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Trump has pivoted to a focus on the virus and law and order in the hope of not loosing the election which is early November. He does not have long to turn around a poll gap behind Biden of roughly 10%.
In the UK Boris has admitted that he did not do all that well with the initial response to COVID-19 and that the Government really needs to do a lot better from now to save lives.
Last week has been all about how much the virus is costing (near $300 Billion so far) and whether the virus can be controlled in Victoria. It will be important for us all how this plays out.
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Major Issues.
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Now for the even grimmer news: it's a hell of a time to be governing
Sean Kelly
Columnist and former adviser to Labor prime ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard.
July 20, 2020 — 12.00am
In April, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg announced he would be releasing an economic statement in June. In June, he put out a press release informing the nation he would be releasing the statement in July, because there was a review of JobKeeper under way, and because the economy was re-opening faster than expected. In other words, for brightly optimistic reasons. The nation felt hopeful.
Two weeks ago, I drove to Bundanoon. I switched off my phone, ignored news. Three days later, looking at front pages I’d missed, listening to radio, checking into group chats, it was clear the national mood had fast become grim. Now it is grimmer still.
There have been concrete changes for Victorians, devastating for those already struggling financially or emotionally. But what has changed even beyond Victoria is the visceral recognition that what felt like a brief phase of our lives – even when we nodded wisely at each other and said the opposite – won’t be brief at all. This is the environment into which Frydenberg will, at last, deliver his statement.
Even the past fortnight has hurt, economically. Borders are shutting again; so is Victoria. In NSW, the government is adamant the state won’t lock down, but lots of people aren’t convinced, which is having divergent effects. As individuals, we are realising that the earliest phase of this pandemic, when many of us were sharing experiences, has passed: at some point our lives separated.
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What saved superannuation from the sharemarket downturn?
For millions of Australians shocked by the torrent of grim financial news this year, the relatively strong performance of local super funds, which mostly finished unchanged in the 12 months to June 30, has been a mystery.
If the sharemarket fell more than 7 per cent across the year, how did funds finish with an average dip of just 0.5 per cent? The answer is revealed in new research that looks at the strategic retreat of Australian super funds from the local share market in the decade since the GFC.
Following the losses of the GFC era when share prices fell 50 per cent from top to bottom from November 2007 to March 2009, the majority of Australia’s biggest super funds moved steadily out of the ASX and into international share markets.
But the most dramatic move was an industry wide step away from traditional fixed income such as bonds into “alternatives” coupled with a shift from listed property and infrastructure to unlisted versions of the same assets.
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https://apo.org.au/node/307002
Moral terrorism
21 Jul 2020
Publisher Centre for Independent Studies
Resources Moral terrorism
Description
We find ourselves living in an age when a small but highly vocal, and zealous, minority are availing themselves of the power of social media, and of sections of the printed press, to seek to force their opinions and attitudes on everyone else. In normal circumstances, this would simply be tedious: if, say, the public were being pressured to watch a particular television channel, or buy a certain brand of coffee. In our society we are conditioned to such things; but we are less conditioned to being told we should not, for whatever reason, watch a certain channel, or should boycott a certain brand of coffee. Mature and advanced societies — liberal societies — take an attitude of ‘live and let live’ in such matters.
It is one thing to be an advocate for your own interests; quite another to seek to attack, undermine and destroy someone else’s. Yet that is what the so-called ‘cancel culture’ seeks to achieve, and it is why the present circumstances of discourse are far from normal. In the pretence of wishing to shield vulnerable people from words that might wound or cause offence, they seek to render others terrified to utter the words at all.
Publication Details
Copyright: Centre for Independent Studies 2020
License type: All Rights Reserved
Issue: CIS Occasional Paper 174
Post date: 22 Jul 2020
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Does cancel culture actually exist?
For the better part of the last decade, we have given a label to something that has existed for the length of human history.
Sarah Manavis
Jul 25, 2020 – 12.00am
It’s a story that goes like this: there is a monster under the bed. It lurks in the shadows; sometimes it hides in the closet. You know it exists because you fear it – you wait for it. How could you be afraid of something that isn’t there?
It’s easy to attribute fears around “cancel culture” to paranoia. Cancel culture might be defined as a mob mentality, a series of mass movements seeking to end the careers of public figures whose thoughts or opinions deviate from a new set of left-wing norms. The concept derives from internet language: “you're cancelled” was a catchphrase created by teens who rescinded their support for problematic celebrities. Its opponents would say that “cancel culture” is a generational craving to nitpick famous people over minute infractions, and ruin their lives if they don't adhere to political correctness.
This discussion particularly intensified after a group of prominent artists, writers, and journalists signed an open letter in the US monthly Harper’s Magazine. With signatories including Noam Chomsky, Margaret Atwood and Salman Rushdie, this letter was a defence of “open debate” – something these public figures fear is becoming increasingly unavailable.
“The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted ... it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought,” it reads.
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Mary Trump and the many problems with uncle Donald
By Zoe Daniel
July 24, 2020 — 5.59pm
MEMOIR
Too
Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man
Mary
L. Trump
Simon
& Schuster, $32.99
It's like an episode of Big Brother. This window into Trump family life is deeply cringeworthy, yet strangely compelling. You can't help but watch, albeit while half covering your eyes. It fits the narrative of the Trump presidency perfectly, in which the White House has been like the set of a reality TV show.
The rest of the Trump family unsuccessfully sued to prevent the book, by his niece Mary, from being published. That's unsurprising, given that it tells a tale of fear, greed, narcissism and a degree of psychological abuse that, by Mary Trump's estimation, ran deep in the Trump clan and formed the man who is now the President of the United States.
"He's a clown," his older sister Maryanne tells Mary during the 2016 campaign. "This will never happen."
As the author points out, this is the first real family insight into the creation of Donald Trump, and it makes for eye-watering reading.
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Australia joins US in declaring Beijing’s South China Sea claims illegal
Australia has dramatically raised the stakes in its worsening relationship with China, swinging in behind the United States to formally declare Beijing’s disputed territorial claims in the South China Sea to be illegal.
In a declaration filed at the United Nations in New York, Australia said it rejected China’s claims to disputed islands and features in the South China Sea as inconsistent with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and therefore “invalid”.
The move comes just days ahead of high-level AUSMIN talks between Australia and the US in Washington, and follows the United States’ abandonment of its position of neutrality on Beijing’s South China Seas claims.
Australia has previously urged all claimants to disputed South China Sea islands and maritime features to resolve their claims in accordance with international law.
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Australia’s US ties a union of strength and shared values
MARISE PAYNE and LINDA REYNOLDS
Australia has many friends, old and new. In the strategically uncertain 21st century, we look to widen and deepen our friendships across the Indo-Pacific. However, there is no relationship that better spans the full spectrum of values, history, practical benefit, evolving interests, economic exchange and natural affiliation as our alliance with the US.
