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We will have just seen the passage of power in the US from Trump to Biden safely, to the huge relief of a good proportion of the world’s population! Good riddance Trump and I hope you spend the rest of your life being pursued in courts for all you misdoings!
It the UK it seems the COVID problem may just be beginning to ease. I really hope so.
In OZ we see the COVID remaining under pretty good control as we wonder just how well our economy and jobs will recover in the next year or so.
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Major Issues.
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China will vie to become world financial centre, says Ray Dalio
Robin Wigglesworth
Jan 10, 2021 – 12.29pm
China will emerge as a rival to New York and London as the world’s financial centre, according to Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio, who is betting heavily on what would be an epochal shift in the global economy.
2020 was a “defining year” for Chinese financial markets, the co-chief investment officer of the world’s biggest hedge fund told the Financial Times, with the coronavirus crisis starkly highlighting the country’s economic outperformance — and spurring ¥1 trillion of investment inflows.
Although China’s financial system remains less developed than its western peers, it will be only a matter of time before it is a contender for Wall Street and the City of London’s supremacy, Mr Dalio said.
“China already has the world’s second largest capital markets, and I think they will eventually vie for having the world’s financial centre,” Mr Dalio said. “Throughout history, the largest trading countries evolved into having the global financial centre and the global reserve currency.
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Insurers becoming too risky for UniSuper
James Fernyhough Reporter
Jan 11, 2021 – 12.00am
Increasing wild weather and rising sea levels are making insurance Australia's riskiest industry, says UniSuper chief investment officer John Pearce, prompting his fund to take an underweight position in the sector.
Mr Pearce said climate change was "manifesting in some pretty wild weather" and that had major implications for the potential long-term returns generated by insurance companies.
"While some people say wild weather is a function of lots of things, it is consistent with the modelling that the climate scientists have done, so you've got to assume that there is some connection there," said Mr Pearce, who manages $90 billion of retirement savings for employees of Australia's university sector.
"If you look at it at a sector level, I don't like the insurance sector for this reason, so we are very light in terms of general insurance."
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/don-t-be-fooled-by-mtt-trickery-20210107-p56sga
Don't be fooled by MMT trickery
The modern monetary theory that would unleash dangerous inflation is a form of fringe-dwelling populism that has escaped proper scrutiny by professional economists.
Wolfgang Kasper Contributor
Jan 10, 2021 – 11.59am
A spectre is haunting the world – Modern Monetary Theory. All the central banks of the world are now in alliance to finance public-sector deficits by conjuring more and more money out of thin air.
The roots of MMT lie in the 1990s when idle supply capacities, a wave of innovations and a fairly stable US price level allowed then US Federal Reserve governor Alan Greenspan to boost money supply as a means of accelerating real economic growth. Like Keynes in the 1930s, Greenspan hoped that artificially stimulated demand would raise prices, thus lowering real wages and boosting production and employment.
However, workers and organised labour cannot be fooled for long by such surreptitious confidence tricks. In the wake of Keynesian stimulus, labour insists on wage indexation or even adjusts wage demands pre-emptively to protect real living standards (as they should).
Today, the supply potential of the economy is reduced by a coronavirus-induced coma, growing trade conflicts and populist trade policies that threaten a partial, productivity-destroying disintegration of the world economy. MMT expansionism therefore threatens inflation.
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This sharemarket bubble will burst, but probably not for a while
By Roger Bootle
January 11, 2021 — 11.45am
Last week the veteran investor and market guru Jeremy Grantham warned that stock markets were in a bubble that would inevitably burst. He said the US equity market was more overvalued now than on the eve of the Great Crash of 1929. The markets responded by continuing to rise. But does he have a point?
If you are an investor in the UK equity market you will probably find his warning surprising. Despite recent rises, the FTSE 100 is still nowhere near its pre-Covid highs. To a large extent, this reflects the composition of the index.
It is heavily dominated by banks, energy companies and miners, with a relatively low representation of hi-tech companies whose fortunes - and share prices - have soared during the pandemic. By contrast, the US S&P 500 is decidedly tech-heavy. In addition, there is a bit of a discount in UK markets for the supposedly negative effects of Brexit.
But on the US market Grantham certainly does have a point. While the economy has floundered, the stock market has continued moving upwards so that it is now far higher than it was before the pandemic hit.
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Five reasons inflation may surprise in 2021
Investors are confident that inflation will remain subdued in 2021. There'll be big moves in equity, bond and real estate markets if they're wrong.
Karen Maley Columnist
Jan 12, 2021 – 2.06pm
Investors have entered 2021 in a sanguine frame of mind.
They're confident that inflation will remain tepid, which will allow central banks to keep interest rates at historic lows. And it's this confidence that is fuelling the surge in global equity markets.
Still, that hasn't stopped some analysts from putting forward a counter-narrative. Morgan Stanley's global head of economics Chetan Ahya has just released a note outlining five reasons why inflation is set to rise much more than people are expecting.
The question is of burning interest for investors because signs that inflation is stirring would be reflected in rising bond yields, triggering a major sell-off in interest-sensitive markets, such as equities and real estate.
So why is Ahya tipping that inflation and growth will be stronger than most people are expecting?
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Treasurer blacklists China investments
John Kehoe, Michael Bleby, Hannah Wootton, Nick Lenaghan and Andrew Tillett
Jan 12, 2021 – 7.00pm
Major Chinese government-backed investments in Australia face an informal ban after Treasurer Josh Frydenberg acted on national security concerns to reject a $300 million takeover of building contractor Probuild by China's largest construction company.
China accused the Morrison government of "weaponising" national security by blocking state-owned China State Construction Engineering Corporation's proposed acquisition of the Australian-based builder, which is publicly listed in South Africa.
CSCEC's connections to the Chinese defence industry and Probuild's construction of sensitive buildings including the Victorian Police headquarters and the Melbourne offices of biotech company CSL, which is producing COVID-19 vaccines, were key factors in the rejection, The Australian Financial Review understands.
China's embassy in Canberra said on Tuesday it was "deeply concerned" by the move.
"This is the latest case that Chinese investment is discriminately targeted," a spokesman said.
"Weaponising the concept of national security to block Chinese investment is detrimental to mutual trust as well as bilateral economic and trade relations.
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With 'I Hate Men', French feminist touches a nerve
Pauline Harmange wrote about living in a man-centred world. She's since received rape and death threats and had her literary debut, derided as a 'genocidal moral project', translated into 17 languages.
Laura Cappelle
Jan 13, 2021 – 12.00am
If it hadn't been for a man, Pauline Harmange's literary debut, I Hate Men, might have gone unnoticed.
The feminist essay, which makes a case for shunning men as a legitimate defence mechanism against widespread misogyny, was initially published in French by the non-profit press Monstrograph. It only printed 400 copies. On the day it was released in August, however, an employee of France's Ministry for Gender Equality, Ralph Zurmély, emailed Monstrograph from his government account.
The book was obviously, he wrote, "an ode to misandry". Zurmély, who hadn't read the book, likened it to "sex-based incitement to hatred" and concluded, "I ask that you immediately withdraw this book from your catalog, subject to legal prosecution."
The threat backfired. No sooner was it made public than I Hate Men became a cause célèbre in the French news media – and brought attention to misandry, the dislike or mistrust of men, as a social phenomenon. Since Monstrograph couldn't keep up with demand, a major French publisher, Seuil, won a bidding war to reprint the book, which has sold 20,000 copies since. The translation rights for 17 languages have been sold.
