chinese financial regulator cancelled the IPO days before its listing date.
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I look forward to comments on all this!
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David.
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