Our region is the most dynamic in the world. Australia and the US share a steadfast determination to keep the Indo-Pacific secure, open, prosperous, inclusive and rules-based. We make our own decisions, and if these often chime between our capitals it is because we are drawing on the same reservoir of deeply felt values: democracy, freedom, human rights, respect for sovereignty of nations large and small, an aversion to coercion and a desire to see security and prosperity spread justly around the globe.
We will discuss the co-operation that flows from this common purpose when we meet in Washington on Tuesday with our counterparts, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Defence Mark Esper, for the 2020 AUSMIN consultations. Never has it been more important that we, as allies, find every possible way to advance shared interests.
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Climate Policy
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https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/banks-need-to-heed-climate-message-20200720-p55dlv
Banks need to heed climate message
Climate change threatens financial stability. Burning coal helps trigger climate change. Banks have a responsibility to listen to protesters’ chants.
The Lex Column
Jul 20, 2020 – 10.40am
"Fossil banks, no thanks!" chant protesters. Financial institutions that lend to coal users are under pressure from climate campaigners.
Their anger will have been stoked by the recent research from lobby group Europe Beyond Coal identifying nearly €8 billion ($13 billion) of loans to coal-burning power companies since 2018.
It is not just campaigners. Nearly a quarter of shareholders supported climate change resolutions at annual meetings this year.
Critics focus on banks’ bottom lines, as well as the wider impact on society. Billionaire hedge fund manager Christopher Hohn compares the risks of lending to coal with those of subprime mortgages ahead of the financial crisis.
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Coronavirus And Impacts.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/supress-the-virus-not-the-debate-20200719-p55dej
Suppress the virus not the debate
Australia’s strategy in response to COVID-19 is not a matter of semantics. It is the most consequential public policy choice of a generation.
Grant Wilson Contributor
Jul 19, 2020 – 12.56pm
For the small minority of us who advocated early for elimination rather than suppression of COVID-19, the vociferous debate this past week has been welcome, but also well overdue.
In early May we highlighted a report from the Group of Eight, a collective of Australia’s leading research-intensive universities, that drew a sharp distinction between the two available strategies: controlled adaption (the preferred description for suppression) and elimination.
A week later we advocated for a "COVID-proof fence", where Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory, having achieved elimination, would pursue accelerated reopening both internally and between each other, providing the east with an incentive to catch up.
This suggestion was taken up by the ABC Darwin a few days later, in a Facebook post that went viral to the tune of 56,000 comments. To our chagrin, most of this was parody. Instead of a substantive debate, Australia succumbed to its traditional battle lines.
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UK makes research funding commitment to universities
It's part of an election promise to boost spending on science and innovation.
Robert Bolton Education editor
Jul 20, 2020 – 12.01am
Britain has put universities at the top of its list of stakeholders in a major upgrade of investment in research.
Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Secretary Alok Sharma released a Research and Development Roadmap this month which says his government would increase public funding in R&D to £22 billion ($39.6 billion) a year, and said it stood by an election promise to raise total R&D spending to 2.4 per cent of GDP by 2027.
Adopting a model that has boosted research effort in US universities, Mr Sharma said, "We will free up researchers to pursue ideas which can go on to have unpredictable benefits without starting with a specific goal in mind.
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'Not immune': Universities prepare for more job losses
By Anna Patty
July 20, 2020 — 12.05am
Thousands of university staff across Australia are bracing for further job losses in the coming months as the sector grapples with the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic.
National Tertiary Education Union general secretary Matt McGowan said about 70 per cent of the research being done in Australia was completed by university staff on fixed-term contracts whose positions were increasingly vulnerable.
The University of NSW last week announced it would cut 493 jobs and combine three faculties in response to a $370 million budget shortfall because of COVID-19.
"The country relies on research for medical advances through to music and the arts," Mr McGowan said. "But the research funding does not cover the cost of the activity. It gets cross-subsidised by international student money and that means ... all the fixed-term contracts are at risk."
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The economy can’t fully recover until the virus is gone
By Ross Gittins
July 20, 2020 — 12.00am
It’s time we stopped debating suppression versus elimination of the coronavirus and got serious: let’s make it a party-political issue. Liberal voters should defend suppression and denigrate elimination, while Labor voters do the opposite. Or vice versa.
This wouldn’t get us anywhere, of course, just as the politicisation of climate change has long crippled our efforts to make real progress. But it would gratify those who follow politics like others follow sport, and it would be a fillip for a media more interested in controversy than solutions.
But above all, it would relieve the rest of us of the mental effort of judging the merits of suppression versus elimination. To decide what our opinion was, all we’d need to do is remember which party we vote for.
We sub-contract the job of thinking through important policy issues to our ever-trustworthy political representatives, who can always be relied on to put our interests ahead of their own. And then we wonder why we’re making so little progress in solving the nation’s problems.
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Rebuilding a truly dynamic economy absolutely essential to the recovery
Pradeep Philip and Kristian Kolding
While much attention is, rightly, being paid to the health efforts to suppress the pandemic and the future of JobKeeper and JobSeeker, less attention has been paid to the dynamism of the economy and the importance of innovation and competition as the effects of COVID-19 have structurally battered the economy.
We can think of the response to the pandemic in terms of the phases of response, recover, and thrive.
The reality is that these phases are intertwined and deal with the short term as well as longer-term impacts on the economy, and cyclical versus structural elements of the economy.
The tragic reality of the pandemic is clear for all to see: around one million Australians have lost their jobs or dropped out of the labour market, while small and medium-sized businesses, with their higher fixed costs, smaller cash reserves and barriers to lending, are barely keeping their heads above water.
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Seven questions Scott Morrison must answer on this crisis
The PM has been forced to drop all the old Liberal rhetoric about 'debt and deficit' and become a social democrat instead.
Kevin Rudd Former Australian prime minister
Jul 20, 2020 – 3.44pm
On the eve of the government’s much-delayed financial statement, it’s time for some basic questions about Australia’s response.
The uncomfortable truth is that we are still in the economic equivalent of “the phoney war” between September 1939 and June 1940, when the full impact of that particular global crisis had yet to be felt. Our real problem is not now but the fourth quarter of this year, and next year, by when temporary measures will have washed through, while globally the real economy will still be wrecked. But there’s no sign yet of a long-term Australian economic strategy, centred on infrastructure, to rebuild business confidence to start investing and re-employing people.
So while Scott Morrison may look pleased with himself (who wouldn’t after months of largely uncritical media, a Parliament that barely meets and a budget already two months late) it’s time for some intellectual honesty in what passes for our public policy debate. So here are seven questions for Scotty to answer.
First, the big one. It’s well past time to come fully clean on the two dreaded words of Australian politics: debt and deficit. How on earth can Morrison’s Liberal Party, and its coalition partner, the Murdoch party, justify their decade-long political assault on public expenditure and investment when responding to an existential financial and economic crisis?
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Britain announces breakthroughs in vaccine and drug treatment
Hans van Leeuwen Europe correspondent
Jul 21, 2020 – 4.40am
London | Britain has taken a big step forward in the global race to defeat COVID-19, announcing breakthroughs in the search for both a vaccine and a more effective treatment.
