-----
We are really getting close to the US election and it has all the hallmarks of being the most contested and divided in US history. There seems also to be a risk that any result will be challenged in the courts with the potential of all sorts of outcomes some of which are truly dire. I fear the US is now well past its zenith and that it is all downhill from here.
In the UK we are seeing daily cases above 14,000. This all looks to be going very badly and does not look like it will end will.
In the 2 weeks before the Federal Budget we are seeing a ‘backflip’ epidemic with major policy changes on debt and deficit, the NBN and ongoing support during the pandemic. We really are not in the political ‘Kansas’ anymore!
-----
Major Issues.
-----
Consolidate and refocus: Australian research needs a reset
Now that universities cannot be relied on to finance research, Australia needs a new way to organise existing funding sources.
Roy Green
Sep 21, 2020 – 12.01am
What a bleak finding it was for policy-makers that Australia's mining boom "sugar hit" masked a structural deterioration in the productivity performance of our economy.
This reflected not only the impact of the high dollar on the competitiveness of our non-mining exports, but also a failure to keep pace with the rest of the world in technological change and innovation.
There is no escape from the challenge of managing Australia’s transition to a more dynamic, knowledge-based economy.
Now that the COVID-19 crisis has exposed our vulnerability to external shocks, we can begin to address the cost of slipping down the Harvard Growth Lab Atlas of Economic Complexity, which measures the diversity and research intensity of a country’s exports. There is no escape from the challenge of managing Australia's transition to a more dynamic, knowledge-based economy.
-----
Is Australia ready for regional conflict?
It has become fashionable to speculate about the risk of a coming war between China and America. Former prime minister Kevin Rudd, in a recent article in Foreign Policy titled Beware the Guns of August – in Asia, claims that we are confronting the prospect of not just a new Cold War, but a hot one as well with actual armed conflict between the US and China appearing possible. He warns that the presidents of China and the US both face internal political pressures that could tempt them to pull the nationalist lever, which “could all too easily torpedo the prospects of international peace and stability for the next 30 years”.
Carl Bildt, the noted European authority on international affairs and a former prime minister of Sweden, observes that as the 1914 assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo set in train events that culminated in World War I, so the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea might become a future flashpoint.
Then to top the league of pessimism, there is Graham Allison, who has become famous by asserting that, based on his analysis of historical events, China, as the rising power, will inevitably go to war with America, the declining power. The fundamental weakness with this line of reasoning is the deterrence of nuclear weapons. If any two countries in world history should have gone to war it was the former USSR and the US. But each side knew that, even under a surprise attack, it could deliver sufficient retaliatory nuclear strikes to eliminate the other side as a modern functioning society.
-----
https://www.afr.com/wealth/personal-finance/case-for-sustainable-investing-20200918-p55x3a
Case for sustainable investing
Irrespective of whether you want to make the world a better place or you want to make higher profits, it's not a fad but a key consideration in SMSF portfolio construction.
Tim Mackay Contributor
Sep 22, 2020 – 12.00am
If finance wasn’t already littered with enough confusing acronyms, along comes ESG (environmental, social and governance) investing as either the latest fad or an important trend for self-managed superannuation funds.
I’ve long been a healthy sceptic of what was once called ethical investing. In the past, the few products being marketed as "ethical" were relatively expensive and clients weren’t prepared to give up returns just to feel better about their investments.
As ethical investing morphed into ESG, there remained questions about the efficacy of ESG investing. For example, ESG can kill jobs. The normal belief is that ESG-compliant firms have happy and diverse workforces and create less pollution. But the "E" (environment) and the "S" (social) in ESG can conflict.
The companies that typically rate the highest on ESG measures are technology and healthcare based – the same companies that are increasingly more virtual, more profitable and less labour-intensive (ie, employing fewer workers).
-----
Thinking economists are grappling with why their profession has made our lives worse
Ross Gittins
Economics Editor
September 23, 2020 — 12.00am
Most economists are great believers in the need for "reform" – for other people, not themselves. Over the past 30 or 40 years, no profession has had more influence over the policies governments have pursued, but the results have hardly been flash.
Even the lightning speed at which an epidemic in part of China became a pandemic reaching every corner of the globe can be blamed in large part on the globalisation that economists long championed.
After the unmitigated disaster of the global financial crisis of 2008 – which the economists not only failed to foresee, but did much to help bring about by their advocacy of deregulated financial markets – many people assumed this would force the economists, shamefaced, back to the drawing board.
It didn't happen. But the poor performance of economies in the decade following the Great Recession hasn't allowed the more intellectually honest among the world's economists to delude themselves that all's well with their theories and policy prescriptions.
At present, politicians and policymakers are preoccupied with suppressing the virus and countering the coronacession this effort has led to. Economists are worried about the depth of this recession, and are warning politicians that they'll need to spend (and borrow) unprecedented sums to bring about a sustainable recovery.
-----
Westpac announces record-breaking $1.3b fine
By Charlotte Grieve
September 24, 2020 — 8.19am
Westpac has announced it will pay a $1.3 billion fine, the largest in Australian corporate history, for breaching anti-money laundering laws and failing to stop child exploitation payments.
Chief executive Peter King apologised for the bank's failings as the settlement with the financial crimes regulator, the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC), was announced.
The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald first revealed the penalty was close to being finalised in a board member conference call late on Wednesday evening.
"We are committed to fixing the issues to ensure that these mistakes do not happen again. This has been my number one priority. We have also closed down relevant products and reported all relevant historical transactions," Mr King said.
-----
'QALY' quality of life pandemic argument is intellectual malpractice
By Richard Holden, Emilia Tjernström and Bruce Preston
September 24, 2020 — 11.21am
Economists in Australian and around the world have come to a near-unanimous conclusion about how to best handle the coronavirus pandemic: we must get infections under control and keep the reproduction rate below 1. In a pandemic, what is good for public health is also good for the economy. In short – and as any amount of painful overseas experience shows – one can’t have a functioning economy while the virus is out of control.
That said, a small – but vocal – contingent of dissenters have argued that legislators should use a seemingly scientific method to calculate the economic value of different lives. Were they correct, this grim calculus would have us evaluate a policy by weighing the costs of, say, a 25-year old’s reduced lifetime job prospects against the benefits of an 80-year old staying alive for the remainder of their life expectancy.
The approach they favour centres on Quality-Adjusted Life Years. This group, many of whom are not economists, want us to use these “QALYs” to assign different “economic value” to different lives.
Like many debaters with a dubious argument, this group often relies on appeals to authority. Medical professionals and health economists “use QALYs all the time”, they say. And yes, QALYs are frequently used in those fields – but for narrowly defined purposes that have nothing to do with making interpersonal comparisons of the value of lives.
-----
A tale of two legacies looms large as ex-PMs surface
The Morrison government is cleaning up Tony Abbott's energy and NBN mess while borrowing budget ideas from Paul Keating.
Phillip Coorey Political editor
Sep 24, 2020 – 8.00pm
A byproduct of the recent decade of political instability is a surfeit of former prime ministers, many of whom still have ants in their pants.
This week alone, Malcolm Turnbull popped up to decry his successor's technology road map and gas strategy as "bonkers".
An angry Kevin Rudd surfaced to claim vindication over the belated decision to build the National Broadband Network as he originally conceived it.
And Paul Keating offered the Reserve Bank of Australia some free advice on how to help fight the recession.
Julia Gillard and John Howard maintained their customary dignified silence.
-----
Coronavirus And Impacts.
-----
One in 10 university research jobs tipped to vanish because of pandemic
By Adam Carey
September 21, 2020 — 5.17pm
More than one in 10 research positions at Australian universities are predicted to disappear by 2024 as revenue from overseas students dries up, and prestigious Group of Eight institutions are tipped to lose the most resources.
Some smaller universities, including Deakin University in Geelong, face an "extremely high" risk of recent strong research capacity gains unravelling as COVID-19 wipes out billions in revenue from fee-paying international students.
Fees from overseas students cross-subsidise just over half the research work in Australian universities. However, the pandemic will cost the higher education sector about $16 billion in the next few years, according to sector body Universities Australia.
