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We are now into the last few weeks before the election and the polls seem to be suggesting a Biden win while Trump is railing about how he has conquered the virus and he will save the whole world. Just where it will go from here is anyone’s guess. There is a lot to play for here with the stability of the world at stake I reckon.
In the UK and Europe we are seeing a terrible resurgence of COVID19 and little improvement in the US. This may be very bad for the global economy which will have dire consequences for Australia!
In OZ we are still digesting the Budget and wondering can business really drive and economic recovery. The answer to that must be open in the next 12-18 months.
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Major Issues.
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A world driven by fiscal policy is going to be different
Direct spending decisions do not work in the same ways as the blunt instrument of interest rates. The implications could be profound.
Richard Yetsenga Contributor
Oct 5, 2020 – 11.25am
The year 2020 has seen many firsts. For a number of countries, including Australia, it is the first time in three decades that fiscal policy has taken precedence over monetary policy in managing the economy.
A fiscal-policy-dominated world implies easier policy overall because the policy targets and accountability are more ambiguous. But it also means much more.
This shift in leadership is not just because interest rates are low or because unconventional policy has a more limited impact and larger side effects than monetary policy - the basic lever of interest rates. It is also because the essential tenets of conventional monetary policy are being challenged.
While some suggest changing inflation targets as a solution, this is missing the mark. The problem is not the specificity of the inflation target; the problem is the ability to achieve any target with an acceptable level of precision.
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Former RBA boss warns low rates haven't done 'any good'
John Kehoe Senior writer
Oct 6, 2020 – 2.53pm
Former Reserve Bank of Australia governor Ian Macfarlane says cutting interest rates to near zero has not done "any good" and warned ultra-loose monetary policy will have long-term costs for pensioners and insurance companies.
In a very rare public critique of the RBA by a former governor, Mr Macfarlane said technology and globalisation were now more powerful forces than interest rates in affecting inflation, but central bankers were reluctant to admit their limitations.
"I've been disappointed with the recent cuts in interest rates, all of them since about 2015," Mr Macfarlane said.
"The latest round of cutting interest rates and quantitative easing, I myself don't think they've done any good.
"I thought, 'wow, you didn't need to do that' but I don't think there's any way my successors could have stood there and said to the world 'we're not going to do that, we're going to do it our way'."
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/rba-keeps-cash-rate-on-hold-as-budget-looms-20201006-p562c7
RBA opens door to November rate cut
Sarah Turner Reporter
Oct 6, 2020 – 2.38pm
The Reserve Bank of Australia kept the official cash rate at a record low for another month, holding fire on policy changes ahead of the most important budget since World War II, but stoking hopes for lower rates next month.
RBA governor Philip Lowe said that the RBA "continues to consider how additional monetary easing could support jobs as the economy opens up further." Last month the RBA said it "continues to consider how further monetary measures could support the recovery."
Dr Lowe on Tuesday underscored that the RBA is committed to doing what it can to support Australian jobs, incomes and businesses, saying "the board views addressing the high rate of unemployment as an important national priority."
The change of wording in the statement to "easing" and the insertion of the phrase that unemployment is an "important national priority" brought Capital Economics to the view that there will be more cuts in November.
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China is opening the door. Will Australia walk through it?
The Financial Review's interview with a top Chinese diplomat would have been approved at the top. The Morrison government is obdurate if it does not take up the gesture.
Geoff Raby Columnist
Updated Oct 7, 2020 – 10.36am, first published at 10.28am
It is not often that a column by an Australian journalist is published in full, in Chinese, in China, especially only a day after its publication in Australia.
It is even more remarkable as the journalist has just been bustled out of China and now faces the prospect of not returning. But the interview this week by The Australian Financial Review's China correspondent Michael Smith with the former Chinese ambassador to Australia, Fu Ying, has achieved just that.
The reprinting of the interview in the online journal, Observer, is official endorsement of Fu’s comments. Not that there should have been any doubt about that. Her written answers to Smith’s questions would have been cleared at the most senior levels of China’s Foreign Ministry, if not within the leadership compound of Zhongnanhai itself.
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Voters are getting the kind of contest they haven't seen in decades
George Megalogenis
October 10, 2020 — 12.00am
Australian politics suddenly lost its complexity this week. The Coalition stands for incentive, and reward for effort. Labor is the party of the safety net and active government. These are not new values, of course. They are the competing identities of our two-party system going back to the days of Menzies and Curtin.
But it’s been decades since those ideals triggered a genuine reform contest between Coalition and Labor because short-term politics kept getting in the way. That will hopefully change now the budget has confirmed the monumental cost of the pandemic.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has rejected claims the 2020 federal budget has left women behind.
Both sides confront an obvious challenge following the record spending, deficit and debt announced on Tuesday: what is the role of government once the health crisis has passed? The good news is there was a welcome level of clarity from the Prime Minister and Opposition Leader in their first draft of that answer.
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Careful what you wish for: COVID-19 transforms population politics
By Matt Wade
October 11, 2020 — 12.10am
Population pressures have preoccupied NSW politics for decades. Traffic congestion, crowded trains and high-rise property developments are perennial themes of public debate, especially in Sydney. Migration is routinely blamed for pushing up prices in the city's famously expensive housing market.
In October 2018, with voter anger over population pressures palpable and an election six months away, Premier Gladys Berejiklian called for immigration to be halved so NSW could “take a breather”.
Sydney had just added more than 110,000 people in a single year and the city's population growth rate – 2.2 per cent – was the highest in a quarter of a century.
A few weeks later, Prime Minister Scott Morrison, a long-time defender of migration, used a speech in Sydney to change tack on the issue.
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Five essentials to know about your super and where to find them
Jessica Irvine
Economics writer
October 10, 2020 — 11.00pm
Have you ever looked at yours? I mean, really sat down — somewhere quiet, with no distractions —and given it a really good going-over?
Lots of people are scared of looking at theirs. And that’s understandable. Who knows exactly what you’ll find there? A nasty surprise, perhaps. Or maybe you just don’t know where to start or what to look for.
I’m talking, of course, about your annual superannuation statement.
Mine arrived in the mail a few weeks ago, and after this week’s historic changes to super, unveiled in Tuesday’s federal budget, I decided to have a really good look. I urge you to do the same.
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Coronavirus And Impacts.
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Australia's response to virus may have saved 16,000 lives
Jill Margo Health editor
Oct 5, 2020 – 4.22pm
Australia’s response to COVID-19 has been “extremely successful” and may have saved 16,000 lives during the first wave, according to a study by the University of Sydney.
Australia’s rate of 34 deaths per million population is 15 to 20 times lower than that observed in countries across Europe and the Americas.
As it is not known exactly how many people would have died if Australia’s response had been different, the researchers arrived at an estimate using complex comparisons with England and Wales.
Writing in the Medical Journal of Australia InSight, they say Australian deaths were low initially. By the end of the first wave on July 31, the country had only 196 deaths.
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IHME revises lower - again - its US death projection
Timothy Moore Online editor
Oct 6, 2020 – 4.53am
In an October 2 update, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation said it projected the US death toll from the virus to be 363,269 by January 1.
That's yet another revision lower for that statistic. Previously the IHME had projected more than 400,000 deaths in the US by the end of the year.
There are now 7.42 million known cases in the US and 209,881 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.
The US cases account for 21 per cent of the 35.27 million global cases. The US death toll represents 20.2 per cent of the 1.03 million global deaths.