The partnership between AstraZeneca and Oxford University has confirmed that its initial trials have demonstrated its candidate vaccine is potentially both safe and also able to trigger immune responses.
Meanwhile, listed Southampton-based drug discovery company Synairgen reported promising results from a trial of 101 hospitalised COVID-19 patients given SNG001, an inhaled formulation of interferon beta.
If substantiated, Syngairgen's treatment could dramatically cut hospitalisation and fatality rates, curbing the threat of the coronavirus pandemic.
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Never have we spent so much, for so long, on safety
Lockdowns have wrecked millions of businesses and young people face chronic unemployment and lost opportunities for years.
July 21, 2020
The “pursuit of safety stands against every great and noble enterprise”, Roman historian Tacitus once remarked. He, and indeed every generation since, would be shocked by the response to this new coronavirus.
As British historian David Starkey observed in late May: “What is peculiar about COVID-19 is that it’s not a very serious disease … (yet) we’ve committed economic suicide … the damage it has done is self-inflicted.”
Never has the world spent — and restricted peacetime freedoms — so much, for so long, in the name of safety. Six months in and more than 600,000 have died, but this remains a fraction of the millions of deaths the flu pandemics caused in the late 1950s and 60s in a smaller world. And governments and media didn’t terrify people and induce the biggest recession in a century.
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, whose state is in the middle of a three-month lockdown costing at least $1bn a week, told a transfixed nation on Sunday three people in their 90s had died from COVID-19. Millions would need to wear face masks indefinitely.
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Coronavirus: Face masks ‘reduce deadly power of virus’: US research
· The Times
Masks do help to protect the wearer, as well as people they meet, according to research by infectious disease experts.
A report from a team at the University of California, San Francisco, says that masks can reduce the amount of virus that gets into someone’s system, meaning they do not get as badly sick.
In England, face coverings are mandatory on public transport and will become so in shops and supermarkets from July 24. The requirement appears to have strong public support, with only 19 per cent of Britons opposing compulsory wearing of masks in shops, according to a survey last week by the research company ORB International.
The paper is due to be published in the Journal of Internal Medicine but was made available in advance by the researchers. Monica Gandhi, one of the study’s co-authors, who is associate division chief of the infectious diseases program at San Francisco General Hospital, said: “You will get in a lower dose of virus if you wear a mask and are exposed to COVID-19 and are very likely to have mild or no symptoms.”
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'Path ahead is expected to be bumpy': RBA governor warns unemployment to rise
By Jennifer Duke
July 21, 2020 — 1.00pm
Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe has warned the unemployment rate will climb further this year as the coronavirus pandemic continues amid government cuts to the amount available under its $86 billion wage subsidy program.
Incomes were also expected to remain lower until there were scientific breakthroughs or improvements managing the virus, Dr Lowe said in an annual address to The Anika Foundation at lunch on Tuesday.
In April and May, about 870,000 people lost employment and another 760,000 had no hours of work although they had a job, while others had their hours cut, he said. Total hours worked fell 10 per cent in a matter of weeks and the unemployment rate increased to 7.4 per cent.
"As staggering as this fall is, it is smaller than we earlier feared," Dr Lowe said. "Fortunately, we have now turned the corner", he said, with hours worked increasing 4 per cent in June and the number of employed people up 210,000.
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Coronavirus pandemic crushes values of shopping malls
The pain in the retail sector has been put on stark display with Chadstone co-owner Vicinity Centres slashing the value of its entire portfolio by nearly $2bn as the coronavirus pandemic discourages shoppers from visiting shopping centres.
The company, whose portfolio is heavily weighted towards Victoria and Melbourne, has been harder hit than rival Scentre, which owns the Australian Westfield empire, and it could be hurt more if Victorian lockdowns drag on.
The pandemic is looming over the mall sector and further heavy writedowns are expected during the December half if foot traffic remain subdued. Superannuation funds are heavily exposed to the downturn, given they have stakes in many of the country’s largest shopping centres directly or via specialist funds, which have also been hit by a string of writedowns over the past year.
“This remains a highly uncertain and evolving environment, as demonstrated by current circumstances in Victoria. Any reductions in discretionary retail spending and lower retail activity may continue to have an adverse impact on the valuation of Vicinity’s assets,” Vicinity chief executive Grant Kelley said.
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Cabinet divided over lockdown with some prepared to accept up to 250 virus cases a day
By Michael Koziol
July 26, 2020 — 12.00am
Premier Gladys Berejiklian's cabinet is divided over how to handle the state's low but persistent numbers of coronavirus cases, with some ministers demanding tighter restrictions and others arguing they could sustain as many as 250 new cases a day before lockdowns are required.
Senior ministers have had informal discussions about the maximum number of daily cases they could accept before the state would have to lock down again. One cabinet member, who spoke on condition of anonymity, nominated the figure of 250 cases a day and said colleagues agreed.
However, ministers accept they would be bound by the advice of risk-averse Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant, who would almost certainly recommend lockdowns at a much lower number.
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Lives versus livelihoods: the impossible calculus of a Lockdown 2.0
By Jessica Irvine, Alexandra Smith and Rachel Clun
July 25, 2020 — 12.02am
The threat of coronavirus has hung over the Australian psyche for exactly half-a-year now.
Saturday marks exactly six months since health authorities confirmed Australia's first diagnosed case of COVID-19, a Chinese man in his 50s who tested positive to the then little-known virus after flying from Guandong to Melbourne.
What followed has been six months of escalating, stop-start attempts by authorities to contain the virus' spread, while limiting the economic fallout.
As the federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg confirmed the biggest hit to the Australian economy and budget since the Great Depression, this week also marked a new and dangerous phase in the health battle, with Australia recording its first day of new-confirmed cases above 500.
At week's end, the nation had just shy of 4200 confirmed active cases of COVID-19. Nearly 8700 have recovered. But the national death toll has climbed to 139 people, after Victoria recorded its highest daily death toll on Friday with seven deaths.
Victoria remains the epicentre of infections, but as numbers slowly rise in NSW, increasingly anxious NSW ministers are considering a range of options, from mandatory masks to targeted sector shutdowns.
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Debt and deficit doomsayers face a new reality: only jobs will matter
The government’s Economic and Fiscal Update on Thursday was a terrifying document.
For a start Treasury is saying we’re in a depression instead of a recession (two consecutive years of negative GDP, which is a common definition of depression, as opposed to a recession’s two consecutive quarters), which is pretty alarming in itself.
But unless things change in the full budget in October, it looks like at least two million people will have their incomes cut by between $225 and $550 a week between September and March and the unemployment rate will be 15 per cent next year.
Add this to the fact that about 800,000 bank mortgage deferrals are due to run out about half way through that period, and it’s not hard to feel a bit gloomy about the prospects for the Australian economy, the housing market and the solvency of the banks, not to mention the happiness and sanity of more than 10 per cent of the population and their families, as they slide into poverty.