New modelling by the University of Melbourne’s Centre for the Study of Higher Education predicts universities will collectively lose between $6.4 billion and $7.6 billion in research income between this year and 2024.
-----
https://www.smh.com.au/national/australian-universities-cower-as-disaster-looms-20200920-p55xh6.html
Australian universities cower as disaster looms
A catastrophe is about to hit our ideas sector, but the fightback has been pathetic
Jenna Price
Columnist and academic at the University of Technology Sydney
September 22, 2020 — 12.02am
By the time you read this, I fear it will be too late to stop the federal government blowing up universities. Not the buildings. Those sandstone wonders, those sturdy red brick boxes, those glorious fantasies of Frank Gehry, they will still stand, memorials to critical thinking.
This tragedy is not a product of any real ideological war. It is not developed enough for that. It is anti-university partisanship, a judgment made by those in the Coalition who think that university employees would never vote for the Coalition so why bother to protect them. What better time to punish them than straight after the damage wrought by COVID-19? By all means, put the boot in when the victim is down, when it can't even defend itself.
Those who work within those buildings, they will soon be gone and for the purpose of Australian life and culture and, indeed, our future, they may as well be dead. The ideas, the energy, the research, the ability to make your children, and maybe even you, sit up and think, so many of the people who provoked, inspired and guided will be gone, lost forever. By December, I calculate that at least 30,000 jobs across the university sector will be lost and the people who worked there will have joined Centrelink queues, fed into the gaping maw of this recession.
-----
Banks urged to show 'forbearance' to customers amid house price fears
By Jessica Irvine
September 22, 2020 — 12.00am
Banks have been urged to show leniency towards struggling customers amid fears home foreclosures could spark a confidence-sapping property price plunge.
Almost one million loans to both households and small businesses have been granted repayment holidays during COVID-19, with initial six-month reprieves expiring at the end of this month.
In a joint podcast for the Institute of Public Administration Australia with Treasury Secretary Steven Kennedy, the chief executive of Commonwealth Bank, Matt Comyn, said loan deferrals could not last "indefinitely".
"It is certainly not indefinitely," Mr Comyn said, "but the idea would be there is enough flexibility that we have within the financial system and with the regulators to at least provide up to another four months around repayment deferrals going into calendar 2021."
-----
https://www.ausdoc.com.au/practice/how-australia-embracing-sewage-fight-against-coronavirus
How Australia is embracing sewage in the fight against coronavirus
A number of states are testing human waste to determine the virus' prevalence - but with mixed result
22nd September 2020
Early research from Spain has suggested public health officials can estimate the prevalence of COVID-19 within 10% accuracy of serology survey by simply testing the sewage.
The advantage of this approach is avoiding the time and expense needed to go antibody-testing the whole population.
But the Victorian experience has perhaps shown the limitations of coronavirus surveillance in the sewage.
The state’s Chief Medical Officer, Professor Brett Sutton, has said 25 sites are currently being monitored, and in early September SARS-CoV-2 traces had been detected at the south-western Victorian seaside town of Apollo Bay.
At the time, Apollo Bay hadn’t recorded any COVID-19 cases for weeks. So was this a cause for concern?
“It could also be because someone who has previously had COVID-19 is continuing to ‘shed’ the virus,” Professor Sutton explained.
“It can take several weeks for someone to stop shedding the virus and further analysis is required to assess the significance of the preliminary result.”
-----
Victoria’s Health Department needs a total restructure
By Lindsay Grayson
September 22, 2020 — 11.34pm
Buried in the evidence presented to the hotel quarantine inquiry last week was an important document that described in one complex diagram why Victoria’s Health Department needs a total restructure. Not only did it definitively show that Brett Sutton, Victoria’s Chief Health Officer, did not have “absolute control” over COVID-19 responses (as claimed by some bureaucrats at the inquiry), it also showed how completely ridiculous and unmanageable the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) has become.
Given this, now is a good time to start planning a revitalised post-COVID-19 structure that could better serve Victoria. We don’t need an expensive review by KPMG or PWC – we simply need to look at what aspects of the current Victorian structure are worth saving, then assess the health structures of other states that have managed COVID better than Victoria, to identify those elements that could be emulated.
First, the good bits that should be retained. Clearly, the integration of public health with the world-class Doherty Institute reference lab, which can undertake genomics in a manner that massively guides COVID-19 investigations and contact tracing, has proven to be critical in understanding how best to control COVID-19 spread.
The main dos and dont's as Melbourne struggles toward the end of COVID lockdown. And remember this is all dependent on the case numbers being right...
-----
Coronavirus: Sweden ‘has beaten coronavirus with herd immunity’
· The Times
Evidence is mounting that Sweden has beaten the coronavirus with herd immunity rather than a lockdown, according to a renowned expert on the spread of disease.
Sweden’s infection rate has remained low and stable at a time when other European countries are facing a strong resurgence.
In Britain there are 69 cases per 100,000 people compared with 28 per 100,000 in Sweden, which did not implement strict lockdown measures in the northern spring. The infection rate in France is almost seven times higher than in Sweden, and in Spain ten times higher.
Kim Sneppen, professor of biocomplexity at Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, told the Politiken newspaper: “There is some evidence that the Swedes have built up a degree of immunity to the virus which, along with what else they are doing to stop the spread, is enough to control the disease.”
-----
Covid side effects spark a warning over a hike in Parkinson’s disease
The nation’s leading institute of neuroscience and mental health, the Florey, is warning of a wave of neurological consequences from COVID-19, including a big escalation in the incidence of Parkinson’s disease.
The neural inflammation that is experienced in many sufferers of COVID-19 is a key risk factor for developing Parkinson’s, it warns.
After the Spanish flu pandemic, there was a tripling in the incidence of Parkinson’s, and The Florey warns the same thing is likely to happen with the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s calling for widespread screening and early treatment to address the feared wave of neurological disease.
Researchers at the Florey have published a paper in the Journal of Parkinson’s Disease warning that the degenerative illness is likely to represent the “third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic”.
-----
NSW planning to bring back international students in 2021
Robert Bolton Education editor
Sep 24, 2020 – 12.01am
International students will be brought back into NSW for the 2021 academic year using an education-related quarantine program in a major boost for struggling universities that have been making staff redundant as revenue collapsed.
NSW Minister for Jobs, Investment and Tourism Stuart Ayres told an international education summit in Sydney on Wednesday that high-level talks in the state government were aimed at looking at alternative quarantine arrangements.
He had learned "lots of lessons about how to house 60,000 people in 14-day arrangements" which he saw as "quite manageable". He had also held "a number of discussions with vice-chancellors".
"I foreshadow that we'll be able to open borders to international students through a quarantine regime much earlier than we'll be able to open borders to the visitor economy or tourists," Mr Ayres said.
-----
https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/no-help-from-high-priests-of-the-reverse-bank-20200923-p55ygm
No help from high priests of the Reverse Bank
The central bank is more interested in preserving orthodoxy than doing the heavy lifting for Australians, writes Paul Keating.
Paul Keating Former prime minister of Australia
Sep 23, 2020 – 4.55pm
In my office during the latter part
of the 1980s and the early 1990s, we had a
nickname for the Reserve Bank – the Reverse Bank.
What earned the bank that nickname was that it was too slow lifting interest rates in the face of the commercial bank credit bubble of the late 1980s and too slow in getting rates down in the early 1990s.
This gave Australia a recession
deeper than it would have otherwise had,
notwithstanding that the commercial banks' crazy credit behaviour had to be
stopped, and gains against inflation had to be protected.
As Treasurer, I wore the cost of the Reserve Bank's indolence in the task of smashing inflation – as it turned out, an outcome that gave Australia 30 years of low inflationary growth.
-----
https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/fighting-chance-for-small-business-20200923-p55yi8
Fighting chance for small business
The government's reform of insolvency laws is designed to help more businesses survive the virus crisis.
