January 13 2022 Edition
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It seems this week that we have seen COVID19 roar back globally with the US and UK now reporting record cases and deaths and things staring to go pear shaped even on OZ.
Otherwise globally the issues with Taiwan and the Ukraine seem to be bubbling on with all sorts of other smaller conflicts and disasters popping up!
In OZ this
week the feature has been the political paralysis on what to do about COVID19
to keep society functioning. It is starting to look a little ominous I have to
say,The lack of RATs to help manage the outbreak is a real mess and shows some real planning deficiencies.
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Major Issues.
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Time to look at the many ways to stuff up productivity
Economics Editor
January 3, 2022 — 12.00am
A good New Year’s resolution for readers of the business pages would be to read more widely and think more broadly, so their thinking about economic problems and their solutions doesn’t get into a rut, returning repeatedly to the same old solutions to the same problems.
No reader of these pages needs to be told that the key to higher material living standards is improved productivity – the ability to create more outputs from the same quantity of inputs of land (raw materials), labour and physical and intangible capital.
Almost continuous productivity improvement over the past two centuries is the outstanding achievement of capitalist, market economies, the proof of capitalism’s superiority as a system of organising production and consumption.
It’s what’s made us so much more prosperous than our forebears were, with much of that prosperity spilling over from the owners of capital to the middle class and people near the bottom.
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Seven surprises for investors in year ahead
9:42PM January 3, 2022
Investors don’t like surprises, they crave certainty. Unfortunately, surprises are more common. In proposing the potential surprises of 2022 we need to expect the unexpected.
There’s not much point in saying rates will rise … of course they will, it’s only a matter of timing. Or it would be wasting time to predict inflation will surprise 2022, why would it surprise? It’s already been with us for six months and will very likely become an even bigger issue over the next year.
Similarly, seasoned investors would not be in the least surprised to wake up some morning in the year ahead to find the sharemarket is diving towards a 10 per cent correction, or even a 20 per cent reversal.
Instead, let’s take a look at what is unexpected and might really make a difference to how investors fare in the coming year.
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https://www.afr.com/world/asia/australia-japan-to-sign-landmark-defence-pact-20220105-p59lxj
Australia, Japan to sign ‘landmark’ defence pact
Andrew Tillett Political correspondent
Updated Jan 5, 2022 – 7.43am, first published at 7.42am
A landmark defence pact between Australia and Japan will send a strong message of deterrence to a more aggressive China, Tokyo’s top diplomat in Canberra has declared.
The agreement will open the way for the two countries’ militaries to step-up joint training and hosting each other’s forces.
The long-awaited Reciprocal Access Agreement between Australia and Japan is expected to be signed on Friday, even though Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida cancelled a trip to Sydney and a meeting with Scott Morrison because of COVID-19 concerns.
The two leaders will instead hold a virtual summit. As well as China, they are going to discuss trade, supply chains and the emerging hydrogen industry’s role in mitigating climate change.
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Japan joins the top ranks of Australian military allies
Andrew Tillett Political correspondent
Jan 5, 2022 – 8.02am
The Reciprocal Access Agreement may have a dry name, but it cements Japan’s place in the top tier of Australia’s military allies alongside the United States and United Kingdom.
Both Australia and Japan share the US as their major ally but such a relationship with a superpower can only be asymmetrical.
Australia’s relationship with the UK bears a historical legacy but Britain’s immediate security backyard will always be Europe and the North Atlantic.
But the RAA treats Australia and Japan as equals sharing the same region and with a mutual suspicion of Beijing.
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As stimulus wanes, focus on productivity and house prices
The strong recovery has camouflaged pressing but dormant structural issues, which should dominate the economic agenda in 2022.
Richard Yetsenga Contributor
Jan 4, 2022 – 1.05pm
The economic recovery from the pandemic-led downturn has, on the surface, been a very positive story. But the strong cyclical performance has camouflaged pressing structural issues that are set to dominate the agenda in 2022.
Policy stimulus has been deployed successfully to limit business bankruptcies. Unemployment has declined quickly, and advanced-economy consumer fundamentals are the strongest in several decades.
In Australia, GDP, employment and capacity utilisation are all above pre-pandemic levels. Omicron is the latest variant challenge, but economic fundamentals are strong.
Looking offshore, China’s growth is likely to be the slowest we’ve seen in recent history. But this doesn’t present meaningful macroeconomic risk. The challenge is much more nuanced. The combination of a rapidly ageing population and reduced urbanisation to meet climate commitments implies quite a different energy demand profile in years ahead.
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‘What’s the plan?’: Australia needs to prepare for the collapse of American democracy
Historian and writer
January 5, 2022 — 5.30am
American democracy has always been uneven. A nation founded on dispossession and enslavement, still grappling with the living legacies of those terrible injustices, cannot honestly call itself a true democracy. It was not until the 1960s that the United States took genuine steps towards inclusive democracy, with the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts. Half a century later, those hard-won victories now face the biggest threats of their relatively short existence.
As the US commemorates the first anniversary of the failed coup attempt of January 6, 2021, the focus is overwhelmingly on how to stop those threats from being realised.
The signs aren’t exactly heartening. Right-wing media continues to promote the “big lie” about the 2020 election, very deliberately laying the groundwork for the next one, voting rights reform is wobbling, and the almost daily revelations from the January 6 congressional investigation are having very little impact.
Meanwhile, the big reforms that need to happen to strengthen American democracy – from the Supreme Court, to voting rights, to media control – are either stalling or not on the agenda.
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How fake science is infiltrating scientific journals
January 5, 2022 — 5.00am
In 2015, molecular oncologist Jennifer Byrne was surprised to discover during a scan of the academic literature that five papers had been written about a gene she had originally identified, but did not find particularly interesting.
“Looking at these papers, I thought they were really similar, they had some mistakes in them and they had some stuff that didn’t make sense at all,” she said. As she dug deeper, it dawned on her that the papers might have been produced by a third-party working for profit.
“Part of me still feels awful thinking about it because it’s such an unpleasant thing when you’ve spent years in a laboratory and taking two to 10 years to publish stuff, and making stuff up is so easy,” Professor Byrne said. “That’s what scares the life out of me.”
The more she investigated, the more clear it became that a cottage industry in academic fraud was infecting the literature. In 2017, she uncovered 48 similarly suspicious papers and brought them to the attention of the journals, resulting in several retractions, but the response from the publishing industry was varied, she said.
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Deeper ties with Japan send strong message to China
11:00PM January 4, 2022
One of the strengths in Australia’s relationship with Japan is our shared ability to deliver substance as opposed to verbal bombast unmoored to practical outcomes.
Australia claims to have strategic partnerships with many countries, usually linked to detailed plans for deepening co-operation – but, looking under the bonnet, often the longer the ministerial communique, the fewer results.
A planned meeting, now virtual, with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida this week will show the opposite is true for Australia and Japan. There is deep substance to the relationship based on a shared strategic outlook and values and a platform of trust built across decades.
On the face of it the Reciprocal Access Agreement designed to enable closer defence co-operation may seem as if it is just tidying away practical details of how our forces interact but, to two countries that take the rule of law seriously, these details matter.
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Robert’s research grants veto a pre-election ‘dog whistle’
Julie Hare Education editor
Jan 5, 2022 – 3.24pm
It’s not often that Labor’s left wing and the Institute of Public Affairs, a right-wing think tank, agree on anything, but they find common ground on why the federal government vetoed six university research grants on Christmas Eve: political dog whistling with a looming election in sight.