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Comments reveal dark underbelly of Australian politics
By Osman Faruqi
January 14, 2021 — 12.03am
There’s a sense among Australians that the political chaos and growth of the far-right movement in the United States is some kind of faraway spectacle, disconnected from our own realities. We watch, we shake our heads, we say to each other “Gee, I’m glad I live in Australia”, and we move on.
But the reaction of senior government figures in Australia to that final, violent spasm of the Trump-era last week, when protesters stormed the Capitol, should be a wake-up call to all of us. Australian politics isn’t at risk of mimicking Trump’s embrace of white nationalism, far-right conspiracies and hate speech. It already has. Most of us just haven’t wanted to accept it.
While senior Republicans in the US have condemned the way President Donald Trump fanned the flames of violent insurrection last week, Australia’s acting Prime Minister has deliberately downplayed the horror of what played out in Washington DC.
Over three separate media appearances on Tuesday, Michael McCormack compared the Capitol riots to the Black Lives Matter protests, described those who supported the Black Lives Matter campaign as “bleeding hearts” who were “confecting outrage”, and declared that “all lives matter”, adopting a favourite phrase of the far-right that is used to write off valid concerns about police brutality and structural racism in the US and Australia.
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Take home pay or put it in super: Government considers opt-in super model
By Jennifer Duke
January 13, 2021 — 5.00am
The federal government is considering giving workers the choice of putting more money into their superannuation or having more take-home pay in an attempt to break a political deadlock ahead of a looming rise in the super guarantee.
The plan, which has not gone to cabinet and is part of a range of possible reforms being examined by the government, would trigger a battle with Labor, the unions and the $3 trillion industry superannuation fund sector who argue increases above the current 9.5 per cent guarantee are necessary for workers to have an adequate retirement.
Increasing the super guarantee to 12 per cent was a Coalition election commitment and Labor is prepared to campaign fiercely if the government changes its mind. But with some Coalition MPs pushing for no increase in the super guarantee and economists concerned the rise will affect the nation's economic recovery during the coronavirus pandemic, the Morrison government is looking for fresh ways to manoeuvre on the promise.
The 9.5 per cent guarantee is scheduled to rise to 12 per cent in 2025, delivering an extra $20 billion into earners' retirement accounts with the first 0.5 percentage point hike legislated to kick in from July. However, a new model being considered for the superannuation system could see workers given the choice about whether to put more of their money into super.
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Scott Morrison can act swiftly to help shape US policy
Australia’s strategic outlook in 2021 faces both an unhappy certainty and a deep anxiety. The unhappy certainty is that China’s intent to punish us for failing to bow to its domination will continue and probably get worse.
The good news is that we now understand what needs to be done about Beijing’s bullying. The government has a tight-lipped determination to push back, as was shown this week by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s rejection of a $300m takeover of the Probuild construction company by a Chinese state-owned enterprise.
Getting to this moment of policy clarity hasn’t been easy. It required the overturning of decades of Canberra consensus that closer engagement with China was Australia’s only path to prosperity.
With the help of Beijing’s offensive rhetoric and aggressive diplomacy we have passed this inflection point. No federal government could reverse course and seek now to deepen our economic dependence on China.
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The secret humans hidden in our DNA
Homo sapiens did not drive the other species of humans that once lived with us on this planet to extinction; instead we simply merged with them.
Modern man carries the genes of multiple ancient human species.
Madelaine Böhme, Rüdiger Braun and Florian Breier
Jan 16, 2021 – 12.00am
The more than 7 billion people who inhabit the planet today all belong to one species of human: Homo sapiens, which can be translated as "rational human". When this species first stepped onto the evolutionary stage more than 300,000 years ago, it was by no means the only species of human on Earth. As far as we know, it shared Eurasia and Africa with seven other species of human.
Eurasia was settled by the Denisovans, the Neanderthals, Homo heidelbergensis and Homo erectus. Homo floresiensis and Homo luzonensis lived on islands in south-east Asia, and Homo naledi lived in South Africa. From an evolutionary perspective, however, these species were not to coexist for long. Something happened over the course of about 14,000 human generations to change things, but what? Why did the diversity of human species shrink so rapidly and so drastically? Why, of all these species, was ours the one to prevail? Were the fellow humans with whom we shared the Earth overtaken by the same fate as the large mammals, the so-called megafauna, of the ice age? Did Homo sapiens drive them to extinction?
The species of megafauna varied from continent to continent, but these carnivores and herbivores were all impressively large. In Eurasia, for example, they included mammoths, cave lions, woolly rhinoceroses, and giant deer standing more than two metres at the shoulder. In the Americas, there were giant sloths, sabre-toothed cats, elephant-like mastodons, and steppe mammoths.
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Time for new foreign policy thinking in the Canberra citadel
There's an urgent need for a fresh approach as Australia is tossed by America's convulsions during the last days of the Trump presidency and China's resurgence.
Andrew Clark Senior writer
Jan 15, 2021 – 2.46pm
Sam Chisholm, the legendary Australian commercial television executive, was fond of saying: “Meetings are for losers. Lunches are for winners.”
But we live in extraordinary times – the right-wing extremists’ violent attack on the US Capitol, the second impeachment of President Donald Trump, Australia’s economic war with China, and COVID-19’s worldwide death spiral. The time has come for Prime Minister Scott Morrison to consider calling a special meeting to review the best options for Australia to survive this global turbulence.
Like the "summit" of business and union leaders Labor prime minister Bob Hawke held in the old Parliament building in 1983, this foreign policy gathering would involve people outside the government’s official circle but who know what they’re talking about when it comes to the key issues Australia faces – though their views may differ sharply at times.
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War of words over free speech: who gets to judge what we see and say?
January 16, 2021
On Sunday, Brogan Renshaw's lifelong habit of reading the news hit a wall. Since Renshaw, 32, was a boy, his dad would unfurl the newspaper and the day would begin.
"I follow The Sydney Morning Herald. I Google it all the time. My general search is just 'SMH'," Renshaw says. ''That day the site did not come up. I thought maybe it’s just me."
It was not.
Google had quietly started to hide local news from Renshaw's search as part of an "experiment" aimed at showing how much the media depends on traffic from the company. Whatever one thinks of Google, it was a demonstration of the power of the technology giants that run much of the internet. The past fortnight has been full of other examples.
Twitter, YouTube (itself owned by Google), Facebook and its photo app Instagram all banned or suspended US President Donald Trump after the violent storming of the Capitol by a mob of his supporters.
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With superannuation choice there will be retirement consequences
Jennifer Duke
Economics correspondent
January 16, 2021 — 5.00am
If you were given the option to have some of your superannuation as pay right now rather than keep it aside for retirement, would you take it? The choice could soon be yours.
One of several policy ideas the federal government is considering is letting you decide what to do with a portion of your superannuation. At the moment employers are legally required to put 9.5 per cent of workers' earnings into super, which typically cannot be used until retirement. This is legislated to increase annually by 0.5 per cent of their income to a total of 12 per cent by 2025.
Under a possible new system these rises could instead be converted into take-home pay. The way this would work isn't clear with the discussion in early stages, however it could be as straightforward as a refund at tax time. Workers could get extra money in their tax returns and employers would simply increase the superannuation payments each year as planned.
If employees had to make a choice at the end of every financial year it would become an annual reminder of how much they have in retirement savings. This would solve an ongoing concern held by the super funds, Labor and the Coalition that members are "disengaged" and don't think about their nest eggs until it is too late or there is a major change in policy. The extra money could also encourage spending and give household budgets more breathing room as the economy recovers after the coronavirus-induced recession.