Josh Frydenberg Contributor
Sep 24, 2020 – 12.00am
Small business has been hit hard by COVID-19. Health restrictions forced many small businesses to close their doors, while others have managed to stay open, albeit with significantly less foot traffic through their store.
Meanwhile, bills rack up, be it for energy, insurance, rent or interest on a loan – all of which need to be eventually paid.
While JobKeeper and the cash flow boost have undoubtedly helped, we know that in this COVID-induced recession, some businesses will not survive in their current form.
For many, through no fault of their own, the insolvency process will be their next and last stop.
-----
Coronavirus: Aged-care regulator misses 83pc of homes
The nation’s aged-care regulator has checked infection control procedures in just one in six facilities across the nation, despite the sector facing the highest death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic.
In Victoria, where 607 aged-care residents have died with COVID-19, the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission had checked infection control systems in just 21 per cent of homes as at September 11, according to federal Department of Health data. In NSW, just 131 of 883 homes or less than 15 per cent had been checked, while just 81 of 472 Queensland facilities (17 per cent), had an infection control monitoring visit.
Aged Care Minister Richard Colbeck’s state, Tasmania, had received the most inspections, with 70 per cent of facilities getting a visit from the federal watchdog.
The ACQSC began making infection control monitoring visits to nursing homes across the nation last month. The compliance checks are to ensure that staff, management and visitors are adhering to personal protective equipment protocols and infection control arrangements.
-----
Daniel Andrews does not know who made key hotel quarantine decisions
Hannah Wootton Reporter
Sep 25, 2020 – 6.13pm
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews does not know who made the disastrous decision to use private security guards in the state's hotel quarantine program, but said responsibility for the scheme lay squarely with Health Minister Jenny Mikakos.
In evidence given to the Hotel Quarantine Inquiry on Friday, Mr Andrews said he did not have oversight of "operational" decisions such as engaging private contractors.
He joined a long list of government ministers and top public servants, including Ms Mikakos, Police Minister Lisa Neville and Jobs Minister Martin Pakula, who have been unable to explain who decided private security should be used in quarantine hotels despite 25 days of inquiry hearings probing the matter.
Ninety-nine per cent of Victoria's second wave of virus infections have been traced back to travellers and workers within the quarantine program.
-----
What governments have learnt from Victoria's second wave
A proud medical history is not the same as a disciplined command and control system operating on the ground.
Tom Burton Government editor
Sep 25, 2020 – 4.55pm
As countries around the world battle a resurgence of the COVID-19 virus Victoria has emerged as a global case study for government on how to beat the virus.
No other major economy has tamed a second wave. But after some of the most stringent and prolonged lockdowns in the world, Victoria's fatigued and frustrated residents finally saw the fruits of their efforts this week as the state recorded days of single-digit case numbers.
There have been plenty of mistakes and it has not been pretty as Dan Andrew's state government became a national punching bag, battling criticisms it had been slow to jump on outbreaks, followed by a tsunami of protests for being too tough.
A world leader in the use of genomic tracing to map clusters, the government's own sequencing showed virtually every case and death in the second wave had come from outbreaks from two returning travelling groups staying in quarantine hotels.
The same American strain – a more potent version than the first wave –spread north to NSW and Queensland, forcing premiers around the country to shutter their states, stymieing Prime Minister Scott Morrison's ambition to reopen the country.
-----
Climate Change
-----
Net-zero emissions by 2050 'absolutely achievable': PM
Ronald Mizen Reporter
Sep 20, 2020 – 1.06pm
Net-zero emissions by 2050 is absolutely achievable under the technology road map set to be released this week, Scott Morrison says, but the government will not firmly commit to the target.
"Our policy is to achieve that in the second half of this century, and we certainly will achieve that," the Prime Minister said, adding that the right technology investment could make it a reality by 2050.
"I think those sort of things are achievable with the right investments in the right technology."
Mr Morrison also refused to back in a new coal-fired power station in Queensland – which is undergoing a $3.3 million feasibility study – saying any such facility would live or die on its economics.
-----
Gas companies are abandoning their wells to leak methane forever
Mya Frazier
Sep 21, 2020 – 7.53am
The story of gas well No. 095-20708 begins on November 10, 1984, when a drill bit broke the Earth's surface four miles (six kilometres) north of Rio Vista, California. Wells don't have birthdays, so this was its "spud date". CO²
The drill chewed through the dirt at a rate of 80 ½ feet (24 metres) an hour, reaching 846 feet below ground that first day. By Thanksgiving it had reached a mile down, finally stopping 49 days later, having laid 2.2 miles of steel pipe and cement on its way to the "pay zone", an underground field containing millions of dollars of natural gas.
The drilling rig arrived two months later, in early January. While 1985 started out as a good year for gas, by its close, more than half the nation's oil and gas wells had shut down. How much money the Amerada Hess Corp, which bankrolled the dig, managed to pump out of gas well No. 095-20708 before that bust isn't known. By 1990, the company, now called simply Hess Corp, gave up and sold it. Over the next decade or so, four more companies would seek the riches promised at the bottom of the well, seemingly with little success. In 2001, a state inspector visited the site. "Looks like it's dying," he wrote.
Gas wells never really die, though. Over the years, the miles of steel piping and cement corrode, creating pathways for noxious gases to reach the surface. The most worrisome of these is methane, the main component of natural gas. If carbon dioxide is a bullet, methane is a bomb. Odourless and invisible, it captures 86 times more heat than CO₂ over two decades and at least 25 times more over a century. Drilling has released this potent greenhouse gas, once sequestered in the deep pockets and grooves of the Earth, into the atmosphere, where it's wreaking more havoc than humans can keep up with.
-----
We don't have to choose between the economy and lower emissions
By Alan Finkel
September 26, 2020 — 12.01am
The science of climate change is not in doubt. Global warming is due to human activity and must be arrested as a matter of urgency by reducing global emissions. But how do we reconcile a dramatic reduction in emissions with a prosperous economy?
The Paris Agreement of 2015 was a milestone – the first time the world came together to offer ambitious decarbonisation commitments. But it left open the question of how each country would reduce its emissions. This is the question Australia faces and now we have a blueprint.
The Low Emissions Technology Statement issued by Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor this week positions Australia to be a leader in the global shift to a decarbonised future and to capture the economic benefits of the growing international demand for low-emissions technologies and products. It sets the framework for manufacturing industries such as aluminium and steel to produce zero-emissions products by switching to renewable electricity and hydrogen.
The statement expresses its ambition as stretch goals that clearly set out what has to be delivered on the ground if we want to get to net zero as fast as possible.
------
Royal Commissions And The Like.
-----
ASIC targets cash funds in fixed income crackdown
Jonathan Shapiro Senior reporter
Sep 22, 2020 – 2.45pm
The corporate regulator has taken aim at fixed income funds that use the term "cash" in their labelling, saying almost two-thirds of the funds using the term had done so in a confusing or inappropriate way.
In a rapid-fire regulatory response to growing concerns that income-starved mum-and-dad investors were being lured into risky fixed income products, Australian Securities and Investments Commission deputy chairman Karen Chester said the regulator had upped its surveillance on the sector.
"We will go where we see actual or potential significant consumer detriment," Ms Chester told The Australian Financial Review.
"Where the macroeconomic drivers escalate risk factors and yield pressure points are where you should expect us to be targeting our ‘watch’."
-----
https://www.afr.com/wealth/personal-finance/how-to-choose-an-aged-care-facility-20200921-p55xsu
How to choose an aged care facility
The outside appearance will certainly matter to some – but it is what is going on inside that really counts.
Bina Brown Contributor
Sep 22, 2020 – 11.07am
Navigating the aged care system is a challenge for many. How do you know you are making the best choices when picking a facility for a loved one?
With residential care vacancies on the rise, particularly in major cities, there may be several accommodation options – from grand hotel-like establishments to older more established facilities.
The outside appearance will certainly matter to some – but it is what is going on inside that really counts. And that comes down in large part to the quality of care – in which respect, humanity, kindness are also a key indicator. Without doubt, when it comes to aged care you don’t necessarily get what you paid for.