The research community has been up in arms since acting Education Minister Stuart Robert quietly, and two months behind schedule, approved 587 Australian Research Grants for funding under the Discovery program. He also blocked six grants on the grounds they did not demonstrate value for taxpayers’ money.
It is only the third time there has been ministerial intervention in the research grants process – each time under a Coalition government and each time with an election looming.
“It’s a dog whistle,” said Kim Carr, a veteran senator from the ALP’s Victorian left faction. “You blow the whistle so only people that agree with you hear it; it’s a nod and a wink to the Pentecostal church.
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https://www.afr.com/street-talk/12-predictions-for-equity-capital-markets-in-2022-20211220-p59j10
12 predictions for equity capital markets in 2022
Kanika Sood and Anthony Macdonald
Jan 6, 2022 – 5.00am
The numbers are out – and 2021 was a bigger year for ASX-listed companies raising equity capital than 2020, as interest rates remained low, companies were cashed up and investors confident.
Together, ASX-listed companies raised $US44.6 ($61.8 billion) in equity last year, beating 2020’s $US41.4 billion, according to Dealogic.
Initial public offers (IPOs) enjoyed their best year in raising since 2014, attracting $US9.6 billion across 187 new listings.
Ultimately, IPOs were also what pushed 2021’s total ECM (equity capital markets) haul over 2020 levels, because follow-on raises were slower at $US32.7 billion compared to $US36.9 billion in 2020.
It’s now time for some crystal ball gazing. Here what ECM bosses think you should expect in 2022.
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https://www.afr.com/wealth/personal-finance/equities-the-best-place-to-ride-out-2022-20220105-p59m3a
Equities ‘the best place’ to ride out 2022
But with so many factors set to challenge global markets in 2022, strategists say investors will need to be selective.
William McInnes Reporter
Jan 7, 2022 – 5.00am
Multi-asset market strategists expect equities to perform well in 2022, saying they are still a better pick than bonds, even as central banks begin to raise interest rates to fight a rise in inflation. But they warn investors will need to be more selective.
While the pandemic-fuelled rally that propelled the Australian sharemarket to near-record levels this week is forecast to wane in the year ahead, commentators have high expectations of shares, albeit with more pedestrian returns than in 2021.
After the wild ride of the last two years, multi-asset strategists point to a more “normal” period for equity markets, with subdued economic growth, while fixed income could still face some challenges.
Even with rates beginning to rise, monetary policy and real bond yields (adjusted for inflation) will still be at historically accommodative levels.
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COVID 19 Information
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Our COVID rear-vision isn’t pretty, but we can’t ignore the oncoming threat in our windscreen
By Steven Hamilton and Richard Holden
January 3, 2022 — 5.00am
Australia’s COVID-19 strategy has run well and truly off the road. Just two weeks ago, NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard predicted the state might reach 25,000 cases by the end of January. At the time, this was framed as a “worst-case scenario” and dismissed as hyperbole.
Well, based on Sunday’s test-positivity rate of 20 per cent, we conservatively estimate the true number of new daily infections to be well over 50,000. It’s unlikely one in five people in the population has COVID-19; if we did more testing, the test-positivity rate would fall, but we would also find more cases. If you found solace in the drop in new cases reported in NSW on Sunday – down to 18,278 from the 22,577 on Saturday – think again. Sunday’s numbers were detected from 90,019 tests, Saturday from 119,278. If we’d tested as many, we’d likely have recorded more than 24,000 cases on Sunday.
Policymakers point to current hospitalisations as low and say “everything is going to plan”. But this ignores the fact hospitalisations lag cases by one to two weeks. Since just Friday, the number of COVID cases in hospital has risen by 28 per cent and in intensive by 20 per cent. Two weeks ago, recorded cases were 10 times lower than they are now. How sure are we that ICUs won’t be overwhelmed later this month? Are we planning for that contingency?
Through December, the hospitalisation rate was 2 per cent for Omicron cases, with the ICU rate 10 per cent of that. That means the likely 150,000 or so true cases for Friday, Saturday and Sunday would translate into 3000 admitted to hospital and 300 to ICU in a couple of weeks’ time. That’s 20 per cent of ICU capacity in a three-day period.
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COVID debate has a detrimental effect on public morale
Psychiatrist and mental health advocate
January 2, 2022 — 4.00pm
Mental health tends to be seen through the prism of the individual. Yet mental health and its vicissitudes also exists at a population level, as mass psychology. It is so much more than the sum of the parts, in a way well captured by the term public morale.
Global pandemics such as COVID-19 seriously undermine public morale, as well as producing a surge of mental ill health and mental illness among individuals. In fact, the latter has already overshadowed by a factor of four the excess burden of disease created by direct effects of the virus in Australia.
This raises the question, who is responsible for the protection and maintenance of public morale and the mental health of the wider population during a time of national crisis?
Traditionally, during wartime, it is the government and its leaders who assume this vital responsibility. The COVID-19 pandemic represents a more complex situation. The global disaster struck at a time when, rightly or wrongly, public trust in and respect for our political leaders was at a low ebb.
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Australia’s Covid positive test rate: why is it rising and what does it really mean?
A rate of 5% or less is needed to keep the spread of Covid under control, WHO says. So what happens when it hits 20%?
Mon 3 Jan 2022 03.30 AEDT
Last modified on Mon 3 Jan 2022 03.32 AEDT
As Covid-19 case numbers have continued to rise following the arrival of the Omicron variant alongside the easing of restrictions in Australia, the focus has begun to turn to the positivity testing rate.
In New South Wales, where the rise in cases has been steepest, the infection rate as a proportion of the population is now one of the highest in the world. By New Year’s Eve the rate of infection was about 2.59 per 1,000 people, higher than the United States.
As cases have risen, so too has the positivity rate, which by Sunday had reached 20% in NSW. Other states have also experienced a steady increase in the ratio of positive cases. In Tasmania it reached 26% on Sunday, Victoria’s was 14.8% and Queensland’s 10.5%.
So what is the positivity rate? And what does it tell us about the spread of the virus as evidence of Omicron’s milder severity continues to mount and governments try to shift the focus away from case numbers?
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Scott Morrison says healthcare system can cope despite warnings of Covid-19 pressure
Scott Morrison has called for people to ‘manage their own health’ as hospital staff and paramedics feel the strain of soaring Covid-19 cases.
January 3, 2022 - 9:20AM
NCA NewsWire
Rising Covid-19 cases and hospitalisations continue to put enormous pressure on parts of Australia’s healthcare system as hospitals grapple with staff shortages and ambulances are delayed.
There are at least 188,000 active coronavirus cases in the country, with almost 2000 people in hospital and almost 150 patients in intensive care, according to the most recent federal government data.
Scott Morrison on Monday insisted the country’s hospitals could cope, saying most people with the Omicron Covid strain would have a much milder illness than with Delta.
The Prime Minister said rising case numbers were part of “the new phase” of the pandemic in which people would need to take responsibility for “managing their own health” at home.
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Morrison’s penny-pinching on COVID tests doesn’t add up
Scott Morrison’s sudden penny-pinching over relatively cheap rapid antigen tests is politically perilous.
Andrew Tillett Political correspondent
Jan 3, 2022 – 2.32pm
Having spent hundreds of billions to prop up businesses and keep people employed and billions more on vaccines and testing, Scott Morrison’s sudden penny-pinching over relatively cheap rapid antigen tests is politically perilous.
First up, the maths doesn’t make sense. In the Prime Minister’s own words, a rapid antigen test (RAT) costs just $15 at the shops.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has ruled out a return to lockdown in an attempt to curb the spread of the Omicron variant.
Yet taxpayers continue to foot the bill for the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) nasal and throat swabs that have become uncomfortably familiar over the past two years, even though those tests are much more expensive.
