October 5 , 2017 Edition.
All has turned to custard for Trump as people become aware he played golf rather than sorting out relief for the poor unfortunates of Puerto Rico post Hurricane Maria. This is going to blow up into a big story I suspect. Time will tell. This just as it seemed he was seemingly getting the hang of the job – or at least General Kelly was!
As far as the Trump tax-cuts that hit the news late in the week – ignore – they will be watered down and massively modified before they see the light of day – if ever!
Sadly the US has also had an awful mass shooting in Las Vegas - 59 killed and 500+ injured. I have no words for this sort of lunacy sponsored by the NRA. The one great thing John Howard did was to get Australia away from such nonsense!
Sadly the US has also had an awful mass shooting in Las Vegas - 59 killed and 500+ injured. I have no words for this sort of lunacy sponsored by the NRA. The one great thing John Howard did was to get Australia away from such nonsense!
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In Australia the energy farce continues and we will all pay for this political nonsense. Parliament is away till mid October and AGL has decided to give the finger to the Government and continue to plan to close Liddell.
Elsewhere the SSM Survey is becoming increasingly ugly and divisive and distracted by all sorts of unrelated issues. Really sad.
Economically the Treasurer is saying we are soon not going to be borrowing to pay for recurrent expenses (health, welfare etc.) and will start to pay off the large pile of debt we seem to have accumulated. Hope it works out!
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Here are a few other things I have noticed.
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Important Articles.
- Updated Sep 24 2017 at 11:46 AM
Time spent thinking about the next financial crisis is not wasted
by John Authers
We are all prisoners of our own experience. For me and the people of my generation who now tend to make the key decisions in finance and investment, our experience has included several huge financial bubbles and crises in the western world, and an unprecedented range of crises in the emerging world. Does that mean that we spend too much time thinking about potential future crises?
The markets research team at Deutsche, led by Jim Reid, think not. Last week they produced the latest edition of their annual long-term assets survey, and devoted almost all of it to "The Next Financial Crisis".
It is an enormous and excellent piece of research, from which I will try to gloss the most interesting points. First, the era we live in does indeed have more financial crises than those that went before. This is true globally, demonstrated with a welter of statistics, and there is a clear point at which the crises began to accumulate: August 1971, when President Richard Nixon brought the Bretton Woods agreement to an end, ending the tie of the dollar, and ultimately most other currencies, to the price of gold.
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- Updated Sep 27 2017 at 3:31 AM
Janet Yellen says Fed should be 'wary' of moving too gradually
by Craig Torres and Christopher Condon
Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen said raising interest rates gradually is the most appropriate policy stance now at a time of higher uncertainty about inflation.
"It would be imprudent to keep monetary policy on hold until inflation is back to 2 per cent," she said in Cleveland. In addition, she said the Fed "should also be wary of moving too gradually".
US central bankers are monitoring progress on their 2 per cent inflation goal, which they have mostly missed for the past five years. Nonetheless, the Fed's quarterly forecasts released last week continued to show most members projecting one additional rate hike this year and three more in 2018.
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- Sep 27 2017 at 9:18 AM
Investors should brace for a 'bumpy decade ahead' as rates rise
by Karen Maley
Janet Yellen, the powerful head of the US Federal Reserve boss, might think that that she's done her bit to discourage the massive levels of speculation in financial markets by preparing investors for a US rate hike in December.
But others - including Mervyn King, the former governor of the Bank of England - predict that the combination of huge debt levels and rising interest rates mean we should brace for a "bumpy decade ahead".
In a speech in Cleveland overnight, Yellen defended the Fed's gradualist approach to raising interest rates by highlighting the dangers of moving too quickly, or too slowly.
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A decade after the global financial crisis, we're still not back to normal
Ross Gittins
Published: September 26 2017 - 10:58PM
Talk about a slow burn. It's 10 years since the beginnings of the global financial crisis, the greatest economic collapse any of us will ever see. Things ought to be back to normal by now, but they aren't.
The world is still picking through the wreckage, deciding what should be kept and what dispensed with. What needs to be done differently to restore normality and ensure there's never another disaster like that one.
A lot of people were surprised the retribution didn't happen at the time: bankers sent to jail, famous economists and their theories discredited, presiding politicians pushed out to pasture, their reputations in tatters.