In the push for more to be spent by the provider on providing the best resident care possible, it is too simplistic to immediately rule out private aged care in preference for not-for-profit or government-run facilities.
-----
Residential aged care sitting on a $30 billion house of cards
By Julie Power
September 22, 2020 — 2.15pm
The residential aged care sector is sitting on a $30 billion house of cards confronting a great deal of risk that could potentially result in a cash flow crisis.
Nick Mersiades, the director of aged care with Catholic Health Australia, said the sector faced a "lot of risk" from falling occupancy rates and the loss of refundable accommodation deposits that are paid by some residents.
Mr Mersiades told the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety on Monday he was surprised the commission "wasn't knocking on providers' doors" and asking to see indications of "how your liquidity is."
His comments follow warnings about a continued fall in occupancy as people shied away from aged care because of fears of COVID-19, a drop in refundable deposits and a shift to daily fees that could also limit the ability of banks to lend to the sector.
-----
National Budget Issues.
-----
Federal budget: How the Coalition will keep its base on side despite economic drift
There’ll be two interesting things in next month’s delayed federal budget; three if you include what will be done about the lockup. First, the size of deficits, this year and beyond, and second, what will be the ideological offset to the socialism of 2020.
Two of the pillars of conservative thought – small government and balanced budgets – have been smashed by the pandemic. Government is now much larger and more pervasive, and the expansion is funded by massive amounts of BORROWED MONEY!
Thanks largely to the second Victorian lockdown, the forward estimate deficits to be revealed on October 6 are likely to be bigger than even the most fervid apostles of Modern Monetary Theory would have thought possible, but cursing Dan Andrews won’t get the federal government very far. Debt is going to blow out.
So to appease its donors and media supporters on the right (the “base”), a right-wing variety of virtue-signalling will be required from the Coalition, and it’s already happening. For a start, the budget seems to have already been given a marketing brand – JobMaker – to set the scene.
-----
Baby slump: Australian newborn deficit to hit budget bottom line
By Shane Wright
September 22, 2020 — 5.00am
Australia is facing a deficit of 280,000 babies by 2024 due to the recession and unrealistic pre-coronavirus forecasts of a birth surge that threatens to leave a permanent hole in the federal budget.
In a fresh challenge for Treasurer Josh Frydenberg ahead of the October 6 budget, which is expected to show a deficit in excess of $200 billion, new analysis of Australia's fertility rate suggests the nation could welcome 56,000 fewer babies a year.
Australia has relied on strong population growth to help support the economy since the nation's last recession in 1990-91. That population growth was already expected to slump to its lowest level since World War I due to a collapse in net overseas migration driven by closure of the border and a sharp fall in international students.
But the fertility rate – the number of children born to each woman – is also expected to fall, exacerbating a structural problem already evident in the budget.
-----
'Gradual and uneven': Australia is not going to recover from the recession quickly, RBA says
By Shane Wright
September 22, 2020 — 10.30am
The Reserve Bank has signalled it may buy more government debt to drive interest rates lower, warning the Australian economy faces a "gradual and uneven" recovery out of the coronavirus recession.
Bank deputy governor Guy Debelle, in an address to a virtual conference put on by the Australian Industry Group, on Tuesday revealed that official interest rates - already at a record low 0.25 per cent - may not move for at least three years given the headwinds facing the jobs market and inflation.
The bank has already cut official interest rates to a record low and bought public debt on the secondary market to drive down the costs on three year government bonds.
It has also extended a cheap line of credit to commercial banks. This has now reached $75 billion with the RBA expecting up to $200 billion being taken up by the middle of next year.
-----
Pushing rates towards 0% and buying more bonds emerge as RBA’s remaining policy tools
Reserve Bank deputy governor Guy Debelle has flagged that a further reduction in rates towards, but not through, zero and buying longer term bonds remain the most likely policy tools at the central bank’s disposal should the economic recovery falter.
In a speech on Tuesday morning, Dr Debelle said “overall, the recovery has not been a rapid bounce but more of a slow grind”.
“As the outlook for the Australian economy unfolds, the board will continue to assess the merits of the range of monetary options to best support the economic recovery,” he said.
The country’s second most senior central banker repeated that, given the RBA’s forecast for growth out to the end of 2022, it was “highly unlikely” that the cash rate would be lifted over the coming three years.
-----
Debelle defines the Reserve Bank's monetary policy toolkit
Jonathan Shapiro Senior reporter
Sep 22, 2020 – 10.33am
Reserve Bank deputy governor Guy Debelle said a lower Australian dollar would be beneficial to support the economy as he outlined the pros and cons of monetary policy options under consideration and delivered a cool assessment on the practicality of negative rates.
In a speech to the Australian Industry Group, Dr Debelle gave further details on the central bank's thinking around increasing longer-term bond purchases, further reductions in interest rates and steps aimed at weakening the currency, which he said was around its fundamental levels.
Dr Debelle said the federal and state governments could raise more funds if needed, as current debt levels were manageable.
There was no trade-off between borrowing money and supporting the Australian economy "in the current circumstance".
-----
Urgent plan to save uni researchers
An emergency plan to bring forward hundreds of millions of dollars of research spending to save university jobs and keep vital programs going is being considered by the federal government.
The proposal, discussed by government officials with a select group of vice-chancellors advising Education Minister Dan Tehan, would bring forward up to $700m to boost research spending in 2021-22, deducting it from the $2.1bn planned spending on higher education research in 2024-25.
The money would slow the job cuts in universities, where more than 11,0000 positions have been lost in the past few months. The research-intensive Group of Eight universities have warned that 4000 of their researchers will come to the end of their contracts over the summer, with no certainty they can be re-employed.
Universities expect to lose $4bn-$5bn this year from the loss of international students due to COVID-19 travel restrictions. New figures show the number of international students commencing courses in the July 2020 mid-year intake fell 45 per cent compared to last year. The data from the federal Department of Education also showed that tens of thousands of international students deferred study because of COVID. About 50,000 had temporarily pulled out of their courses and not resumed by mid-year.
At least 66,000 international students, or 13 per cent of the total, were studying online from overseas in July.
-----
No rapid rebound as Covid four-year budget blow $553bn
The coronavirus recession will wipe $553bn off the federal budget bottom line over four years, according to new forecasts from AMP Capital chief economist Shane Oliver, who is foreshadowing a “concerning period of relatively high public debt”.
Budget deficits totalling $529bn over the four financial years to June 2023 are likely, Dr Oliver said in a note on Tuesday, amid expectations of further federal government spending and tax cuts to be announced in the October budget.
“The blowout in public debt is a concern and we may have to get used to a long period of relatively high public debt in Australia and in other developed countries,” he said, pencilling in an increase in gross federal public debt as a share of GDP to 54 per cent from 34 per cent. “Stepped-up economic reforms will help grow the economy but are unlikely to drive a repeat of the rapid post-WWII decline in the budget deficit and public debt,” he added, suggesting much of the “low-hanging fruit” in tax and industrial reform had already been picked.
“The 1950s and 60s rarely saw balanced budgets, let alone surpluses, and so debt was not actually paid off. But the ratio of public debt to GDP fell sharply and by the early 1970s had fallen to 7 per cent of GDP.”
-----
2020 Budget focus: surplus out, spending in
Josh Frydenberg will jettison the key plank of the federal government’s fiscal strategy by putting economic stimulus ahead of a return to surplus, which could be up to a decade away.
In a speech to the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry on Thursday, the Treasurer will reveal the “budget repair” strategy has to be delayed indefinitely and replaced with continued targeted economic spending.
However, the second iron law written into the fiscal strategy in 2014-15 — to cap taxes as a percentage of GDP to under 23.9 per cent — will be retained.
This will be helped by the bringing forward of the next round of personal income tax cuts, dealing with bracket creep, to be announced in the federal budget on October 6.
-----
https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/responsible-lending-laws-to-be-axed-20200924-p55yvw
'Responsible' lending laws to be axed
John Kehoe Senior writer
Sep 24, 2020 – 10.30pm
Responsible lending laws that fuelled a bitter court fight between the corporate regulator and Westpac will be scrapped for banks, which will be subject to less onerous credit rules to encourage the flow of loans and boost the economic recovery from the COVID-19 recession.