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Don't want an Australian Trump? Now's the time to choose wisely
Parnell Palme McGuinness
Columnist and communications adviser
January 16, 2021 — 12.16am
As President Donald Trump exits the White House, Australians face a decision. We can choose to keep following America or we can choose to learn from its mistakes.
Sorry is the hardest word, but it’s even harder to refrain from saying “I told you so”. Trump at the tail end of his presidential term proved that his instincts were as bad as many had feared. That’s no reason to gloat. The underlying issues which convinced Americans to risk it all on an unstable genius remain, and there are similar dynamics in Australia.
At the end of 2019, the director of the International Security Program at the Lowy Institute Sam Roggeveen published a paper in which he described the “hollowing out” of the traditional centre-right and centre-left parties. The parties, Roggeveen said, “no longer represent coherent or well-defined social and economic forces”.
The same was true of the US Democratic and Republican parties well before Trump. Trump harnessed dissatisfaction with establishment politics and positioned himself as an outsider, despite running with the benefit of all the infrastructure available to a Republican candidate. It is tempting to see the elevation of Joe Biden to the presidency as a re-embrace of establishment politics, but it would be wrong.
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Impeach Trump or not? It's not as clear-cut as you might think
By Tim Stanley and Rosa Prince
January 15, 2021 — 11.01pm
The 'yes' case for impeachment, by Tim Stanley
Impeachment and conviction have the twin benefits of signalling that Trump's behaviour was unacceptable and, potentially, barring him from future office. For a Republican Party desperate to move on, this is very attractive.
The counter argument is that it will martyr him. Well, in the eyes of his supporters, he already is a martyr – they think the 2020 election was stolen – and he's going to be "persecuted" even more in the courts.
Trump will be as much a problem for the GOP out of office as in it: he will intervene as often as he can, threatening to stand again in 2024, offering a running commentary on Republican strategy. His rhetoric has already cost the GOP control of the Senate – it was probably Trump's baseless challenge to the 2020 result that led to the defeat of the party in two senatorial contests in Georgia. Given this, and the way he's abused the party for several years, I struggle to see why senior Republicans should stand by him now.
Impeachment will divide the GOP, no doubt. A civil war on the right is likely. But it's also inevitable, whether he is convicted or not, and while popular outrage at the storming of the Capitol is still high, and this process has some momentum, it might be better to lance the boil now rather than later on. It gives the GOP a chance to restate what it stands for – constitutional norms – and, if Congress votes for it, to take him out of consideration for president again.
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A farewell to Washington
Imagine living in Mike Pence’s former home 15 minutes from the White House and reporting on the Trump whirlwind for four years. Well, this is what it was like …
January 15, 2021
As I watched the jaw-dropping sight of Donald Trump’s supporters smashing their way into congress last week, I tried to recall the last time that America felt normal. Was there a single day in the past four years when the world was not fixated by this out-of-the-box president? Was there a fleeting moment when I did not have a major, if not a global, news story to cover as The Australian’s Washington correspondent?
As the Trump era draws to a close this week, he leaves behind such a blizzard of news that just a single word or two triggers unshakeable memories: Comey. Russia. Little Rocket Man. Fire and Fury. Crooked Hillary. Turnbull phone call. Border wall. Scaramucci. Mueller. Kavanaugh. Ukraine. Impeachment. Hunter laptop. Fake News. Trade war. George Floyd. China virus. Face mask. Kamala. Sleepy Joe. Rigged election. Capitol siege.
All of this was still ahead of me when I arrived in Washington to take up the post in January 2017 and found myself, by accident, moving into the former home of the new vice-president Mike Pence. That experience gave me my first glimpse into how bitterly divided Americans were about their new president.
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https://www.afr.com/wealth/personal-finance/the-industries-set-to-outperform-in-2021-20210114-p56tzy
The industries set to outperform in 2021
While most of the market is expected to benefit from this recovery, not every sector is tipped to soar.
William McInnes Reporter
Jan 16, 2021 – 12.00am
Investors across the board are in agreement 2021 will be a good year for equities. The global recovery story driven by the rollout of vaccines, further fiscal stimulus and accommodative monetary policy is set to light a fire under equity markets and Australia could be a standout.
The domestic economy has already kicked into recovery mode, with state governments effectively restricting the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing life to largely continue as normal.
While the majority of the market is expected to benefit from this recovery, different sectors will perform differently, with those hit hardest by the pandemic set to benefit in the rebound.
Expectations of a return to above target levels of inflation could prompt some weakness in the high-flying growth names but allow cyclicals and value stocks to flourish. Cyclicals are stocks exposed to the economy and therefore likely to prosper as global growth picks up.
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Is Morrison ready for a Biden administration?
By Anthony Galloway
January 17, 2021 — 12.00am
At the height of the United States presidential election in 2016, then-Foreign Minister Julie Bishop instructed her mandarins to prepare two briefs: one for a Clinton win and one for a Trump win.
There was pushback from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, with even its traditionally thorough and uber-cautious officials seemingly of the view that Clinton would easily prevail.
That was not the message Bishop had been receiving on her trips to the US that year, and she insisted the briefs be prepared “equally”.
While things looked rushed from the outside – with Canberra’s then-ambassador to the US, Joe Hockey, famously needing to request a phone number for Donald Trump from Australian golfer Greg Norman on the night of the election – the preparation had been going on for months.
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Overseas students dump Australia for Canada and COVID-ravaged Britain
By Anna Patty
January 17, 2021 — 12.00am
Australia's tertiary education industry faces a devastating economic hit this year as international students from key markets switch their applications to countries with more open borders including Canada and COVID-ravaged Britain.
University vice-chancellors and international education agents have reported students in India, Nepal and China, who were originally bound for Australia, this month have started making other arrangements because they want to study on a real campus instead of online.
Western Sydney University vice-chancellor Barney Glover said his agent networks told him some students who had been offered a place at his university had eventually declined the offer to take a place at a UK university.
"The information we are getting from our agent network is that students are deciding to take UK offers because the UK borders are open," he said. "Although the students and families are concerned about COVID, they are prioritising being able to enter the country and to begin studies in the UK over the risks of COVID."
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China boycott will ‘hurt’ Australian businesses
Calls to boycott Chinese products over escalating trade tensions between Beijing and Canberra may end up hurting Australian businesses more than helping them, economists and China experts warn.
While China’s communist regime has banned or imposed punitive tariffs on a range of Australian farm commodities, calls for Australia to respond in kind are short-sighted given the “asymmetrical” relationship between the two countries.
China accounts for 27 per cent of total imports into Australia — more than double the US, the next biggest source of imports — while Australia accounts for 1.9 per cent of China’s worldwide sales.
Even buying a product with the triangular green and gold Australian-made logo on it doesn’t completely snub Chinese-made goods. Take most tomato sauces, for example. They’re made mostly from Australian ingredients, but the acidity regulator it contains most likely comes from China.
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Coronavirus And Impacts.
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Roll up your sleeves: How the vaccine rollout will affect the global economy
Jennifer Duke
Economics correspondent
January 11, 2021 — 12.01am
Many people can tell you the exact place they were when they heard about huge global events. The death of Princess Diana, the September 11 attacks are instances etched into our collective memories and 2021 will deliver its own share of such high-profile moments.
One of them has already happened: The violent storming of the United States Capitol by supporters of President Donald Trump. But there is another defining event pencilled in on the calendar and it's likely to be one we remember with relief: The vaccination of Australians against COVID-19.