The IHME has drawn an increasing number of critics, because of the fluctuation in its most forward dated projections. The IHME itself acknowledges that it's continually revising its projections as it widens its data.
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Coronavirus: Sweden defied zealots and never met its Waterloo
11:00PM October 5, 2020
Sweden’s impressive legacy — ABBA, dynamite, Ikea, for instance — has expanded significantly in 2020, having provided the world with an example of a sane response to what’s turned out a relatively mild pandemic.
The Scandinavian nation deserves enduring credit from reasonable people everywhere for resisting the destructive authoritarian mindset that enveloped democratic nations this year. Sweden was viciously attacked by supposed experts and mainstream media all year that if it didn’t crush commerce by fiat and suspend civil liberties indefinitely, as has occurred in Europe, many US states, and of course Victoria, more than 90,000 Swedes would die.
The army of lockdown zealots will never be able to say lockdowns are essential to avert disaster, if that wasn’t already clear enough from Japan, Taiwan and South Korea.
Historians will struggle to see a public policy disaster in Sweden. The number of deaths there from all causes so far this year, just less than 68,000, is fewer than over the same period in 2015, adjusted for population size. Far from an apocalypse, the total death rate from January 1 to September 20 is barely distinguishable from recent years, notwithstanding a jump from 2019, during which it was unusually low.
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Revealed: $57b reserve fund for COVID-19 uncertainty
John Kehoe Senior writer
Oct 9, 2020 – 12.00am
The federal government has stashed aside a record $57 billion for future cost blowouts and potential extra COVID-19 spending such as vaccines, in a massive under-the-radar expansion of the budget's reserve fund.
The "contingency reserve", a feature of the budget for decades, has almost quadrupled for the next four years from $15 billion in the previous budget.
The contingency reserve sets up an expense buffer of $8.1 billion in 2020-21, $12.6 billion in 2021-22, $14.8 billion in 2022-23 and $21.6 billion in 2023-24 – a build-up that reflects that cost blowouts are harder to predict and tend to grow in the longer term.
The expanded reserve is further evidence of Scott Morrison's conservative approach to budget forecasts, in which since his days as treasurer and before COVID-19, he often under-promised but over-delivered on fiscal outcomes.
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https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/this-massive-debt-is-with-us-till-2080-20201008-p5633q
This massive debt is with us till 2080
It will take at least 60 years to pay off the bill for the pandemic. So why is the government so insouciant about Australia's economy?
John Roskam Columnist
Oct 8, 2020 – 5.28pm
"Insouciance" is a word Australians don't use very often. Maybe we should.
It perfectly describes the popular reaction to this week's federal budget and the news the country faces more than a trillion dollars of government debt.
Australians are also insouciant about the jobs of a quarter of the nation's workforce now being dependent on wage subsidies from the government.
And the Coalition seems insouciant about the political consequences of government spending going from $549 billion and 28 per cent of GDP in 2019-20 to an estimated $677 billion and 39 per cent of GDP in 2020-21.
To be insouciant is, according to various definitions, to be "apathetic", "carefree", "unconcerned", and "with no feelings of worry or guilt". That's been the prevailing attitude to the national economy for the past decade, and it looks set to continue. It's an attitude that's the product of 29 years without a recession.
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Vaccine suppliers given indemnity for 'inevitable' side effects
By Dana McCauley
October 8, 2020 — 5.42pm
The Morrison government has given the suppliers of two COVID-19 vaccines indemnity against liability for rare side effects that experts say are "inevitable" when a vaccine is rolled out.
But the government will not set up a statutory compensation scheme, which the president of the Australian Medical Association, Omar Khorshid, said meant Australians who suffered "extremely rare" side effects from the vaccines would face a tough battle to seek compensation.
"With a brand new vaccine, it's going to be really hard to tell what is a vaccine injury and what is a rare medical condition that someone would have had anyway," Dr Khorshid said.
As part of its $1.7 billion deals to secure more than 84.8 million doses of the Oxford University and University of Queensland vaccines if successful, the federal government has indemnified the suppliers, meaning they cannot be held liable for adverse events caused by the vaccines.
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One hundred days of Dan's pressers: What did Victorians really learn?
By Sumeyya Ilanbey
October 9, 2020 — 3.50pm
Daniel Andrews took an oath, swearing on the Bible to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
It was September 25 and he was on our screens for the second time that day, this time as the final witness at the hotel quarantine inquiry. Earlier, he had been in his accustomed position on the Treasury Theatre stage presiding over another press conference – his 85th in a row. His demeanour in both rooms was similar: calm, confident, in control.
But this was different. Before former judge Jennifer Coate Andrews was apologetic. He was not combative. For the first time he was providing answers to simple questions he had dodged for months.
“Would you agree with me that these issues of infection control were too important to be left entirely to private contractors [security guards]?” asked counsel assisting the inquiry Rachel Ellyard.
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Climate Change
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No entries this week
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Royal Commissions And The Like.
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No entries this week
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National Budget Issues.
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Reserve Bank board 'does not understand monetary policy': Ex-RBA researcher
By Jennifer Duke
October 3, 2020 — 1.22pm
The Reserve Bank of Australia board has been lashed by a former researcher for failing to understand monetary policy, in an email made public a fortnight after former Prime Minister Paul Keating attacked the bank's deputy governor Guy Debelle.
Former senior research manager for the RBA, Peter Tulip, sent the email to his colleagues on August 12 saying he "no longer" believed the bank served the public interest.
The email, which became public on Friday following a freedom of information request, criticised the bank for its reluctance to be open and honest, and for making claims contradicted by evidence including about the effectiveness of policy, likelihood of dropping interest rates to zero and the effect of negative interest rates.
"I recognise that these problems are not the Bank's fault. We have a Board that does not understand monetary policy or statistical research," Dr Tulip said.
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No taxpayer left behind: Budget relief for all to boost spending
By Shane Wright and David Crowe
October 4, 2020 — 11.30pm
No taxpayer will miss out on a financial helping hand in the federal government's recession-busting budget as Treasurer Josh Frydenberg hopes to encourage consumers to spend any financial windfall to prop up the economy.
Declaring people needed to have more money in their pockets "right now", the Treasurer on Sunday signalled the government's plan to bring forward its previously legislated tax cuts while also ensuring there is cash directed to those on low wages.
The stage two and three tax cuts, that are currently due to start in mid-2022 and mid-2024, skew towards middle and high-income earners. A person on $40,000, just above the minimum wage, gains just $100 extra a year from the 2022 tax cuts and nothing from the later ones.
But someone earning $140,000 will be $2430 better off once the 2022 tax cuts begin and another $3410 in front once the 2024 tax cuts start operation.
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$1.1 trillion plunge into debt, deficit at $250bn
The nation’s official debt ceiling will be lifted beyond $1.1 trillion, with Tuesday’s crisis budget set to also record a ballooning peak deficit for this year of just over $210bn.
The new debt cap, to be contained in the budget papers, would take the gross debt to GDP ratio to about 55 per cent — the highest level since the 1950s but remaining among the lowest debt levels of developed countries.
The 2020-21 budget deficit will peak at a little over $210bn before coming down over the following three years as the government moves to dramatically expand its borrowing capacity to help underwrite the post COVID-19 economic recovery.