Private pathology providers receive a rebate of $85 from the government, while the state-run clinics receive $42.50 for each test.
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COVID-19 testing sites shut down as PM rules out universal free rapid kits
By Rachel Clun and Mary Ward
January 3, 2022 — 7.54pm
Sydney’s COVID-19 testing strain is intensifying with a major pathology company shutting its testing sites across the city and Prime Minister Scott Morrison ruling out providing universal free rapid antigen tests despite reports of sharp price rises of the home testing kits.
Mr Morrison on Monday warned the tests would not be subsidised for everyone as coronavirus cases continue to rise, with NSW recording 20,794 cases and four deaths with 21 per cent of those tested for the virus returning positive results.
The number of people with COVID-19 in hospital is at 1204, including 95 in ICU. The hospitalisation figure is close to the 1266 in hospital during the peak of the Delta wave in September. At that time 244 people required intensive care.
“We’ve invested hundreds of billions of dollars getting Australia through this crisis,” Mr Morrison told Channel Seven’s Sunrise program. “But we’re now in a stage of the pandemic where you can’t just make everything free because, when someone tells you they want to make something free, someone’s always going to pay for it and it’s going to be you.”
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Australia sets new daily COVID case record as experts call for more free tests
By Rachel Clun and Jennifer Duke
January 3, 2022 — 7.30pm
Australia’s new daily record of 37,100 confirmed coronavirus cases will soon be eclipsed, with actual case numbers believed to be magnitudes higher as demand for both PCR and rapid antigen testing stretches the country’s resources.
Public health and economic experts say rapid antigen tests should be subsidised more broadly than the federal government currently plans to help slow the spread of the coronavirus and keep pressure off hospitals.
Epidemiologist and public health medicine specialist Professor Tony Blakely, who estimates COVID-19 cases are between five and 10 times the daily confirmed cases, said if confirmed infections reached 50,000 a day, the real figure is likely to be between 250,000 and 500,000 actual infections each day.
“It’s only going to take about three weeks at those sorts of numbers before 40, 50, 60 per cent of the population has been infected, and the virus will run out of steam,” the University of Melbourne academic said.
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Nurses are in despair as staffing shortages bite in NSW hospitals
By Brett Holmes
January 4, 2022 — 5.30am
Nurses and midwives have described feelings of despair as they battle through the short-staffing crisis that is plaguing our hospitals. Others are now being called back in to work, their hard-earned rostered leave and much-needed family time abruptly cut short.
Across the state, intensive care unit nurses are once again working excessive hours of double shifts and overtime. They are caring for a combination of ventilated and high dependency patients, some with COVID-19 and some without.
Over the weekend, an ICU nurse at an outer-metropolitan hospital declared, “We are falling like flies.” In the state’s north, an ICU nurse said, “We’ve had two years to prepare for this and it’s still shit everywhere”; another reflected, “There’s nothing left in the tank.”
Staffing has become so bad that many ICUs are working without team leaders or the nurses they need in addition to bedside nurses to keep the units working seamlessly. Nurse educators have been forced to stop offering clinical supervision to take on patients of their own. Meanwhile, ICU teams are still attending to medical emergency calls from other parts of their hospitals.
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French scientists discover new mutant Covid variant which could be more resistant to vaccines
Alarm bells are ringing after a new Covid variant was detected in France, with a renowned health expert pointing out a “worrying” sign.
January 4, 2022 - 9:03AM
The medical world is on alert yet again after a new mutant Covid-19 variant emerged in France recently.
The new strain, dubbed “variant IHU” or B. 1.640.2, was first detected in the nation last month, but is now making international headlines after catching the attention of global experts.
At least 12 cases were confirmed near the Marseilles area, and it is understood that many of those patients were hospitalised with the illness.
Variant IHU, which is believed to be linked with travel to the African nation of Cameroon, has 46 mutations which experts fear could mean it is more resistant to existing vaccines.
However, on a more positive note, the new strain does not appear to be spreading rapidly.
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Sydney doctor reveals Covid ‘reality’ as hospitals continue to struggle
NCA NewsWire
January 4, 2022
A Sydney hospital doctor says staff are suffering enormous burnout, laying down a challenge to NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet to spend time in an emergency department.
The doctor told the ABC that staff were working harder and for longer, as the number of people in hospital with Covid-19 passes levels seen at the peak of the Delta variant outbreak.
On Tuesday, as 21,131 new infections were recorded statewide, 1344 people were in hospital with the virus, including 105 patients in intensive care.
There were 25 people on ventilators on Monday, with Tuesday’s figure yet to be released.
Amid the height of the Delta outbreak on September 21, 1266 people were hospitalised with infections, with 244 patients in intensive care and 118 people on ventilators.
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Charging for rapid antigen tests shows Prime Minister is out of touch
In just six words Prime Minister Scott Morrison showed how out of touch he is with hard working, everyday Aussies.
January 4, 2022 - 3:12PM
OPINION
On Monday, when Prime Minister Scott Morrison was talking about the cost of Rapid Antigen Tests (RATs) he said we’ve got to the point in the pandemic where “we cannot just make everything free”.
“We already make them free to everyone who is required to have one,” Mr Morrison told Sunrise on Monday.
“We are now at this stage of the pandemic we just cannot make everything free because when someone tells you they will make something free, someone will always pay for it, and it is going to be you.”
With this statement the PM showed just how out of touch he is with general population who are still struggling through the Covid pandemic after almost two years.
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True virus cases understated, health officials admit
Andrew Tillett Political correspondent
Jan 4, 2022 – 5.54pm
Top health officials have admitted the true number of coronavirus cases is underestimated because of testing delays and people dismissing mild symptoms, as national cabinet prepares to reboot the testing system and redefine how to count people hospitalised with COVID-19.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison will take a proposal to state leaders on Wednesday to help concession cardholders and low-income earners access rapid antigen tests.
He is also expected to offer further support to the states to hand out free test kits for symptomatic patients and close contacts through their testing clinics.
A new one-day record of almost 48,000 infections was reported, seeing the cumulative number of Australian cases since the pandemic began two years ago surge past 500,000.
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Rapid antigen test chaos casts doubt on Morrison’s competence
January 4, 2022 — 6.00pm
People often spend a lot of time shopping over the Christmas period but this holiday season has had a macabre difference: The nation is obsessed not with cheerful gifts and Boxing Day bargains but with the grim task of securing scarce supplies of rapid antigen tests.
People have been reduced to standing in line outside chemists only to be disappointed when they reach the front of the queue to learn they have just sold out – and often at vastly inflated prices.
The federal government’s failure to procure the tests in advance is a major bungle, which is all the more frustrating because it could so easily have been avoided, as it was in other countries. But Prime Minister Scott Morrison seems incapable of admitting his mistake.
For the past week, Mr Morrison has tried to deflect criticism by arguing first that he wanted to leave the task of distributing tests to the private sector and then by claiming that it would have wasted money to supply kits to everyone for free. “We’re now in a stage of the pandemic where you can’t just make everything free because, when someone tells you they want to make something free, someone’s always going to pay for it, and it’s going to be you.”
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To live with COVID-19, we must plan for a permanent pandemic
The risk of another, potentially more lethal, variant is incontrovertible, and failing to imagine what that means is no longer forgivable. A whole new order of preparedness is therefore imperative.
Martin Sandbu
Jan 5, 2022 – 9.21am
Two years into the pandemic, much of Europe is holding its breath, hoping omicron is less virulent than earlier coronavirus variants so that even record infection numbers don’t reap the death and sickness rates of earlier waves.
