January 26, 2023 Edition
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The world seems to be getting into gear for the year and the disaster that is the Ukraine war rolls on with Germany really letting the side down badly…. Just pathetic.
In OZ we are getting ready for Australia Day which has sadly, it seems, has become rather divisive. We need to sort out what we commemorate and when to stop the friction and division.
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Major Issues.
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ETF market shrinks by $4b, inflows slow
Aleks Vickovich Wealth editor
Jan 15, 2023 – 2.46pm
The ASX-listed exchange-traded funds market shrank last year for the first time since at least 2017, ending December with $4 billion less in its collective coffers than it held at the end of 2021.
The local sharemarket’s ETFs had $130 billion in investor assets under management (AUM) at December 31, according to Australian Securities Exchange data analysed by researcher ETFtracker, representing a 2.7 per cent decline on the $134 billion funds had invested at the end of 2021.
ETFtracker analyst Mark Monfort described it as a “choppy, sideways year” for the much-hyped market, which grew at a compound annual rate of 40 per cent a year between 2018 and 2021. “This has mostly been driven by negative returns as net inflows continued to come into the market each month,” Mr Monfort said.
However, while flows stayed in positive territory throughout the year, investors allocated less to ASX-listed ETFs last year than in 2021 or 2020, thwarting the sector’s upward trajectory. ASX data shows about $16 billion flowing into its ETFs last year, down from more than $22 billion in the previous year.
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Union membership in private sector shrinks to 8pc
David Marin-Guzman Workplace correspondent
Jan 15, 2023 – 4.58pm
Union membership in the private sector has shrunk to a record low of 8 per cent after a loss of more than 176,000 members over the past six years.
Data compiled for The Australian Financial Review by the Australian Bureau of Statistics reveals 779,700 private sector employees were members of a union in their main job in 2022 compared to 956,200 in 2016 – a decline of 176,500 or 20 per cent.
The drop means union membership for private sector employees in their main job has fallen from 9.3 per cent to 8.2 per cent over the six years.
In the public sector, union membership as a proportion of the workforce is much higher at 33.7 per cent. There were 642,000 public sector union members in 2022 compared to 606,500 in 2016.
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https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/the-odds-are-stacked-in-vote-for-the-voice-20230115-p5cclz
The odds are stacked in vote for the Voice
Peter Dutton is not being picky to ask for more details when Labor’s record at getting referenda over the line is so abysmal.
Dean Smith Liberal Senator
Jan 15, 2023 – 5.00pm
There is more truth to Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s claim last week that the Prime Minister is setting up the Voice to parliament referendum to fail than many care to acknowledge.
Australia’s history with constitutional referendums is well known – since federation in 1901, 44 referendum proposals have been put to the vote and just eight have succeeded.
On each occasion when the “Yes” vote has won, it has been carried in all six states.
None of the eight referendums since 1977 has been successful, making it almost five decades since Australians last felt it necessary to amend our founding document.
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Wesfarmers, Telstra push to sell corporate bonds to retail investors
Jonathan Shapiro and Aleks Vickovich
Jan 16, 2023 – 4.59am
Wesfarmers and Telstra want to sell corporate bonds directly to retail investors, if the red tape around such deals could be cut, aiming to attract new sources of capital as yields surge to their highest levels in over a decade.
The ASX listed blue chips each have about $10 billion of long-term debt but are keen to tap everyday investors seeking to diversify away from equities, who would provide capital as wholesale funding costs rise.
The yields on corporate bonds issued by highly rated companies have surged from their ultra-low levels of below 2 per cent in 2021 to around 5 per cent, making the asset class more compelling to investors. In the United States, retail accounts for about 20 per cent of the market, compared to just 1 per cent in Australia.
Wesfarmers head of group finance, Tricia Ho-Hudson, said the focus of the $52 billion company was to issue debt “nimbly” to a “broad base of supportive investors”.
“An attractive opportunity for Wesfarmers, and for other well-rated corporates like us is to be able to access our home-grown market in Australia at any point,” she said.
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Record number of threats against MPs reported to federal police
January 15, 2023 — 5.00am
Aggressive and violent incidents involving federal politicians have skyrocketed, with the Australian Federal Police last year receiving more than 500 reports of threats to the safety of MPs, the prime minister and the governor-general.
The incidents last year included a spate of online threats, letters delivered to electorate offices, verbal altercations and destruction of property.
The brutal murder of British MP Sir David Amess in 2021 led the AFP to conduct an internal review of the safety of Australian politicians.
Federal police have experienced an increase in reports of direct threats to MPs since about 2017 but the numbers have tripled in the past three years. Many MPs put the rise in threats down to a surge in far-right extremism and conspiracy movements.
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Australia not immune from fascism’s global revival
Political and international editor
January 17, 2023 — 5.00am
Dominic Perrottet might have thought he was just playing when he wore a Nazi uniform to his 21st birthday party, but he was playing with fire. It’s the fire that’s once again threatening to consume human liberty worldwide.
Fascism is not the exclusive preserve of Hitler and Mussolini, and it is not safely bottled in the formaldehyde of history. It dresses in a variety of forms, and it is today enjoying a great revival.
Far-right forces have attempted violent coups against elected governments in three of the world’s most important democracies in the last couple of years: the January 6 attack on the US Congress in 2021; the plot against the German state to install a prince as dictator, foiled last month by a mobilisation of 3000 police; and now the attempted violent shutdown last week of Brazil’s parliament, presidency and supreme court.
These are not ragtag failed states. Each of the three nations is the dominant power in its continent. In all three cases, the democratic order prevailed, but the antidemocratic movement lives on and a threat remains.
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Consumer confidence picks up, but still ‘depressingly’ low: Westpac
11:04AM January 17, 2023
Households have started the New Year in a more upbeat mood thanks to a summer holiday break in rate hikes, but consumer confidence remains “depressingly low”, Westpac’s latest survey reveals.
Westpac’s January survey showed a substantial 5 per cent lift in the bank’s sentiment index to 84 points, the largest increase since April 2021, as Australians became less optimistic about the prospects for their financial situations and the economy in 2023.
With the Reserve Bank board not meeting in January, Westpac chief economist Bill Evans said the break in relentless rate hikes had likely provided a psychological boost to households, despite the consensus view for another rise to 3.35 per cent when the RBA board next meets on February 7.
Sentiment among respondents with a mortgage climbed by 11 per cent, the survey showed.
“One likely explanation for the lift in confidence is that January was the first month since April last year that did not see an increase in the RBA cash rate. If so, we should be cautious about reading the January sentiment rise as part of a continuing trend,” Mr Evans said.
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D-Day approaches for urgent defence strategic review
12:00AM January 17, 2023
The Albanese government is approaching climax point on the Defence Strategic Review, which will likely be delivered to government in the week beginning February 6. The government’s formal response to the DSR, and the study into acquiring nuclear-powered submarines, will come in March.
Next week, Stephen Smith and Angus Houston will travel to London for consultations with the British who undertook their own DSR under the brilliant academic, John Bew, in 2021. Smith will stay in London and immediately take up duties as high commissioner.