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Royal Commissions And The Like.
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There are no entries in this section.
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National Budget Issues.
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Plans needed to avert insolvency tidal wave
Australia’s peak body for insolvency practitioners has warned of growing risks in government COVID-19 support schemes that are allowing potentially non-viable businesses to continue to trade.
Insolvency numbers across the country are sitting around 40 per cent below long-term averages, after collapsing in April as measures including the JobKeeper wage subsidy scheme and director liability relief for insolvent trading were introduced.
But the Australian Restructuring Insolvency and Turnaround Association says allowing so many businesses to trade that otherwise might have been wound up risks debt contagion and could overwhelm the resources of the country’s insolvency practitioners.
“When businesses continue to trade and rack up greater debts there is a flow-on to other businesses,” ARITA chief executive John Winter told The Australian.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/economic-growth-is-the-best-way-out-of-the-crisis-20200721-p55e2e
Economic growth is the best way out of the crisis
The RBA Governor says until the pandemic passes it makes sense to provide fiscal support but there is no such thing as a free lunch.
Philip Lowe
Jul 21, 2020 – 4.18pm
I would now like to address one idea for the use of the central bank’s balance sheet that I sometimes hear – that is, we should use it to create money to finance the government.
A variant on this idea is that the central bank should just deposit money in every bank account in the country – this is sometimes known as "helicopter money" because, before we had an electronic payments system the idea was that banknotes could simply be dropped by helicopter.
For some, this idea is seen as a way of avoiding financing constraints – it is seen as holding out the offer of a free lunch of sorts. The central bank, unlike any other institution, is able to create money and the resource cost of creating that money is negligible. So the argument goes, if the government needs money to stimulate the economy, the central bank should simply create it in the public interest.
The reality, though, is there is no free lunch. The tab always has to be paid and it is paid out of taxes and government revenues in one form or another. I would like to explain why.
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Debt and deficits ‘manageable’, says RBA governor Philip Lowe
Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe has endorsed record public debt and deficits during the coronavirus pandemic as an “entirely manageable and affordable” to limit the severity of “costly economic scars” caused by high unemployment.
In a major speech in Sydney on Tuesday that aksi took a swipe at calls for “money printing” the RBA governor said the government could borrow “on very favourable terms” and public debt was “much lower that in many other countries and was likely to remain so”.
“For a country that has got used to low budget deficits and low levels of public debt, this is quite a change but it is a change that is entirely manageable and affordable and it’s the right thing to do in the national interest,” he said.
The comments came soon after the Prime Minister announced an extension of emergency social security measures JobKeeper and JobSeeker into 2021, at reduced rates, which UBS on Tuesday estimated could cost almost $20bn.
Dr Lowe blasted calls for the central bank to “print money” to pay for government spending, stressing it risked an inflation blowout and was “clearly not relevant to the situation we face in Australia”.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/growing-our-way-out-of-debt-is-a-very-big-bet-20200722-p55e9s
Growing our way out of debt is a very big bet
The RBA governor says it's OK to rack up debt paying for the virus. But there may be no reliable way back out.
Stephen Anthony Contributor
Jul 22, 2020 – 5.35pm
Reserve Bank of Australia governor Philip Lowe outlined on Tuesday his vision for the activist use of the central bank balance sheet to facilitate economic smoothing in a zero interest rate world:
“Using the public balance sheet in this way inevitably requires government borrowing against future income. It is through this borrowing that we can smooth out the hit to our current income. For a country that has got used to low budget deficits and low levels of public debt, this is quite a change. But it is a change that is entirely manageable and affordable and it’s the right thing to do in the national interest.”
That language augurs the shift away from the twin anchors of Australian macro policy for the past 30 years – balanced budgets over the cycle, where discretionary monetary policy was the main tool of discretionary policy. The goal here was always to ensure policy neutrality over the cycle by promoting consistency in private sector decision-making.
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Frydenberg unveils biggest deficit since World War II
By Jennifer Duke and Shane Wright
July 23, 2020 — 11.00am
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has revealed the budget will be in the red by $85.8 billion in 2019-20 and $184.5 billion in 2020-21, marking the biggest deficit since World War II due to drastic spending to mitigate the damage from the coronavirus pandemic.
At a special budget update on Thursday, the first since December, Mr Frydenberg said the unemployment rate was expected to reach 9.25 per cent in the December quarter, while GDP would contract by 0.25 per cent in 2019-20 and shrink 2.5 per cent in 2020-21.
The economic downturn has cost the budget $32.4 billion in 2019-20 and $72.2 billion in 2020-21. Tax receipts are down $31.7 billion in 2019-20 and $63.9 billion in 2020-21.
The coronavirus pandemic has dashed the Morrison government's plans to be "back in the black" and produce the first surplus since 2007-08. In December, the government had expected to reach a $5 billion surplus in 2019-20 and a $6.1 billion surplus this financial year.
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Make no mistake. This weaning process will be painful
Jessica Irvine
Economics writer
July 22, 2020 — 11.53pm
Never let it be said designing unprecedented wage subsidy schemes in the middle of a rapidly evolving pandemic is an easy thing.
When exhausted Treasury officials finalised the details of the government's JobKeeper 1.0 scheme, announced on March 30 off the back of two other massive stimulus packages, they erred firmly on the side of simplicity and generosity.
Amid reports of Northern Italian doctors switching off ventilators for elderly COVID-19 patients to keep younger patients alive, Treasury assumed Australia, too, was headed for an eight-week "hard lockdown" in which all non-essential activity, like retail, construction and mining, would be cancelled.
Treasury thought more than 6 million Australians would need the $1500 per fortnight JobKeeper payment, but only 3.5 million did. Because, of course, as it turns out, that severe lockdown didn't happen.
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https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/harsh-reality-jobless-rate-to-hit-9-25pc-20200723-p55emq
'Harsh reality': Jobless rate to hit 9.25pc
Phillip Coorey Political editor
Jul 23, 2020 – 11.42am
The extent of the havoc inflicted on the economy by the coronavirus pandemic has been laid bare in an economic update that shows the budget deficit for last year blowing out to $85.8 billion and forecast to hit at least $184.5 billion this year.
The July Economic and Fiscal Outlook (JEFU) released on Thursday morning by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg forecasts the unemployment rate, currently at 7.4 per cent, to hit 9.25 per cent before Christmas.
Calling the update "the real cost of protecting lives and livelihoods from the coronavirus", Mr Frydenberg said the real unemployment rate and the effective rate, now 11.3 per cent, would soon merge as restrictions were eased and assistance pared back.
"Beyond 2020, Labour market conditions will strengthen but it will take some time for the unemployment rate to decline,'' the statement said.
It forecast a unemployment rate of 8.75 per cent for this financial year.
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https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/budget-has-done-all-it-can-in-a-crisis-20200723-p55en6
Forecasts unveil hardest hit part of the economy
The emergency spending will help us recover better on the other side. But it isn't enough to get almost a million jobs back again.