The deficit will be used to fuel a demand-driven agenda, with the budget poised to deliver a multi-billion-dollar wage subsidy for businesses to employ new workers — in addition to the JobKeeper program — and accelerated income tax cuts to drive household spending.
Scott Morrison will on Monday also unveil a further $7.5bn in infrastructure funding that will be brought forward to this year’s budget and allocated for shovel-ready national transport projects aimed at supporting 30,000 direct and indirect jobs.
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Why the RBA should not fund government spending
On display this week will be the reason monetary and fiscal policy can never be merged, and that the creation of money should never be a tool of politics.
Both forms of macroeconomic policy are driven by some kind of ideology, but the politics behind fiscal are mostly self-serving, or party-serving, or sometimes just crazy-idea-serving, while the ideology of central banking is at least well-meaning, if sometimes old-fashioned and slow.
Take the tax cuts originally planned for 2022, which are obviously going to be brought forward to 2021 in tomorrow’s budget, with some talk of even backdating them to July 1 this year.
The purpose of any tax cut by conservative parties is both political and ideological: to buy votes and enforce small government. (When progressive parties do it, it’s purely vote-buying). Tax cuts for the base are a tried and trusted strategy of conservative political leaders around the world, taken to a new level of refinement and excess by Donald Trump.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/putting-jobs-tax-investment-and-small-business-20201005-p5628o
Budget repair for jobs, tax, investment and small business
The Treasurer has laid out the Morrison government’s eagerly awaited economic recovery plan in Canberra.
Josh Frydenberg Contributor
Oct 6, 2020 – 7.32pm
COVID-19 has resulted in the most severe global economic crisis since the Great Depression.
Around the world the equivalent of 600 million people have lost their jobs.
The global economy is expected to contract by 4.5 per cent this year, compared to just 0.1 per cent during the global financial crisis.
Australia has not been immune. Our economy has been hit, and hit hard.
In the space of just one month, more than 1 million Australians lost their jobs or saw their working hours reduced to zero. In my home state of Victoria, millions have been in lockdown.
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NAB boss welcomes budget but chief economist wary about government's outlook
By Charlotte Grieve
October 7, 2020 — 9.38am
National Australia Bank chief executive Ross McEwan has welcomed the business-focused federal budget, saying it will help rebuild the battered economy, but the bank's chief economist has cautioned the government's outlook may be overly optimistic.
The big four banks are among the businesses excluded from the $27 billion investment allowance, that targets small to medium businesses by enabling those with turnovers of less than $5 billion to deduct the full cost of any asset worth up to $150,000.
The instant asset write-off scheme will cover 99 per cent of businesses employing 11.5 million people and Mr McEwan said this will help drive the country's economic activity through the pandemic.
"We must do everything we can to support and strengthen businesses right now and the budget measures announced by the government will certainly help to do that as we begin to transition from support to stimulus," Mr McEwan said.
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Federal budget 2020: Decade of deficits and it doesn’t end there
6:02PM October 6, 2020
Treasury is now forecasting at least a decade of deficits, with the underlying cash deficit assumed to be about $53bn in 10 years’ time.
Government debt will keep rising, skipping past the new limit of $1.2 trillion to be $1.8 trillion in 2030-31, or 55 per cent of GDP. Treasury’s long-term forecasts don’t go beyond that year, but there’s unlikely to be a return to surplus in 2031-32, even if the Coalition is still in power, so there’ll be more debt to add to the total after that. That’s hardly surprising: deficits continued for 10 years after the GFC.
The only question will be how much of the debt will end up being owned by the Reserve Bank, something we didn’t learn anything about on Tuesday because the RBA decided to hold off announcing its expected big quantitative easing, or government debt buying, program, presumably until next month.
By 2030, central banks owning lots of government debt will be old hat, in fact in many countries they might have been directly funding government spending, instead of waiting for the bonds to be laundered through private ownership first, as the RBA insists on doing. The fact Australian deficits and rising debt will keep going for at least a decade is partly a consequence of what may be the most shocking thing in a pretty shocking budget: that the impact of on receipts of “parameter and other variations” — that is things outside the government’s control — gets worse each year of the new forward estimates, versus last year’s now redundant estimates, not better.
From minus $41bn this year, to $54.5bn next year, $61.3bn in 2022-23 and finally $76bn in 2023-24. There’s no catch up. Total four-year decline in receipts compared to what they thought before the pandemic: $232.8bn.
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Heroic assumptions in budget omit one major threat: a global debt crunch
John Hewson
Columnist and former Liberal opposition leader
October 7, 2020 — 4.00pm
You simply can’t buy business and consumer confidence, no matter how much you spend. To be fair, quite uncharacteristically for a Coalition government, it has certainly had a go, with both costly tax cuts and business incentives, but as Treasurer Josh Frydenberg conceded, “there is a monumental task ahead” to climb out of the black hole created by the response to COVID-19.
We're definitely “back in black”, but we're in that hole, not credit as hoped at the time of the last budget.
Overall, the government runs up a total of about half a trillion dollars in deficits over the next four-year budget period, hoping to return unemployment, from a peak of about 8 per cent, to 2019 levels by 2024. This drives net government debt to almost $1 trillion by 2023-24, some 44 per cent of gross domestic product. Apparently gross debt reaches almost $1.8 trillion over a decade.
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https://www.afr.com/chanticleer/beware-super-s-paradigm-shift-20201007-p562sx
Beware super's paradigm shift
The latest intervention in the $3 trillion super system is pitched as an overdue move to ensure transparency, accountability and higher performance. But it could have consequences far beyond these noble objectives.
Oct 8, 2020 – 12.00am
The move towards greater transparency, accountability and performance measurement in the $3 trillion superannuation system is likely to lead to increased passive management of retirement savings.
This will have implications for local and international fund managers, both active and passive, and potentially cause significant changes to the direct flow of capital from super funds into alternative investments including infrastructure, private equity, venture capital and credit.
The catalyst for change is a requirement that all super products meet an annual performance test based upon a formula developed by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority.
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Strengthening super trustee obligations dismissed as unnecessary
Sally Patten BOSS editor
Oct 7, 2020 – 8.31pm
Lawyers have lambasted the federal government's plans to make superannuation fund trustees more accountable, saying the measure is unnecessary and unlikely to benefit members.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg surprised the retirement savings sector on Tuesday with a proposal to strengthen the obligations of super trustees to ensure they always act in "the best financial interests" of members.
The Coalition, which has long been concerned by super fund spending on advertising and other forms of promotion, said it would also require retirement schemes to "provide better information regarding how they manage and spend members’ money" to unitholders on an annual basis.
Lawyers and trustees argued that funds already acted in members' best financial interests, with the former noting that this was enshrined in the superannuation law and in the regulator's prudential standards.
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https://www.afr.com/technology/r-and-d-reversal-to-spur-job-creation-more-investment-20201006-p562l2
R&D reversal to spur job creation, more investment
Yolanda Redrup Reporter
Oct 7, 2020 – 5.33pm
Australia's most innovative companies are gearing up to increase their research and development activity, with more jobs expected to flow into the sector thanks to the federal government winding back proposed cuts to the R&D tax incentive (RDTI) scheme.
The backflip on the slated $1.8 billion cuts was part of a $2 billion R&D package outlined in Tuesday's budget, which involves scrapping a proposed $4 million cap for companies generating less than $20 million in revenue, and simplifying a tiered claiming system for bigger businesses.