In the US, too, omicron is spreading like wildfire. Leaders seem uncertain about which restrictions to impose, and are scrambling to put in place everything from sufficient testing capacity to support measures for renewed economic disruption.
We have evidently neither controlled the pandemic nor learned to optimise our policy responses, despite two years of experience. There is no excuse for this. Omicron, like any particular mutation, came unannounced.
But the arrival of mutations is a predictable – and predicted – outcome of infections continuing to spread, which the world has failed to prevent.
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Restaurants empty as diners, staff show omicron caution
Hannah Wootton Reporter
Jan 5, 2022 – 5.44pm
Australians cut their spending on dining out by 24 per cent last week compared with the week ending December 24 amid caution about booming COVID-19 case numbers, data from ANZ has revealed.
This drop outstripped the 18-20 per cent reduction usually recorded after the Christmas trading peak, with South Australia, Western Australia and NSW recording particularly sharp drops.
The reduction in dining out came as hospitality businesses across the eastern states close their doors, as venues struggle to find enough staff who are not isolating or infected with COVID-19 to open.
Almost all restaurants and cafes in the Great Ocean Road town of Lorne were shut on Wednesday, while venues in both Melbourne and Sydney’s northern suburbs were extending their Christmas closure periods in light of staff shortages.
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https://www.afr.com/world/europe/what-britain-can-teach-australia-about-omicron-20220106-p59mak
What Britain can teach Australia about omicron
Staff shortages, rising hospitalisations and stiff demand for free rapid tests have pushed Boris Johnson to tweak his COVID-19 strategy.
Hans van Leeuwen Europe correspondent
Jan 7, 2022 – 9.52am
London | There are few places in the world that are as relatable to Australians as Britain. Yet during the two years of the coronavirus pandemic, the two countries have often felt poles apart.
Time and again, Britain - almost always mired in COVID-19 more deeply or dramatically than pretty much anywhere else - has served as either a warning or an inspiration to insulated, isolated Australia.
But the omicron variant has changed all that. Its ability to flatten obstacles and rip through a population has suddenly put all countries on the same pandemic page - and the differences have diminished.
Now, it’s not a question of who is pulling which policy lever to combat omicron - it’s mostly just who is pulling the same levers first, and fastest.
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The race to crack the code of natural COVID immunity
By Luke Mintz
Updated January 7, 2022 — 9.41amfirst published at 9.00am
London: It’s the question on everyone’s lips. How come I’ve had COVID twice, despite being fully vaccinated? How has my neighbour - who spent the last month isolating with her fully omicronned children - managed to avoid catching it? Why do some people fall foul of coronavirus again and again, and others remain steadfastly immune? Is it luck, genes, or what?
This week, Sir Keir Starmer tested positive for COVID for the second time in just over two months. It came four weeks after the Labour leader received his third vaccine dose, and is the sixth time Sir Keir will have to self-isolate since the beginning of the pandemic. Few people in Britain have been locked in isolation as many times as Sir Keir.
Dodging the virus
There are people like Sarah, who in October last year, assumed COVID-19 had finally come for her. The 25-year-old teacher had until that point managed to dodge the virus. But then a colleague at her central London primary school tested positive. Then another, and another. Eventually, the school had to close. Sarah had been in close contact with some of the positive cases, in meetings and in the staff room.
But curiously, her lateral flow tests kept returning negative results. Then, two months later, two of her three flatmates tested positive. Fuelled by the Omicron variant, COVID cases were exploding in London among Sarah’s age group during that week, ONS figures show. Every time she checked her phone, her social media was flooded with more positive results from friends. But still, Sarah’s test results remained stubbornly negative.
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Hospitalisations of kids too young for COVID shots soar in the US
By Lindsey Tanner and Mike Stobbe
January 8, 2022 — 10.36am
Washington: Hospitalisations of US children under five with COVID-19 soared in recent weeks to their highest level since the pandemic began, according to government data released Friday on the only age group not yet eligible for the vaccine.
The worrisome trend in children too young to be vaccinated underscores the need for older kids and adults to get their shots to help protect those around them, said Dr Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
Since mid-December, with the highly contagious omicron variant spreading furiously around the country, the hospitalisation rate in these youngest kids has surged to more than 4 in 100,000 children, up from 2.5 per 100,000.
The rate among children ages 5 to 17 is about 1 per 100,000, according to the CDC data, which is drawn from over 250 hospitals in 14 states.
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‘On the edge of blowing up’: French schools overwhelmed as Omicron takes hold
By Yiming Woo and Ingrid Melander
January 8, 2022 — 2.23am
Boulogne-Billancourt: It’s just a week since French schools reopened after Christmas, but already one in four teachers and nearly 50 pupils are sick with COVID-19 at the Jean Renoir high school in Boulogne-Billancourt.
With new testing and contact tracing rules introduced at the start of this term, the headteacher, Aristide Adeilkalam, now faces a huge challenge.
“It’s very, very, very complicated,” Aidelkalam said, his glasses fogging up because of his face mask.
“Forty-seven pupils have COVID. I need to identify the contacts for each. Up until now, we could handle cases one at a time, as they arrived. Now we’re overwhelmed.”
The school of 620 students and 40 teachers in the suburbs of Paris is not alone – schools all over France are struggling to manage COVID cases.
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Australians on their own in this DIY Covid-19 pandemic
7:55PM January 7, 2022
In this confused and confounding new year, Australians have had to learn a sobering lesson as Covid case numbers soar and government services buckle or disappear entirely … we’re on our own.
The Covid pandemic has become the DIY pandemic, as people have turned to each other for advice on what to do when Omicron strikes, how to lay their hands on an elusive rapid antigen test kit, and which PCR testing station has the shortest queue.
On Facebook, private groups such as the one started by Brisbane woman Danica Clayton on Christmas Eve have undertaken the casual contact tracing that health authorities abandoned last year. The group’s membership is already approaching 200,000 and is growing faster than the grim daily count of new infections.
Similar websites allow those in isolation or sick at home to vent their frustration, providing a comforting sense of community at a deeply unsettling time.
This was particularly so in Queensland, which caught on to Covid with a vengeance after the state border reopened last month. The numbers tell the story, exploding from 3587 new cases on January 1 to 10,953 as of Friday, when 14 people were in intensive care in hospital, three of them on ventilators.
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https://www.ausdoc.com.au/news/omicron-variant-not-mild-declares-who
Omicron variant is not 'mild', declares WHO
Omicron is hospitalising and killing people says its director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
2 minutes to read
10th January 2022
The Omicron variant appears to produce less severe disease than the globally dominant Delta strain, but should not be categorised as "mild", the WHO has declared.
The agency said early studies showed that when compared with Delta there was a reduced risk of hospitalisation from the variant which first emerged in November.
And there appears also to be a reduced risk of severe COVID-19 for younger and older people, although the WHO said the impact on the elderly remains unclear as most of the cases studied have been in younger people.
"While Omicron does appear to be less severe compared to Delta, especially in those vaccinated, it does not mean it should be categorised as mild," its director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters last week.
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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jan/08/living-with-covid-has-turned-scott-morrisons-promise-sour-before-the-summer-is-out
‘Living with Covid’ has turned Scott Morrison’s promise sour before the summer is out
Sarah Martin, Chief political correspondent
The PM says he wants governments out of the lives of Australians, but in a raging pandemic that has left them feeling abandoned
Sat 8 Jan 2022 06.00 AEDT
Last modified on Sat 8 Jan 2022 15.08 AEDT
Supermarket shelves stripped bare, hospitals straining under pressure and worried Australians unable to access tests – welcome to the reality of living with Covid.