This is partly because there will soon be a new Australia UK Ministerial Meeting, or AUKMIN, with Defence Minister Richard Marles and Foreign Minister Penny Wong expected to travel to the UK. Smith attended two AUKMINs as foreign minister. It’s common sense for the new high commissioner to attend the new AUKMIN.
DSR consultations have wound down, writing is under way. For any final touches arising out of consultations with the Brits, Smith and Houston will have to work together long-distance.
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Resources ETFs big winners in 2022 as tech funds nurse wounds
Lucy Dean Wealth reporter
Jan 18, 2023 – 5.00am
A turbulent 2022 saw exchange-traded funds focused on resources and commodities outperform, while those angled to tech and cryptocurrency tanked, analysis of the top and bottom ETFs of the last year has found.
The findings by investment data analyst ETFtracker list Betashares’ global energy ETF (ASX:FUEL) as the strongest performing non-geared product, returning 40.79 per cent, following the 2022 boom in mining and energy stocks.
The only products that outperformed it were geared products, which leverage debt to turbocharge gains. Those products were Global X’s ultra-short Nasdaq 100 Hedge Fund (ASX:SNAS) which returned 81.61 per cent, and Betashares’ US equities strong bear hedge fund (ASX:BBUS), returning 44.18 per cent.
ETFtracker measured total returns, including price performance and reinvestment of dividend returns.
At the other end of the spectrum, Betashares’ crypto innovators ETF (ASX:CRYP) was the worst performing, down 81.97 per cent, while Global X’s ultra-long Nasdaq 100 hedge fund (ASX:LNAS) lost 70.36 per cent.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/how-the-war-and-inflation-have-helped-australians-20230117-p5cd40
How the war and inflation have helped Australians
High commodity prices and inflation are reducing debts for Australia’s national coffers and young home buyers alike.
Chris Richardson Economist
Jan 17, 2023 – 4.35pm
War and inflation . Those terrible twins upturned 2022, causing considerable carnage.
And they’re still raging in the early days of 2023, though the damage they’re causing is increasingly concentrated in gas and electricity prices.
Those energy prices dominate the outlook for inflation in Australia.
And energy prices are also central to the slowdown starting in our economy, given their corrosive impact on interest rates and on purchasing power.
That’s why they’ve been central to the government’s scramble as it tries to limit their damage on all these fronts – on inflation, interest rates, growth, and the living standards of Australian families.
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Nuclear subs deal an exercise in futility and should be sunk
Former diplomat
January 18, 2023 — 5.00am
The decision for Australia to acquire nuclear-powered submarines has taken on a life of its own, divorced from disciplined considerations such as cost, effectiveness, and alternatives. At best, the decision is ill-considered. At worst, it’s Treasury-busting lunacy.
Former head of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute Peter Jennings has claimed that Australia’s purchase of the subs – eight in total at an estimated cost of an additional $20 billion per year, out to about 2050 – is necessary to “deter” China. That’s a big call in a number of ways.
In particular, what would the submarines deter China from doing? Is it to deter China from attacking Australia? There is no evidence that China even dreams of such a misadventure.
Australia is thousands of kilometres from China, and its approaches are characterised by maritime choke points and potential killing zones. That’s thousands of kilometres where its forces would be exposed to attack; thousands of kilometres of stretched supply lines requiring enormous and sophisticated logistics.
We have seen Russia’s logistical challenges in conducting a land war just across its border, logistical failures have been a key reason for Russia’s military underachievement. The challenge for China in attacking Australia would dwarf anything Russia has experienced in Ukraine.
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PM fumbles over details of the voice
By Sarah Ison
12:42PM January 18, 2023
Anthony Albanese says the government hasn’t sought advice from the solicitor general on legal issues that could arise from enshrining an Indigenous voice to parliament in the Constitution, but has hosed down suggestions the voice could take matters to court should the government disagree with its advice.
In an interview on Wednesday described by the Coalition as “a train wreck”, the prime minister could not answer questions over whether members of the body would be appointed or elected, and would not rule out legislating the voice even if the referendum failed.
“One of the things that I’m not doing is leading with a position that assumes a loss of a referendum. That would not be a very sensible thing to do,” he told Ben Fordham on 2GB.
“I am determined to do what I can, along with so many other Australians who will be campaigning for a ‘yes’ vote from across the political spectrum. And that is my focus.”
Mr Albanese said that if Australians voted ‘no’ at the referendum, that would mean there would “be no constitutional change”.
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https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/2023/01/19/internet-billionaires-bitcoin-kohler/
6:00am, Jan 19, 2023 Updated: 6:52pm, Jan 18
Alan Kohler: The internet is a battleground between billionaires and altruists
Last week the price of Bitcoin went back above $US20,000 apiece and its market cap – that is the total value of all Bitcoins – regained $US400 billion.
Tesla’s market cap, meanwhile, did NOT go back above $US400 billion, having fallen below that level about a month after Bitcoin’s did in November. Tesla’s share price continues to flounder at two-year lows, down 70 per cent from its peak.
As it
happens, in one of those strange twists of fate, the total values of both Tesla
and Bitcoin hit $US1.2 trillion a month apart in late 2021.
Are the fortunes of these two things that are connected by coincidence actually
entwined?
In a way they are. Let me explain why.
Tesla’s share price crashed last year because its founder and CEO, the billionaire Elon Musk, decided to buy Twitter in April and has since been distracted by it, to put it mildly. His fellow Tesla shareholders are being driven to distraction.
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Aussie troops have five weeks to turn ordinary Ukrainians into soldiers
Andrew Tillett Political correspondent
Jan 18, 2023 – 5.20pm
Taxi drivers and hairdressers will be among the everyday citizens of Ukraine that Australian military trainers will help transform into soldiers to defend their country against Vladimir Putin’s invading forces.
Seventy troops who will join a multinational training mission in Britain were farewelled from Darwin’s Robertson Barracks on Wednesday. It is Australia’s latest contribution of military assistance to Ukraine’s war against Russia.
The Australians will put Ukrainians through an accelerated five-week boot camp, compared to the 12 weeks the Australian army has for its new recruits.
The course will cover handling weapons, living in austere environments, battlefield tactics, combat first aid and working in small teams. The Australians will not enter Ukraine,
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Detail isn’t needed to vote on the Voice, but explaining these four things wouldn’t hurt
barrister
January 19, 2023 — 5.00am
In politics, as in life, there are always colliding truths.
There is no legal reason or historical precedent for the Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum to be a detailed proposal. The reverse is true. Referendums pose simple questions and parliaments take care of the detail. Constitutional law expert Anne Twomey nailed this truth recently in the Herald, as the good professor always does.
But it’s also true that sharing details can be both a sword and a shield: a way of making a sincere case for important change whilst risk-managing being positioned as “evasive” or of “treating people like mugs”, as is the current opposition line.
The welcome news is the current prime minister is not the evasive type.
He successfully campaigned for a Voice referendum at the 2022 election, giving him the credibility which only political courage buys – think John Howard and gun reform. Moreover, after the first-year performance of the Albanese government, the Rabbitohs and rugby league-loving PM is running with an even stronger wind in 2023.
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Unemployment rate steady at a revised 3.5 per cent
12:14PM January 19, 2023
Unemployment held steady at a revised 3.5 per cent in December, after the number of jobs fell by a surprise 14,600 in the month.