The coronavirus vaccine will start to be rolled out in Australia from mid-to-late-February, faster than the previous expectation of March, with frontline workers and other high-risk essential staff to get the jab first. The finer details of this plan are being figured out but 80,000 people a week could be rolling up their sleeves for their health and the country's recovery.
Just a few months ago it would have been hard to imagine getting excited about a medical procedure but now it will understandably be the basis of one of the most anticipated events of the year.
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Financial support 'needs to change': Economists back targeted help for locked-down businesses
By Jennifer Duke
January 12, 2021 — 8.58pm
Extending wage subsidy scheme JobKeeper beyond March for businesses forced to shut due to outbreaks is on the wish list of top Australian economists who are warning inconsistent border rules are creating havoc for employers trying to recover from the pandemic.
After record spending from the federal government to keep companies and workers afloat during the coronavirus pandemic, former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman Allan Fels said the multibillion-dollar schemes introduced at the height of the pandemic to support businesses and workers "now needed to change".
"They need to be more selective and targeted," Professor Fels said, adding the "dilemma" was the "difficulty of separating businesses which can be expected to revive post-COVID and those that are not going to survive".
While he wasn't supportive of extending support to businesses facing "short-term" lockdowns, such as the three-day closure of Brisbane, he said he was not opposed to additional assistance during prolonged shutdowns.
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To build vaccine confidence Morrison should knock down his sceptic MPs
By David Crowe
January 12, 2021 — 6.25pm
Scott Morrison made a tough but necessary call one month ago to cancel support for an Australian vaccine because he wanted to maximise community confidence in the treatment of COVID-19.
Now the Prime Minister has another challenge in shoring up that confidence, only this time the threat comes from within his own ranks.
Liberal backbencher Craig Kelly has become a dangerous source of dubious advice and outright lies on social media at a time when the government wants full support for a mammoth effort to vaccinate almost everyone.
Kelly rails against the use of masks and calls them "child abuse" for schoolchildren when political leaders and health authorities are telling Australians to cover up.
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'Plague Island' Britain will soon pull free of the COVID quagmire
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
January 13, 2021 — 11.00am
Once British care home residents and the over-80s are vaccinated, two thirds of potential COVID-19 deaths will be covered. That will come into view within 10 days.
The figures have been crunched by Yifei Gong and Stuart McDonald from the COVID 19 Actuaries Response Group, based on analysis of death certificates. It validates the UK government strategy of break-neck speed vaccination, rather than the European precautionary policy.
Some 88 per cent of avoidable deaths will be covered by the time Britain reaches the mid-February target of 13 million vaccinations, in principle saving 55,600 lives. Whether the efficacy rate of the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab is 70 per cent or 80 per cent is a distraction. Not a single volunteer in the group's clinical trials died or became critically ill from COVID. For all intents and purposes the vaccine has 100 per cent efficacy against mortality. Personally, I would be equally happy to receive any jab approved by the MHRA.
We are about to go through a lacerating phase where the headline picture keeps getting worse. The death toll will keep rising mechanically into late January as a result of infections dating back to December - when, let us not forget, the UK Education Secretary was forcing schools to stay open even in zones where cases were spiralling.
Yet at the same time the underlying picture will be improving very quickly. My guess is that the atmosphere will change dramatically at the beginning of February as it becomes clear that early vaccinations are progressively pulling down the mortality ratio.
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Why we shouldn't halt the vaccine rollout
Jill Margo Health editor
Jan 13, 2021 – 12.17pm
Whoa! Before confidence in Australia’s vaccination program is completely shaken by calls to pause the rollout of the Astra Zeneca/Oxford vaccine, some issues need to be considered.
Although the government has pushed back, data cited by the Australian and New Zealand Society for Immunology, which made the call, is correct. However, it is also preliminary and could change.
So far, the Oxford vaccine is 62 per cent effective compared with about 95 per cent for the new technology RNA vaccines developed by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna.
It is difficult to grasp, but this difference might just be by chance or because the Oxford trials were done in a different way.
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WHO expert explains Australia's pandemic success
Jill Margo Health editor
Jan 15, 2021 – 2.51pm
When exhausted health officials in Europe ask Dr Margaret Harris why Australia has done so well in this pandemic, she says it is because the country understands bushfires.
She tells her World Health Organisation colleagues and television audiences that “Australians know how these fires can spread, they know about spot fires and clusters, and why some areas are badly affected by the blaze and others not at all.”
But Harris, an expert in emergency risk communication and a spokeswoman for WHO, says there is more to her home country’s advantage than this. To the surprise of those listening, she says Australia is more part of Asia than the rest of the world understands, and this goes beyond its geography.
Australia was wide awake to the threat of SARS in 2003, which began in China and spread to 30 other countries, as close as Singapore and as far afield as Canada.
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'This is not a game': Global coronavirus death toll hits 2 million
By Chris Sherman, Maria Cheng, John Leicester and Joshua Goodman
Updated January 16, 2021 — 6.42amfirst published at 5.16am
Mexico City: The global death toll from COVID-19 has topped 2 million, crossing the threshold amid a vaccine rollout so immense but so uneven that in some countries there is real hope of vanquishing the outbreak, while in other, less-developed parts of the world, it seems a far-off dream.
The numbing figure was reached just over a year after the coronavirus was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan. The number of dead, compiled by Johns Hopkins University, is about equal to the population of Brussels, Mecca, Minsk or Vienna.
In wealthy countries including the United States, Britain, Israel, Canada and Germany, millions of citizens have already been given some measure of protection with at least one dose of vaccine developed with revolutionary speed and quickly authorised for use.
But elsewhere, immunisation drives have barely gotten off the ground. Many experts are predicting another year of loss and hardship in places like Iran, India, Mexico and Brazil, which together account for about a quarter of the world’s deaths.
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‘The trauma? That will come. What we’re seeing stays with you’
· The Times
Ashley Boffa is having a breather. She has peeled off the full face mask that has pressed a deep crease down her cheek, and is sitting in the “rest and recoup” room for staff. Some chat. Others just sit alone, looking a little bit shell-shocked.
Usually she’s a physiotherapist, but now she is one of thousands summoned to the front line from all parts of Britain’s National Health Service to care for the onslaught of coronavirus patients threatening to overwhelm intensive care.
“I cried when I got the call,” says Ms Boffa, 33, who was at home with her two-year-old son when it came.
She spent enough time watching patients die alone during the first wave, comforting them when their families could not, that it took all her nerve to walk back into the intensive-care unit (ICU), the pandemic’s last-chance saloon that is steadily expanding across an entire floor of Epsom General Hospital in Surrey in England.
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Climate Change
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QBE hikes catastrophe allowance by 24% after extreme weather
By Charlotte Grieve
January 11, 2021 — 3.46pm
Premiums could rise after insurer QBE increased its allowance for catastrophic weather claims by almost a quarter following a year of unprecedented weather events in Australia and the United States.
QBE told investors on Monday it would set aside $US685 million ($890 million) for claims related to extreme weather for calendar year 2021, after breaching its $US550 million cap last year due to Australia's horror bushfires and the northern hemisphere's worst hurricane season on record.
The ASX-listed global insurer, headquartered in Sydney, last month said it would likely report a $US1.5 billion loss for the year due to the higher-than-expected claims from catastrophic weather, which caused the company's share price to fall by more than 12 per cent over the day.
However, QBE interim chief executive Richard Pryce said he was now confident the group could "drive appropriate margin expansion" in 2021 given its beefed up reinsurance program that factors in greater exposure to more frequent and extreme weather events.