"The new approach strikes the right balance between ensuring there is not an overall reduction in incentives for business-led R&D and encouraging 'additionality' by providing a greater benefit to companies that are genuinely R&D driven," Cochlear chief executive Dig Howitt told The Australian Financial Review.
"We are also very pleased to see the government remains committed to increasing the cap on RDTI eligible expenditure from $100 million to $150 million.
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Banks facing elevated risks up to the task of recovery: RBA Stability Review
Australia’s financial system is up to the task of supporting economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, according to the Reserve Bank’s biannual Financial Stability Review.
Defaults could rise as mortgage deferrals and government income support for workers and firms ends in coming months, the central bank said.
However while acknowledging “risks are elevated” the Council of Financial Regulators, of which the RBA is a member, maintains that “the Australian financial system is in a strong position”.
Risks would be “exacerbated by a weaker-than-expected economic recovery”, for example stemming from further setbacks on the health front or international political tensions, the RBA cautions.
However, stress tests show the banks would remain above their minimum capital requirements even if the economic contraction is substantially more severe than expected.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/rba-sees-rising-business-bankruptcies-20201009-p563ky
RBA sees rising business bankruptcies
John Kehoe Senior writer
Oct 9, 2020 – 12.00pm
The Reserve Bank of Australia is bracing for thousands of extra business failures and a rise in household financial stress over the coming months when loan repayment deferrals and government income supports end.
The RBA said COVID-19-linked government subsidies and temporary insolvency relief had increased business "cash buffers" and reduced the number of business failures by about 4600 firms so far.
Many of these measures, such as JobKeeper, cash flow payments from the Australian Taxation Office and a temporary freeze on director liability for insolvencies will roll off between January and March.
Without them, an extra 1400 businesses would have failed in the final few months of the financial year to June 30, the RBA estimated, on top of the typical 15,000 to 20,000 business exits every year.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/the-government-s-big-bold-confidence-trick-20201008-p5637g
The government's big, bold confidence trick
Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg are betting budget measures will breathe new life into an economy that's been flattened by COVID-19. Their success, or otherwise, depends on millions of individual decisions.
Matthew Cranston Economics correspondent
Oct 9, 2020 – 11.00pm
Brisbane-based electrician Boyd Fletcher is one of the 7 million Australians who are about to get a tax cut of $2000 or more.
His boss, Lorne Vikars, runs one of the 2.8 million businesses that have been offered massive tax relief.
Fletcher's tax cut and Vikars' instant asset write-off were the two key measures Treasurer Josh Frydenberg announced on Tuesday in a record-breaking budget that revealed a $213.7 billion deficit, worth 11 per cent of GDP.
The Morrison government – and the rest of the country – is hoping these two policy braces will support a rebuilding of both the demand and supply side of the economy after the first recession in 29 years.
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We need more than low interest rates to cope with a $1.7trn debt
Australia owes it to the next generation of taxpayers to generate a faster rate of economic growth to lift their living standards and make the debt manageable.
John Kehoe Senior writer
Oct 9, 2020 – 2.03pm
With the federal government's debt bill forecast to hit $1.7 trillion over the next decade, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg says "we owe it to the next generation" to ensure they enjoy economic prosperity. Right now, that job is at best half done.
To be sure, record-low borrowing costs means Australia can afford the higher debt for the foreseeable future – assuming global interest rates remain low while world governments borrow at unprecedented rates. Astoundingly, the government's interest bill will be lower than in past years, even though federal gross debt is poised to shoot up to 55 per cent of GDP by around 2030, from 28 per cent in 2019.
But Australia owes it to the next generation of taxpayers to generate a faster rate of economic growth to lift their living standards and ensure the debt is manageable.
Tuesday's federal budget was rightly big on short-term stimulus to fill a short-term private demand gap. But it fell short on long-term economic reforms to lift Australia's economy.
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Population slowdown hurts economy but Minister predicts budget baby boom
By Shane Wright
October 9, 2020 — 11.30pm
The federal Population Minister has warned a slowdown in the number of new Australian residents could have a long-term impact on economies like Victoria's, but he said the budget could get people in the mood for more children.
As the Reserve Bank said a sharp slowdown in population growth could weigh on housing prices, Population Minister Alan Tudge said there was now a chance for states to "catch their breath" and get on top of their infrastructure demands.
Figures released in this week's budget revealed a huge downgrade in national population forecasts, with population growth falling to its lowest rate in more than a century.
After predicting last year that by the end of 2022 there would be almost 27 million people in the country, Treasury now thinks there will be fewer than 26 million.
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Almost everybody is better off with the tax cuts, modelling shows
By Shane Wright
October 9, 2020 — 3.47pm
Three-quarters of Australians will be better off under the Morrison government's budget, exclusive analysis of its key tax and welfare measures shows, with almost two-thirds of people at least $75 a week in front.
But there is a looming fiscal cliff for those dependent on welfare, which without a sizeable increase in the JobSeeker unemployment payment will mean some of the nation's most vulnerable could lose up to $3000 next financial year in support.
The analysis, compiled by the Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre, takes into account the second stage of the government's tax cut plan, which was pulled forward to this year. They include an extension of the low and middle income tax offset and an increase to $120,000 from $90,000 the upper threshold of the 32.5 per cent tax rate.
It also includes the two $250 payments for people on the age pension, disability support pension and carers support as well as the coronavirus supplement which is due to end by year's end.
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With surpluses off the agenda, let’s say farewell to financial discipline
Everybody can stop worrying about the so-called snake oil mumbo jumbo of modern monetary theory — it’s already here. MMT is effectively with us, like it or not.
Not that the Reserve Bank is directly monetising government debt, although it is likely to greatly expand indirect monetising next month, but with at least 10 years of deficits ahead according to Treasury, with no prospect of a surplus, fiscal discipline will have to be reinvented.
Deficits no longer matter politically, just as they don’t matter economically, and aiming for a surplus can’t be the reason for the Treasurer saying no to mendicant ministers.
A decade of deficits is not bad in itself. As MMT advocate Stephanie Kelton wrote in her book The Deficit Myth, “fiscal deficits … are neither good nor bad. What matters is not whether the government’s budget is in surplus or deficit, but whether the government is using its budget to achieve good or bad outcomes for the rest of the economy.”
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Budget has restored ‘sense of confidence’: Wesfarmers
Rob Scott employs over 100,000 Australians in businesses across the country and it is no secret that he is a business leader Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has frequently turned to this year.
But asked what advice he gave the Treasurer ahead of the budget as the economy wrestles with the loss of around a million jobs, Scott’s answer veered to the unfinished business of structural reform. It is clear that he sees the next May budget as time for a productivity gamechanger.
It is also clear that he is deeply troubled by the impact of the hard line Andrews government policies on the wellbeing of Victorians.
“The advice that we have been trying to communicate with all key political leaders has been the things we can do to create jobs,” begins the quietly spoken former Olympic oarsman. “We have talked about things that can happen to the tax system, some initiatives that are really important around industrial relations.”
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Health Issues.
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Thomas had a rare brain cancer and no good options. Then he joined a clinical trial
By Rachel Clun
October 6, 2020 — 2.00am
A life-saving program uses genetic testing to find treatments that shrink or stabilise aggressive tumours in children.
Research on the ZERO Childhood Cancer program, published in Nature Medicine on Tuesday, found the testing of the genetic makeup of the tumours led to suggested alternative treatments for the majority of children in the study.