The seasonally adjusted figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed a fall in the workforce participation rate from 66.8 per cent to 66.6 per cent. A lower proportion of Australians in the workforce allowed the key jobless measure to remain unchanged from November despite the fall in employment.
Economists had projected an additional 25,000 jobs would be created in December, and for the unemployment rate to remain stable.
The underemployment rate – which measures the proportion of workers who would like more hours but are unable to find them – climbed from 5.8 per cent in November, to 6.1 per cent in the latest data.
The ABS revised the November unemployment rate up from 3.4 per cent to 3.5 per cent.
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Where income investors are finding more than 11pc
Top ETFs are paying double-digit returns but lower-risk bonds and risk-free term deposits are offering more than 4 per cent.
Duncan Hughes Reporter
Jan 20, 2023 – 5.00am
Income funds are attracting record inflows as investors chase returns of up to 11 per cent – more than double the yield from top-performing risk-free fixed term accounts or high-quality bonds.
Last year, a record $770 million was invested in exchange-traded funds (ETF) targeting those investing in high dividend paying listed companies – that’s about 40 per cent more than the previous year and more than double flows in 2020, according to analysis by online financial adviser Stockspot.
Top-performing bond funds are producing about 4 per cent while risk-free fixed term accounts for deposits of at least $10,000 pay 4.5 per cent, which is well below the nation’s 32-year-high inflation rate of about 7.3 per cent.
Individual investment grade bonds are returning more than 5 per cent.
The combined amount invested in bond and income-focused funds last year constituted more than 30 per cent of the sector’s net flows.
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Invasion Day rallies will campaign against the Voice
January 20, 2023 — 4.37am
Invasion Day rallies in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane will march under slogans calling for treaty and sovereignty to take priority over a Voice to parliament, as the Indigenous organisers say they will campaign against the push for constitutional recognition.
Thousands of people are expected to attend the annual rallies in each capital city to commemorate January 26 as the beginning of Indigenous colonisation by the British, with this year’s events taking place as the Voice to Parliament referendum is set to be held in the second half of 2023.
But organisers will use the high-profile rallies to campaign against the referendum, in a move that exposes long-running tensions within the Indigenous community between Voice supporters and black activist groups that view Australia’s Constitution as a product of colonisation.
Co-organiser of the Sydney rally Gwenda Stanley, a Gomeroi woman, said the theme of this year’s march would be “sovereignty before Voice”, as she criticised the referendum as a waste of money that could have been better spent on the ground in Indigenous communities.
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COVID-19 Information.
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‘We’re all vulnerable’: One in 10 people will end up with long COVID, new study says
January 16, 2023 — 5.00am
Health experts are calling for a rethink of Australia’s COVID-19 approach after a new study showed one in 10 people will end up with “long COVID”.
According to the report, published on Friday in the academic journal Nature Reviews Microbiology, at least 65 million people worldwide already have long COVID, or post-COVID conditions, which is when symptoms persist for more than 12 weeks after the initial infection.
It is estimated more than 10 per cent of those who catch COVID-19 will experience chronic health issues, with women aged between 30 and 55 particularly at risk.
Long COVID’s symptoms vary but can include severe fatigue, brain impairment and nervous system dysfunction, as well as nausea and shortness of breath.
Professor Brendan Crabb, an infectious disease researcher and CEO of the Burnet Institute, said the report was “jaw-dropping” and should prompt a rethink of Australia’s relaxed attitude towards COVID-19.
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‘No one wants to know that we exist’, say sufferers of after effects of Covid vaccines
Updated 9:21AM January 21, 2023, First published at 10:00PM January 20, 2023
Naomi Smith had to think long and hard before she opened her Facebook page and tapped out a message to her circle of friends and contacts.
“As a person who generally is open about life’s ups and downs I’m not sure why I was keeping this quiet,’’ she began.
Thinking back to that post now, she understands why she’d been silent about what happened to her. “I didn’t want to be the reason why someone didn’t get vaccinated,’’ she says from her Cairns home.
There was another reason she was cautious about telling her story: “I didn’t want it to be used by the anti-vax movement.”
In that initial post in December 2021, Smith, then 43, revealed that she’d started experiencing chest pains days after her second Pfizer Covid-19 vaccination in October. An avid hiker and gym goer with no history of poor health, she thought she’d pulled a muscle. “But this felt different. It progressively got worse … I had severe chest pain and I couldn’t breathe properly.”
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Climate Change.
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There is a source of hydrogen without all the downsides
The big downside with hydrogen is having to make the stuff in the first place. But South Australia has the gas as a natural resource.
Alexander Downer Columnist
Jan 15, 2023 – 1.36pm
From where I’m sitting to write this column, I can see in the far distance a wind farm at a place called Starfish Hill. The 22 wind turbines produce 33 MW of electricity which power the equivalent of around 30,000 houses a year. This was the first wind farm built in South Australia and dates back to 2003. The trouble is, on a still day, it generates nothing and that is the weakness of wind and solar power – they need to be backed up somehow with base load power from a more reliable source.
A bit beyond Starfish Hill is Backstairs Passage the other side of which lies Kangaroo Island which you wouldn’t associate with base load power. It is after all, a very desirable tourist destination and has successful agricultural and fishing industries.
But here’s a surprise. In the 1930s, wells were drilled on both Kangaroo Island and the nearby York Peninsula in a search for oil. None was found but what the drilling did reveal was large quantities of natural hydrogen.
Hydrogen has ebbed and flowed as a fashionable energy source.
In the 1930s hydrogen had very little use – although those of you with a sense of history will recall that in 1937 the German airship, the Hindenburg, caught fire and was destroyed. Its death gave hydrogen a bad name.
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ACCC says gas giants’ record profits should pay for investment despite price caps
By Mike Foley and Nick Toscano
Updated January 19, 2023 — 6.53pmfirst published at 6.49pm
The national competition watchdog has cast doubt on the gas industry’s claims that the Albanese government’s new price caps and market rules will stifle investment and impose unfair risks on producers, pointing to the industry’s soaring revenue.
East coast gas producers were handed new guidance from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) on Tuesday, detailing the requirements for wholesale supply deals under the federal government’s new laws imposing unprecedented price caps of $12 a gigajoule for the next 12 months.
ACCC chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb said the companies had reaped big profits on the global market and she expected that to be their source of capital for new projects.
One east coast exporter, Santos, reported on Thursday a record annual revenue of $US7.8 billion ($11.3 billion) in 2022, up 65 per cent from 2021.
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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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https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/2023/01/16/inflation-cost-of-living-alan-kohler/
6:00am, Jan 16, 2023 Updated: 10:52pm, Jan 15
How long will we use human misery to control inflation?
A year ago in these pages I suggested that the Reserve Bank was in danger of getting left behind by inflation, and that we were all therefore “in danger of getting left behind by galloping interest rates”.
RBA governor Philip Lowe had just told the House of Representatives standing committee on economics that it was “plausible … that an interest rate increase will be on the agenda some time later this year”.
An interest rate increase? On the agenda? Try eight, actually happening. Dr Lowe and his colleagues did get left behind; they made a mistake, and that’s not even counting the repeated prediction that rates wouldn’t change until 2024.