Far from the hot vaxxed summer Australians were looking forward to, the Omicron wave has thrust the country into yet another season of uncertainty, panic and fear.
Confused and seeking assurance, the public has turned to the government for help – but lo and behold, the government was busy pursuing its strategy of getting out of everyone’s lives.
Driven by a laissez-faire zeal, Scott Morrison has stressed for months that governments of all persuasions needed to extricate themselves from the lives of Australians as we all learnt to live with Covid.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/health-and-education/why-we-need-more-pandemic-defences-20220105-p59lza
How we get to the COVID-19 sweet spot
We can’t bulletproof ourselves jurisdictionally in Australia, we have to think globally. But we can create a better way of dealing with new variants that may lie ahead.
Jill Margo Health editor
Jan 7, 2022 – 12.55pm
Managing this pandemic is akin to playing snakes and ladders.
The hopeful part of this analogy is that it is ultimately possible to win the game. No one, however, can predict how soon this might happen. While economists tend to focus on the ladders, most health experts worry about the snakes.
There are differences, too, between what is happening globally and what is happening in individual countries, with life on the ground varying greatly between nations. This pandemic won’t be over until it’s over everywhere, but Australia can do much more to protect itself while fulfilling its obligations to its neighbours.
Some experts say the best domestic goal is to try to find a sweet spot where the country can live with the virus, as comfortably and as normally as possible, while waiting for the pandemic to run its course across the world. Establishing and maintaining such a position means remaining in a state of preparedness and being vigilant.
That is quite different to what was happening in Australia in November, when omicron officially emerged. Although the population was well vaccinated, not enough other protective measures were in place. The country was caught off guard, its health system wasn’t resilient enough to cope with the surge, and it gave way.
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With each wave, Australia’s leaders make the same expensive mistake
Despite everything COVID-19 has thrown at us, it seems our political leaders remain incapable of being proactive.
Laura Tingle Columnist
Jan 7, 2022 – 4.15pm
Just on a month ago, about the same time he was dumping social restrictions and advocating personal responsibility in dealing with COVID-19, NSW’s still-new Premier, Dominic Perrottet, made a speech arguing for the need to think about the lessons the pandemic had taught us about our system of government.
What he specifically had in mind was the nature of the federation.
“The pandemic may not yet be over,” he said. “But now is the right time to start thinking about the lessons COVID-19 has taught us about our federal system of government – and how we can respond.”
It was a genuinely interesting speech, and vaguely refreshing to hear someone sounding like they were actually thinking about stuff amid the chaos of pandemic management.
Of course, some of it looks a little sick now, given how the actions of Perrottet’s government appeared to accelerate the spread of the already contagious omicron variant.
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Climate Change.
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Europe energy crisis goes global
Holman W Jenkins Jr
The Wall Street Journal
10:13AM January 6, 2022
Hard to believe, but politics sometimes exhibits a pull toward the rational, especially when voters find it difficult to pay their bills, heat their homes and keep their jobs.
That’s happening in Europe now thanks to home-heating and electricity prices up 300 per cent at the wholesale level since last winter. In a quote echoed across the continent, one of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s parliamentary allies warned on the weekend of “catastrophic” damage to the government: “Elections are won and lost in people’s wallets.”
Europe’s mess has been framed as a story of many influences — the proverbial perfect storm. But it’s really a story of one thing, coal, plus hypocrisy.
By undiversifying its base-load power supply away from dirty coal while also dumping nuclear, Europe has invited all the consequences you read about: ill-advised reliance on Russian natural gas, frantic bidding wars with China for liquefied-gas shipments, fear of rolling blackouts whenever a French nuclear plant needs maintenance or the wind dies down or the sun goes behind a cloud.
Though firm believers in the risks of man-made climate change, analysts at the commodity research firm CPM Group cogently argue in a recent report that 2022 will be the year when energy and climate realism finally break through:
The gestures governments have been enacting, they write, are “not meaningful in the race to combat climate change.”
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Royal Commissions And The Like.
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No entries in this category.
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National Budget Issues.
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Australian markets betting on three interest rate rises this year
7:51PM January 2, 2022
Bond traders are pricing in three rate rises this year, in defiance of Reserve Bank governor Phil Lowe and many economists who believe emergency monetary policy settings will not need to be reined back for another two years.
As investors headed into the summer break, financial markets were betting on as many as seven RBA hikes by the end of next year – an alarming prospect for new borrowers who have chased soaring house prices by taking on record amounts of debt. The aggressive betting on financial markets comes as John Howard and Peter Costello criticised Dr Lowe’s monetary policy response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The former prime minister and treasurer said slashing the cost of borrowing had led to even more unaffordable homes and Dr Lowe had been wrong to signal that rates would stay at near zero until 2024.
Since the end of 2019, established house values have rocketed 26 per cent higher, on ABS figures, ranging from a 15 per cent rise in Darwin, to more than 30 per cent in Sydney and Canberra.
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RBA’s yield curve defeat gives bond market upper hand
Tom Richardson Markets reporter and commentator
Jan 4, 2022 – 9.28am
Whether central banks dictate cash rate policy to markets or markets dictate cash rate policy to central banks is an age-old question set to be tested again in 2022.
In Australia, the bond market’s late-October revolt against the Reserve Bank’s targeted yield curve control still threatens climactic consequences after the nation’s central bank was forced to dramatically abandon a flagship policy of keeping the yield on the three-year Australian government bond at 0.1 per cent.
The RBA’s forced concession and implicit admission that the cash rate would climb above 0.1 per cent before April 2024 gave a green light to the big four lenders Commonwealth Bank, ANZ, National Australia Bank, and Westpac to hike fixed home loan rates. All four lifted rates across one to four-year loans four times (equal to 16 separate moves) in just over two months.
The steepest rises came across three and four-year fixed loans. This directly reflects the fact mortgage lenders now expect the RBA to aggressively hike rates in a period much shorter than the next three years.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/worst-week-since-delta-for-consumer-spending-20220107-p59mmc
‘Worst week since delta’ for consumer spending
Tess Bennett Work & Careers reporter
Jan 7, 2022 – 1.55pm
Consumer spending has dropped to its lowest levels since the delta lockdowns as cautious consumers avoid shopping and eating out and businesses battle to find enough staff to keep their doors open, new data released by ANZ shows.
Although the retail and hospitality sectors are open, spending in Sydney and Melbourne in the week ended January 5 resembled typical lockdown conditions, with spending in Sydney at its lowest point since the pandemic began.
Nationally, spending across dining and shopping dropped 39 per cent in the first week of 2022, compared to the week ended December 24.
“The data shows starkly how behaviour is impacted by surging case numbers even without government intervention,” said David Plank, Head of Australian Economics at ANZ.
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Health Issues.
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Unvaxxed pregnant women warned
7:54PM January 5, 2022
Clinicians across Australia’s three largest states have reported significantly higher hospital admissions for unvaccinated pregnant women with Covid-19, warning that vaccine uptake remains dangerously below expectations as Omicron cases continue to surge.
Infectious disease specialist Paul Griffin, who works with Covid-19 patients in Brisbane’s Mater Maternity Hospital, said he had been shocked by the high volume of unvaccinated pregnant women admitted to hospital in the past three weeks.
“We are currently observing large numbers of people at various stages of pregnancy who aren’t vaccinated and, as a result, require admission for antibody therapy, management of symptoms and even in a number of cases intensive care,” he said.
While none of the state health departments collect centralised data on the number of unvaccinated pregnant women admitted to hospital, Professor Griffin said it was time more up-to-date information was available to “grasp the scope of the problem”.
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International Issues.