Chris Richardson Contributor
Jul 23, 2020 – 1.16pm
The economic statement had already been delayed once, so they couldn’t delay it again.
But this was the worst possible week in which to have to update the Australian public on the economy and the budget, because what happens to them depends on what happens with the fight against the virus.
And Australia’s fight against the virus still hangs in the balance.
Melbourne, Melbourne, Melbourne ... Pretty much all of the big questions as to what happens next – for our health, our finances, and for the federal budget – will depend on what happens next in Melbourne.
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Morrison looks to tread the path of least resistance
The huge numbers in the updated forecasts are the government's way of preparing voters for the policy measures to come in the October budget.
Phillip Coorey Political editor
Jul 23, 2020 – 8.00pm
Typically when a government releases a budget, mini-budget, budget update or economic statement, there is as much focus on the measures contained within as the numbers.
Not this time.
The government announced in advance the measures reconciled in Thursday's statement – the extension of JobSeeker, JobKeeper and the cheap loan scheme for small and medium-sized enterprises – so the focus on Thursday would be on the numbers.
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No government has been mugged by reality quite like this
David Crowe
Chief political correspondent
July 23, 2020 — 11.10pm
A surprising silence fell over some Liberal offices this week when the Morrison government said it would spend another $20 billion on income support for workers and the unemployed.
The phones were quiet. Some of Scott Morrison's backbenchers were struck by the lack of thunder about the latest boost to a massive stimulus.
"I haven't had a single phone call or email about it," says one Liberal MP in suburban Melbourne. A Liberal in Sydney says the same thing. A check of other party room members suggests the muted response was fairly widespread. It was as if the community gave a quick nod and moved on.
Australians had more than the budget to worry about when the country had 388 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday and 502 on Wednesday, showing the second wave of the pandemic has surged higher than the first.
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Unemployment to soar as economy suffers deep recession
By Shane Wright
July 23, 2020 — 7.45pm
An extra 240,000 Australians are likely to end up on the nation's jobless queues by Christmas, with the Morrison government expecting the coronavirus recession to shrink the economy for two consecutive years.
The economic and fiscal report released by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg on Thursday, the first formal update on the government's budget forecasts since its mid-year report in December, forecasts the jobless rate to reach 9.25 per cent in the December quarter.
Australia's deficit estimated at $85.8 billion for 2019-20 will rise to $184.5 billion in 2020-21, the Treasury revealed.
The unemployment rate hit 7.4 per cent in June and would have been well above 11 per cent but for the official statistics excluding more than 230,000 people on JobKeeper who are not working any hours and another 300,000 who have left the jobs market altogether.
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No longer a disaster but a debt and deficit off-planet mountain
By Shane Wright
July 23, 2020 — 2.50pm
Debt and deficit disasters are so 2014.
When Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey attacked Labor for its profligacy and failure to maintain control over its budget, the nation's gross debt was about $310 billion. The first Coalition budget since John Howard and Peter Costello warned that, without measures to bring spending under control, the budget would be "in deficit for at least the next decade".
Fast forward six years. Prince Philip has been knighted but there has still been no surplus, debt is on its way toward $1 trillion and the economy is in its first recession in 30 years.
Unemployment is tipped to reach 9.25 per cent by Christmas. Excluding those on JobKeeper and who have left the jobs market altogether, that's an additional 240,000 people looking for work on top of the 992,000 currently without employment.
The numbers unveiled by Josh Frydenberg and Mathias Cormann are butt-clenchingly large: a deficit this financial year of at least $184.5 billion that will probably nudge $200 billion by the time of the October budget and its extra spending measures; gross debt that will go through the government's recently increased limit of $850 billion some time in 2021-22 with no idea how it will be paid down.
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Complacent government delivers early shock therapy to prepare public for cuts
Ross Gittins
Economics Editor
July 23, 2020 — 5.11pm
Sorry, but this is the economic statement of a government that’s complacent about controlling the coronavirus and about getting a million unemployed people back to work. It sees its job as largely done. Now it’s time to quickly wind back its spending on supporting the economy and call for the bill.
You can tell Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg decided this before the extent of the setbacks in Victoria and NSW became fully apparent. They have assumed that after the six-week lockdown in Melbourne, everything will be fine again.
That’s quite an assumption, especially because those two states account for more than half the national economy.
A less complacent assumption would have been that, in the many months likely to pass before a vaccine is widely available, several further major setbacks could occur and delay the return to confidence by consumers and businesses that normal economic times had resumed and it was time to get on with spending and investing.
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COVID impact on property seen as large after economic update casts shadow
Spiralling unemployment and falling immigration outlined in the Treasurer’s economic update are likely to cast the greatest shadow over residential property in the months ahead.
If anything, industry predictions that house prices might fall 10 per cent further in the major cities are most likely optimistic.
As the continued extensions of support programs mask the reality of strained household finances, the update added yet another support extension with the deadline for the early superannuation release scheme moved out from September to December.
However, the sliding level of key support payments such as JobKeeper will now cut straight into the ability of borrowers to repay mortgages. Treasury expects unemployment to peak at 9.25 per cent by December.
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Failure to lead us from the fiscal gloom
Business was underwhelmed by Thursday’s economic statement not because of the national debt, but because Treasurer Josh Frydenberg failed to provide any suggested pathway out of the fiscal gloom.
The onus will now be on October’s budget to deliver evidence of a plan via policy reform to achieve the necessary switch from emergency funding via JobKeeper/Seeker to long-term stimulus.
That is the tricky test ahead of the Treasurer, unless of course his budget is pre-empted as Thursday’s statement was by the early release of the JobKeeper extensions.
Just why that split was made was confusing because clearly the two announcements made more sense together but put that one down to marketing and who claims credit.
The quicker the country can get from emergency support to actual budget stimulus the better everyone will be because the latter is all about growing the economy and the former just trying to keep the place together.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/how-the-government-can-shrink-the-850b-debt-bill-20200724-p55f2o
How the government can shrink the $850b debt bill
If the economic growth rate exceeds the borrowing rate, the debt-to-GDP ratio will fall over time, even if the dollar value of debt does not decline.
John Kehoe Senior writer
Jul 24, 2020 – 5.17pm
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg was asked this week if he would increase taxes or cut spending to repay the record $850 billion of gross debt forecast for next year that will ultimately approach $1 trillion.
But here's the economic secret. The government may never actually repay the debt, which will hit 45 per cent of GDP next year – still less than half the average of advanced economies.
What really matters to bond investors and credit rating agencies is not the dollar value of debt, but the debt as a share of the size of the economy.
If the economy grows strongly, the debt-to-GDP ratio naturally falls over time and the borrowing is sustainable.
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Hesitant and dithering: The void at the heart of the government endangers the nation's future
Peter Hartcher
Political and international editor for The Sydney Morning Herald
July 25, 2020 — 12.01am
Let the clinical notes show that Dr J. Frydenberg and Dr M. Cormann attended the patient, Mr Oz Economy, on Thursday, July 23. The doctors told the patient the results of diagnostic tests. He had suffered a massive cardiac arrest, was on life support and would remain confined to the ICU. They informed him that his hospital bill was large and growing. Dr Frydenberg described it as "eye watering".