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RBA says debt-burdened households vulnerable to shocks
Clancy Yeates
Published: September 26 2017 - 12:57PM
Home buyers who stretched themselves to enter the property market while interest rates were at record lows could be "vulnerable" to economic shocks, a senior Reserve Bank official says.
With markets and key forecasters expecting official interest rates will start to rise next year, RBA assistant governor for the financial system Michele Bullock also said the central bank would need to keep a close eye on how rate rises affected households' spending.
Ms Bullock on Tuesday said a key risk that was being watched closely remained the high level of household indebtedness, which was a result of cheap credit and rising house prices.
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Why we're doing stuff, not buying stuff
Michael Pascoe
Published: September 28 2017 - 10:01AM
Pascoe's Law of Stuff states that stuff expands to fill available space. Live in a small unit, it will be full. Live in a big house for a while, it also will be full.
The corollary is that less space means less stuff – as anyone who's downsized knows only too painfully. And what follows from that is, if people can have fewer things, they'll react by spending more on services and experiences.
That's been my theory, supported by observation, speculation and the odd Australian Bureau of Statistics survey, such as those showing our spending on cafes and restaurants is outstripping general retail sales.
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Help me out here. RBA deputy says bank asked to do too much
Peter Martin
Published: September 28 2017 - 7:30PM
The Reserve Bank is being asked to do far too much, its deputy governor Guy Debelle has told a conference in London. From the time it was granted independence in the mid-1990s, it came to be seen as "the only game in town" for economic management, a view that was reinforced as it was forced it to do more and more.
With the rare exception of the global financial crisis in 2008-2009, demand management became to be the sole responsibility of the Australian Reserve Bank and others like it, he told the conference on central bank independence. Government tax and spending decisions were "not much in the mix".
"Given their mandate, as long as there was something that could be done to achieve the goals given to the central banks, however small the impact, then that something had to be done."
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National Budget Issues.
Brisbane off-the-plan unit losses affirm RBA fears
- The Australian
- 12:00AM September 25, 2017
Rosanne Barrett
Apartments bought off the plan at the start of Brisbane’s unprecedented unit-construction wave are selling at losses of up to 36 per cent, underscoring concerns from the Reserve Bank about the city’s concentrated inner-city market.
Property searches of high-rise apartment towers in Hamilton, Bowen Hills and Fortitude Valley built about five years ago show most sales this year had been at a loss.
The heaviest falls were a $152,000 plunge from an original price of $522,000 for a Hamilton two-bedroom unit with river views; a $150,000 decline on a smaller two-bedroom unit in the same complex; and a $145,000 loss on a $400,000, 60sq m unit in Bowen Hills.
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How 'bomb kit' delivery changed thinking about Australian border security
David Wroe
Published: September 24 2017 - 11:45PM
The recent case of a terrorist bomb kit allegedly being airmailed from Turkey to Sydney was a "game-changer", prompting a major rethink of border security that is looking at more screening of cargo offshore, a top official has said.
It can also be revealed that the government is working with cutting-edge artificial intelligence and big-data researchers to streamline the movement of passengers, parcels and mail into Australia and better predict incoming threats.
Michael Outram, acting Commissioner of the Australian Border Force, told Fairfax Media that the Sydney case had underscored the need for Australian agencies to co-operate to gather more information about packages before they arrive.
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How Australia can play a role in the 'second space age'
John McDuling
Published: September 25 2017 - 5:36AM
Elon Musk, the most hyped entrepreneur in the world right now, is scheduled to touch down again in Australia this week.
The South African-born billionaire is due to speak at the International Astronautical Congress, being hosted in Adelaide.
Musk is best known for his electric vehicle and energy company Tesla, which won a lucrative contract earlier this year from the South Australian government to supply the world's biggest lithium-ion battery.
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Everyone has a different excuse for the electricity stuff-up
Ross Gittins
Published: September 25 2017 - 12:15AM
The electricity market is such a mare's nest of stuff-ups and problems it's impossible to see the deeply divided Turnbull government making much progress in fixing it.
The goals of halting runaway power prices and reducing the risk of summer blackouts wouldn't be quite so daunting, for instance, were it not for the third goal of "sustainability" – the euphemism you use when you can't say "climate change".
It's tempting to focus on the first two and forget the third, but even that wouldn't work because the inescapable reality of climate change means that, until the Turnbull government ends the "policy uncertainty" about its treatment of fossil fuels relative to renewables, it's unlikely to get sufficient investment in new production capacity to keep prices controlled.