Researcher and co-chair of ZERO’s national clinical trial Associate Professor David Zeigler said the program's success rates was higher than the team had ever dreamt it would be.
"We were hoping when we started this, we would at least see tumours slow down in their growth, or stabilised for a period of time," he said.
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GP payment boost trial to help sustain Medicare system
By Anna Patty
October 6, 2020 — 12.00am
Four in ten Australians would be willing to ditch bulk billing and pay up to $25 out-of-pocket to see a GP in exchange for shorter waiting times and longer consultations, as the federal government trials a system that gives doctors payments for ongoing treatment of chronic patients.
Experts have warned that Medicare patient rebates have not kept pace with inflation for more than 20 years, leading the government to consider new models to fund GPs.
The Federal Department of Health is trialling a system in Sydney that involves the voluntary enrolment of patients with their chosen GP, who receive a bulk payment calculated on the seriousness of disease and health care needs of the patient.
An interim evaluation of the Health Care Homes program, which will run until the end of June next year, says the "views about the bundled payment remain mixed, with some reporting it has created opportunities for flexibility and change, and others that it is insufficient for managing patients’ chronic illnesses".
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Nobel Prize on Chemistry for genetic ‘scissors’
Frenchwoman Emmanuelle Charpentier and American Jennifer Doudna have won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing the gene-editing technique known as the CRISPR-Cas9 DNA snipping “scissors”.
“Using these, researchers can change the DNA of animals, plants and microorganisms with extremely high precision,” the Nobel jury said. “This technology has had a revolutionary impact on the life sciences, is contributing to new cancer therapies and may make the dream of curing inherited diseases come true.”
Professor Charpentier, 51, and Professor Doudna, 56, are just the sixth and seventh women to receive the Nobel chemistry prize. They will share 10 million Swedish kronor ($1.56m).
While researching a common harmful bacteria, Professor Charpentier discovered a previously unknown molecule, part of the bacteria’s ancient immune system that disarms viruses by snipping off parts of their DNA.
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https://www.croakey.org/lobbyland-the-unhealthy-business-of-health-sector-lobbyists/
LobbyLand: The unhealthy business of health sector lobbyists
Amy Coopes on: October 08, 2020In: Budget2020Health, conflicts of interest, health reform, health regulation, pharmaceutical industry, public interest journalism
Introduction by Croakey: In a week where vested interests have again dominated the federal budget, it is timely to consider the impacts on our democracy of those with the deepest, darkest pockets.
Lobbying has long been considered part and parcel of our political system, but how healthy is this symbiosis, asks health law academic Bruce Arnold, in this piece which first appeared at John Menadue’s blog Pearls and Irritations, and is republished here with permission.
Bruce Arnold writes:
COVID-19 has been a reminder that health policy matters.
Irrespective of the billions spent on infrastructure, private health insurance, professional regulation, research and medications subsidised under the Pharmaceutical Benefit Scheme (PBS), it is a matter of national productivity and taxation. It is also a matter of geopolitics as partners such as the United States exert influence on behalf of their corporations.
If we want a healthy democracy rather than just healthy bodies we need to ask some questions, get more data and potentially make some difficult decisions.
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International Issues.
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America's long history of secrecy over presidential illness
Kadhim Shubber
Oct 4, 2020 – 2.12pm
Washington | A deadly pandemic raged across the world. Millions had been infected. And suddenly the US president himself was hit by the virus.
The year was 1919. Woodrow Wilson had been laid low by the Spanish flu in Paris, where he and other world leaders were negotiating the post-World War I settlement in Europe.
In public, the White House played down the illness as a mere cold. In reality, Wilson was “violently sick” with influenza, his doctor wrote in private.
“His [infection] was pretty severe,” said David Petriello, a historian. “That dramatically impacted him during the Versailles peace conference.”
A hundred years later, echoes of Wilson’s experience have returned as Donald Trump has become infected with the coronavirus. His doctor said Mr Trump was “fatigued but in good spirits”. He would spend a few days at Walter Reed Military Medical Centre “out of an abundance of caution”, the White House said.
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Trump confronts a new form of risk, more personal and perilous
With his political career, his business dealings and his reputation, the President has long bet that he can ride out difficulties. Now, though, he is facing an entirely unfamiliar threat.
Matt Flegenheimer
Updated Oct 5, 2020 – 8.52am, first published at 8.16am
Washington | President Donald Trump's relationship to risk has often come down to an abiding self-belief: It will all probably work out for him because it generally has.
"Whatever happens, happens," he said in 1991, declaring himself a "great fatalist" as his business fortunes wobbled.
"We'll see what happens," he said of North Korean nuclear diplomacy two years ago, blithely predicting that all would be fine.
"Risk plays a part in everything we do," he advised in one of his pre-presidential how-to books. "I could get hit by a bus while I am crossing the street. Things happen."
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Experts divided over Trump’s experimental virus treatments
Gina Kolata and Apoorva Mandavilli
Oct 4, 2020 – 6.17pm
Washington | President Donald Trump will stay at Walter Reed military hospital for an indefinite number of days, his doctor says, undergoing a five-day antiviral drug regimen for COVID-19 that indicates his condition might be more serious than has been publicly disclosed.
On Thursday, he received another therapy that is still in early phases of testing.
Medical experts who have been following the sketchy, conflicting details released by the White House and Walter Reed about the President's condition were divided on Saturday (Sunday AEDT) about the experimental treatments that Mr Trump, 74, has received.
Many doctors stressed the critical period – about seven to 10 days after infection – when a patient's condition can take a turn for the worse. Some people respond to an infection with an overly exuberant immune response that can worsen their illness and even prove fatal.
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Second day of obfuscation from the White House
Jill Colvin and Steve Peoples
Oct 5, 2020 – 9.37am
Bethesda |President Donald Trump declared, “I get it,” in a message to the nation Sunday evening before briefly leaving the hospital to greet cheering supporters from his motorcade, a surprising move that suggested that his health — and his understanding of the coronavirus — may be improving.
Hours earlier, the president's medical team confirmed that his blood oxygen level dropped suddenly twice in recent days. But they also said he could be discharged as early as Monday.
“It’s been a very interesting journey. I learned a lot about COVID,” Trump said, standing in his hospital room in a video posted on social media. “I learned it by really going to school.”
He added, “I get it, and I understand it."
At least one medical professional inside Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre, where Trump has been hospitalised since Friday evening, questioned whether Trump had really learned anything.
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Don't think for a moment Trump's illness spells the end of right-wing populism
Peter Hartcher
Political and international editor for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age
October 4, 2020 — 7.13pm
US President Donald Trump’s virus infection has excited many people into thinking that it must spell the end of his style of politics. Whether he lives or dies, right-wing populism surely has met its Waterloo.
The President for years has managed to dismiss all sorts of realities as "fake news". But "you can’t spin a virus" as Barack Obama’s former campaign manager, David Axelrod, has said.
The New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote that after months of pretending that COVID-19 was going to magically disappear, "in a moment that feels biblical … it was undeniable that reality was crashing in on the former reality star".
Really? Is it necessarily true that he can’t "spin" this to his advantage? Will he no longer be able to define reality according to his own agenda? Is it really the end of right-wing populism?