The patient said that he was aware of these facts and wanted to know his prognosis. Dr Frydenberg said the patient would continue to lose function until Christmas. He was expected to improve in the new year. The outlook was "highly uncertain". Any recovery would feel like climbing a mountain.
The patient asked for a treatment plan. Dr Frydenberg said he would provide one in October. Dr Cormann said the main thing was that the patient was in better condition than other patients in the ICU. After the patient conference, Mr Economy asked the nursing staff for more oxygen and antidepressants and asked whether he might still be alive in October.
The Morrison government's economic response to the pandemic so far has been solid. Credit where it's due. The federal government and the Reserve Bank mobilised serious quantities of national resources to protect the country from the worst global economic shutdown since the Great Depression almost a century ago.
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Josh Frydenberg is planning for light at the end of the tunnel
As Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg faces a once-in-a-hundred-year dilemma — he is hostage to a pandemic. His problem is Australia’s problem — the government wants to push the economy towards recovery but the nation, due to Victoria, has just recorded its worst-ever COVID-19 infection rate.
This week’s policies and unprecedented debt and deficit forecasts announced by Frydenberg are actually optimistic but their validity depends upon Australia continuing to perform better, to quote Frydenberg, “than almost any other nation in the world”.
The public is apprehensive, alarmed but resilient. This is understandable. The coronavirus is an assault on medical, psychological and economic confidence. “People want hope, people need hope,” Frydenberg tells Inquirer. “The economic recovery is a confidence game, it’s so important we maintain the public’s confidence.”
That is a daunting challenge with Australia facing a more arduous era of high unemployment, generational long debt and deficits, damaged industries and shrinking opportunities for many people. The headline unemployment rate is forecast to rise to 9.25 per cent before Christmas but this rests on optimistic assumptions: that the Victorian lockdown works, the Victorian border reopens as planned, that COVID-19 is contained across the nation and that recovery is ignited.
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Health Issues.
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'Huge concern:' Heart attack patients risk lives by delaying hospital treatment
By Melissa Cunningham and Aisha Dow
July 20, 2020 — 11.45pm
Some Victorians with heart attack symptoms waited more than 12 hours before seeking potentially life saving hospital treatment during the first COVID-19 lockdown in a dangerous trend doctors fear could cost lives during the current surge in infections.
New research from the University of Melbourne and Austin Health, published in the European Heart Journal, found Victorian patients with severe chest pain were waiting four times longer on average to seek medical treatment amid fears of overburdening the health system or catching the virus in hospital.
As part of the study, researchers examined the behaviour of more than 120 patients who had suffered heart attacks before presenting at the Austin Hospital over a four-week period when the state's first lockdown came into effect in March.
They then compared this data to the same period over the past seven years, finding patients with heart attacks were staying at home six or more hours longer before presenting to hospital.
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Health insurance on slide as Bupa reveals post-pandemic claims surge
The number of Australians taking out private health insurance has fallen to its lowest levels since 2006, with the sector feeling the squeeze from a cutback in non-essential spending as the economic slows.
Data released on Thursday by the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority showed private health hospital coverage of adults declined from 44.7 per cent in 2018 to 44 per cent last year.
Coverage declined across almost all age groups, except the over 70s, whose coverage lifted by as much as 8 per cent.
The latest figures are on top of already low rates of coverage for people younger than 30 years old.
The greying of private health policyholders is a concern, according to Canstar financial expert Steve Mickenbecker, who warns the shifting of policies towards the elderly is driving the exit of younger people.
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Viking-age smallpox complicates story of viral evolution
By James Gorman
July 24, 2020 — 5.46pm
New York: The evolution of the deadliest virus in human history — smallpox — is only partly understood. Like the novel coronavirus and many other disease-causing viruses, smallpox seems to have originated in animals, probably rodents, and spilled over to humans, probably thousands of years ago. In the 20th century alone it killed hundreds of millions of people.
Until now, the earliest confirmed case of smallpox had been found in the mummified remains of a Lithuanian child from the 17th century. On Thursday, US time, an international team of researchers pushed that date back 1000 years, reporting in the journal Science that they had recovered smallpox DNA from the remains of people in northern Europe in the Viking Age.
The virus they found is now extinct and has not been found in other, more recent skeletal remains. It is not an ancestor of the modern smallpox virus but an evolutionary dead end. It has more genes than the modern virus, and scientists have observed that among the many pox viruses in nature, fewer genes tend to mean a more deadly virus. Putting those facts together caused one prominent smallpox specialist to suggest that the modern virus might have become more deadly as it evolved. Most viruses become less deadly over time.
Pox viruses are not closely related to coronaviruses, and the research has no direct application to the current spread of the novel coronavirus. But in the midst of a pandemic, even the thought of some viruses evolving to be more deadly is decidedly uncomfortable.
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Inside our microscopic war machine and the million-dollar question
By Liam Mannix
July 25, 2020 — 11.30pm
A study that indicates antibody levels drop rapidly after exposure to COVID-19 is not a major hurdle to making a vaccine, experts say.
But that does not mean making a long-lasting vaccine is easy. While futuristic vaccines lead the race, it may be an ancient technology that provides the best staying power.
“Immunity to COVID-19 could be lost in months,” fretted one newspaper, after a study by King's College London found antibodies to the virus drop rapidly after a patient recovers. “This threatens a vaccine,” warned another outlet.
But many immunologists are not concerned by those results. Looking just at antibody levels does not tell the full story, they say.
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International Issues.
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Trump admits he may not accept election result
Harriet Alexander
Updated Jul 20, 2020 – 9.49am, first published at 9.12am
New York | Donald Trump may not accept the results of the forthcoming presidential election, he has said, setting the stage for an epic showdown in November.
In a wild and contentious interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News, broadcast on Sunday (AEST), the President said he was "not a good loser" and was fully prepared to challenge the results, if he lost to Joe Biden, his Democratic rival.
He claimed postal voting, which Democrats pushed as a response to the pandemic, "is going to rig the election".
Asked if this meant that he would not accept the election results, Mr Trump said: "No. I have to see."
His rival is currently 15 points ahead, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll released yesterday.
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Australia's regional defence strategy is short on Indonesia
Canberra's Defence Strategic Update does a poor job of specifying the shared regional interests that may or may not rally the support of regional countries such as Indonesia.
Evan Laksmana
Updated Jul 20, 2020 – 11.46am, first published at 11.34am
Australia launched its 2020 Defence Strategic Update this month to bring defence policy up to speed with the deteriorating strategic environment in the Indo-Pacific, marked by the rapid military modernisation in the region, sharpening US–China strategic competition, and the rise of "grey-zone" forms of assertiveness and coercion to achieve strategic goals without provoking conflict.