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Origin and Neoen plan $1bn batteries for NSW power plants
Two of the world’s biggest batteries, worth a combined $1bn, will be built at the sites of NSW coal plants in a move to ease strains in the power grid and provide back-up for renewable energy generation.
Origin Energy plans to develop a giant 700 megawatt battery at Eraring, Australia’s largest coal-fired power station, while France’s Neoen is preparing a 500MW battery stack dubbed the Great Western Battery Project at Wallerawang, home to the former EnergyAustralia coal station, which has now been decommissioned.
The two batteries would rank as the largest storage devices in the world and over four times larger than the Tesla world-beating battery in South Australia, which is also operated by Neoen.
The rollout of the big batteries shows the willingness of investors to ensure enough supply is in place when coal plants retire over the next two decades. It also boosts the flexibility of running Eraring, which supplies a quarter of the state’s energy needs, during peak demand until its scheduled retirement in 2032.
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Planet sizzles through hot 2020
The world’s leading weather agencies have ranked 2020 as either the equal hottest or second hottest year on record.
According to NASA the Earth’s global average surface temperature tied with 2016 as the warmest year, 1.02C warmer than the baseline 1951-1980.
A separate, independent analysis by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) concluded that 2020 was the second-warmest year in their record, behind 2016.
The UK Met Office said 2020 was the second hottest, concluding the Earth’s warmest 10-year period on record.
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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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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/retail-sales-surge-20210111-p56t4a
Retail sales bounce back to rude health
John Kehoe Senior writer
Jan 11, 2021 – 12.01pm
National retail sales surged 7.1 per cent in November as Melbourne shoppers exited lockdown to splurge on household goods and clothes and at cafes.
Strong online activity during the Black Friday and Cyber Monday internet sales period also contributed to the stellar pre-Christmas rebound in spending after Victoria's three-month lockdown.
Seasonally adjusted retail sales were also upgraded in October, rising by 1.4 per cent – an improvement on the previously reported zero growth for the month.
Goldman Sachs economist Andrew Boak said the increase was driven by strong growth in Victoria following the easing in lockdown restrictions, as well as Black Friday sales in late November.
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Why Australia's national debt is not as bad as it looks
The debt share of our national income has soared. But that is because we are not using the best measure for it.
Chris Richardson Contributor
Jan 11, 2021 – 3.26pm
In many ways Australia’s biggest business has had a very good pandemic:
- Demand for its services soared when COVID-19 came to town, and it had to borrow lots to fund the necessary expansion in its activities.
- Yet markets were more than happy to fund that expansion, and it locked away its extra borrowings for a decade, doing so at record low rates.
- Even better still, standard corporate metrics look sweet. Net interest cover continues to improve, and the overall interest bill is below its 2018-19 peaks. Similarly, although gearing ratios are hard to calculate for this business, they don’t appear to have budged much either.
- Finally, although demand will fall away again over the next year or two, the business has carefully avoided ongoing increases to its expense base.
But the “business” we are talking about here is the Australian federal government. And while the jump in its debt has generated much angst, there’s lots to like about federal finances.
Before COVID-19 arrived, net federal debt had been forecast to fall. But the pandemic put paid to that, and Treasury now forecasts net debt to more than double its pre-COVID share of national income.
How worrying is that? Net debt as a share of national income has traditionally been used as a key measure of budget sustainability.
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Australian Bureau of Statistics: New figures show more job vacancies than pre-coronavirus levels
· NCA NewsWire
The number of job vacancies has jumped higher than pre-coronavirus levels, with the private sector leading the charge in seeking new workers.
Latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show job vacancies over the 2020 November quarter rose 23 per cent on the previous quarter and were 12 per cent higher than the same month in 2019.
According to the ABS, arts and recreation, accommodation and food services, and retail trading experienced the biggest spike in the number of new jobs available.
These sectors in May 2020 had the largest slump in available jobs due to being highly susceptible to shutdowns following government-enforced lockdowns to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
ABS head of labour statistics Bjorn Jarvis said the job vacancy rates reflected the better-than-expected economic recovery in Australia.
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Dr Copper's prognosis for the global economy is positive
Stephen Bartholomeusz
Senior business columnist
January 14, 2021 — 12.02pm
Dr Copper’s prognosis is for a full recovery in the health of the global economy, and prices for commodities overall are signalling something better than just a return to pre-pandemic conditions.
Copper gets that honorific because demand for the metal is acutely sensitive to economic conditions. It is now trading about 26 per cent above its price a year ago, before public awareness of the coronavirus hit markets, and 72 per cent above last year’s March nadir.
At the same time, Bloomberg’s broader commodities index shows commodity prices generally have fully recovered and are higher than a year ago, wiping out the memories of the plunge they experienced in March.
The iron ore price -- and iron ore is the key commodity from Australia’s perspective -- is 80 per cent above where it was 12 months ago, 174 per cent off its low point last year and trading at levels last seen nearly a decade ago, during the frenzy of the last resources boom.
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JobKeeper can't be forever but is needed a little longer
Jessica Irvine
Economics writer
January 14, 2021 — 12.05am
The Morrison government’s historic JobKeeper wage subsidy program has proved a vital lifeline for the recession-ravaged Australian economy throughout COVID.
So, as shutdowns and border closures persist into 2021, it’s only prudent to ask whether the current March 28 expiry date should be extended yet again, albeit in some modified form, for COVID-affected businesses.
Government ministers remain adamant JobKeeper is a “time-limited” program, pointing to the potential pitfalls of propping up unviable jobs. But they also remain open-minded to the need to remain “agile” to the evolving situation.
Proponents of extending the payment warn of a looming “fiscal cliff” if support is not extended, with JobSeeker coronavirus supplement also set to expire at the end of March.
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Coronavirus: $200bn savings warchest to boost recovery
Households and businesses have saved more than $200bn in cash during the pandemic, which Treasury says will be used to bolster the economic recovery as the Morrison government’s emergency support measures are withdrawn.
While the recovery has proved faster than anticipated, it remains incomplete, and there are fears it will falter when programs such as JobKeeper and the JobSeeker coronavirus supplement expire. They are due to end in March.
Direct fiscal support is forecast to fall from 6.9 per cent of nominal GDP in 2020-21, or about $138.4bn, to 2.4 per cent in 2021-22, or $48bn.
Treasury modelling suggests the contribution to economic activity from emergency support measures will extend beyond the end of the spending programs.
The Morrison government has spent $142.6bn in major relief measures aimed at cushioning the blow from the country’s sharpest downturn in close to a century. In addition to providing relief to struggling workers and firms through mandated shutdowns, a large portion of payments were saved.
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Health Issues.
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Vaccine ‘not good enough to stop the coronavirus’
Doctors are calling for a re-evaluation of Australia’s vaccine strategy, saying that herd immunity cannot be achieved with the lower-efficacy Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, which the Morrison government plans to administer to millions of Australians.
Medics and infectious disease experts are calling for Australia to invest in more high-efficacy vaccines, rather than relying on the AstraZeneca jab.
Australia has ordered 53.8 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine. But trials have showed it has a much lower level of efficacy than the mRNA vaccines produced by Pfizer and Moderna and now being administered in Britain, France, Israel and the US.
Andrew Miller, an anaesthetist and head of the Australian Medical Association in WA, called for the government to halt its plans to begin vaccinating the population with the AstraZeneca vaccine from March.
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International Issues.