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Trump's health has markets bracing for a wild ride
By Matthew Lynn
October 5, 2020 — 9.40am
If it is going to happen, it will happen in the next four weeks. At the start of every October, investors and traders can be forgiven for already feeling a little uneasy. Traditionally, it is the month for a stockmarket collapse. With valuations already sky-high, a contested election looming, key vaccine data on a knife-edge, and with the virus resurgent around the world, there were already plenty of reasons to feel nervous. Now, with President Trump testing positive for COVID-19, it promises to be a wild ride.
In truth, however, Trump's positive test won't be the trigger for a full-scale collapse. If he suffers mild symptoms, it won't make much difference either way. If he goes into intensive care, then either the more moderate vice-president Mike Pence steps in, or else Joe Biden wins, with an expansionary fiscal programme, while the civil unrest a Trump second term might spark will be avoided.
Either way, the markets and the economy won't move dramatically in either direction. There was a strong rally in equities after Trump was elected, but neither his illness, nor his re-election or defeat, will have anything like the same impact.
It might be the autumnal weather, the approach of the year-end, or else a sheer coincidence but October has always been the month of maximum risk for investors. In stock market terminology, the phenomenon even has its own name, the "October effect", referring to the fact that the 10th month of the year typically witnesses a worse performance than any other (although September is bad as well).
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Prognosis unknown for Donald Trump, his campaign and the US
This is more than an extraordinary moment in Washington, it is an extraordinary moment in American history.
A US president sits in hospital with a potentially deadly virus for which there is no cure on the eve of a presidential election.
The White House gives mixed signals about Donald Trump’s health, with his medical spokesman saying he is doing well, while his chief of staff says the 74-year-old is not out of the woods, calling his condition “very concerning”.
I heard the President’s chopper fly over my house as he was being taken to the hospital with news alerts pinging on my phone. The events are dizzying for Americans as they comprehend the unprecedented events of recent days.
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https://www.afr.com/politics/in-trump-s-white-house-politics-trumps-medicine-20201005-p5623l
In Trump's White House, politics trumps medicine
While the President's drive-by was a skilful piece of political theatre, it would have sent the two security agents in the front seat of his vehicle directly into two weeks of quarantine.
Jill Margo Health editor
Oct 5, 2020 – 2.09pm
Donald Trump is medically unmanageable. Aside from the confusing messages about his health and treatment, there is nothing confusing in the way he has now put others at risk.
This morning (AEDT), he took a brief trip to greet "patriots" outside the Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre in Maryland, where he is being treated for COVID-19.
During the drive-by, he waved and gave a thumbs up before returning to the hospital.
While this was a skilful piece of political theatre and would have sent a powerful message to his supporters, it also would have sent the two security agents in the front seat of his vehicle directly into two weeks of quarantine.
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'Don't be afraid of COVID': Trump leaves hospital after three days
By Matthew Knott
Updated October 6, 2020 — 10.02amfirst published at 6.04am
Washington: US President Donald Trump has returned to the White House after leaving the hospital where he was being treated for coronavirus, urging Americans not to be afraid of COVID-19 or let it dominate their lives.
Trump's return to the White House came three days after he was admitted to Walter Reed Medical Centre in Maryland.
Trump walked out of the front doors of the hospital, giving a thumbs up and punching the air in a gesture of triumph as he walked down the stairs. He appeared to be walking without difficulty as he boarded Marine One, the presidential helicopter, to fly back to the White House.
Trump said in a tweet that he was feeling better than he did 20 years ago, even though doctors have administered three different types of medication in recent days for his COVID symptoms and given him supplemental oxygen.
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'We’re in crazytown': Trump's disruptive leadership is doing Xi's job for him
Peter Hartcher
Political and international editor for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age
October 6, 2020 — 12.10am
China posed its own system as a better alternative to the US after the global financial crisis. Thanks largely to Donald Trump, Beijing is making some serious new headway.
Today we see that the US is such a diminished power that it cannot protect its people or its leader from a pandemic. It suffers the third-highest rate of deaths per capita of any developed nation, after only Belgium and Spain.
With 627 dead people per million population, the US has performed even worse than let-it-rip Sweden, with 583 deaths per million.
America is not in the same universe as successful countries like Germany with 115 deaths per million, Australia with 35 or Taiwan – the most impressive of any credible reporting country – with just 0.3 deaths per million.
The US, once the global benchmark of modernity and progress, has descended to the point where a senior Australian federal government official told me that it was a mistake to study the US election in the same framework as an Australian election: "Look at the US as if you are looking at a Third World country with deepening social and economic inequality overlaid by diminishing trust in institutions, and where the institutions are increasingly politicised."
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Guessing game: The US economy is sending confusing signals
By Neil Irwin
October 6, 2020 — 7.47am
In a normal time, a month in which US employers added 661,000 jobs would represent an absolute blockbuster — the kind of thing an incumbent president could happily promote as evidence his policies were working.
These are, of course, not normal times. And the 661,000 positions that employers added to their payrolls in September are paltry relative to the 22 million positions slashed in March and April, and relative to the seven-figure monthly job growth experienced from May through August.
Indeed, if the rate of September job creation outlined by the Labor Department were to be sustained indefinitely, it would take another 17 months for the economy be back to its pre-pandemic levels of employment. That milestone would be reached in only eight months at August's rate of job creation.
To make sense of where the economy stands on the verge of the election, it's essential to keep a clear view of the distinction between three concepts: the level at which the economy is functioning, how fast it is improving, and whether that speed is accelerating or decelerating. And in a shambolic year, it's not totally clear which of these concepts will matter most to voters, or how heavily the state of the economy will weigh on them at all.
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UK PM Boris Johnson doomed by drumbeat of incompetence
· The Times
“In my beginning is my end . . .” Ten months on from its victory the government already has the fag-end feel of one that has been going for ten years. The people have stopped listening to its pronouncements, the prime minister looks exhausted, the backbenchers are rebellious, the civil servants leaky, the ideas either flat ("levelling up") or far out (building a floating wall in the Channel). It can seem we have reached something approaching the nadir of John Major’s government when, as Norman Lamont put it, they appeared to be “in office but not in power”.
Major’s government was so patently past it that Tony Blair’s attacks on his opponent seemed as wantonly savage as a lion tearing apart a wounded gazelle: “This prime minister, so weak, so utterly incapable of stamping his authority on the government he nominally leads, that he has given birth to the first ‘ism’ in politics to denote not the existence of a political philosophy but the absence of one: ‘Majorism’ . . .” Such savagery is not Sir Keir Starmer’s style, but his cool dissection of the government’s failures at prime minister’s questions is equally wince-worthy; despite the prime minister’s bravado, we see the wounds and scent the blood.
While Major’s government was doomed by the drumbeat of sleaze, Boris Johnson’s is doomed by something worse: the drumbeat of incompetence. Tories are expected to be bastards – this is priced in – but they are also expected to be capable. I needn’t rehearse the full catalogue of Covid failures here; you know the drill, from the “world-beating” test and trace system that wasn’t, to the A-level fiasco that was. It leaves us with a government whose every announcement is met not with respectful silence but rolls of the eyes. In 2017 the novelist Robert Harris said of Theresa May’s administration that, though only months old, it “already has a whiff of decay about it”. We might say the same today.