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Climate crunch: Australia to fail on Paris commitments without massive renewable switch
Mark Kenny
Published: September 24 2017 - 11:45PM
Australia will fall short of its Paris carbon reduction targets signed under Tony Abbott unless it lifts its renewable energy production to levels higher even than Labor's plan for 50 per cent green energy reliance by 2030.
The first assessment by the Australia Institute's new Climate and Energy Program, to be released on Monday, has found that unless a higher burden is placed on the more expensive process of carbon reductions in other sectors – agriculture, transport and manufacturing – then the electricity generation sector will need to aim for a renewable energy target of at least 66 per cent by 2030, and possibly as high as 75 per cent.
That is, a power generation sector where the fossil fuel component is reduced to perhaps a quarter of the size it is now.
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Reserve Bank warns how Australia can avoid another global financial crisis
Jessica Irvine
Published: September 24 2017 - 11:43PM
On September 16, 2008 Australians woke to extraordinary television footage of events overnight in New York.
Outside the towering offices of investment bank Lehman Brothers, bewildered looking bankers spilled onto the street, clutching archive boxes hastily-filled with personal effects, including framed portraits of families they now found themselves liberated to spend a whole lot more time with.
As shocking as the collapse of Lehman Brothers was, however, it was just the most dramatic development in a financial crisis which had been gathering speed for more than a year.
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No easy answers as the world's second biggest gas exporter prepares to run short
Peter Martin
Published: September 26 2017 - 5:48AM
Surely the world's second biggest exporter isn't about to run short of gas?
We are, according to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, although not for the reasons that are widely believed.
The conventional wisdom has been that when three big exporters opened six big liquefaction plants at Gladstone in Queensland and locked themselves into long-term supply contracts with Japan that they couldn't fulfil they had to commandeer gas that the rest of us would have used.
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Federal government announces final budget deficit has dropped to $33.2 billion
TREASURER Scott Morrison has said the Federal Budget is $4.4 billion better off, as the government slashed spending on social services.
Claire Bickers
News Corp Australia Network September 26, 201711:25am
TREASURER Scott Morrison has revealed Australia’s federal budget is $4.4 billion better off than forecast five months ago.
Australia’s final budget deficit for the 2016-17 financial year was $33.2 billion, down more than $4 billion from the $37.6 billion outlined in the May budget.
Federal government spending on social services, border control and the National Disability Insurance Scheme has been lower than expected.
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High house prices make a mockery of the bank lending crackdown
- The Australian
- 6:00PM September 26, 2017
James Kirby
If you want hard evidence that our property market has decoupled from reality perhaps this is all you need to hear: NAB has decided to introduce new rules about how much it will lend home buyers — the details emerged in recent days when the bank let it be known it will not allow new customers to borrow more than eight times their annual income.
Eight times income! What on earth? This is supposed to be NAB responding to concerns about household debt getting out of hand.
The average income is about $80,000 — the average house price is about $640,000 so the bank has to get a ratio that allows the average earner buy a house, so it comes up with a maximum of eight times income.
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Malcolm Turnbull's 'innovation' agenda lashed by Auditor-General
Stephanie Peatling
Published: September 28 2017 - 9:58AM
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's $1.1 billion flagship innovation agenda was poorly designed and lacked evidence to support its claims about economic growth, a scathing report from the Auditor-General has found.
Auditor-General Grant Hehir has criticised the policy's foundations, and attacked the quality of advice from the public service that underpinned the policy, which was announced in December 2015 – less than three months after Mr Turnbull became Prime Minister.
In a report that reads as if it could be a script for the ABC television public service satire Utopia, the Auditor-General said: "The policy logic that can be inferred from this model is that: if the proposed actions are taken, they will reduce the barriers, which will move Australia towards the vision, which in turn will help achieve the objective of increasing productivity and diversifying the economy".
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Audit exposes NISA as ‘innovation-lite’, Labor says
- The Australian
- 3:05PM September 28, 2017
Primrose Riordan
Labor has seized on an audit report which cast doubt over the impact and planning of the government’s innovation package, saying it exposed the program as “innovation-lite”.
The report by the Australian National Audit Office found there is no way to know whether the National Innovation and Science Agenda has had any economic impact and raised concerns about the amount of evidence presented to support some of the measures.