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Capitol riots: only Donald Trump’s golden girl Ivanka could walk him back from the edge
The president’s daughter stepped in after a day of crisis that America will never forget
Josh Glancy , Washington
Saturday January 09 2021, 6.00pm GMT, The Sunday Times
Ultimately it was the threat of getting sacked that finally reined Donald Trump in, at least temporarily. In the wake of Wednesday’s astonishing insurrection on Capitol Hill, encouraged and incited by the president himself, the White House counsel Pat Cipollone explained to Trump just how much legal jeopardy his quest to overturn the election result at any cost was putting him in.
Then allies, including Trump’s daughter Ivanka and his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, told him that he faced removal from office — via impeachment or the invocation of the 25th amendment — unless he released a conciliatory message. He had to back down.
And so on Thursday evening he did, issuing a stiff and hollow call for “unity”, expressing his “outrage” at the violence, lawlessness and mayhem and committing to the “orderly transition of power” in a video.
It was too little too late for Democrats, who are well on their way to impeaching Trump — again. They will introduce articles of impeachment in the House of Representatives as early as tomorrow, accusing the president of “incitement of insurrection” and seeking to bar him from holding public office again.
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Trump has permanently trashed America's global reputation
The Capitol riots will diminish the US' international standing and Joe Biden's soft power ability to rally allies to deal with the China challenge.
John McCarthy Contributor
Jan 10, 2021 – 3.29pm
The events on Capitol Hill last week have been met with outrage both because they happened and because US President Donald Trump provoked them.
There has been hype – much from those who have sustained Trump these past four years – about an invasion of the “hallowed halls”, an attack on “democracy itself”, sedition, insurrection and treason.
Well, yes, OK. But we could see the intrusion – or something like it – coming. Trump and his like had incited the mob for months and the Democrats had warned of it.
The America of two decades ago could ensure that its strategic and value related interests could be pursued in unison. This administration will not have the same advantage.
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More than a riot, but not a coup: how Trump made a fantasy real
Rather than the first act of a mortal threat to American democracy, the mob storming of the Capitol was the culmination of the distorted reality that is the Trump Show.
Ross Douthat Contributor
Jan 10, 2021 – 12.25pm
I will be honest and say that I don't know exactly how to interpret the surreal events that unfolded this past week in Washington, DC, when a mob inflamed by online memes and presidential fantasies rampaged through the halls of the US Capitol.
Throughout the Donald Trump era there has been a debate among his critics about whether to regard this presidency as a mortal threat to the Republic or a degrading interlude in its decline; a revival of 1930s fascism or 1870s white supremacy or as something more purely virtual, performative and astonishingly weak.
The riot at the Capitol occupies a liminal, unstable space between these two interpretations. Cock your head one way and it looks like the fulfillment of every resistance warning: the head of the executive branch incites a mob to take over the seat of the legislative branch and prevent power from being passed to his successor.
Cock your head another and it looks like the culmination of "The Trump Show": a politically impotent, conspiracy-addled president whips up a rabble of costumed selfie-snappers and then goes home to the White House with no plan except to watch them get rowdy on TV.
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For the real threat to democracy look to China, not the US
Despite the hysterical headlines, US democracy will survive Donald Trump. It's the bullying hardline authoritarian President Xi Jinping who is truly damaging his nation's international standing.
Alexander Downer Columnist
Jan 10, 2021 – 3.29pm
Watching the scenes on television of Donald Trump supporting thugs bursting into the US Congress, breaking windows and smashing furniture brought back a distant memory.
In 1996, there was a similar attack on the Australian Parliament. It was certainly disconcerting to have an uncontrollable mob wielding iron bars and baseball bats just metres from your own office. Still, order was restored and democracy survived. Mind you, 90 people were injured.
In America they do things more violently and on a bigger scale. The only real long-term damage will be to Trump‘s legacy. He incited the riot and has rightly been condemned for it. But American democracy will survive, the administration will change on January 20 and the United States will move on.
Hysterical media stories about the damage this has done to American democracy will just pile up in the recycling bins of US homes.
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'It all started with lies': Schwarzenegger compares Capitol riots to Kristallnacht
By Tim Loh
January 11, 2021 — 6.02am
Washington: Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former Republican governor of California and Hollywood action star, has issued a heartfelt and stinging criticism of outgoing US President Donald Trump, while comparing last week's Capitol riots to Kristallnacht, the night the Nazi attacked the Jewish population in Germany in 1938.
In a video message posted on social media on Sunday, Austrian-born Schwarzenegger says the rampage was carried out by the "Nazi equivalent of the Proud Boys" and he's seen "first hand how things can spin out of control".
Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger, a former California governor, said Donald Trump would be remembered as 'the worst president ever' on a video posted on twitter.
"Wednesday was the Day of Broken Glass right here in the United States. The broken glass was in the windows of the United States Capitol. But the mob did not just shatter the windows of the Capitol. It has shattered the ideals we took for granted. They did not just break down the doors of the building that housed American democracy. They trampled the very principles on which our country was founded."
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Only a resilient democracy could have survived the mob violence
Does Donald Trump’s act of constitutional vandalism in inciting mob violence presage an end to America’s greatness or the rebirth of a country that has lost its way?
After last week’s unprecedented scenes of mayhem and wanton destruction in Washington’s Capitol building, the notion of a rebirth seems far-fetched. Worse could follow in the waning days of his presidency if Trump gives full vent to his vindictive nature by inflaming his hardcore supporters or initiating an international crisis. Without bipartisan support, impeachment risks turning Trump into a martyr and further polarising the electorate.
But American resilience and the capacity for renewal should never be underestimated. The Trump-inspired insurrection against the people’s house may be the shock the country needs to realise it has come to a fork in the road. Unconstrained populism is the low road that leads to dysfunction, division, violence and the anarchy of the mob. Joe Biden’s task is to bring America’s warring tribes to their senses and reverse the palpable decline in civic pride and principled behaviour that has debased the nation’s political culture.
Can he do it? Sceptics — and there are many — doubt Biden’s empathy and compassion are enough to heal the grievous wounds Trump has inflicted on the US body politic. But this could be a case of “cometh the hour, cometh the man”. Dismissed as a weak and ineffectual presidential candidate less than a year ago, a reinvigorated Biden has come roaring back to life, visibly growing in stature since his emphatic defeat of Trump at the ballot box.
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Why investors shrugged off the Capitol riots
Stockmarkets rallied as a group of pro-Donald Trump insurgents rampaged through the US Capitol. The reason is anticipation of a new Democratic administration that also controls Congress.
Rana Foroohar Contributor
Updated Jan 11, 2021 – 10.26am, first published at 10.23am
Normally when a financial market rises amid a coup or extreme political instability, it is because the leftists are out and the animal spirits of business have been released. But last week in the US there was a different kind of result.
Stockmarkets rallied, even as a group of pro-Donald Trump insurgents rampaged through the US Capitol. The reason, in brief, is that investors were cheering that a new Democratic administration that also controls Congress is about to take over.
President-elect Joe Biden will surely raise corporate taxes and increase regulation. From the perspective of business leaders, that’s never a good thing.
But in last week’s elections in Georgia, Democrats won two Senate seats, giving Biden’s party sway over both houses of Congress. That means Democrats will also be more able to push through fiscal stimulus in areas from infrastructure spending and healthcare, to education and aid to states. That in turn will complement the huge monetary tailwind still coming from the US Federal Reserve.
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Why Biden should promise to pardon Trump
Far from impeaching the President, the Democrats should find a way to rebuild fractured public life.