In a shift from "lender beware" back towards traditional "borrower beware", Treasurer Josh Frydenberg will on Friday announce the government will in effect dump the responsible lending law that was imposed by the Rudd Labor government in 2009 following the American subprime loan crisis.
The simplification will remove the Australian Securities and Investments Commission from enforcing the responsible lending rules for banks and other mainstream lenders, while bolstering ASIC's oversight of payday lenders for vulnerable borrowers.
In a red-tape reduction, banks and many non-bank lenders will be policed under less prescriptive prudential lending standards currently overseen by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, while eliminating the stricter ASIC lending rules.
-----
Hayne overruled as banks win responsible lending stoush
Aleks Vickovich Wealth editor
Sep 25, 2020 – 12.00am
The major banks have won the argument that responsible lending has squeezed access to credit, with the Morrison government set to change the rules 18 months after Royal Commissioner Kenneth Hayne implored the financial services industry to "apply the law as it stands".
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg will on Friday unveil "the most significant reforms to Australia's credit framework in a decade" in a bid to reduce red tape for lenders and increase the flow of credit to consumers and businesses amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The reforms put an end to a multi-year row between the big four banks, fintech challengers, regulators and the courts over the responsible lending regime introduced by Labor in the aftermath of the global financial crisis.
The Hayne royal commission castigated the banks for the allegedly widespread practice of what law firm Herbert Smith Freehills has called "credit-mash", whereby processes of inquiry and verification were combined into a single assessment process.
-----
No budget deficit repair until jobless below 6pc: Frydenberg
Phillip Coorey Political editor
Updated Sep 24, 2020 – 7.46pm, first published at 12.26pm
The federal budget will remain in deficit for the foreseeable future and the government will not focus on a return to surplus and stabilising debt until the unemployment rate is "comfortably'' below 6 per cent, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg says.
The budget to be released on October 6 is expected to forecast gross debt to exceed 45 per cent of GDP, pushing it close to or over $1 trillion, while the deficit for this financial year is expected to be above $200 billion. Deficits will be forecast for the subsequent three years as well.
The final deficit number for last financial year will be released on Friday. It is anticipated to be between $80 billion and $90 billion, in a year that was forecast to be in surplus before the coronavirus struck.
The budget will also forecast the economy to be 6 per cent smaller by the end of this financial year than was thought before the pandemic struck.
-----
Manufacturing jobs collapse as economists back more JobSeeker support
By Shane Wright and Jennifer Duke
September 24, 2020 — 7.00pm
The number of Australians employed in manufacturing jobs has collapsed to its lowest level on record as economists urge the Morrison government to extend support programs like the welfare coronavirus supplement to help the growing army of unemployed.
As Treasurer Josh Frydenberg revealed the government would maintain fiscal support for the economy until the jobless rate was "comfortably" below 6 per cent, new figures revealed the recession is hollowing out manufacturing.
Manufacturing jobs have fallen to their lowest level on record and now account for just 1 in 15 jobs.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics revealed there were 843,900 people with a manufacturing job in August: the lowest on record and a 50,000 drop since the advent of the coronavirus pandemic.
Manufacturing now accounts for just 6.7 per cent of all jobs in the country. In 1984, soon after the 1982-83 recession, almost 17 per cent of people worked in manufacturing.
-----
Federal budget: Josh Frydenberg, Mathias Cormann reveal ‘challenging’ deficit figures
Josh Frydenberg has unveiled the final position of the federal budget after the 2019/20 financial year, with the deficit hitting $85.3bn and gross debt increasing to $684.3bn.
The Treasurer said it was important to recognise that Australia had approached the global pandemic from a position of economic strength, declaring the Australian economy is “fighting back against the virus.”
“Today’s 2019-20 final budget outcome shows a fiscal result that was broadly consistent with the economic and fiscal update the government released in July,” Mr Frydenberg said.
“The underlying cash balance was a deficit of $85.3 billion, or 4.3 per cent of GDP, compared to the forecast surplus of $5 billion, or 0.3 per cent of GDP at MYEFO.”
-----
Economists predict budget deficit up to $270 billion, even bigger debts to come
By Shane Wright and Jennifer Duke
September 25, 2020 — 10.00pm
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg is poised to reveal a budget that will leave the economy in deficit until at least 2030 and government debt of $1.5 trillion, some of the nation's pre-eminent economists believe, as the coronavirus recession delivers a generational blow to the nation's finances.
As Mr Frydenberg revealed the nation's largest deficit since the end of World War II, members of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age Scope panel believe the $85.3 billion shortfall for 2019-20 will be dwarfed by what will be revealed in the October 6 budget.
After promising ahead of last year's election to deliver the first budget surplus since 2007-08, a combination of soaring expenditure to deal with the coronavirus pandemic and collapsing revenues has left the budget deeply in the red.
In dollar terms it is the largest on record, surpassing the $54.5 billion recorded in 2009-10 as the nation emerged from the global financial crisis. As a proportion of GDP, only the war-time budgets of then-treasurer Ben Chifley are larger. Personal income tax collections alone were down by $9 billion on what had been expected while company tax receipts tumbled by $13 billion.
Government spending soared by $57 billion over what was expected, largely driven by the JobKeeper program and increased welfare payments to the unemployed, pensioners and students. At 27.7 per cent of GDP, spending is at its highest level outside of war time.
-----
Inflation to miss RBA target for half a decade, say top economists
By Jennifer Duke and Shane Wright
September 26, 2020 — 5.00am
The Reserve Bank is unlikely to achieve its inflation target for at least half a decade, with leading economists predicting prolonged low interest rates could lead to households taking on risky levels of debt and overheating the stock market.
The bank aims to keep inflation in the range of 2 per cent to 3 per cent over time in order to help price stability and reach full employment but RBA deputy governor Guy Debelle said this week it could take three years to reach this target. Former prime minister Paul Keating has savaged the central bank, saying it had taken too long to help the government and "one would need a microscope" to find inflation.
Now, top Australian economists from major banks, universities and research facilities surveyed for The Sydney Morning Herald/The Age 2020 Scope survey have warned it will take more than five years to reach the target range.
ANZ head of Australian economics David Plank did not expect the RBA to achieve its targets for three years or more. "It will most likely be some time after that horizon before both are achieved."
-----
Split emerges over policies to lift population growth
By Jennifer Duke and Shane Wright
September 26, 2020 — 5.00am
Top economists are split over whether the federal government should intervene to bolster the nation's falling population growth rate as debate swells about policies to attract more migrants when many Australians are unemployed.
Immigration has dropped sharply this year due to restrictions on international arrivals to Australia to stop the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, leading to the biggest fall in population growth since World War I.
But Market Economics managing director Stephen Koukoulas, University of Western Australia Professor Jakob Madsen and Newcastle University Professor Bill Mitchell all strongly opposed any moves to encourage population growth in The Sydney Morning Herald/The Age Budget 2020 Scope Survey.
At the same time many others warned the economy would struggle to recover without efforts to increase the migration rate, including University of Melbourne Professor Neville Norman, BIS Oxford Economics' Sarah Hunter, Housing Industry Association chief economist Tim Reardon and a swathe of banking chief economists.
-----
Coalition shifts stance on climate change in a week of policy backflips
It’s been a big week for ministers doing backflips. Energy Minister Angus Taylor kicked it off on Tuesday with his “low emissions technology roadmap”, followed by Communications Minister Paul Fletcher’s NBN backflip on Wednesday, and then on Thursday Josh Frydenberg “recalibrated” fiscal policy.
The problem with the NBN was that Tony Abbott never bothered to understand it, he only ever saw it in political terms: it was a Labor thing, so it had to go. His then communications minister, Malcolm Turnbull, managed to stop him destroying it entirely but it became fibre to the copper, not to us. Now it’s fibre all the way, for a price.
As for the Treasurer, Thursday’s budget warm-up speech was just the beginning of the somersaults required.