What was the mistake, exactly? Well, they waited too long to start raising rates, and as I wrote in that piece last February, the longer you wait the more rates have to rise, and more quickly.
Getting left behind … again
Now they’re in danger of getting left behind again – on the way down – because they have resumed the grotesque idea that human misery is the only way to control prices – that is, using unemployment and putting families into mortgage stress.
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Economists warn two RBA rate hikes will tip Australia into recession
5:43PM January 20, 2023
Another two Reserve Bank rate hikes risk tipping the economy into recession, leading economists warn, with the most aggressive policy tightening in decades already set to push mortgage repayment burdens to all-time highs this year.
Most analysts expect the RBA board will deliver its ninth consecutive rate rise to 3.35 per cent on February 7, and for there to be a further lift to 3.6 per cent in March as the central bank battles to tame inflation, which could end 2022 above 7.5 per cent.
But Gareth Aird, head of Australian economics at the country’s biggest home lender, CBA, warned a cash rate of 3.35 per cent would be “deeply restrictive”, and any further monetary policy tightening in March or beyond would be “inconsistent with a soft landing” for the economy in 2023.
Mr Aird predicted the RBA would hike again next month before pausing, and that the central bank would be forced into cutting rates towards the end of this year and in early 2024 to soften a crash in consumption and prevent a jump in unemployment.
Mr Aird estimated that half of the bank’s massive fixed rate mortgage book would roll over this year – threatening a spending cliff that would hit the economy hard as home loan repayments for many households reset at much higher levels and left families with less in their pockets.
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Health Issues.
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‘Hallmarks of distrust’: AHPRA staff fear public at risk due to ‘super toxic’ culture
January 18, 2023 — 5.00am
The national health regulator has been plagued by reports of widespread bullying, harassment and under-resourcing, creating fears the public is at risk of harm if staff are unable to properly investigate rogue surgeons and doctors.
The Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) hired four external consultants in 2019 after staff raised concerns about a toxic culture causing high turnover within teams responsible for investigating medical misconduct around the country.
According to a leaked internal presentation circulated in 2020, obtained by The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, consultants held focus groups with 317 staff across Tasmania, Darwin, Canberra and Sydney offices and held 302 online surveys and 61 individual interviews.
These efforts identified four “thematic findings” about AHPRA’s workplace culture, including widespread “inappropriate, uncivil behaviours” between leaders, staff and medical boards that “may increase the risk of psychological safety” of employees.
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Big win in kidney disease battle
Updated 5:38AM January 18, 2023, First published at 12:00AM January 18, 2023
A simple blood test that could identify people with diabetes who are at risk of developing potentially fatal chronic kidney disease has been made possible, with Australian research identifying for the first time a genetic process that is altered in those who are susceptible to the condition.
For years, researchers around the world have searched in vain for a genetic biomarker of kidney disease in people with diabetes. Now international research led by Monash University has discovered a biochemical process associated with gene regulation that is the key as to whether individuals are at higher risk.
The finding is likely to open the way for the introduction of screening tests that could detect whether a person with diabetes is at risk of kidney disease years before any symptoms have developed. Current tests can only screen for kidney damage once the disease has already begun.
“Diabetic kidney disease is a serious and common complication of Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes, and over time poorly controlled diabetes can cause damage to blood vessels in your kidney that filter waste in your blood,” said Monash University epigeneticist Sam El-Osta, who leads the Human Epigenetics team at the Department of Diabetes in the university’s Central Clinical School. “This can lead to kidney damage and cause high blood pressure, and over many years the condition slowly damages your kidney’s filtration system.
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Why healthcare services are in chaos all around the Western world
By The Economist
Updated January 20, 2023 — 12.06pmfirst published at 11.51am
The imposition of lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic had one overarching aim: to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed. Governments hoped to space out infections, buying time to build capacity. In the end, however, much of this extra capacity went unused. England’s seven “Nightingale” hospitals closed having received only a few patients, as did many of America’s field hospitals. A study of Europe’s experience in Health Policy, a journal, found only one example where there were more COVID patients than intensive-care beds: in the Italian region of Lombardy on April 3, 2020. Although there are now stories of overwhelmed Chinese hospitals, as the country confronts a great exit wave, it is too soon to know whether these are isolated examples or represent broader, systematic failure.
Outside China, COVID weighs less on people’s minds these days. Yet healthcare systems in the rich world are closer to collapse than at any point since the disease started to spread. Unlike for unemployment or GDP, there are few comparable, up-to-date figures on healthcare across countries. So The Economist has trawled statistics produced by countries, regions and even individual hospitals to paint a picture of what is going on. The results suggest patients, doctors and nurses did not escape the worst effects of the pandemic. Instead, the effects seem to have been delayed.
Start with Britain, which produces excellent data. The National Health Service (NHS), the country’s state-run provider, is in dire straits. Just before the pandemic, someone with a medical issue requiring urgent but not immediate attention, a category that includes strokes and heart attacks, waited on average 20 minutes for an ambulance. Now they wait longer than an hour and a half. The number of long “trolley waits”– the time between a decision to admit and a patient arriving at a hospital ward – has jumped.
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40 per cent reduction in cerebral palsy within a generation
By STEPHEN LUNN
6:56PM January 19, 2023
Cerebral palsy in newborn children in Australia has fallen by 40 per cent in a generation, putting us among the lowest rates in the world, new research shows.
The incidence of cerebral palsy has fallen nationwide from one in 400 births in the mid-90s to one in 700 births, the 2023 Australian Cerebral Palsy Register Report reveals.
And the severity of the condition is declining, data crunched from almost 11,000 children with cerebral palsy shows, with fewer people needing wheelchairs or other supports to walk.
Cerebral palsy, the most common childhood physical disability, is caused by a brain injury that occurs while in the womb or shortly after birth. Australia currently has around 34,000 people with cerebral palsy, which affects their ability to move, communicate, eat, sleep and learn.
Despite the numbers, Australia has done well to reduce both incidence and severity of the condition through a strong health system and critical advances in obstetrics and newborn care, world-leading expert Nadia Badawi said.
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https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/gps-blast-out-of-control-pharmacists-20230120-p5cebb
GPs blast ‘out-of-control’ pharmacists
Rachael Ward
Jan 20, 2023 – 4.06pm
Pharmacy Guild president Trent Twomey has called GPs “twits”, causing the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners to label the lobby group as “out of control”.
In a speech to students in Canberra, Professor Twomey pushed for pharmacists to be given greater powers to prescribe medications, and said GPs were twits who had allowed their sector to become commercialised.
“We do not support, at the Pharmacy Guild of Australia, being able to only prescribe if someone else is looking over my shoulder,” Professor Twomey said, according to reporting in the Australian Journal of Pharmacy.
“You don’t see a plumber needing to look over the shoulder of an electrician before they put in your air conditioner.”
He went on to explore the benefits of pharmacists being able to prescribe, dispense, administer and review medications.
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More people died last year than ever before. Sydney’s death industry has struggled to cope
Morticians cannot keep up and Sydney is running out of space.
January 21, 2023
Everyone dies. But last year in NSW, far more people than usual did. Every single week up to September, dozens more deaths were reported than the state’s average. The cause is no secret: a rapidly ageing population combined with the ongoing impact of the pandemic.