Kenneth Lasson
Jan 11, 2021 – 12.46pm
US President-elect Joe Biden could largely avoid the quagmire of political turmoil he’s about to inherit by following a thoughtful course of action. Here’s a three-step plan that could pacify the entrenched partisan divides:
Step 1: Announce in advance that on taking office he would pardon Donald Trump and any of his potentially culpable cabinet or staff members for misdeeds they may have committed while in government service.
As far back as 1866, the Supreme Court ruled that the pardon power “extends to every offence known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment”.
But whether a president can pardon himself remains a contentious question for legal scholars. Many feel that such an action would probably ignite a constitutional crisis. “No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause,” wrote James Madison in The Federalist Papers, “because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity.”
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'Trillions' of US stimulus dollars unsettles markets
Sarah Turner Reporter
Jan 11, 2021 – 3.18pm
Growing optimism for a US economic stimulus package potentially worth trillions of dollars pushed the 10-year Treasury yield to a near 10-month high, sending a ripple of unease through financial markets.
The rise in the US 10-year Treasury yield was reflected in Australia, with the 10-year Australian government bond yield hitting 1.12 per cent on Monday, a level not seen since March.
Interest rate-sensitive stocks, including Sydney Airport, down 1 per cent at $6.25, and Transurban, down 1.5 per cent at $13.13, sank as the Australian sharemarket pulled back. The benchmark S&P/ASX 200 index declined 1 per cent to 6694.
"The US 10-year Treasury bond yield is perhaps the most important interest rate in the world," Andrew Ticehurst at Nomura Securities said. "So higher US bond yields puts upward pressure on bond yields on other countries, including Australia."
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Big spender Biden puts markets in crossfire
Investors are caught between hopes for a growth rebound and concerns about resurgent inflation.
Robert Guy Senior Writer
Jan 11, 2021 – 4.19pm
It was "buy the rumour, sell the fact" as Australian stocks retreated despite US President-elect Joe Biden tweeting demands for $US2000 ($2600) stimulus cheques and as China's latest economic data showed the recovery in our most important trade partner continues to gather pace.
The collective shrug underscores the growing tug of war between the stock-boosting prospect of revved-up US growth and the valuation dampening threat of a rise in bond yields as jitters about resurgent inflation simmer.
Biden's tweet vindicated those investors who stormed into stocks last week after the Democrats swept the Georgia Senate run-off elections.
The Democrats' dominant numbers in Congress eases the way for a monster stimulus package, one aimed at reviving short-term growth amid the uncertainty of a mounting virus death toll, as well as investing in much needed infrastructure to bolster longer-term growth and productivity.
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Europe is not immune from America’s political madness
It would be a mistake for Europeans to believe that the absence of a Trump figure makes them safe from dangerous political unrest — particularly given the economic distress and social dislocation caused by COVID-19.
Gideon Rachman Columnist
Updated Jan 12, 2021 – 9.39am, first published at 9.30am
A crowd of far-right activists break through police lines. Cheering and waving flags, they prepare to storm the legislature. In Washington DC, last week, the mob broke through. In Berlin, last August, they were stopped on the steps of the Reichstag.
If the demonstrators had broken into the building, they would have found some walls still adorned with carefully preserved graffiti from when the Reichstag was sacked by Russian troops, in 1945.
Germany’s near-miss over the summer, the “gilets jaunes” demonstrations in France and the passions aroused in Britain by Brexit and COVID-19 — all underline the same point. Europeans cannot assume that they are immune to the political passions that have engulfed America.
Many of the elements that destabilised the US are also present in Europe — in particular, the spread of conspiracy theories, online radicalisation and extremist political movements.
The crucial missing element is Donald Trump. The fact that America’s conspiracy-theorist in chief is also president makes the country’s situation uniquely dangerous. It was Trump’s efforts to overturn the election that motivated crackpots from all over America to descend on the nation’s capital and storm Congress.
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FBI warns of plans for armed protests around US next week
By Colleen Long, Michael Balsamo and Michael Kunzelman
Updated January 12, 2021 — 7.22amfirst published at 7.17am
Washington: The FBI is warning of plans for armed protests at all 50 state capitals and in Washington DC in the days leading up to US President-election Joe Biden's inauguration, stoking fears of more bloodshed after last week's deadly siege at the Capitol.
An internal FBI bulletin warned that, as of Sunday, the nationwide protests may start later this week and extend through Biden’s January 20 inauguration, according to two law enforcement officials who read details of the memo to The Associated Press. Investigators believe some of the people are members of some extremist groups, the officials said. The bulletin was first reported by the American ABC.
“Armed protests are being planned at all 50 state capitols from 16 January through at least 20 January, and at the US Capitol from 17 January through 20 January,” the bulletin said, according to one official. The officials were not authorised to speak publicly and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.
The FBI issued at least one other bulletin — they go out to law enforcement nationwide on the topic — before the riots last week. On December 29, it warned of the potential for armed demonstrators targeting legislatures, the second official said.
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FBI warns of armed protests as Homeland Security chief quits
By Colleen Long, Michael Balsamo and Michael Kunzelman
Updated January 12, 2021 — 10.07amfirst published at 7.17am
Washington: The FBI is warning of plans for armed protests at all 50 state capitals and in Washington DC in the days leading up to US President-election Joe Biden's inauguration, stoking fears of more bloodshed after last week's deadly siege at the Capitol.
This comes as Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf gave notice of his resignation, the latest senior Trump administration official to resign following last week's deadly mob attack on the U.S. Capitol.
His move comes nine days ahead of President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration.
Wolf announced that his resignation was effective as of midnight, Washington local time, a decision he said was prompted by several court rulings challenging the validity of his appointment to lead Homeland Security.
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House to vote on impeaching Trump, FBI warns of ‘uprising’
House Democrats have introduced an article of impeachment against Donald Trump, accusing him of inciting an insurrection and announced a vote will be held on impeaching the President on Thursday (AEDT).
On Wednesday, the House will vote on a resolution demanding Vice President Mike Pence invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Mr Trump from office, Democrat leaders have confirmed.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said she plans to reconvene the full House for a vote on the 25th Amendment resolution, and if approved and Mr. Pence doesn’t act to remove Mr. Trump from office within 24 hours, the House will proceed to impeachment.
It comes as the FBI warned of possible armed protests at all 50 state Capitols starting January 16 and lasting through Inauguration Day on January 20. The Agency sent a memo to law enforcement agencies that also warned an armed group had threatened to travel to Washington, the same day and stage an uprising if Congress removed President Donald Trump from office, US media report.
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Capitol mob sees itself as fighting for democracy
Lucy Cane
The world looked upon the siege of the US Capitol last week with shock and horror. Many are concerned about the possible death of American democracy and allege that President Donald Trump has led the country away from democratic values. However, the US was far from an exemplary democratic system before Trump rose to power. In fact, many of his supporters understand themselves to be defending democracy, rather than trashing it. How can this be?
The US political system has always had anti-democratic features that were intentionally built into its constitution at the founding. Founders such as James Madison defended the US constitution precisely because it promised to avoid what he called a “pure democracy”. Concerned about populist uprisings in the states, the drafters of the constitution wanted to keep power in the hands of a wealthy, educated elite. To do so, they ensured only one part of the federal government — the House of Representatives — would be directly elected by the people. Senators, federal judges, and the president were all to be appointed in various ways, not elected. The founders also designed a complex system of separated powers to prevent the unrestrained rule of the majority party in the House.
Some counter-democratic features of the constitution have been amended. For instance, since ratification of the 17th Amendment in 1913, senators are elected by the people, not appointed. The president is also now elected by the people, albeit through the controversial Electoral College system rather than by a national popular vote.” The franchise has also been extended to include women and people of colour. However, US history has not been a story of the continual expansion of democracy. Over recent decades the US has suffered various democratic erosions that have stoked political disillusionment on the left and the right.