The Australian banking system is strong, but not strong enough to withstand more than a few mortgagors trying to live on $40 a day.
-----
'We're in deep strife': Fertility wipe-out set to derail COVID-19 recovery
By Shane Wright
September 25, 2020 — 4.00pm
Demographer Liz Allen is blunt.
Population growth is on track to be at its lowest level since World War I while the nation's fertility rate - the number of children a woman will have over her lifetime - is likely to fall to its lowest rate on record.
"We're in deep strife," the Australian National University academic says.
Amongst the disaster the coronavirus pandemic has turned out to be in terms of health and the economy, it has also delivered a substantial blow to population growth and fertility, which will have even broader implications.
-----
Trade tensions tipped to drag on regardless of Trump or Biden victory
By Jennifer Duke and Shane Wright
September 27, 2020 — 1.00am
A panel of Australia's top economists has warned the nation will face escalating global trade tensions and volatility whether US President Donald Trump or Joe Biden wins the November election.
Independent economist Saul Eslake was scathing about the effects on global stability of a second Trump term. He described the US President's handling of the world's biggest economy as "an unmitigated disaster" that had increased the US budget deficit, driven up prices, emboldened dictators and undermined the confidence of allies.
"Re-election of Trump would be a terrible thing for America, for America's allies (whom Trump has treated with contempt), for our region ... and for Australia," Mr Eslake told The Sydney Morning Herald/The Age's Budget 2020 Scope Survey.
"I can't think of an election in which I have more wanted the incumbent to lose ... since the Tasmanian election of 1989."
-----
Fears over the growing stockpile of zombie companies
By Lucy Battersby
September 26, 2020 — 12.01am
The insolvency industry fears government rules keeping failing businesses alive during the COVID-19 economic crisis could lead to a massive wave of phoenixing and create a stockpile of non-viable businesses.
The concerns come as insolvency firms themselves are on their knees due to a lack of work - with half the country’s firms on JobKeeper - raising fears there may not be enough practitioners around to deal with the stockpile once creditors and the Australian Tax Office start chasing unpaid debts again.
Changes to insolvency laws has become a key tool for the government in staving off business collapses and supporting the economy.
This week Treasurer Josh Frydenberg flagged further reforms to the insolvency sector, opening the door to US Chapter 11 style corporate bankruptcies for small business. These proposals would cap fees paid by small business seeking restructuring services and "leave the keys" to the business in the hands of directors rather than in the hands of administrators.
-----
'Disaster': Consumer groups slam lending laws repeal as bank stocks soar
By Sarah Danckert and Charlotte Grieve
September 25, 2020 — 12.49pm
Former National Australia Bank chief executive Don Argus says the government's move to ease credit rules will not trigger an explosion of reckless loans by the major banks, but could increase predatory lending by start-ups.
Bank share prices surged on Friday after the announcement by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg that 'responsible lending' rules would be removed in an attempt to spur lending as the economy falls into a deep recession.
Mr Argus, one of the most senior figures in corporate Australia and also a former BHP chairman, said thorough credit checks were the backbone of traditional banking as debt recovery was a costly exercise. "The basic principles of lending money have always been the same. One is the integrity of the customer, two is the capacity of the customer to repay the loan," Mr Argus said. "If they can’t repay the loan, you run into issues."
But he said said low cost, startup finance providers with sales-driven cultures could cause problems. "If people are being incentivised to write more loans without going through the proper credit assessment, yes you’re going to run into trouble."
-----
Health Issues.
-----
Up to one in seven medical diagnoses could be wrong, study reveals
By Stuart Layt
September 21, 2020 — 12.01am
Australian doctors have warned that up to one in seven patients could be misdiagnosed after largely preventable errors by medical professionals.
But they say patients also bear some of the responsibility to meet clinicians half way to help get the best possible treatment and outcomes.
In a perspective article published in the Medical Journal of Australia, two leading clinicians, Professor Ian Scott, from Brisbane’s Princess Alexandra Hospital, and Associate Professor Carmel Crock, from the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital, analysed diagnostic error rates in the United States.
They used the data to extrapolate to Australia the number of diagnostic errors, finding an estimated 140,000 such cases annually, with 21,000 cases of serious harm and between 2000 and 4000 deaths.
-----
Health Minister Jenny Mikakos resigns: Read her statement in full
By Jenny Mikakos
September 26, 2020 — 10.50am
Victorian Health Minister Jenny Mikakos has resigned only days after giving evidence at the inquiry in the botched hotel quarantine program. This is her resignation statement in full:
"Since the start of this pandemic, I have worked every day with a single focus - to protect Victorians from an unprecedented global public health threat in our lifetime. It has been a responsibility for which I have felt only a sense of urgency and resolve.
"I have been in awe of our health professionals saving lives every day and I can never express my admiration of them enough.
"When the case numbers started to rise in June I sought an explanation. On 30 June, I received a briefing on a genomic sequencing report. To say that I was shocked would be a massive understatement. The sacrifice and suffering of Victorians is something that I feel deeply.
-----
International Issues.
-----
China is intervening in currency markets by stealth
It looks increasingly likely that China has been intervening to suppress the value of the yuan while avoiding international scrutiny.
Grant Wilson Contributor
Sep 20, 2020 – 12.55pm
In the week ahead China will release its balance of payments data for the second quarter. Consistent with the violent pivot we flagged back in March, the data will confirm that the pandemic has made China great again.
The current account surplus will rebound towards 3.5 per cent of GDP, reflecting a surge in demand for China’s exports of medical equipment and electronics, including from the US.
Meanwhile, China’s deficit in services will collapse, principally due to restrictions on outbound tourism.
FX intervention is taking place, but it is showing up on the balance sheet of China’s state banks as net foreign currency assets.
A turnaround in portfolio flows will also be revealed. This principally owes to large-scale inflows to China’s bond market, which is a now a global high yielder at 3 per cent.
-----
Wall Street's $4.2 trillion wipeout is no surprise
By Sarah Ponczek
September 22, 2020 — 8.30am
It was just 12 trading days ago that the S&P 500 capped an almost uninterrupted 60 per cent rally from its March lows, leaving the benchmark at the most-expensive level since the height of the internet bubble. Since then, about $US3 trillion ($4.2 trillion) of the index's value has been erased as it tumbles toward a correction.
Suspected culprits for the sell-off abound: Congress hasn't agreed on another fiscal stimulus package, an increase in COVID-19 case counts in Europe is raising the spectre of more lockdowns, and the Federal Reserve last week failed to give new details on its bond-buying plans. Before those headlines, stock valuations had been surging, setting the stage for a swift reversal whose speed rivals any in history.
Wall Street's main indexes hit their lowest in nearly seven weeks as concerns about fresh coronavirus-driven lockdowns and the inability of Congress to agree on more fiscal stimulus raised fears about another hit to the domestic economy.
While it's often said that valuations are poor market-timing tools, and rock-bottom interest rates do bolster the case for higher stock multiples, there were plenty of signs that equity prices were getting stretched. When the S&P 500 last hit a record on September 2, the benchmark traded at 27.8 times reported earnings, surpassing levels from 2002 for the first time to reach the most expensive since 2000.
-----
The world is losing the money laundering fight
By Elisa Martinuzzi
September 22, 2020 — 11.05am
We've just had the closest look yet at the global battle against money laundering, and it's deeply troubling: Banks and their regulators are nowhere near restraining the flow of trillions of dollars of illicit funds.
Both the finance industry and the authorities are to blame. Without an urgent, concerted political effort, criminals - from drug dealers and terrorists to human traffickers - will keep the upper hand.
In a year-long investigation by BuzzFeed and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, reporters pored over about 2100 suspicious activity reports, or SARs, which lenders file to the US Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) when they spot potential money laundering and other bad behaviour.
While the number of SARs reviewed by the journalists dwarfs any previous access to these confidential documents, they're still just a tiny fraction - 0.02 per cent - of the 12 million or so SARs that were probably filed during the period in question, mostly 2011 through 2017. Also, the sample isn't representative of overall banking activity. Some records stem from the US congressional investigation into interference with the 2016 presidential election. Almost half of the SARs came from Deutsche Bank.