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America will be the next empire to decline: Dalio
Jan 2, 2022 – 5.54pm
Key Points
- 36 Dalio is the 36th richest person in America and within the top 100 globally.
- $150b in assets is managed by his venture Bridgewater.
- 30pc The chance of civil war erupting in America in the next decade, claims Dalio.
- $12b Bridgewater loss in 2020 as coronavirus hit.
To make money betting on the future, Ray Dalio delves into the past. As one of America’s richest men, and founder of the world’s biggest hedge fund, being well versed in history has proved lucrative.
“Studying the Great Depression in the 1930s allowed me to anticipate the 2008 financial crisis and do very well in it,” says Dalio who, at the age of 72, remains co-chief investment officer of Bridgewater Associates.
If the past can provide valuable insight, then trouble is brewing for the global economy - or so Dalio believes.
He puts the risk of US civil war in the next decade at 30 per cent, believes stock markets are soon headed for difficult times and predicts the Chinese “empire” will become the dominant global power, leapfrogging America and transforming the geopolitical landscape.
His book, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order, which was published in November, is a 500 plus-page study of how empires have risen and fallen. The US is the next to decline, according to Dalio, who is starry-eyed about China.
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Russia-Ukraine conflict lies in the bones of an 11th-century prince
By Brett Forrest
Dow Jones
5:05PM January 2, 2022
In the 11th century, a prince called Yaroslav the Wise united principalities lying between the Baltic and Black seas, codifying laws and forming the first political state of the eastern Slavs. Both Russia and Ukraine claim him as a forefather.
Now, Ukraine is searching for Yaroslav’s missing bones.
Finding them would be a notable if symbolic victory, bolstering Ukraine’s case for sovereignty at a moment of significant tension with its neighbour. Yaroslav’s legacy is contested ground, forming a historical underpinning to Russia’s current military build-up near Ukraine that U.S. officials see as a potential prelude to a Russian invasion.
Russia and Ukraine each claim to be the political heir of the Kievan Rus federation he founded. Ukraine awards the order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise for service to the state. A Russian frigate carrying his name patrols the Baltic Sea. Yaroslav’s image appears on a bank note from each country.
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Deep uncertainty looms over global economy in 2022
Never have there been so many big issues to watch that could have dire implications for today’s elevated markets.
Jim O'Neill Columnist
Jan 3, 2022 – 11.24am
At the start of the new year, the parlour game of pretending to know what will happen in the next 12 months has begun. Yet when it comes to 2022 (and beyond), I am not sure whether it is worth even pretending. I cannot recall a previous time when there were so many big question marks looming over so many key economic issues.
This deep uncertainty is especially intriguing with respect to financial markets. Should any of several developments to watch take a negative turn, the implications for today’s elevated markets could be dire.
Among the most urgent and topical issues, other than COVID-19, is inflation. Are this year’s price increases transient, or do they represent something more ominous? My useless answer is, “I don’t know.” Although I did suggest at this time last year that inflation would become a bigger issue than weak GDP growth, now, as I look ahead to 2022, I am far less sure.
Much of today’s inflationary pressures could still relate to the speed of the recovery in many economies, and, of course, to large, still-persisting supply disruptions. But the supply shortages themselves may be symptoms of bigger problems, such as economic overstimulation, ineffective monetary policies, or weak productivity growth.
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‘The easy part is over’: Uncertainty looms after world’s COVID rebound
Most economists agree that the backdrop in most countries of a strong recovery combined with high inflation will make it difficult to balance supply and demand.
Chris Giles
Jan 3, 2022 – 11.09am
The world economy rebounded from the historic recession caused by the COVID-19 crisis better than many economists expected in 2021 but faces a harder path ahead in the coming year, forecasters have warned.
Progress will depend on the virulence of the pandemic, the ease with which inflation is tamed and the dispersion of the economic damage across countries and industries, they said, warning of a rising risk of monetary and fiscal policy errors as governments and central banks seek to respond.
“The easy part of this uneven global economic recovery appears over,” said Daan Struyven, senior global economist at Goldman Sachs.
Janet Henry, chief economist of HSBC, said the outcome was unlikely to be a “Goldilocks” scenario — not too hot and not too cold.
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Expect the unexpected in global inflation dynamics
A lot of the debate on growth, inflation and stock markets has been about the secular shifts we may or may not be entering. But what if the only constant in the next few years is volatility?
Rana Foroohar Contributor
Jan 3, 2022 – 8.16am
The long-expected end of easy money seems to be upon us. In the past couple of weeks, the Bank of England has raised rates, and the US Federal Reserve has indicated a swifter tapering of its asset-buying program and as many as three rate increases in the year ahead.
All this is predicated on the idea that “transitory” inflation is becoming more permanent, moving from commodities and durable goods into areas such as wages and services.
A lot of the debate on growth, inflation and sharemarkets has been about the secular shifts that we may or may not be entering. But what if the only constant in the next few years is volatility? What if inflation dynamics that seem entrenched begin to oscillate?
I think you can argue this will be the case for a number of reasons. First, the ripple effects of the pandemic have created an inflationary environment unlike in the 1970s, the last time the US had a prolonged period of inflation. COVID-19 has created a series of asynchronous recessions and recoveries around the world.
Trio of indicators set to give Wall Street clues on 2022 returns
Jessica Menton
Jan 4, 2022 – 8.47am
As goes January, so goes the year.
That’s the theory of a phenomenon known as the “January Barometer”, which suggests that if the stock market rises during the first month of the year, further gains may be in store for the next 11 months.
Since 1950, the so-called January Barometer has been right 84.5 per cent of the time, according to the Stock Trader’s Almanac.
The S&P 500 surged 27 per cent in 2021, surpassing most bullish outlooks. But analysts expect returns to be more modest this year as the Federal Reserve winds down its massive stimulus support to combat rising inflation. This is expected to weigh on corporate earnings growth, and eventually stock prices.
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China’s Evergrande halts trading after ordered to tear down apartments
By Jan Dahinten
January 3, 2022 — 3.29pm
Chinese developer shares tumbled following local media reports that China Evergrande Group has been ordered to tear down apartment blocks in a development in Hainan province. Evergrande halted trading in its shares.
An index of Chinese developer shares slumped 2.8 per cent as of 11.37 a.m. local time, with Sunac China Holdings and Shimao Group Holdings plunging more than 10 per cent. A local government in Hainan told Evergrande to demolish 39 buildings in 10 days because the building permit was illegally obtained, news wire Cailian reported on Saturday.
Evergrande gave no details on the trading suspension other than saying it would make an announcement containing inside information.
The government of Danzhou, a prefecture-level city in the southern Chinese province of Hainan, asked Evergrande to tear down 39 illegal buildings in 10 days, Cailian reported on Sunday, citing a document from the local government.
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Apple becomes world’s first $US3 trillion company
By Nivedita Balu
January 4, 2022 — 7.39am
Apple became the first company with a $US3 trillion ($4.2 trillion) stockmarket value, lifted by investors’ confidence that the iPhone maker will keep launching best-selling products as it explores new markets such as automated cars and virtual reality.
On the first day of trading in 2022, the Silicon Valley company’s shares hit a record of $US182.88 in morning trade in New York.
The world’s most valuable company is the first to reach the latest milestone as investors bet that consumers will continue to shell out top dollar for iPhones, MacBooks and services such as Apple TV and Apple Music.
“It’s a fantastic accomplishment and certainly worthy to be celebrated,” said Jake Dollarhide, chief executive officer of Longbow Asset Management in Tulsa, Oklahoma. “It just shows you how far Apple has come, and how dominant it is seen as in the majority of investors’ eyes.”