But behind those numbers stands a colossal and often misunderstood industry that deals with everything from palliative care and burials to cremation and counselling.
And under immense pressure, 2022 changed it forever.
Crematorium operators spent the year dealing with a “high volume” of requests, funeral directors have been forced to increase their services and, as if to prove bureaucracy stays with you to the grave, the city’s cemeteries are set to be full within 10 years.
Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, from January to September 2022, reveals deaths in the year far exceeded the baseline average for every single week, apart from two weeks at the end of September.
At its worst, during the peak of the Omicron crisis in January 2022, there were 367 extra deaths in a single week. After a slight slump, the number trended up once again to August.
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Slow, unaccountable and riven: Is the national healthcare watchdog sick?
January 22, 2023
Just over a year ago, controversial homebirth midwife Martina Gorner was permanently banned from the profession after an autopsy found a clear link between the death of a baby and her delays in sending the mother to hospital.
The ban followed a Victorian Healthcare Complaints Commissioner investigation which found a litany of breaches, ranging from botched record-keeping to failing to provide services in a safe and ethical manner.
“Her actions placed multiple women and their babies at serious, arguably avoidable, risk,” then-acting commissioner Elizabeth Langdon said in December 2021.
But this was not the first time authorities had been warned about Gorner, and the case speaks to broader issues with the watchdogs that are supposed to protect the public from incompetent, unethical or unfit health professionals.
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International Issues.
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Geopolitics threatens to destroy the world Davos made
Delegates at the World Economic Forum fear that the long period of peace and economic integration could be coming to a close.
Gideon Rachman Columnist
Jan 16, 2023 – 9.15am
The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann’s classic novel set in Davos against the backdrop of a deadly disease and an impending world war, was published almost a century ago.
But, as World Economic Forum delegates gather again in Davos this year, Mann’s world feels uncomfortably close to our own. The fear haunting the WEF is that a long period of peace, prosperity and global economic integration could be coming to a close — just as it did in 1914.
This year’s Davos slogan is “cooperation in a fragmented world”. That fragmentation began with COVID-19 – with its lockdowns, closed borders and disrupted supply chains.
So, the 2023 WEF – the first to take place in its regular winter location since the pandemic began – could be seen as signalling a return to normalcy. However, China’s sudden abandonment of its zero-COVID policy has raised fears that a new wave of variants could emerge.
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Executives ill-equipped to deal with 2023’s big risks
Business leaders are contending with a baffling world that most do not have the experience to analyse.
Gillian Tett Contributor
Jan 15, 2023 – 8.26am
This month, Suzanne Clark, head of America’s mighty Chamber of Commerce, has been grilling her members about what they anticipate when contemplating the outlook for 2023.
You might expect this prognosis to be grim. A JPMorgan survey of American business leaders last week reported “a sharp fall in optimism about the economy as recession fears loom”, with 65 per cent of executives predicting a downturn in 2023, and just 8 per cent feeling upbeat about the global economy.
And when the World Economic Forum issued its annual risk report before this week’s annual jamboree in Davos, it was apocalyptic, noting that “as an economic era ends, the next will bring more risks of stagnation, divergence and distress”. Ouch.
But there is a peculiar paradox at play: if you scour that JPMorgan report, you can see plenty of micro-level cheer amid the macro malaise. Most notably, 51 per cent of respondents predicted that profits would rise – not fall – in 2023, and 88 per cent of them expect to keep or add staff.
A cynic might say this is because CEOs have to be optimistic in the face of investors. However, Clark believes the scale of the dichotomy, also reflected in the chamber’s own data, is unusual. “Right now, many of our members tell us that while the state of their business is strong, the state of our economy is fragile,” she says. Clark dubs this a problem of “second-hand pessimism” – or the place where corporate reality and public rhetoric diverge.
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European stocks are soaring. Wait, isn’t there a war on?
The worst fears about war-hit Europe haven’t been realised, and investors have fallen on the markets with rabid relief.
Hans van Leeuwen Europe correspondent
Jan 16, 2023 – 8.45am
London | Being The Australian Financial Review’s town crier for Europe has been a pretty gloomy business of late. War, climate change, stagflation, dysfunction – ask not for whom my bell tolls, it tolls for Europe.
But as we bask in an unseasonably warm January – yes, Aussies, I know it’s only 11 degrees, but everything is relative – it suddenly feels like at least some of the pessimism might have been overdone.
Inflation shows signs of slowing; economies are stuttering rather than stalling; and gas prices have eased, with supplies still plentiful. Pitchfork-wielding mobs of populists haven’t taken to the streets.
I’m not the only person to have noticed. The benchmark European index, the Stoxx 600, is up 18 per cent from its trough in late September, and the German and French bourses have jumped almost 10 per cent since the year began.
The more globally oriented FTSE 100 rocketed close to a record high on Friday, up 15 per cent from its mid-October trough and 5 per cent since the start of the year.
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‘Silencing dissent by threatening family’: Iran cracks down on family of Australian protester
By Paul Sakkal
January 16, 2023 — 5.00am
The mother of a leading Iranian-Australian protester has been jailed in Tehran and interrogated about her Australian relatives in what her family and experts fear is part of a wider attempt to silence Australia’s pro-democracy protesters.
Her Melbourne-based family members, who requested anonymity due to fear of retribution against their mother, told this masthead she was arrested on December 20 by government forces that have killed an estimated 520 protesters, arrested nearly 20,000 and began executing demonstrators.
“She was at her work and four plain-clothed officers showed up and abducted her,” her son said. “My brother went everywhere trying to find her. They said ‘we haven’t arrested her, we don’t know anything’.
“Then after two days she called and said she is ... at Evin Prison. My mother made clear to my brother they have asked many questions about us. We have been very active [in demonstrations] here.”
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‘Seize on this moment’: Britain sends Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine
January 15, 2023 — 9.51am
London: The UK will send 14 tanks as well as self-propelled guns to Ukraine in a move that adds to international pressure on Germany to follow suit.
Downing Street announced the news in a short statement after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak spoke with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday.
A spokesman said that during the call the leaders reflected on the gains made by Ukraine in pushing back Russian troops.
“They agreed on the need to seize on this moment with an acceleration of global military and diplomatic support to Ukraine,” the spokesman said.
“The prime minister is clear that a long and static war only serves Russia’s ends. That’s why he and his ministers will be speaking to our allies across the world in the days and weeks ahead to ramp up pressure on Putin and secure a better future for Ukraine.
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Folk wisdom suggests stock markets may lead a global rebound this year
An old adage says the US share market will hold on to an early January rise for the rest of the year. Many indicators say that might be right in 2023.
Jim O'Neill Columnist
Jan 16, 2023 – 1.45pm
Although it has been almost a decade since I gave up a full-time job in finance, markets – and market oddities – still fascinate me, especially when they send signals that run against a widely held consensus among analysts and investors.
Given all the disappointments in 2022, the outlook for the new year is quite downbeat. Major corporations are announcing layoffs, and the International Monetary Fund is forecasting that at least one in three countries will experience a recession this year.
The reasons for such pessimism are not hard to find. The big inflationary surprises of 2022 triggered a massive and rapid tightening of monetary policies in most major economies, and key central banks have continued to talk tough. Although the US Federal Reserve reduced the size of its interest-rate hikes from 75 basis points to 50bps in December, it has made clear that more rate hikes are likely – and that a rate cut is not in the cards for 2023.