-----
Beware the long arms of American and Chinese law
Without common international rules, third countries may increasingly find themselves torn between the competing extraterritorial demands of Washington and Beijing.
Gideon Rachman Columnist
Sep 22, 2020 – 9.23am
A small town in Germany gets a letter from US senators, threatening it with “crushing, legal and economic sanctions”. Professors at Oxford and Princeton tell students to submit essays anonymously – to protect themselves from potential arrest for violating Chinese law.
Welcome to the world of extraterritoriality. The US and China are increasingly seeking to extend the reach of their domestic law overseas – compelling foreign companies and people to do the bidding of Washington or Beijing.
The rise of extraterritoriality is the latest sign of the sad decline of our old friend, the rules-based international order, under which big powers at least pretended to play by the same rules as everybody else.
In the extraterritorial world, there is one set of rules for superpowers and another for everybody else. This looks less like the 21st century, as imagined by international lawyers and more like the 19th century, in which imperial powers imposed their will on others.
-----
Powell warns recovery highly uncertain, argues for more aid
Christopher Condon
Sep 23, 2020 – 5.20am
Washington | Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell said the US economy has a long way to go before fully recovering from the coronavirus pandemic and will need further support.
"The path forward will depend on keeping the virus under control, and on policy actions taken at all levels of government," he told the House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST).
While a recovery is underway, "both employment and overall economic activity, however, remain well below their pre-pandemic levels, and the path ahead continues to be highly uncertain".
In his own remarks, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said he and the White House continue to seek an agreement with both parties in Congress on another fiscal relief package.
"The President and I remain committed to providing support for American workers and businesses," he said in testimony released on Tuesday. "I believe a targeted package is still needed, and the administration is ready to reach a bipartisan agreement."
-----
https://www.afr.com/politics/china-is-escalating-its-punishment-diplomacy-20200924-p55yq3
China is escalating its punishment diplomacy
The EU, US and other democracies need to form a united front and formally agree they will not be played off against each other when individual countries are 'punished' by Beijing.
Jamil Anderlini
Sep 24, 2020 – 10.16am
Just two days before President Xi Jinping was scheduled to speak to Chancellor Angela Merkel last week, China blocked all pork imports from Germany.
The ostensible reason was the death of a single German wild boar from African swine fever, a disease already endemic in China. But some analysts jumped to a different conclusion. To them, this was the latest example of Beijing’s coercive commercial diplomacy — an evolving facet of Chinese statecraft that has come to dominate relations with several countries.
This coercion is never quite acknowledged publicly. As with German pork, Beijing announced it has blocked imports or opened investigations into a country’s products because of safety concerns or some other bureaucratic excuse.
But these actions almost always target nations that have recently displeased Beijing; and they are intended to force a change in policy or behaviour. Blocking pork imports was a warning to Berlin not to join Washington’s campaign to isolate Beijing and to stop criticising China’s human rights record.
-----
'We’re going to have to see what happens': Trump opens door to violence if he loses
By Aamer Madhani and Kevin Freking
September 24, 2020 — 9.50am
Washington: US President Donald Trump on Wednesday declined to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses the November 3 presidential election.
“We’re going to have to see what happens,” Trump said at a news conference, responding to a question about whether he’d commit to a peaceful transfer of power. “You know that I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots, and the ballots are a disaster.”
Trump has been pressing a monthslong campaign against mail-in voting this November by tweeting and speaking out critically about the practice. More states are encouraging mail-in voting to keep voters safe amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The president, who uses mail-in voting himself, has tried to distinguish between states that automatically send mail ballots to all registered voters and those, like Florida, that send them only to voters who request a mail ballot.
-----
Slow death spiral: Europe's economy is in fundamental crisis
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
September 24, 2020 — 10.05am
Risks of a double-dip recession in America are receding. Not even COVID-19 can repress the dynamism of US capitalism for long. The eurozone is another matter. The IHS Markit composite survey for September has fallen back to the boom-bust line at just 50.1. Services are in contraction again - even in Germany.
The equivalent US index is in rude good health, with business orders rising at the fastest pace in two years.
Europe's recovery was already fading before the second wave of COVID-19 struck, a truncated V pregnant with economic, social, and political trauma to come.
It is why the EU cannot risk the unforced error of a no-deal Brexit, doubly so given that London is asking only for a bare-bones Canada tie-up. Brussels will have to dial down its extraterritorial demands to protect its £95 billion ($171 billion) trade surplus.
-----
Trump's 'naked declaration of autocratic intent'
Every once in a while Donald Trump outpaces the baseline of corruption, disloyalty and sadism we've been forced to get used to.
Michelle Goldberg
Sep 25, 2020 – 8.20am
Living under a president who daily defiles his office and glories in transgressing the norms holding democracy together is numbing and enervating.
It's not emotionally or physiologically possible to maintain appropriate levels of shock and fury indefinitely; eventually exhaustion and cynical despair kick in.
But every once in a while Donald Trump outpaces the baseline of corruption, disloyalty and sadism we've been forced to get used to. Outrage builds and the weary political world stirs. Sometimes even a few Republican officeholders feel the need to distance themselves from things the president says or does.
Child separation caused this kind of clarifying horror. There was a moment of it when Trump tweeted that four congresswomen of colour should go back to the "totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came". And now, thanks to Trump's latest attack on democracy, we're seeing it again.
-----
Don't assume Xi Jinping's version of China will last forever
Since 1949 the Party's controls have waxed and waned. And there is evidence that people in China are now chafing under the new constraints and more assertive foreign policy.
John Culver
Sep 25, 2020 – 12.00am
China’s president Xi Jinping has framed the historic events surrounding this period of Chinese growth as a once-in-a-century change – an allusion to the First World War and its aftermath, which overturned the previous world order.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) probably does not seek to overturn the international order that brought China enormous benefits, enabled and sustained its unprecedented economic rise, and provided an architecture for Beijing’s global influence.
But Beijing does seek to alter what it sees as the international order’s bias towards liberal democratic norms and values. Above all, China’s leaders seek legitimacy and acceptance of an authoritarian political system that provides security, stability, and development, particularly in parts of the world that have not benefited from the Western development model, and therefore may see China’s state-capitalist model as an attractive alternative.
Still, the CCP's mid-century goals appear to rely less on the success of the regime’s current policies and agency than on historical forces, a continued US decline, and a shift in global norms and values to align with Chinese preferences.
-----
Boris Johnson fights to hold a pandemic-stricken UK together
As the second wave hits Britain, the Prime Minister is struggling to fend off a fresh independence push in Scotland and soothe Brexit unease in Northern Ireland.
Hans van Leeuwen Europe correspondent
Sep 25, 2020 – 1.47pm
As the COVID-19 pandemic’s second wave crashes onto Britain’s shores, its relentless power to unmoor old certainties, and to expose fault lines, fragilities and failings, is unabated. And it's shaking the country to the core.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government is reeling from the immediate crisis: a testing system that’s not up to the job; an economy that is suffering from “long COVID-19” rather than bouncing back to rude health; and a population that is losing confidence in Johnson's misfiring leadership.
But deeper, structural erosion is also taking place. Brexit was already eating at the foundations of unity among the United Kingdom’s four nations – England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Now COVID-19 is threatening to wash away the debris and reveal just how deep the fissures have become.
Like Australia, Britain’s public health system isn’t centrally run. Unlike Australia, the fact that second-tier governments are basically in charge is actually threatening to crack the country apart.
-----
https://unherd.com/2020/09/can-america-hold-apart/
How America came apart
A people with no shared narrative or history will find it very hard to keep a lid on disorder and violence
Douglas Murray is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist based in London.
September 18, 2020
Is America splitting apart? Just a few years ago it would have seemed an absurd idea. Today the signs from the outside do not look good.