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Massacres echo across Nagorno-Karabakh as Turkey eggs on Azerbaijan
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON
In the next week or so, many thousands of human lives – of civilians as well as soldiers – could be lost in a war the great powers of the world seem unable to stop, and for which Turkey is egging on the aggressor, Azerbaijan. This war is over Nagorno-Karabakh, a small self-governing democracy of 170,000 Christians, settled in a mountainous enclave between their fellow Armenians and their Azeri enemies, with Turkey, still unrepentant about its Armenian genocide, on the horizon. The last war, in the early 1990s, resulted in 30,000 deaths and a “line of control” around the border over which the rival armies have faced off, but not fully engaged – until the last week.
Some history is necessary to understand Nagorno-Karabakh, or Artsakh as it is known locally. This is a country in the clouds, as its mountains first appear after the seven-hour road trip from Yerevan (the Armenian capital) passing the looming shadow of Mount Ararat, in Turkey. A flight to the well-equipped airport at Stepanakert (the Artsakh capital) would take merely 20 minutes but the Azeri government has threatened to shoot down any passenger plane that tries. Any visit to this de facto independent republic earns a lifetime ban from entering Azerbaijan.
Interspersed among its hills are several thousand old Christian churches, some dating back to the 10th century, while in museums are manuscripts and archives testifying to the intense intellectual and religious lives of Armenians in these highlands and to the unique designs of the carpets still woven there.
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Trump's virus bravado belies scale of White House infection
President Trump is eager to put a triumphant spin on his return from hospital, even as the infectious disease spreads like wildfire through his own White House staff.
Jacob Greber United States correspondent
Updated Oct 6, 2020 – 4.08pm, first published at 3.07pm
Washington | Donald Trump believes he is fighting fit and raring to go despite becoming so sickened by COVID-19 he was twice put on supplementary oxygen and needed a cocktail of experimental drugs over the past 72 hours.
His triumphant stance came at the end of a day of grand political theatre in which the US President commandeered the world's attention as he journeyed by foot, SUV and Marine One helicopter from his hospital bed at Walter Reed Military Hospital to the White House South Portico.
From there, after removing his mask despite being highly infectious, and saluting the helicopter's pilots, Mr Trump filmed a video message in which he urged Americans not to let COVID-19 take over their lives.
"I learned so much about coronavirus," he said. "One thing's for certain, don't let it dominate you; don't be afraid of it. You're going to beat it.
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Trump's treatments are unproven, unapproved and may cause mania
By Liam Mannix
October 6, 2020 — 3.55pm
US President Donald Trump’s medical regime to beat COVID-19 includes unproven supplements, an experimental and unapproved therapy, and a drug that can cause delirium and mania.
The President returned to the White House on Tuesday after spending three nights at Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre.
“Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life. We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!,” he wrote on Twitter.
According to his personal doctors, those drugs include dexamethasone, remdesivir, famotidine, melatonin, and an experimental monoclonal antibody therapy. He is also taking zinc and vitamin D.
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Curtain falling on Trump's political operetta
With just four weeks left in the 2020 race, Donald Trump looks to be in danger of a landslide loss.
Jacob Greber United States correspondent
Updated Oct 7, 2020 – 9.25am, first published at 9.10am
Washington | Donald Trump no longer needs any form of life-support. But his re-election campaign is gasping for air.
A series of polls taken since the President was hospitalised over the weekend, and in the rubble of last week's disastrous presidential debate, show him falling ever further behind Joe Biden as hundreds of thousands of Americans vote early.
Trump was in trouble more than a week ago, as he stood on that stage in Cleveland, Ohio, more than likely expelling coronavirus pathogens into the air. Now he looks in danger of a landslide loss.
"He really is his own worst enemy," the property manager of my rented home, a staunch Christian conservative who fears the "socialism" that Biden and the Democrats would impose on America, tells me as he paints the outside walls.
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There's an essential starting point for grasping the crisis engulfing US politics
Bob Carr
Industry Professor of Climate and Business at the University of Technology Sydney
October 7, 2020 — 12.00am
In the 50s the head of CIA counterintelligence James Angleton said Russian stratagems were like "a wilderness of mirrors". The same phrase captures the maze of the US constitutional and electoral system, a wilderness of mirrors that can warp, even falsify, the choice of voters on November 3.
This system was not intended as a democracy but as republic. This is an essential starting point for grasping the US crisis.
Wearing what appeared to be a white surgical mask, US President Donald Trump pumped his fist and gave a thumbs-up as he walked down the steps of the Walter Reed Medical Center outside Washington, DC.
"A republic, if you can keep it," Benjamin Franklin said in 1787 when constituents asked what the founding fathers at Philadelphia had agreed on. One designed, he could have added, to use a creation called the electoral college to thwart popular rule.
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Biden could unleash the greatest economic upheaval in a century
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
October 7, 2020 — 11.33am
Bidenomics is a heady brew. The Democrats' $US7.9 trillion ($11.1 trillion) blast of extra spending is a step beyond Roosevelt's New Deal. It mimics the Keynesian expansion of the Second World War and consciously aims to run the economy at red-hot speeds of growth.
If enacted in full, it is large enough to lift the US economy out of the zero-rate deflationary trap of the last decade and entirely reshape the social and financial landscape.
The stimulus will be corralled inside the closed US economy by Joe Biden's protectionist "Buy America" policies, his industrial strategy and his carbon border tax (i.e. disguised tariffs against China). This limits leakage.
It is a laboratory of sorts for a post-globalisation experiment in what used to be called "reflation in one country" - before the free flow of goods and capital emasculated sovereign governments.
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2020 race: Donald Trump on track to lose by a landslide
Cameron Stewart Follow @camstewarttheoz
While the world has been transfixed by the theatrics of Donald Trump projecting a macho image as a self-described survivor of COVID-19, a more terminal political prognosis for the president is closing in.
In recent days, while we have been watching the Trump Covid show, a slew of polls reveals that his Democrat opponent Joe Biden has dramatically extended his lead over the president.
With under four weeks to go until the November 3 poll, Biden now leads Trump by a formidable 9.2 points according to the RCP national average of all polls. This is up from 6.1 points only a week ago; a punishing response from voters to Trump’s poor performance in the first presidential debate. Some polls, like this week’s WSJ/NBC poll have Biden a thumping 14 points ahead. Biden has also extended his lead in the battleground states that will decide the election and he is even leading in states like Iowa, North Carolina and Ohio which were once expected to be easy wins for Trump.
Put simply, unless Trump can engineer a stunning comeback in just a few weeks, he is on track not just to lose this election, but to lose it in a landslide.
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Trump’s faults are more libertarian than authoritarian
If the President’s illness has shown anything, it is that he differs from classic strongmen in a very US way. His populism tends more to the libertarian than the repressive.
Janan Ganesh Contributor
Updated Oct 8, 2020 – 9.40am, first published at 9.17am
Eva Perón addressed the Argentine people from one. Communist Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu gave his final speech on another. As for Mussolini, he liked to grip the balustrade of his as he orated, lantern jaw jutted to the masses.
The demagogue’s natural habitat is a balcony. When Donald Trump mounted the White House version this week, days after testing positive for coronavirus, the US President invited comparisons with the autocrats of yesteryear.
But then these have been flowing, rather too casually, since before he was elected. True enough, his nationalism, his messianic following and his political rise in the aftermath of a financial crash are all suggestive of the 1930s far-right.
It is just that so much else about him bucks the parallel.
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America is tired of the crazy Donald Trump show
· The Times
For much of the world’s media, Donald Trump’s affliction with Covid-19 has been some kind of karmic justice, a sort of divine retribution for his insouciant handling of the epidemic. You get the distinct impression, reading between bilious lines of condemnation, that in the view of the commentator class, the only truly condign outcome to this latest episode in the Trump melodrama would be his timely demise, just weeks before the election.