In a joint statement Labor’s industry spokesman Kim Carr, digital economy spokesman Ed Husic and innovation spokeswoman Deborah O’Neill said the plan was just an “election ploy”.
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Middle-income earners bear brunt of slump
- The Australian
- 12:00AM September 29, 2017
Simon Benson
Middle-income earners are bearing the brunt of a decade-long wage growth slump while workers on lower wages are weathering the storm through the tax-and-transfer welfare system, according to a Treasury report that debunks the myth of rising income inequality since the global financial crisis.
The first study of its kind into the underlying causes of the record low wage growth cycle, which the Reserve Bank saw as perplexing in a May analysis, has revealed a nationwide problem infecting every sector and hitting almost every worker.
Real wage increases over the past five years, taking into account the cost of living, have averaged half of what they did in the preceding decade, while fewer than 10 per cent of workers have experienced wage growth of 4 per cent or more — the lowest level since 2000 when the figure was 40 per cent. The percentage has been declining since.
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Job vacancies surge. It's raining vacant jobs.
Peter Martin
Published: September 28 2017 - 8:34PM
It's easier to find a job than it has been in years.
The latest count from the Bureau of Statistics shows there were 208,400 vacant jobs in August, the most on record. With 714,000 Australians out of work, it means there were just 3.4 unemployed for each vacancy in August, the best odds since 2012.
The number of vacant jobs has jumped from 179,700 to 208,400 in the space of a year. Two years ago, when there were only 152,600 vacant jobs, the unemployed to vacancy ratio was 5.5.
Employment Minister Michaelia Cash said the news was in line with other data showing stronger growth across the economy, particularly in full-time employment.
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How to ensure Australia thrives when the robots come
Peter Hartcher
Published: September 30 2017 - 12:05AM
We are in a moment between techno-rapture and techno-panic. For the last couple of decades we were in such reverential awe of the new technology firms that we allowed them to do as they pleased. Big Tech - Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter - could do no wrong.
Our state of techo-rapture allowed them to get busy doing and enabling things that no one else was allowed: the plundering of our personal data, the exploitation of our intellectual property, the avoidance of our tax laws. They provided platforms that allowed Islamic State to organise attacks on our societies and recruit new terrorists from our suburbs. They stood by as hostile governments used their systems to undermine our democracies.
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How Australia blew its future gas supplies
Tony Wright
Published: September 30 2017 - 12:15AM
No one went hungry at our place.
My father killed our meat, grew our vegetables and was a champion at bartering. A leg of lamb was worth a tub of crayfish to fishermen down the coast. My mother always had chooks, and there were warm eggs collected every morning.
The old boy would snort at the idea of selling a paddock of sheep or cattle without first selecting a fat lamb or a fine steer for the table and the freezer. When Mum took eggs to market, there were plenty put aside for our frypan.
It doesn't bear contemplating, now they're gone, what they might have thought about a country that allowed its entire store of gas to be flogged off without first setting aside enough of the stuff to ensure the nation's power grid continued humming and that consumers could afford to turn on a light switch.
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Health Budget Issues.
Govt hopes to secure private health package
Updated: 11:35 am, Sunday, 24 September 2017
Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt hopes to secure a private health insurance affordability package by the end of this year.
Mr Hunt has been in talks to bring down costs with Australian and international device or implant firms, as well as private health insurers.
'I think we are extremely close to genuine agreements that will reduce the pressure on the both devices but overall on the viability of private health insurance,' Mr Hunt told Sky News on Sunday.
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Care before costs: Our aged deserve better
Published: September 24 2017 - 12:05AM
Countless people in aged care are being harmed through neglect born of profit-driven cost-cutting and a failure to properly regulate an industry trusted by some of the most vulnerable people and their families.
We should all be alarmed by evidence of systemic and structural deficiencies, and shocking examples of the consequent suffering and trauma, set out in Fairfax Media's extensive investigation by Michael Bachelard. The four-day series of articles and data show reform is urgently needed to protect the almost 200,000 already in aged care, half of whom have dementia, and to meet the looming demographic surge in the need for end-of-life support. Medical advances have created historic increases in life expectancy, and millions of Australians will soon become unable to live without support available around the clock. Their quality of life is determined by the quality of their care.