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https://www.afr.com/world/asia/the-xi-nobody-saw-coming-20230116-p5ccqj
The Xi nobody saw coming
China’s strongman president has reversed his decisions on a wide range of policies, wrong footing the rest of the world. But his impulse to control may reassert itself when the economy starts to recover.
Ruchir Sharma Writer and investor
Jan 16, 2023 – 11.12am
In late October, when Xi Jinping consolidated his hold on China’s Communist Party at its five-yearly congress, the world cringed. Xi seemed determined to push China back to the age of Mao Zedong, his role model. Hardline ideology would tighten its grip on the world’s second-largest economy, with dire implications for the rest.
The last thing anyone expected from a strongman president entering his 11th year in power was a sudden about face. Yet within weeks, Xi’s government has reversed its efforts to control COVID-19, big tech companies, the property market and more.
It has shown signs of reduced support for Russia’s war in Ukraine while easing tensions with the US and in its territorial disputes in the South China Sea. This softening seemed so uncharacteristic of Xi, some even speculated that he no longer set government policy.
That’s unlikely – at the congress Xi had purged enemies and installed allies throughout the party. Yet, the 180-degree turn on multiple policy fronts was unmistakable and raises doubts about everything the world thought it knew about Xi, the unbending hardliner. Was he now bending to pressure from worried officials, the public, the deteriorating economy?
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Where to invest in a deeply divided world
The titans of commerce gathering in Davos this week are grappling with a shift away from the era of ever-closer global ties.
Saleha Mohsin, Philip Aldrick and Daniel Flatley
Jan 16, 2023 – 8.01pm
New York | A new age of great-power rivalry is redrawing the map of the world economy and forcing business chiefs to navigate around a growing number of global flashpoints.
With a hot war raging in Europe and a cold one escalating between the US and China, the rest of the world is under pressure to pick sides. Political leaders are imposing new economic priorities, as they battle to avert shortfalls of vital commodities – from natural gas to semiconductors – and use the ones they control as leverage.
For the titans of commerce gathering in Davos this week, all of this marks a shift away from the era of ever-closer global ties, when big business thought it had succeeded in making the world flat. Now it’s in for a bumpier ride.
Debate at the World Economic Forum will revolve around these emerging geo-economic risks. Some centre on key goods or markets – like the worldwide focus on energy security since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, or the US campaign to deprive China of cutting-edge technology.
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40pc of business chiefs fear for the future as Davos begins
Hans van Leeuwen Europe correspondent
Updated Jan 17, 2023 – 8.51am, first published at 5.31am
Davos, Switzerland | Business leaders and economists anticipate the world will tumble into recession this year, and two in five chief executives are worried that their companies may not see out the decade.
As hundreds of the world’s top CEOs gathered for the World Economic Forum’s week-long annual jamboree in the Swiss ski town of Davos, two separate surveys cast a shadow of pessimism over the denuded alpine slopes.
A survey of 4410 chief executives released by PwC on Monday night (Tuesday AEDT) as business leaders, economists and finance ministers such as South Africa’s Enoch Godongwana met at Davos, showed 73 per cent are braced for recession this year – the biggest display of pessimism since the question was first asked 12 years ago.
Almost 40 per cent said their business might not be economically viable in 10 years’ time without major course correction, as confidence in their prospects plummeted across all sectors.
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https://www.afr.com/world/europe/interest-rate-rises-risk-a-financial-earthquake-20230117-p5cd0x
Interest rate rises ‘risk a financial earthquake’
To borrow Warren Buffett’s famous adage, you only discover who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Jan 17, 2023 – 7.57am
Breakneck monetary tightening by the major central banks is nearing a critical tipping point and risks triggering a chain-reaction of financial distress, the world’s leading expert on debt crises has warned.
“The combination of recession and rising real interest rates is very dangerous,” says Harvard professor Ken Rogoff, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund.
Professor Rogoff is best known for This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, a magisterial history of debt delusions co-written with Carmen Reinhart.
He believes it was a minor miracle that the world averted a financial crisis last year, but the odds of a major accident are shortening as the delayed effects of past tightening feed through.
“We were very fortunate that we didn’t have a global systemic event in 2022, and we can count our blessings for that, but rates are still going higher and the risk keeps rising,” he said on the eve of the World Economic Forum in Davos.
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There is no path to lasting Russian victory
Vladimir Putin’s war has left his country isolated in Europe, while permanent occupation of Ukraine is unfeasible.
Gideon Rachman Columnist
Jan 17, 2023 – 9.18am
“Don’t write off Russia” – that was the muttered warning of a European diplomat, with long experience in Moscow. It is a fair point. Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has gone badly wrong. But Russia remains a huge country, with plentiful resources and a ruthless, brutal government.
Ukraine’s intelligence services think that further conscription drives may allow Russia to deploy an army of 2 million for a renewed offensive later this year. President Volodymyr Zelensky recently warned that Moscow might soon make a fresh attempt to capture Kyiv.
But even a battlefield breakthrough could not deliver Russia a lasting victory. Imagine that Putin’s forces achieved some kind of malign miracle, defeated Ukraine and overthrew the Zelensky government. What then?
The reality is that a wounded and isolated Russia would then be stuck in a decades-long guerrilla war that would make Afghanistan look like a picnic. Occupying forces or a collaborationist government in Kyiv would be under constant attack. “Victory” would lock Russia into a long-term disaster.
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https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/no-stalemate-in-ukraine-at-least-not-yet-20230116-p5ccph.html
No stalemate in Ukraine, at least not yet
Military leader and strategist
January 16, 2023 — 3.30pm
At the beginning of 1915, the war on the Western Front had reached a stalemate. There were technical, strategic and doctrinal reasons for this. The machine gun changed tactics and killed soldiers by the hundreds, as did more accurate and concentrated artillery. Poor communications hampered the co-ordination of the different elements of the massive armies. A lack of protected mobility meant that even when a breach was made in enemy lines, the enemy could more quickly fill the gap than the attacker could exploit it.
Recently, this has become the analogy of choice for some writing about the war in Ukraine. Articles in publications from in the United States, Britain and beyond have all touted theories of the current “stalemate in Ukraine”. It makes for good headlines, but there is one problem: it just isn’t true.
The Collins dictionary defines stalemate as a “deadlock, draw, impasse … a situation in which neither side in an argument or contest can win or in which no progress is possible”. War is a complex tableau of military, diplomatic, technological, economic and societal endeavours. Therefore, a stalemate in war implies a situation of geographic, economic, military and intellectual stasis. This is not the case in Ukraine. Both sides in the conflict, and their supporters, have an enormous range of tactical and strategic options available to them in 2023.
What we are seeing instead is the normal ebb and flow of a long war being fought by well-resourced countries with external sources of support. After the initial burst of activity where each side seeks large, hard blows against the adversary to hopefully compel them to concede quickly, most wars settle into a cycle of pulses and pauses.