The strategic update commits Australia to shaping its strategic environment, deterring actions against its interests and responding with force if necessary. It reorients defence planning to Australia’s immediate region, from the north-eastern Indian Ocean through south-east Asia to the south-west Pacific.
Australia's boost to defence capabilities and the realignment of strategic focus in the face of adverse strategic trends is a perfectly reasonable step. But the focus on south-east Asia immediately raises the question of where Indonesia fits in.
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Strangest and most grotesquely untrue statement of Donald Trump’s life
Donald Trump chose, 100 days before the election, to make surely the strangest and most grotesquely untrue statement of his life, when the US President told Fox TV’s Chris Wallace that the US has the lowest COVID-19 mortality rate in the world.
There have been a little over 600,000 COVID-19 deaths worldwide and nearly a quarter of them were Americans. How can that possibly be the world’s lowest COVID-19 death rate?
It can’t.
Trump has stepped up his attacks on Joe Biden.
He paints Biden as bordering on semi-senile, soft on China and a willing dupe of the Democratic Party’s activist left wing. Although Trump expresses them roughly, these are profitable lines of attack as there is a smidgen of truth in each.
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After long absence, Trump re-engages with virus crisis
Jacob Greber United States correspondent
Jul 21, 2020 – 9.06am
Washington | Donald Trump, after months of effectively ignoring the raging US pandemic, is preparing to re-engage with the crisis by resuming regular coronavirus taskforce press briefings.
Shaken by damning internal and public polls, Mr Trump said on Monday (Tuesday AEST) that he would "get involved and we'll start doing briefings . . . . probably tomorrow".
Mr Trump pledged to resume briefings after a near three-month hiatus on the same day that he posted a photograph of himself on Twitter wearing a face mask.
"We are United in our effort to defeat the Invisible China Virus, and many people say that it is Patriotic to wear a face mask when you can’t socially distance," he wrote alongside the picture. "There is nobody more Patriotic than me, your favourite President."
The return to briefings comes as America continues to produce the world's worst pandemic numbers, exposing the country's systemic healthcare shortcomings and leaving the President vulnerable to accusations that he has lost control of the crisis less than four months from the November 3 election.
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The world is heading for a population crisis but not the one it was expecting
Peter Hartcher
Political and international editor for The Sydney Morning Herald
July 21, 2020 — 12.01am
We've been told many times over the decades: the ever-growing population of the earth will end in a shattering overpopulation crisis of food shortages, environmental collapse and resource wars.
Will COVID-19 change the picture? The pandemic has killed 600,000 people globally and is still likely in an early phase. The number of worldwide infections is accelerating.
The pandemic "will have some impact" on the planet's future population, says Peter McDonald, professor of demography at Melbourne University. "But it's not the deaths, it's the births that will make the difference." How so? The number of deaths so far is equivalent to 1 per cent of the 60 million that would have been expected to die of all causes in the normal course of events.
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Return to the 70s: The US economy might be doomed to repeat history
By Conor Sen
July 21, 2020 — 8.04am
A Joe Biden presidential administration, which is becoming more probable as his lead in the polls grows, probably will try to avoid the mistakes that held back the economic recovery after the 2007-09 Great Recession. His fiscal agenda is getting bolder. The Federal Reserve is also pledging to keep monetary policy loose until inflation actually emerges.
But potential supply bottlenecks loom if the US breaks out of the slow-growth trap that has plagued the economy during the past decade. That suggests the economy will need reforms that increase supply in housing, the labour market, and in healthcare and childcare.
We got an unwelcome preview of how this can play out in coastal urban housing markets - at least before the coronavirus pandemic. Jobs and incomes for knowledge workers surged in cities such as San Francisco and New York, but the increase in employment outstripped the housing supply in those metro areas. Even with an increase in high-end residential construction, soaring rents often outpaced rising wages. An economy-wide version of this could unfold in the next few years if the US achieves more robust growth.
Consider the impact on the housing market of an economic agenda that sought to return and keep the labour market close to full employment, particularly outside the coastal knowledge hubs. This probably would reduce housing affordability in inland and smaller metro areas. Although it's true that it's easier to build housing in smaller, lower density metro areas than on the coasts, zoning codes and community opposition are still obstacles to housing construction almost everywhere. And with fewer workers in the homebuilding industry than before the financial crisis, construction would be plagued by rising costs and delays. Any plan that seeks to increase economic growth, in part through more demand for labour, also needs a plan that ensures growth in the supply of housing to keep up.
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Why Trump's law and order push might backfire
Violent riots in progressive cities are giving Donald Trump all the ammunition he needs. But his use of federal troops means he may end up owning problems he didn't create.
Jacob Greber United States correspondent
Updated Jul 22, 2020 – 9.50am, first published at 9.40am
Washington | Throughout America’s long hot summer two crises have dominated people’s thoughts: the twin fevers of an out-of-control pandemic and bouts of civic unrest left over from late-May's protests over the killing of George Floyd.
With the pandemic showing few signs of abating any time soon, the administration is eager to focus on what it's doing about street protests.
And this gives President Donald Trump the battle he desires and needs to buoy his flagging election prospects.
But deploying federal troops to fix entrenched problems that he didn’t create across some of America’s most progressive cities is also a risky political strategy.
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When will things get back to normal? Never, says Davos founder
Klaus Schwab's quick-fire book 'The Great Reset' tries to imagine how we will live with COVID-19. It's equal parts forecast, manifesto and warning.
Hans van Leeuwen Europe correspondent
Jul 22, 2020 – 6.09am
As the COVID-19 pandemic's second wave breaks upon us, all thoughts of an easy ride out are dissipating. We are paddling into a fog of uncertainty, and we need a navigator.
Step forward Klaus Schwab. He is the octogenarian German engineer and economist who parlayed his dull-sounding 1971 management manual into a think tank, the World Economic Forum, that in turn became Davos – the star-studded gathering of the global political and corporate elite each January, which almost unfailingly nails the politico-economic zeitgeist of the year ahead.
Except this year, of course, it didn't. The general tone on the Swiss slopes was cautiously optimistic; nobody saw fit to mention, or had even really heard about, a recently identified virus that was filling hospitals in distant Wuhan.
Schwab hopes to make amends for that rare and understandable failing of his signature gathering with a new book, co-authored with French analyst Thierry Malleret and published last week, called The Great Reset.
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In a flip flop, Trump says people should wear a mask when needed
By Alexandra Alper
July 22, 2020 — 7.37am
Washington: US President Donald Trump, in a shift in rhetoric on facial coverings, encouraged Americans on Tuesday to wear a mask if they cannot maintain social distance from people around them in an effort to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
In his first briefing focused on the pandemic in months, Trump told reporters at the White House that the virus will probably get worse before it gets better.
When asked about wearing a mask more frequently, US President Donald Trump said during his coronavirus briefing that he had 'no problem with the masks.'
Trump has been reluctant to wear a mask himself in public.
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Coronavirus: Indonesian President Jokowi accused of sacrificing health for economy’s sake
Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo has replaced the country’s COVID-19 task force with a body that some say puts economic recovery ahead of public health.