The primary problem is an insufficient number of proficient professional staff, particularly nurses. This is discouraging for the many dedicated and decent staff in the industry. Evident flaws include lack of training, lack of expertise and poor English skills. So, an evident reform is to improve the quality and quantity of staff. There is no legally required minimum ratio of staff to residents, no minimum training standards, and no mandatory requirement to have a nurse on duty at all times. There is merely an unenforceable rule that staff numbers should be "adequate".
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Is this how it ends?: How we can make aged care better
Michael Bachelard
Published: September 26 2017 - 9:15AM
Lucy O'Flaherty insists that the village her organisation plans to build for people suffering dementia is nothing like the fake town depicted in the 1998 movie The Truman Show.
Korongee, due to open in two years in a suburb in Hobart's north, has been designed specially as a safe place for dementia patients, to give them the feeling they are living in a "real" village.
"But this is not about creating a simulated life," O'Flaherty says. "It's about letting people with dementia do what they want to do, when they want to do it, in a safe environment."
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Half doubt their health cover is worth it
Half of those with health cover surveyed in new polling agree health insurance isn't worth the money you pay for it.
Source: AAP 26 September, 2017
More than half of those surveyed in new polling don't think their health insurance is worth the money they pay for it.
Overall, 60 per cent in the Essential poll agreed with the claim that health insurance wasn't worth it, but when broken down to the group who have cover the result was 53 per cent.
Nearly 70 per cent who have never had insurance also agree it isn't worth the cost.
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Complications, wait times and necessary surgeries: where NSW was outclassed by other health systems, BHI report shows
Kate Aubusson
Published: September 27 2017 - 12:15AM
Patients in NSW public hospitals have higher rates of complications and longer wait times for some of the most common surgeries compared to comparative health systems internationally, a new independent analysis shows.
Australia's most populous state outperformed its international peers on a range of health system measures, but fell down when it came to adverse events, readmissions as well as inappropriate or delayed surgeries, according to the Bureau of Health Information's 'Healthcare in Focus' report.
NSW was the worst among eight comparator countries for hip fracture surgeries performed on time, with more than one in four patients waiting more than two days for their operations.
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Australian drug induced deaths at highest rate since late 1990s
AUSTRALIA has recorded its highest number of drug-related deaths since the late 1990s, driven by the meth epidemic, but also the misuse of prescription medicines.
Claire Bickers
News Corp Australia Network September 27, 201712:45pm
DRUG related deaths have reached alarming rates in Australia, with the nation recording its highest number in 20 years.
Prescription drugs caused the highest numbers of drug induced deaths last year, but Australia has also seen a rapid increase in the number of people dying from methamphetamine overdoses.
There were 1808 drug induced deaths registered in Australia in 2016, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics data released today.
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Dementia biggest killer of Aussie women
Dementia has become the leading cause of death for Australian women while drug deaths have hit a 20-year high, a new snapshot on mortality shows.
Megan Neil and Tracey Ferrier
Australian Associated Press September 27, 20176:03pm
Australian drug deaths have reached their highest level since the height of the 1990s heroin epidemic while dementia has become the biggest killer of Aussie women.
Heart disease has long been the nation's number one killer but as its death rate continues to decline, and Australians live longer, the number of people dying from dementia is increasing.
More than one-third of the 158,504 deaths in Australia in 2016 were due to the usual top five leading causes; heart disease, dementia, strokes, lung cancers and chronic lower respiratory diseases.
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Healthcare faces disruption: Primary Health Care CEO Parmenter
- The Australian
- 12:00AM September 28, 2017
Sarah-Jane Tasker
The head of one of Australia’s top healthcare companies has warned the sector is facing disruption, with technology and access to data set to drive increased consumer choice.
Primary Health Care’s new chief executive, Malcolm Parmenter, said more could be done to improve consumer experience in healthcare and a key driver of that was competition.
Dr Parmenter, who is three weeks into the top job, said consumers knew what constituted a good experience and already had access to technology to determine that in other areas of service, such as banking and supermarkets.
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How I claim back every cent of my health premiums as payouts
Nicole Pedersen-McKinnon
Published: September 27 2017 - 12:15AM
My health fund – which I love – hates me. This is because I'm among a presumably small group of Australians who routinely claim back every cent of their premiums as payouts. That's even though those premiums have increased by an average 55 per cent over the past 10 years.
Part of the secret is needing a lot of treatment: to keep pain and injuries at bay, my scoliosis requires a hectic regime of exercise physiology, osteotherapy and myotherapy.