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https://www.afr.com/world/asia/china-s-q4-growth-halves-as-covid-policies-bite-20230117-p5cd5k
China’s annual growth falls to almost worst on record
Michael Smith North Asia correspondent
Updated Jan 17, 2023 – 1.54pm, first published at 1.26pm
Tokyo | China has posted its second-lowest annual growth rate in half a century as COVID-19 restrictions crippled the world’s second-largest economy in the final quarter of last year, prompting an abrupt end to Beijing’s zero-case policy.
China posted a 3 per cent increase in GDP growth for the 2022 calendar year, with growth at 2.9 per cent in the fourth quarter.
The data beat economists’ forecasts for 2.8 per cent annual growth and 1.8 per cent growth in the fourth quarter.
Still, growth in the fourth quarter was half the 3.9 per cent recorded in the third quarter last year, confirming the growing threat that citywide lockdowns and other restrictions were having on the economy as the government struggled to contain the virus.
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https://www.afr.com/world/asia/china-tells-the-world-the-maoist-madness-is-over-20230118-p5cdcp
China tells the world the Maoist madness is over
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Jan 18, 2023 – 9.00am
Davos, Switzerland | China has extended the olive branch to Western democracies and global capitalists alike, promising a new era of detente after the coercive “wolf warrior” diplomacy of the last five years.
Vice-premier Liu He, the economic plenipotentiary of Xi Jinping’s China, told a gathering of business leaders and ministers in Davos that China is back inside the tent and eager to restore the money-making bonhomie of the golden years.
“We must let the market play the fundamental role in the allocation of resources, and let the government play a better role. Some people say China will go for the planned economy. That’s by no means possible,” he said.
“All-round opening up is the basis of state policy and the key driver of economic progress. China’s national reality dictates that opening up to the world is a must, not an expediency. We must open up wider and make it work better,” he told the World Economic Forum.
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https://www.afr.com/world/europe/get-russia-to-the-negotiating-table-urges-kissinger-20230118-p5cdbh
Get Russia to the negotiating table, urges Kissinger
Hans van Leeuwen Europe correspondent
Jan 18, 2023 – 7.17am
Davos, Switzerland | The US and Europe should get around a negotiating table with Russia as soon as possible, to try to prevent the war spiralling beyond Ukraine or causing a dangerous collapse of the Russian state, Henry Kissinger has urged.
The 99-year-old former US secretary of state and foreign-policy éminence grise told a Davos panel on Wednesday (AEDT) that talks should start now, followed by a ceasefire once Ukraine had driven Russia back to the pre-war lines of control.
“The object is to keep the war from becoming a war against Russia itself. To give Russia an opportunity to rejoin an international system,” he said.
Dr Kissinger sought to ward off the inevitable flak that his views would draw by praising Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the courageous Ukrainian defence.
He also said the US should maintain its military support for Ukraine “until the ceasefire line is either reached, or accepted in some preliminary discussions”.
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China chides central banks for braking too hard
Hans van Leeuwen Europe correspondent
Jan 18, 2023 – 4.05am
Davos, Switzerland | China is bouncing back from its recent COVID-19 scourge more quickly than expected and will return to normal economic growth this year, a top Chinese economy minister has said.
In an upbeat speech in Davos, vice-premier Liu He also chided Western central banks for raising interest rates to the point where they were damaging the world’s economic prospects.
His outlook for the Chinese economy got the backing of former prime minister Kevin Rudd. Australia’s soon-to-be Washington ambassador told a Davos panel that China could probably get back to growing at 5 per cent this year – but only if it could ride out domestic and international “headwinds”.
Mr Liu used his keynote speech to try and shrug off news on Monday that Chinese economic growth last year was just 3 per cent. That was the second-lowest annual growth rate in decades, as Beijing’s stringent zero-COVID policy sapped the economy.
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Interest rate rises ‘risk a financial earthquake’
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
January 18, 2023 — 5.00am
Breakneck monetary tightening by the major central banks is nearing a critical tipping point and risks triggering a chain-reaction of financial distress, the world’s leading expert on debt crises has warned.
“The combination of recession and rising real interest rates is very dangerous,” says Harvard professor Ken Rogoff, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund.
Professor Rogoff is best known for This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, a magisterial history of debt delusions co-written with Carmen Reinhart.
He believes it was a minor miracle that the world averted a financial crisis last year, but the odds of a major accident are shortening as the delayed effects of past tightening feed through.
“We were very fortunate that we didn’t have a global systemic event in 2022, and we can count our blessings for that, but rates are still going higher and the risk keeps rising,” he said on the eve of the World Economic Forum in Davos.
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https://www.afr.com/world/asia/why-china-s-one-child-policy-is-now-backfiring-20230118-p5cdfy
Why China’s one-child policy is now backfiring
After three decades of being limited to having one child, Chinese families no longer see the need to have bigger ones as the costs mount up.
Michael Smith North Asia correspondent
Jan 18, 2023 – 2.04pm
Tokyo | When China abolished its notorious one-child policy six years ago, the expected baby boom from a population free to reproduce failed to happen.
Although a small increase in births occurred in the year immediately after the introduction of the two-child limit, this turned out to be a blip.
By the following year, in 2017, the birth rate was declining again. Policy-makers in Beijing were scratching their heads. Why were people in a society where the family unit is at the centre of everything, and children are worshipped like little emperors, not having more kids?
The one-child policy, introduced by former leader Deng Xiaoping in 1976 in response to the country’s extreme poverty, was hugely unpopular. Described as the largest social experiment in human history, it enforced draconian limits on women’s rights to have more than one baby.
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https://www.afr.com/world/asia/china-s-decline-became-undeniable-this-week-now-what-20230118-p5cdi4
China’s decline became undeniable this week. Now what?
The population is falling, economic growth has slowed to a crawl and relations with the West are tense. But the scariest aspect is geopolitical.
Bret Stephens
Jan 18, 2023 – 2.31pm
For years, I’ve been writing columns predicting China’s decline. This week, the decline became undeniable. The road downhill will not be smooth — not for it or for us.
The news is that the death rate in China outnumbered the birthrate for the first time in more than 60 years. Last time, it was famine caused by Mao Zedong’s economic policies that led to an estimated 36 million deaths from starvation. Now, it’s young Chinese couples who, like their peers in much of the developed world, don’t want children.
So far, the demographic downshift has been small – 9.56 million births last year against 10.41 million deaths, according to Chinese government statistics. That’s out of a total population of 1.4 billion. The country will not be running out of people any time soon.
But the longer trend lines look awful for Beijing. In 1978, when Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms got under way, China’s median age was 20.1. In 2021, it was 37.9, exceeding that of the United States.
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https://www.afr.com/world/asia/the-problem-s-with-china-s-population-drop-20230118-p5cdea
The problem(s) with China’s population drop
Can the world’s second-largest economy – whose working-age population has been falling since 2015 – manage things as well as Japan? There are good reasons to be sceptical.
Paul Krugman
Jan 18, 2023 – 9.52am
China’s population declined last year, for the first time since the mass deaths associated with Mao Zedong’s disastrous Great Leap Forward in the 1960s. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that China has announced that its population declined.
Many observers are sceptical about Chinese data. I’ve been at conferences when China released, say, new data on economic growth, and many people responded by asking not “why was growth 7.3 per cent?” but rather “why did the Chinese government decide to say that it was 7.3 per cent?”