This comes as the number of infections in Indonesia surpassed China, with 88,214 confirmed cases and 4239 deaths as of Monday. The country has recorded more than 1000 infections every day for the past three weeks.
In a decree issued on Monday, Mr Jokowi appointed senior economic minister Airlangga Hartarto and state-owned enterprises minister Erick Thohir to co-ordinate efforts related to the national economy and the spread of the virus. “The team will plan and implement programs so that COVID-19 and economic recoveries can be done simultaneously under the same institution with maximum co-ordination,” Mr Hartarto said.
The previous task force, managed by Indonesia’s Disaster Management Agency, admitted to some blunders, including pushing for a “new normal” which led to confusion among the public.
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Is the rebound in America’s economy already over?
A rise in coronavirus cases in the most populous US states is halting consumer and business activity.
James Politi
Jul 22, 2020 – 12.19pm
Washington | It was the missing cars that first alerted Maryann Ferenc: the economic rebound that she and many others had been hoping to see at Florida’s Pass-a-Grille Beach was already in danger of vanishing.
“July 4 and you could find a parking spot all day long, you could find several parking spots all day long,” says Ms Ferenc, who owns a number of restaurants in the Tampa area as well as a boutique hotel along that stretch of the Gulf coast.
“That was the first indicator, and you could just notice the difference, through the entire weekend and then the following week, you saw that drop.”
In the run-up to Independence Day, which the tourism sector had been counting on for a huge boost, the number of new coronavirus cases in Florida had been rising at an alarming rate, exceeding 10,000 a day for the first time. Since then, the situation has deteriorated, with the state recording a record 15,299 infections on July 12.
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Can Australia really 'shape the region' as PM would like?
This country can take a more proactive role in Asia. But that will require more resources than we are putting in at the moment.
Anthony Milner Contributor
Jul 22, 2020 – 2.42pm
In this month's Defence Strategic Update, Scott Morrison highlighted the need to “shape Australia’s strategic environment”. This is ambitious – and has its own resource implications.
It requires, as the update puts it, “improving our awareness of what’s happening in the region” – no straight-forward matter. Recent regional commentary, including experts who commented in a recent Council for Security Co-operation-Asialink survey, remind us how much must be factored in as Australia negotiates the struggle between the US and China. It also warns of the need for an adequate knowledge base.
Australia is not alone in being anxious about China’s power. A senior Singapore commentator confirms that many Asian governments “continue to harbour suspicions about China”. There is a view in south-east Asia and elsewhere that China is coming out of the COVID-19 crisis “strengthened” – showing leadership, for instance, in the provision of medical supplies.
There is a consistent perception of the “steady decline” of US influence in Asia. The “appearance of incompetence in managing the pandemic” is a factor in the judgment (made by a senior Philippines observer) that the “post-Second World War order built around US hegemony … is ending”.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/can-china-and-the-us-agree-again-20200722-p55e9r
Can China and the US agree again?
Trade-dependent China risks being the loser in a global contest with the US. But can they reach a relationship where rivalry and co-operation co-exist?
Mohamed El-Erian Contributor
Jul 22, 2020 – 1.10pm
Not a day seems to pass without further evidence of the mounting economic tensions between China and the United States, the world’s two largest economies.
This growing antagonism will have a bigger immediate impact on China than on the US, as bilateral decoupling fuels a broader ongoing process of deglobalisation. And the negative spillover effects for a subset of other countries – which I call the dual-option economies – could be particularly significant.
Even from a purely economic perspective, it is hard to envisage any durable abatement of Sino-American tensions in the near future. And that is before factoring in national security issues, let alone those relating to technology and human rights.
The economic and financial implications of COVID-19 are uniting three segments of the US economy in decoupling from China. This dynamic is unlikely to abate anytime soon and will be mutually reinforcing, meaning that one plus one plus one adds up to more than three.
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https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/the-deceptive-radicalism-of-joe-biden-20200723-p55enc
The deceptive radicalism of Joe Biden
The more he is seen as a do-nothing grandpa, the more licence Mr Biden has to advance ideas that would have done for another candidate. Americans, if he wins, should not count on a quiet life.
Janan Ganesh Contributor
Jul 23, 2020 – 9.42am
The Soviet Union used to alternate between bald leaders and ones with formidable hair. The US, which is seldom ruled by the smooth of pate, swings around a different axis. It seems to crave a breather after each high-drama president.
The Richard Nixon years gave on to some water-treading under Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. Ronald Reagan led to George HW Bush and the prelapsarian tranquillity of the 1990s.
After the younger Bush and his still-simmering wars came Barack “No Drama” Obama. It follows that Donald Trump, the author of so much tumult, should prefigure a restful four years under Joe Biden.
Moderate Republicans are counting on it. Not to impugn their principles, but they might be slower to say “Never Trump” if the alternative was as leftwing as Bernie Sanders or his Senate colleague Elizabeth Warren.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/foreign-affairs/india-s-pivot-to-australia-20200723-p55eo4
India’s pivot to Australia
With discussions underway for Canberra to join the Malabar naval exercises, New Delhi hopes to add a new backer in its fight against China.
Harsh V. Pant and Premesha Saha
Jul 24, 2020 – 12.00am
Will Australia join the Malabar exercises? For weeks, Indian media has reported with near certitude that New Delhi will be inviting Canberra to join its high-level naval exercises, which usually involve the navies of India, Japan and the United States.
While strategic dialogue and informal cooperation has long existed between the four countries, known as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, the exercises would mark the first time Australia would be part of this official joint military engagement.
For India, the decision to extend the invitation – a move it had so far held back on despite interest from Australia – marks a major step. Not only does New Delhi hope to strengthen its relations with its partners in the Indo-Pacific, but it intends to send a strong message to Beijing as border tensions mount: India’s military partnerships are growing stronger than ever, and Chinese intransigence will make them even more potent.
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'We'll figure it out': Trump scraps big Republican convention
Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou and Gregory Korte
Jul 24, 2020 – 9.00am
President Donald Trump relented Thursday (Friday AEST) to worries about the coronavirus and cancelled his Florida nominating convention, the biggest event of his re-election campaign, as the host state posted record deaths from the pandemic.
"I told my team it's time to cancel the Jacksonville, Florida component of the GOP convention," Trump said Thursday at the White House. "We didn't want to take any chances."
Trump had insisted for months that he would still hold his four-day extravaganza despite worries the gathering would become a super-spreader event. The party decided June 11 to move the convention from Charlotte, North Carolina, to Jacksonville, Florida, after Governor Roy Cooper refused to waive social-distancing and other measures to prevent contagion.
But just as preparations for the Florida event got underway, Florida was hit with a surge of infections and now is one of the country's hardest-hit areas, with a total so far of 389,868 confirmed cases of the virus – about 1.8 per cent of the state's population – and the number growing by an average of more than 10,000 cases a day. The state posted a record 173 deaths on Thursday.
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I look forward to comments on all this!
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David.