Readers whose medical circumstances also crank their extras usage will be nodding knowingly. And developing a treatment-intensive condition yourself would put you in the same – let's not call it happy, but at least subsidised – position. Without serving waiting periods if cover is already in place.
1400 drugs on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme to get cheaper from October 1
Eryk Bagshaw
Published: September 30 2017 - 3:36PM
Australians battling breast cancer, Parkinson's disease and psoriasis will save hundreds of dollars a year on medicine as a wave of 1400 drugs become eligible for extra subsidies under the pharmaceutical benefits scheme from Sunday.
But the biggest benefits are set to go to up to 285,000 Australians with schizophrenia who will get access to a drug that costs $1700 for $38.
From October 1, REXULTI, an antipsychotic tablet, will become one of only a handful of mental illness medications to be added to the scheme. The structure of the program means that for concession card holders it will only cost $6.30.
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International Issues.
Trump administration adds countries to travel ban list
Devlin Barrett
Published: September 25 2017 - 10:28AM
The Trump administration announced new restrictions on visitors from eight countries - an expansion of the pre-existing travel ban that has spurred fierce legal debates over security, immigration and discrimination.
Officials had said they wanted the new rules to be both tough and targeted. The move comes as the key portion of President Donald Trump's travel ban, which bars the issuance of visas to citizens of six majority-Muslim countries, is set to expire.
"These restrictions are necessary and conditions-based, not time-based," a senior administration official said.
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Donald Trump demands NFL teams 'fire or suspend' players as solidarity spreads
Abby Phillip
Published: September 25 2017 - 6:41AM
US President Donald Trump's continued demands on Sunday that NFL owners fire or suspend players who kneel during the national anthem were met with defiance as teams and players knelt and locked arms in solidarity.
More than 100 players across the country on Sunday knelt during the national anthem or remained sitting in their locker rooms in protest. Most teams in the early afternoon games locked arms in solidarity, with at least three team owners joining their players.
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Election gives Germany's far right what it has sought: national legitimacy
Rick Noack
Published: September 25 2017 - 5:28AM
Berlin: In a country that kept the far-right restricted to the political sidelines for more than half a century, the rise of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) marked a watershed moment on Sunday, according to first projections which showed the party winning more than 13 per cent of the vote.
The AfD won't be in a position to drive a legislative agenda, but Sunday's vote will likely provide it with something the far-right had so far always been denied: parliamentary legitimacy on a national level.
"Once a party gains access to parliament, chances become much lower that it will simply disappear again," said Tarik Abou-Chadi, a comparative politics researcher at Humboldt University in Berlin. "The election could remove the social stigma which has hampered other far-right parties in the past."
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Think Donald Trump is dividing America? You're not alone
Philip Bump
Published: September 25 2017 - 6:34AM
President Donald Trump's weekend commentary on protests in the NFL was unsurprising in some respects. It's certainly unusual for a president to weigh in repeatedly on what's happening in professional sports, but we've come to expect the unusual from Trump.
It was also unsurprising that Trump injected himself into a fraught political subject, standing firmly in opposition to those players who choose to kneel during the national anthem as an expression of their concern about racial divides in the country. Trump's language was unequivocal in a way that he hasn't been in response to other protests - such as those in Charlottesville, Virginia, last month.
Washington Post-ABC polling released Sunday suggests that, even before Trump inserted himself into the NFL protests, most Americans viewed him as a president who was doing more to divide the country than to unite it.
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North Korea accuses US of declaring war, threatens countermeasures
Published: September 26 2017 - 6:40AM
North Korea's foreign minister has accused President Donald Trump of declaring war on North Korea, saying that Pyongyang reserves the right to take countermeasures including shooting down US strategic bombers even if they are not in the country's air space.
"The whole world should clearly remember it was the US who first declared war on our country," Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho told reporters in New York on Monday, local time.
"Since the United States declared war on our country, we will have every right to make countermeasures, including the right to shoot down United States strategic bombers even when they are not inside the airspace border of our country."
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North Korea v Donald Trump war of words: a most dangerous game
Paul McGeough
Published: September 26 2017 - 9:35AM
The dogs are barking – mad.
North Korea emerged from Donald Trump's weekend twitterstorm, with a Monday threat of its own. Pyongyang said it was ready to shoot down US military aircraft, even before they might enter its airspace.
It's scary stuff.