In any case, it’s clear that China’s population is or soon will be at a peak; the best bet is probably that population has been falling for several years. But why consider this a problem?
After all, in the 1960s and 1970s, many people worried that the world was facing a crisis of overpopulation, with China one of the biggest sources of that pressure. And the Chinese government itself tried to limit population growth with its famous one-child policy.
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IMF signals upgrade to forecasts as optimism spreads at Davos
Chris Giles, Katie Martin, Stephen Morris and Simon Mundy
Jan 18, 2023 – 6.02pm
Davos | Business leaders and top government officials have expressed optimism about the global economy as China drops coronavirus controls, the US embarks on a green investment boom and western Europe adjusts to the impact of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Gita Gopinath, deputy managing director of the IMF, signalled that the fund would upgrade its economic forecasts. Instead of predicting a “tougher” 2023, she now expected an “improvement” in the second half of the year and into 2024.
Positive data from Europe and the US in recent weeks have boosted hopes that the world’s economy will avoid a recession this year.
Germany’s Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, told Bloomberg that the eurozone’s largest economy would avoid a recession, while the Mannheim-based think-tank ZEW said its monthly gauge of investor sentiment had turned positive for the first time since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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Mud-slinging is weakening the Catholic Church
12:00AM January 19, 2023
So, what’s the worst sin of the Australian Catholic Church – the pedophilia of the past, or the politics of the present? And which of these forces will have the most influence on the future shape of the church?
It’s an important question for an organisation heading for a full-blown – and public – culture war at the same time as it deals with extensive media coverage of a cardinal wrongly accused of assault.
For Catholics, lapsed or otherwise, the revelations of historical abuse in recent years have been gut-wrenching but it’s difficult to know how many have actually left the church because of the criminal behaviour of some priests and religious brothers.
One suspects that while the scandals have reinforced the dismay of non-Catholics and those who no longer “practise” the faith, thus confirming their decision to get out, the scandals are not necessarily a deal-breaker for those still in the pews.
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https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/hello-davos-you-are-the-problem-20230119-p5cdvp
Hello Davos, you are the problem
Global elites are busy undermining the economic fairness that’s needed if the anti-democrats and demagogues are to be kept at bay.
Misha Zelinsky International analyst and columnist
Jan 19, 2023 – 12.28pm
What’s eating liberal democracy? Davos attendees will offer no shortage of answers. But with news the world’s richest people grabbed two-thirds of the $US42 trillion of wealth created since 2020, they should consider looking in the mirror. Or their bank accounts.
Out-of-control economic inequality is now arguably just as threatening to the democratic project as any dictator with a nuclear arsenal. But while any nuclear strike would be launched from afar, the inequality cancer is eating democracy from within.
This is a fundamental question of national security. Because in the contest against autocrats the virtues of democratic values are worth more than the strength of our armies.
In geopolitics, results matter and hypocrisy hurts.
A core promise of democratic societies is a better life for those living in them. Grotesque inequality erodes stability in democracy at home and undercuts the case for reform abroad.
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https://www.afr.com/world/pacific/jacinda-ardern-leaves-new-zealand-in-a-policy-void-20230119-p5ce1t
Jacinda Ardern leaves New Zealand in a policy void
The departing prime minister was a warm and empathetic presence. But there was little of the policy analysis and execution that the country needs now.
Jan 19, 2023 – 7.44pm
Nobody saw Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s political exit coming yesterday, least of all her own Labour Party.
She has given New Zealand a global political brand: a Millennial woman leader and the second to have a baby in office, and a heroine to many on the global left for a firm but empathetic zero-COVID strategy that involved locking down New Zealanders and isolating the country from the world.
Yet in the post-pandemic era, it has been her lack of policy analysis and delivery that has become most obvious.
Ms Ardern has quit with inflation embedded in the economy, a hawkish Reserve Bank of New Zealand determined to squash it even at the cost of a recession this year – and an election due on October 14. Food inflation is galloping at nearly 12 per cent for some of the most indebted households in the world. Her party is falling in the polls, and her own approval is at its lowest since she was elected in 2017.
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Who would win a war over Taiwan?
The WSJ Editorial Board
The Wall Street Journal
12:22PM January 20, 2023
Good news: The Chinese military can’t easily seize Taiwan by force. That’s the gist of the headlines about a recent war game from a Washington think-tank. But that’s not the full story, and the details in the 160-page report show that even a victorious fight for Taiwan would be a ruinous affair, and the US is still showing little sense of urgency in deterring it.
The Centre for Strategic and International Studies set out to test what would happen if China attempted an amphibious invasion of Taiwan. Analysts played the war game 24 times, and in most instances US intervention beat back the invasion. Taiwan remained an autonomous democracy, albeit as a ravaged island without basic services like electricity.
War games are a product of choices and assumptions, but there were four preconditions to defeating an invasion, none of them guaranteed. First the Taiwanese have to fight. The island is ramping up its spending on defence but its conscription and readiness are underwhelming. Condition two: Arms need to be pre-positioned; the US can’t pour in weapons over friendly borders after the fight starts a la Ukraine. American weapons deliveries to Taiwan now lag years behind orders.
Three: The US must be able to rely on its bases in Japan. American fighter jets lack the range to commute to the war without Japan’s outer islands, one more reason Tokyo is America’s most important Pacific ally. The fourth condition? The US “must be able to strike the Chinese fleet rapidly and en masse” with long-range weapons.
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https://www.afr.com/world/pacific/chris-hipkins-to-be-next-new-zealand-pm-20230121-p5ceeo
Chris Hipkins to be next New Zealand PM
Ben McKay
Jan 21, 2023 – 8.30am
Chris Hipkins will become the next prime minister of New Zealand after he was the sole nominee for the Labour leadership vacated by Jacinda Ardern.
Ms Ardern announced her shock resignation on Thursday, citing exhaustion after five and a half years in the job.
Her surprise exit - not known to her partyroom until just hours before - set Labour MPs racing to find a replacement as party leader and prime minister.
Mr Hipkins, a trusted ally of Ms Ardern, emerged as the consensus candidate and was the only nominee for the role in a hastily-convened leadership ballot.
Senior MPs stayed tight lipped as they held talks in Napier, where they had travelled for the year-starting party retreat, and back in Wellington on Friday.
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Fed to downshift in February, first rate cut seen in March 2024: TD
Timothy Moore Before the Bell editor
Jan 21, 2023 – 5.50am
The Federal Reserve is poised to lift its key rate by 0.25 per cent early next month, with similar increases in March and May, according to a revised forecast update from TD Securities.
TD’s chief US macro strategist Jan Groen and colleagues cited comments from policymakers that signalled a willingness to downshift rate increases after inflation eased in December.
“For the upcoming February [policy] meeting we are revising our initial expectation of a 0.5 per cent increase to a Fed funds target range of 4.75 per cent-5.00 per cent to a 0.25 per cent hike to a target range of 4.50 per cent-4.75 per cent.”
Policymakers are scheduled to meet January 31 and February 1.
“For the March and May meetings we continue to project 25bp rate hikes and, thus, we now expect a terminal rate range of 5.00 per cent-5.25 per cent to be reached in May, a notch down from a previously expected terminal rate range of 5.25 per cent-5.50 per cent.”
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David.
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