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China ‘stabilising’ after a year of reforms
8:30PM January 3, 2022
Thomas Fang is cautiously optimistic about the outlook for China’s economy and markets in 2022.
Regulatory change is now somewhat expected and a lower growth rate will be partly a result of efforts to deleverage and reorientate the economy to lessen systemic risk and meet its goals.
Still, it was challenging for investors to understand and accept the regulatory changes behind last year’s underperformance of sharemarkets in Hong Kong and the mainland.
While the MSCI World Index of developed markets rose a massive 20 per cent last year, China’s Shanghai Composite rose just 4.8 per cent and the Hang Seng Index dived 14 per cent as Hong-Kong listed shares of mainland and US-listed companies were pummelled.
“I think there’s some comfort in terms of the risk premiums priced in,” said Mr Fang, who is the head of China global markets at UBS.
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https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/ray-dalio-says-minimise-cash-bond-holdings-20220105-p59lwr
Ray Dalio says minimise cash, bond holdings
Nathan Crooks
Jan 5, 2022 – 5.24am
Ray Dalio renewed his warning about holding cash and bonds amid the ongoing, pandemic-fuelled increase in debt creation and monetisation in the US.
“This printing of money and buying of debt assets has driven interest rates so low that cash and bonds are stupid to own,” he wrote in a post on LinkedIn. “I think one should consider minimising one’s ownership of cash and bonds in dollars, euros, and yen.”
Dalio, the billionaire founder of Bridgewater Associates, said it would be a good time to borrow in those currencies. Investments should be saved for stocks and inflation-hedge assets in socially and financially healthy countries, he added.
While Dalio has long been known for his interest in China and its rise as a global power, he said the current economic paradigm is being driven just as much by internal conflicts over wealth and values in the US that have not been seen since the 1930s.
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‘No one can win a nuclear war’: Superpowers release rare joint statement
By Andrey Ostroukh
Updated January 4, 2022 — 12.30pmfirst published at 12.40am
Moscow: China, Russia, the UK, the United States and France have agreed that a further spread of nuclear arms and a nuclear war should be avoided.
According to a joint statement released on Tuesday morning (AEDT), the five countries – permanent members of the United Nations Security Council – said they considered it their primary responsibility to avoid war between the nuclear states and to reduce strategic risks, while aiming to work to create an atmosphere of security.
“We declare there could be no winners in a nuclear war, it should never be started,” the Russian-language version of the statement read.
An English-language version was released by the White House.
“We affirm that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” the statement reads. “We also affirm that nuclear weapons – for as long as they continue to exist – should serve defensive purposes, deter aggression and prevent war. We believe strongly that the further spread of such weapons must be prevented.”
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To save America, the Republican Party first has to save itself
The Wall Street Journal
5:46PM January 4, 2022
Democrats have spent a year trying to re-engineer the US economy, redraft the nation’s social compact, and remake its political and legal institutions, all on the back of an imaginary electoral mandate. They’re going to spend a good deal of time in 2022 telling us how the Republican Party poses an existential threat to America as we know it.
We should take a moment to step back, admire the chutzpah and deride the hypocrisy. Many of us have devoted a good deal of time in the past year to pointing out the darkly illiberal direction of modern progressivism and the cant that sustains it. But if we want to find the path back to national renewal, conservatives should resolve to acknowledge that the challenges to democracy come not exclusively from one side.
The country’s future won’t be secured by shrill appeals to partisanship or by “owning” your opponent. It’s true that, thanks to the extremism and ineptitude of the Democrats, Republicans have a historic opportunity to redeem the nation. But to convert a mere electoral victory in midterms into genuine progress toward national regeneration will require persuasion — especially of the large numbers of Americans with grave doubts about the modern Republican Party. That will require a more thorough repudiation of the illiberal tendency in their own ranks.
To be sure, the progressives who lecture us on the sanctity of the electoral process are the same ones who subverted it five years ago. In 2022 we’ll presumably learn even more about the plot to discredit and then disable Donald Trump’s presidency, cobbled together by Democrats and their allies in the media and Silicon Valley.
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https://www.afr.com/markets/equity-markets/mounting-risks-cloud-2022-market-outlook-20220102-p59lav
Mounting risks cloud 2022 market outlook
Inflation, slower growth, geopolitical threats, and systemic problems are set to keep investors on the edge of their seats in 2022.
Nouriel Roubini Contributor
Jan 5, 2022 – 1.29pm
Despite dips and disruptions from new variants of COVID-19, 2021 turned out to be a relatively positive year for economies and markets in most parts of the world. Growth rose above its potential after the severe recession of 2020, and financial markets recovered robustly.
This was especially the case in the US, where sharemarkets reached new highs, owing partly to the Federal Reserve’s ultra-loose monetary policy (though central banks in other advanced economies pursued radically accommodative policies of their own).
But 2022 may be more difficult. The pandemic is not over. Omicron may not be as virulent as previous variants – particularly in highly vaccinated advanced economies – but it is much more contagious, which means that hospitalisations and deaths will remain high. The resulting uncertainty and risk aversion will suppress demand and exacerbate supply-chain bottlenecks.
Together with excess savings, pent-up demand, and loose monetary and fiscal policies, those bottlenecks fuelled inflation in 2021. Many of the central bankers who insisted that the inflationary surge was transitory have now conceded that it will persist. With varying degrees of urgency, they are planning to phase out unconventional monetary policies such as quantitative easing, so that they can start to normalise interest rates.
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Endemic civil disorder could be America’s future
A large minority of Americans regard the opposing political party as more or less illegitimate. Few are old enough to remember that politics can be so dangerous as to start total wars.
Janan Ganesh Contributor
Jan 5, 2022 – 11.02am
Some 50 winters ago, the UK home secretary Reginald Maudling gave up on the outright defeat of Irish Republican terrorism. What might be feasible, he said, almost spoofing the British art of managing decline, was to keep the bloodshed down to “acceptable” levels.
What was at the time a quite sensational gaffe went unmarked on its semicentennial last month. This was a sheepish admission that he had not been callous or defeatist, but prescient.
A year on from the US Capitol siege, there is talk, even among unexcitable scholars, of a second civil war. That remains an epic stretch. Red and Blue America do not map on to contiguous geographic blocs, as the Confederacy and the Union did. The central state is unrecognisably stronger than it was in 1861. There is (for now) no single precipitating issue to equal South Carolina’s declaration of secession. In the medical parlance of today, what is more plausible than war is disorder of a chronic and endemic nature. What is plausible is an “acceptable” level of violence.
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The ‘Made in China’ plan is back - and it’s better
By Anjani Trivedi
January 6, 2022 — 8.05am
As the world headed into 2022 grappling with the latest virus variant, China unveiled a sharpened version of the Made in China 2025 industrial policy blueprint. Previous iterations may have had nations like the US on edge, but this is the one to keep an eye on.
State planners released a five-year smart manufacturing development plan in late December that aims to digitise 70 per cent of the country’s large enterprises. China will now focus on building and owning industrial robots, as well as upgrading equipment and processes used in the manufacturing sector.
These may not have the same buzz as nanotechnology, new materials or human job-stealing robots — sectors targeted in the last “Made in China” plan. However, the latest blueprint has the potential to help Beijing become the factory floor of the future, with uber-efficient and precise machinery, at a time when the US’s biggest hurdle to competitiveness is just that. With global supply chains in a state of disarray, China’s intent to upgrade its vast industrial production sector and the ecosystem around it to bolster its role as the world’s supplier is shrewd and prescient: Beijing will do better what it already does well.