It may have been his stubborn failure to die, in fact, as much as his apparently negligent behaviour in getting infected and perhaps exposing others to the virus, that was the main reason for much of the outrage expressed in the past week.
The operatic return to the White House on Monday, the flourish of self-unmasking on the balcony, was variously described on TV and in print as some sort of grotesque homage to Benito Mussolini or Eva Peron, two equally colourful and controversial historical figures who also, it should be noted, died somewhat before their time.
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https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/why-the-democrats-are-winning-this-race-20201009-p563ie
Why the Democrats are winning this race
Americans have seen chaos loom, particularly over the past nine days, and Biden and Harris seem like the safest and least exhausting pair of hands.
David Brooks Contributor
Oct 9, 2020 – 10.52am
Back in February it seemed as if we were about to have one of the most ideologically polarised elections in American history. US President Donald Trump was rushing ahead with his populist/ego-trip/authoritarian whatchamacallit. The Democrats were shifting left: Medicare for All, Green New Deal, Bernie Sanders-style reimagining of capitalism.
The great political/culture war was at hand!
Instead, this has turned into the least ideological election in recent times. The campaign has largely shrunk down from grand ideological issues to two practical problems: How to get rid of Trump. How to beat COVID-19.
The shrinkage happened in three stages. First, Democratic primary voters decided that beating Trump was more important than the revolution. Second, the pandemic hit. Candidates imagine that if elected they will be able to implement their grand vision. But as George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Trump all learned the hard way, governing is usually about responding to crises you didn't choose or foresee.
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https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/was-this-the-week-trump-lost-it-20201010-p563te
Was this the week Trump lost it?
Nobody, outside the President's inner circle, is predicting a Trump landslide.
Jacob Greber United States correspondent
Updated Oct 10, 2020 – 8.07am, first published at 7.59am
No matter what the polls show, the rarest creature in Washington these days is a Democrat who isn't riven with fear that Donald Trump can still win this election.
Memories are deeply etched. It'd be insanity to write him off. What happened in 2016 shook everyone's faith in the pollsters' art and four years later nobody wants to repeat the experience of another rude awakening.
Often lost in that kind of instinctive second-guessing is the fact that the national polls four years ago were actually pretty much spot on. They accurately captured the fact that Hillary Clinton would win the popular vote by about 3 per cent.
But as Trump's victory demonstrated, winning the popular vote isn't everything. In fact, in this context, it's absolutely irrelevant. All it does, and it does this pretty much every election, is show that Democrats are popular in places like California and New York.
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https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/voters-desert-desperate-trump-20201009-p563oy
Voters desert desperate Trump
Jacob Greber United States correspondent
Oct 9, 2020 – 7.09pm
Washington | A week of chaos in Trump's White House has catapulted Joe Biden to a commanding lead in the US presidential race as markets sniff the prospect of a Democrat clean sweep on November 3.
After being diagnosed COVID-19 positive, rushed to hospital, injected with experimental drugs and dramatically helicoptered back during prime-time to his official residence in a trial-by-fire that has robbed his campaign of momentum, the President now lags behind Mr Biden by an average of 9.7 percentage points nationally.
He has also slipped sharply across a number of swing states, including Pennsylvania and Florida, as once-reliable senior voters threaten to jettison a President they fear is all too willing to downplay the risks of a pandemic that disproportionately kills older victims.
"Investors are revelling on the [Democrat] Blue Wave rally bus, where the first order of the day [post election] will be to open the stimulus taps, and stocks are rallying in kind," said Stephen Innes, chief global strategist at AxiCorp.
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Michigan Governor says 'domestic terrorists' behind kidnap plot
October 10, 2020 — 4.30am
Lansing: Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer said on Friday that the men charged with plotting to kidnap her and storm the state Capitol should be referred to as domestic terrorists, not members of a militia.
On Thursday, federal and state prosecutors charged 13 members of an armed group with planning to kidnap the Governor and other violent, anti-government acts as part of an effort to ignite a wider civil war. The group's organisers face felony domestic terrorism charges.
Multiple news organisations referred to those charged as "Michigan militia" members, but Whitmer on Friday condemned that language.
"They're not 'militias.' They're domestic terrorists endangering and intimidating their fellow Americans. Words matter," the Governor wrote in a tweet.
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If 'all things must pass', when will COVID-19 subside, ask Liverpudlians
By Bevan Shields
October 10, 2020 — 10.42am
Liverpool: The Cavern Club, a basement bar in central Liverpool where The Beatles found their fame, should be packed this weekend. Friday would have been John Lennon's 80th birthday, and the faithful planned to remember Liverpool's lost son.
The doors, though, are shut. A rapidly worsening second wave has taken hold in England's north, testing hospital capacity and triggering mass confusion over how the government will respond. The crisis is also ravaging Liverpool's world-famous live music scene, and not even its best-known venue is immune from the damage.
"It looks like a completely different city and feels like a completely different city," said the Cavern Club's co-owner, Bill Heckle.
"The locals are frightened to go out and other people in Britain have stopped travelling here, especially over the past two weeks. And of course there are no planes coming in from our major international markets.
"Everybody is just trying their best. We will get through it. George Harrison once said 'all things must pass', and it will, but it's looking like this problem is here for a bit longer than we hoped."
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There's one headline about Donald Trump that has not been printed but makes the most sense of all
By Ian Hughes and Alan D. Blotcky
October 11, 2020 — 12.01am
For almost four years, there has hardly been a day that Donald Trump has not made front-page news. The unrelenting avalanche of lies and norm-shattering behaviour that Trump has unleashed has presented the mainstream media with an unprecedented challenge. It is a challenge that the media has struggled to meet, largely because of the ethical and practical difficulties that journalists face in dealing with Trump’s mental pathology.
Even before his election, mental health professionals were warning that Trump’s psychopathology posed a threat to US democracy and to global stability. After his election, dozens of mental health experts collaborated on the book The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump which became a New York Times bestseller. Over the past three or four months, the number of voices expressing alarm at Trump’s pathology has been growing.
Donald Trump has described catching COVID-19 as a ‘blessing from God’ in a video message.
The media, however, has largely continued to cover Trump’s actions one story at a time, without joining up the dots and accurately describing his pathology.
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Treat claims about US presidents’ wellbeing with a dose of scepticism
· The Times
Americans know a lot about the health of their presidents, at least compared with other leaders. White House medical bulletins are expected. We know much more about President Donald Trump’s treatment for coronavirus, for instance, than Boris Johnson’s.
US presidents have been expected to release details of medical conditions since Dwight Eisenhower, the former Second World War general, began publishing regular check-ups during his two terms.
Eisenhower was initially criticised for misleading the press about his heart attack in 1955. He sought to make up for it by bombarding the media with minute details. The Associated Press was left unsure how to report updates on the president’s bowel movements.
Despite his show of greater openness, however, secrecy was the rule, not the exception.
His successor John F Kennedy, two decades younger, managed to keep hidden his chronic back pain and Addison’s disease, which left him fatigued and for which he was treated with steroids. Rumours of his ailments circulated and the offices of a doctor who treated him were broken into during his close-fought 1960 election contest with Richard Nixon, although the would-be thieves left empty-handed.
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I look forward to comments on all this!
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David.