Take the events of recent months. In almost all of the world’s democracies, the immediate reaction to the Covid pandemic was an uptick in public trust in, and support for, their governments. Countries like Britain — said to be hugely divided over recent years — suddenly turned out to have significant secret wells of public trust in the authorities. A consensus grew around what was the best way to deal with the outbreak, based on the advice of the country’s leading scientists.
The Government (and a Conservative one at that) ordered everyone to stay in their homes and the public followed its orders. The Government told all young people not in a committed relationship or living with their partner to engage in months of chastity. And they did. If you had suggested this time last year that a Conservative Prime Minister — and Boris Johnson of all prime ministers — could have successfully ordered the youth of Britain to take up celibacy for the summer you would have been adjudged mad. And yet they did it; as did the public in democracies all around the world. Except for one.
-----
Inside the global alliance attempting to stifle China
By Eryk Bagshaw
September 26, 2020 — 12.00am
The medieval church cloisters in the small Dutch city of Maastricht are an unlikely setting for Chinese Communist Party influence.
Local councils in the Limburg province, struggling for cash amid an economic downturn, have been happy to accept assistance from Chinese community groups for repairs. The offers are genuine efforts at collaboration, combining the Chinese diaspora's appreciation for European art with a need for investment in decaying buildings.
It gets more complex when local councils are asked to then take positions on foreign affairs, according to Dutch MP Martijn van Helvert, who sits on the Netherlands' Foreign Affairs Committee.
"They try to help provinces and local councils with restoring old buildings, old cloisters and start Confucius Institutes," he says. "And then the local government is very happy. They think we don’t have to pay for it but then they agree that they don't say anything critical on China."
-----
Attitude adjustment required on both sides over Taiwan
The clouds of war have been building up ominously in the Taiwan Strait. China has been intruding into Taiwan’s sea and air space and making strident statements about the self-governing, democratic and prosperous island being an inalienable part of its own territory. The Eastern Theatre Command, which would supply the military forces for an initial assault on Taiwan, issued a press release recently declaring that it would defend every flower and every blade of grass of “the motherland” rather than allow Taiwan to become independent.
For decades, the outside world has sustained relations with China and peace across the Taiwan Strait based on the formula of “one China” and the recognition that the PRC claims sovereignty over Taiwan — which is not the same as acknowledging such sovereignty. Xi Jinping is openly threatening to enforce this sovereignty claim by going to war, in the same bellicose spirit that had him impose a draconian national security law on Hong Kong this year; casting aside the Basic Law, under which Hong Kong was supposed to be governed until 2049. The same spirit has seen him fortify or create islets in the South China Sea, intrude violently into India and undertake provocations against Japan’s occupation of the Senkaku islands.
Pro-China lobbyists in Australia have, for many years, argued both that China’s claim to sovereignty over Taiwan is justified and that it is, as Hugh White, Stephen Fitzgerald or Bob Carr tend to express it, a “neuralgic” issue for China — a highly sensitive one, which cannot be changed and must, therefore, be taken as a given in our own strategic and diplomatic calculations. Many on both sides of politics in this country have long insisted that Australia does not have a dog in this fight and should not permit the ANZUS alliance to drag us into a war with China on account of Taiwan, if Taiwan “provokes” a Chinese assault and the United States stands by Taiwan.
-----
Building a Shared Worldview Among Democrats and Republicans Could Be More Dangerous Than Healing
Bring people together around protecting democracy instead.
By Malka Older| September 25, 2020, 11:55 AM
For the past four years, the United States has been lurching from one political outrage to another. Time after time, President Donald Trump’s administration has broken norms or laws, triggering dozens of hot takes and thousands of appalled tweets. Now, as the United States rapidly approaches a presidential election, the attacks on its political process are accelerating; most recently, Trump has declined to commit to a peaceful transition if he loses the vote in November. Morally outraged think pieces and apocalyptic tweets are not going to be enough, but finding another approach has been a struggle.
In an effort to propose a solution, many commenters have started pointing to the lack of a “shared reality” and the influence of media “echo chambers,” suggesting that a common understanding of facts and policy goals is needed to help the country out of its slump. To be sure, these are important considerations—ideally, Americans would be less vulnerable to manipulation, something the country should be working toward. But the idea of a single worldview that everyone shares is both unrealistic and dangerous. Most of the times groups of people have gotten close to such a shared reality, they have used it to propagate destructive ideas.
-----
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/09/25/2020-election-donald-trump-joe-biden/
The Most Important Election. Ever.
Why the fate of the American republic—and the world—could depend on what happens Nov. 3.
By Michael HirshSeptember 25, 2020, 2:07 PM
Pick your historical precedent. In each case, the direction and very survival of the American republic were at stake. There was the close election of 1800 between Aaron Burr—an unprincipled fellow with dictatorial impulses who was in some ways the Donald Trump of his day—and Thomas Jefferson. The 1860 contest in which Abraham Lincoln faced off against Stephen Douglas, with the Civil War looming. Or the 1932 election during the Great Depression, the stakes of which were so consequential that when Franklin D. Roosevelt was warned he’d be known as the worst president in U.S. history if his recovery program failed, FDR reportedly replied, “If it fails, I’ll be the last one.”
An extraordinary consensus exists among historians, political scientists, diplomats, national security officials, and other experts that the stakes of the U.S. presidential election between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden this November rise to these portentous historical standards. Indeed the stakes may go well beyond that, considering the central place the United States today holds in the global system—in a way it did not as a much younger nation in 1800, 1860, or even 1932.
Some suggest that Trump and the malign forces he has summoned up have already done so much damage to the institutions of U.S. democracy—especially his failure to contain the COVID-19 pandemic and his open encouragement of racial violence and national division—that his reelection in November could damage forever the 244-year-old American experiment of a republic of laws. After a first term in which Trump has openly defied Congress and the courts, twisted foreign policy to serve his political interests, dismissed electoral norms, and turned a terrified Republican Party into his plaything, his return to power would, in effect, legitimize the gutting of the institutions of law and what remains of the founders’ checks and balances. Reelection would vindicate his view that as president he can, as Trump said, “do whatever I want.” It would all but destroy, in other words, the American conceit that the United States is a different kind of democracy than has existed in the past, leaving the country as just another abject discard on the ash heap of failed republics going back to ancient Rome and Greece.
-----
'Naked ballots' and Ginsburg's death set to collide in the US election
By Matthew Knott
September 27, 2020 — 12.05am
Washington: In the fiercely contested Gore vs Bush election of 2000, there were Florida's notorious "hanging chads": punch-card ballots had not been completely perforated, making it unclear whether they should be counted or thrown away.
The fight over Florida's excruciatingly close result made its way to the US Supreme Court which, 36 days after election day, certified Bush the winner of Florida and, therefore, the presidency.
Among those in the minority of the 5-4 decision was Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died last week at age 87.
In this year's presidential election, the most contentious issue could be "naked ballots" in Pennsylvania, a battleground state that could determine the election outcome. On the same day as Ginsburg's death, Pennsylvania's top court ruled that all postal ballots must be placed inside a special secrecy sleeve as well as the official return envelope. Unlike in previous elections, all ballots returned without the secrecy sleeve will be rejected.
-----
President Trump picks conservative Amy Barrett for US Supreme Court
By Zeke MIller
September 27, 2020 — 7.22am
Washington: US President Donald Trump has nominated Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, capping a dramatic reshaping of the federal judiciary that will resonate for a generation and that he hopes will provide a needed boost to his reelection effort.
Republican senators are already lining up for a swift confirmation of Barrett ahead of the November 3 election, as they aim to lock in conservative gains in the federal judiciary before a potential transition of power. Trump, meanwhile, is hoping the nomination will serve to galvanise his supporters as he looks to fend off Democrat Joe Biden.
An ideological heir to the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, Barrett would fill the seat vacated after the death of liberal icon Ruth Bader Ginsberg, in what would be the sharpest ideological swing since Clarence Thomas replaced Justice Thurgood Marshall nearly three decades ago. She would be the sixth justice on the nine-member court to be appointed by a Republican President, and the third of Trump’s first term in office.
"The stakes for our country are very high," President Trump said of the significant announcement.
-----
I look forward to comments on all this!
-----
David.