Core to the latest intelligent manufacturing plan is growing the country’s industrial robotics sector revenue at an annual rate of 20 per cent over the next three years and doubling the density of robots — a proxy for automation adoption. These aren’t just in factories, but also in warehouses, logistical functions and other related areas that make the entire sector operate in a way that raises productivity, including better and more electric cars, batteries and electronics.
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‘Complete anarchy’: Kazakhstan cabinet resigns as rioters torch presidential palace
By Olzhas Auyezov and Jim Heintz
January 6, 2022 — 6.41am
Almaty: Protesters in Kazakhstan’s largest city stormed the presidential palace and the mayor’s office and set both buildings on fire, as demonstrations sparked by a rise in fuel prices in the Central Asian nation escalated sharply.
In an attempt on Wednesday (Thursday AEDT) to calm the worst unrest to rock the Central Asian nation for more than a decade, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev fired his predecessor, former president Nursultan Nazarbayev, as the head of the country’s security council.
He called on a Russia-led security bloc of nation to help Kazakhstan combat what he described as a “terrorist threat” as eight police and security officers were confirmed dead and 317 injured as rioters smashed public buildings and broadcasters’ headquarters with clubs and axes.
He said he had appealed to the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), a military alliance of Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.
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Republicans’ January 6 responsibility
The Wall Street Journal
January 6, 2022
We’re in an acrimonious period of partisan tribalism and have been for some time. Both parties are guilty of overwrought denunciations of their political opponents.
My criticisms are often aimed at Democrats; on the anniversary of January 6, I’m addressing squarely those Republicans who for a year have excused the actions of the rioters who stormed the US Capitol, disrupted congress as it received the Electoral College’s results, and violently attempted to overturn the election.
These apologists say those who stormed the Capitol were innocent patriots, tourists visiting the seat of the national government to petition their elected representatives peacefully. We’re told that these harmless, ordinary Americans are being persecuted as political prisoners.
Let’s stipulate that while the thousands who went to the Capitol a year ago were wrong to insist the election was stolen, most weren’t violent as they exercised their first-amendment rights to gather peacefully on the Mall — just as I had seen liberals gather to protest both inaugurations of President George W. Bush.
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Internet anger helped inspire the Capitol riots. So let’s log off.
Last year’s attack on the Capitol showed how thoroughly the Internet’s ugliness has transformed us. We can’t log off forever - but a day away will do us good.
Adam Chandler
Jan 7, 2022 – 5.00am
Earlier this week, ahead of the anniversary of the attack on the US Capitol, a new Washington Post-University of Maryland poll offered some of the grimmest metrics yet about the state of public trust and extremism in the United States.
“The percentage of Americans who say violent action against the government is justified at times stands at 34 per cent,” the poll found. It’s the highest figure on record in over two decades and a double-digit jump from 2015 when a similar study was conducted.
This finding is less surprising than it should be – especially if you spend enough time online. As a coda to a year marred by enduring rage over the 2020 presidential election, the despair and endless slog of pandemic life, vaccines, inflation and political stasis, it resonates with sentiments that many of us surely witness, and possibly feel, in the virtual spaces we inhabit. Whether you’re wishing a harmless “happy birthday” to a distant relative on Facebook or searching for a dentist on the app Nextdoor, it seems nearly impossible to do either without encountering the toxic fury that has been prioritised in social media feeds.
By now, we know what study after study says about how moral outrage is a key feature of social media, regardless of whether we’re exposed to content we agree with or not. We also know that platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter profit most from what polarises best. It’s practically conventional wisdom that hashing out all our politics online and in relative anonymity, erodes discourse, weaponises opinion, spreads lies and artificially makes enemies out of strangers.
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Global democracy escaped an earthquake a year ago
Had the storming of Capitol Hill overturned the US presidential election, the international liberal democratic order would have struggled to survive without its prime mover.
David Alexander Contributor
Jan 6, 2022 – 1.44pm
Americans are set to mark the anniversary of the January 6 storming of Capitol Hill, the culmination of Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the presidential election result last year.
Perhaps less appreciated is how close the rest of the free world also came to disaster, collateral damage in a high-stakes Washington drama.
Let’s start by recognising that President Trump’s campaign to thwart the election result could have turned out differently.
Trump was relentlessly pressing election chiefs, legal chiefs, Congressmen, and the vice-president to overturn or provide a pretext for overturning the election result.
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The two-headed fight for Ukraine and Taiwan
Seth Cropsey
The Wall Street Journal
11:33AM January 6, 2022
A crisis may be imminent in Ukraine as Vladimir Putin gathers troops on the Russian border for a possible invasion. American policy makers have also begun focusing on a potential conflict in Taiwan, one that is coming to a boil more slowly. But American statesmen ought to understand: These events can’t be viewed in isolation; they are connected and part of a larger political competition for Eurasia.
Whether Mr. Putin is seriously considering action against Ukraine is an open question. But Mr. Putin has achieved three objectives simply by posing a credible threat. First, he has gained President Biden’s attention, and the two had teleconferences on Dec. 7 and 30. Russia views itself as a great power and wants to deal with other great powers directly, not via the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, an execrable reminder of Russian weakness and Soviet collapse.
Second, Mr. Biden hasn’t committed to a military deployment in support of Ukraine, instead emphasising an economic response, such as sanctions, to a Russian offensive. This is a signal that Mr. Biden is reluctant to intervene militarily. Third, and most important, Mr. Putin has mobilised the Russian military to allow almost immediate combat operations against Belarus, allowing him to swallow Minsk. Internationally, Mr. Putin still hopes to achieve the Soviet dream of dismantling the American-led European security system. This is similar to his objective in the Middle East: replacing the U.S. as the prime external force in the region.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/us-economy-adds-199-000-jobs-in-december-20220108-p59mql
US economy adds 199,000 jobs in December
Reade Pickert
Jan 8, 2022 – 4.54am
Washington | The US unemployment rate fell below 4 per cent and wages jumped last month, adding to evidence of a tight labour market that’s expected to help spur Federal Reserve interest-rate liftoff as soon as March despite disappointing payroll growth.
The jobless rate fell to 3.9 per cent and monthly wage growth accelerated in December, a Labor Department report showed. A 199,000 increase in nonfarm payrolls followed upward revisions in the prior two months, and the labour force participation rate was unchanged.
The latest employment numbers suggest that despite still-robust labour demand, the factors that have kept a lid on hiring throughout the fall -- a lack of childcare, virus fears, large savings cushions -- persisted late last year. The omicron variant, driving COVID-19 cases to record highs in recent days, is another wrinkle and poses a risk to the pace of employment growth in early 2022.
The jobs report is made up of two surveys -- one of households and one of employers. While the survey of businesses showed disappointing job growth, the household survey posted a marked improvement in employment.
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35,000 pages of evidence, 300 witnesses but lots Capitol riot probe still doesn’t know
Updated January 7, 2022 — 3.56pm first published at 11.59am
Washington: Like so many other Americans, Steve O’Neal will never forget where he was the day Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the United States Capitol.
The Washington resident was riding his bike on the north-east corner of Capitol Park when he saw the rioters running up the steps of the iconic building. He didn’t realise what was happening until he noticed his wife had called 10 times from their home as she watched the chaos unfold on TV, begging him to “get out immediately”.
“I’m not sure where we are as a country now,” he told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald as President Joe Biden marked the first anniversary of the attack on Thursday (Friday AEDT). “I just hope that Congress can do something to prevent things like that from happening again.”
O’Neal’s sentiments are emblematic of the expectations many others have placed on the congressional committee examining the events of January 6, 2021.
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I look forward to comments on all this!
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David.
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