As these guys hurl insults and abuse at each other the lives of millions and the fate of nations are at stake, and the region and the world can't be sure how serious they are.
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Donald Trump's and Republicans' inability to scrap and replace Obamacare a failure of both
Paul McGeough
Published: September 27 2017 - 4:15PM
For days, Donald Trump has been banging on about footballers "taking a knee" - their kneeling protests at social injustice in the US.
But, on Tuesday, Trump took one in the groin as his promise to "repeal and replace" Obamacare was torched in yet another social injustice protest - this time by a courageous few among his own Republican Senate colleagues.
The Republican Party took a hit, exposed as more of a rabble as its last effort to "repeal and replace" died an ignominious death in broad daylight, with all of America looking on.
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- Updated Sep 28 2017 at 7:19 AM
Donald Trump unveils huge tax cuts in far-reaching fiscal overhaul
by John Kehoe
US President Donald Trump and senior Republicans have settled on a bold and expensive tax cut plan to boost America's international competitiveness, which aims to slash the corporate rate to 20 per cent, offer full deductibility of business investment and eliminate the taxation of foreign profits.
The ultimate success or failure of the fiscal overhaul will be closely watched by business tax reform advocates in Australia and around the world, to see if America ups the competitive ante for attracting global capital and puts pressure on Australia to adopt the Turnbull government's proposed 25 per cent corporate rate, a cut from the current 30 per cent rate for big business.
Mr Trump today unveiled the ambitious tax "framework" for businesses and individuals as the White House faces a fierce political battle to convince Congress to pass the economic overhaul so the President can clinch a rare legislative victory.
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Trump's tax plan to result in 'little-to-no taxes' from multinationals
Nassim Khadem
Published: September 29 2017 - 12:15AM
Australia's top corporates and their advisers say companies are more likely to base future projects offshore thanks to Donald Trump's plans to slash the US company tax rate as well as end taxes on foreign profits of US-based multinationals.
And while big business in America has largely thrown its support behind Trump's tax reform plan, a number of Washington-based lobby groups have warned the changes make it easier for multinational corporations to pay little-to-no taxes on all profits that they book offshore.
Mr Trump has proposed cutting the US corporate tax rate from 35 per cent to 20 per cent. His plan, which is still scant on detail and has no explanation of how it will be funded, will also give a one-time "tax holiday" to companies such as Apple and Microsoft to return overseas funds to the US. But as yet,Mr Trump hasn't specified what the one-off reduced corporate tax rate would be.
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North Korea war a real possibility, says RUSI
- Catherine Philp
- The Times
- 11:00AM September 29, 2017
The US cannot launch a preventive strike on North Korea’s nuclear capabilities without provoking a wider war that would leave hundreds of thousands of people dead, Britain’s leading defence think tank said yesterday.
War with North Korea is “now a real possibility”, the Royal United Service Institute (RUSI) warned in a report on the crisis prompted by the Kim regime’s rapid advances in nuclear missile technology. “If this war is launched, it will not be surgical or short,” it said.
Either side could trigger conflict but there are growing indications that the Trump administration is unwilling to live with a nuclear North Korea armed with intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the US mainland.
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Donald Trump’s faith in magic pudding economics
- The Australian
- 12:00AM September 29, 2017
Adam Creighton
Donald Trump’s courageous tax plan could be the last hurrah of the baby-boomers, delivering a remarkable windfall to the richest generation in history courtesy of a massive debt burden for the next generation.
Don’t get me wrong. There’s a lot to like about the Trump plan — a nine-page sketch of what the White House hopes US congress will pass in coming months, released earlier this week.
But slashing US taxes by about $US2.2 trillion ($2.8 trillion) over a decade (one estimate of the net impact of the proposals on the US budget) without cutting spending will only push the US government further down the path to fiscal oblivion, a problem boomers won’t have to worry about.
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China's National Congress prepares to shuffle the deck in second-largest economy
Kirsty Needham
Published: September 30 2017 - 12:15AM
Twice a decade, the top echelons of the Chinese Communist Party meet. It is political theatre on a grand scale.
Around 2000 delegates gather at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing and by week's end, China's new power elite will be unveiled. Seven men will walk out on stage on the red carpet, before hundreds of cameras.
It will be the Chinese public's, and the world's, first glimpse of the new Politburo Standing Committee – the Chinese government's cabinet under president Xi Jinping.
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I look forward to comments on all this!
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David.