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House Democrats Briefed On 3 Terrifying Plots To Overthrow Government
One plot includes surrounding the Capitol and murdering Democrats to allow Republicans to take control of the government.
WASHINGTON ― Capitol Police briefed Democrats on Monday night about three more potentially gruesome demonstrations planned in the coming days, with one plot to encircle the U.S. Capitol and assassinate Democrats and some Republicans.
On a private call Monday night, new leaders of the Capitol Police told House Democrats they were closely monitoring three separate plans that could pose serious threats to members of Congress as Washington prepares for Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration on Jan. 20.
The first is a demonstration billed as the “largest armed protest ever to take place on American soil.”
Another is a protest in honor of Ashli Babbitt, the woman killed while trying to climb into the Speaker’s Lobby during Wednesday’s pro-Trump siege of the Capitol.
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'Threat to democracy is real': MPs call for social media code of conduct
By David Crowe and Nick Bonyhady
January 12, 2021 — 7.04pm
Social media companies would have to sign up to an Australian code of conduct on the way they silence free speech and shut down accounts, under a federal push for greater oversight after Twitter and Facebook suspended posts by US President Donald Trump.
Liberal MPs called for the voluntary code as a practical first step to introduce transparency and accountability to public debate on the online platforms, while raising the prospect of passing new federal laws to mandate the code if necessary.
The calls put an early proposal on the agenda within the federal Coalition party room as cabinet ministers express frustration at Twitter's move to take down Mr Trump's account but struggle to name a policy solution to the private company's control of the content posted on its site.
Acting Prime Minister Michael McCormack has slammed Twitter's move and questioned why the company took down Mr Trump's tweets when it would not remove a Chinese Foreign Ministry tweet last year that showed an Australian soldier holding a knife to a young child's throat.
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Markets wrestle with an imminent spending spree from Biden's Democrats
Stephen Bartholomeusz
Senior business columnist
January 12, 2021 — 12.02pm
The outcome of the run-off Senate election in Georgia last week has changed the dynamics of not just US politics but also financial markets.
That election, which improbably gave the Democrats the slimmest of majorities in the Senate and therefore control of both chambers of Congress, has transformed investor perceptions of what the Biden administration might be able to achieve in its initial period in government.
Where previously it appeared unlikely Biden would be able to overcome Republican opposition in the Senate to add to the $US900 billion of pandemic-related stimulus Congress passed late last year, now markets are factoring in another $US1 trillion of aid and Biden is himself talking about a multi-trillion-dollar package.
Vice President–elect Kamala Harris’ casting vote in the Senate also opens the door to the Democrat agenda on infrastructure, clean energy and more spending on health and social welfare programs. In the next two years, ahead of the mid-terms in 2022, the US could embark on a near-unprecedented spending spree.
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House introduces article of impeachment against Donald Trump
By Matthew Knott
Updated January 12, 2021 — 11.23amfirst published at 4.19am
Washington: Congressional Democrats have formally launched their push to remove Donald Trump from office in the last days of his presidency by introducing a single article of impeachment accusing him of inciting insurrection over a violent attack on the US Capitol last week.
The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives is expected to vote to impeach Trump as early as Thursday (AEDT). If they are successful, Trump would become the only president in US history to be impeached twice.
"In protecting our Constitution and our Democracy, we will act with urgency, because this President represents an imminent threat to both," Pelosi wrote to her fellow House Democrats on Monday (AEDT).
Thousands of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol last week, forcing the Congress members who were certifying President-elect Joe Biden's election victory into hiding.
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'The Capitol grounds are a crime scene': 170 investigated for riots
By Sarah N. Lynch
January 13, 2021 — 8.44am
Washington: The US Justice Department has opened criminal investigations of more than 170 individuals on their involvement in the riot at the Capitol by President Donald Trump's supporters, and investigators are working toward charging people with assault and seditious conspiracy.
"I think the scope and scale of this investigation and these cases are really unprecedented, not only in FBI history, but probably Department of Justice history," Acting U.S. Attorney Michael Sherwin said in a press briefing on Wednesday (AEDT)
"The Capitol grounds outside and inside are... a crime scene."
Sherwin said 70 criminal cases have been filed to date. While many of them involve people whose photos went viral on social media, such as Richard Barnett pictured sitting at the desk of a staffer of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, he said more serious charges are coming and a grand jury has been reviewing the cases.
"We're looking at significant felony cases tied to sedition and conspiracy," Sherwin said, noting his office has launched a strike force whose marching orders are to build criminal cases around such charges.
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Unwed mothers paid terrible price for 'perverse morality': Irish PM
By Jill Lawless
January 13, 2021 — 8.05am
Dublin: Ireland’s prime minister said on Wednesday(AEDT) that the country must “face up to the full truth of our past,” as a long-awaited report recounted decades of harm done by church-run homes for unmarried women and their babies, where thousands of infants died.
Prime Minister Micheal Martin said young women and their children had paid a heavy price for Ireland’s “perverse religious morality” in past decades.
“We had a completely warped attitude to sexuality and intimacy. Young mothers and their sons and daughters paid a terrible price for that dysfunction,” he said.
Martin said he would make a formal apology on behalf of the state in Ireland's parliament.
The final report of an inquiry into the mother-and-baby homes said that 9,000 children died in 18 different mother-and-baby homes during the 20th century. Fifteen percent of all children in the homes died, almost double the nationwide infant mortality rate, the report said. Major causes included respiratory infections and gastroenteritis, otherwise known as the stomach flu.
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FBI opens more than 160 cases over riots, tightens inauguration security
The FBI has opened more than 160 case files in connection with last week’s deadly pro-Trump riot at the US Capitol, officials have said, announcing that prosecutors are looking at bringing potential seditious conspiracy charges against members of the mob.
Officials from the FBI and Justice Department are giving politicians their first formal briefings on the riot at the Capitol. Notably absent are their bosses — Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and FBI Director Christopher Wray — who have kept a very low public profile for almost a week.
It came as the top uniformed officers of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, National Guard and Space Force said in a message to the entire US military that last week’s Capitol attack was “a direct assault on the US Congress, the Capitol building, and our constitutional process.”
The unusual message from the Joint Chiefs of Staff represented the first unified military statement about last Wednesday’s assault.
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Conservatives need a dose of moral clarity
Yes, the left does bad things too but Conservatives are supposed to believe in objective moral truth.
By Gerard Baker
· From The Wall Street Journal
January 12, 2021
It’s a measure of the depravity to which America’s national political conversation has fallen that however bad one side’s latest transgression against norms, morality or the law, there’s always something it can point to that the other side did first. The earlier outrage may not exactly justify the latest offence. But by reminding an already highly partisan audience that there is prior sinfulness in the actions of your opponents, you can dilute the negative public impact of your own wrongdoing or, at a minimum, apply some balm to a troubled private conscience.
This equivalence play, or “whataboutism,” can, if we’re not careful, neuter all efforts to hold our leaders’ actions to some objective standard. It inflicts on all judgments the terminal paralysis of moral relativism. As with the widespread undermining of objective factual truth in recent years, so the erosion of the idea of objective moral truth steadily weakens the foundations of political and civil community and softens us up for a final descent into the invented truths of totalitarianism.
In the wake of last week’s violent incursion at the US Capitol, President Donald Trump’s supporters have been working overtime on the moral-equivalence shift.
Sure, the President’s claims of a stolen election are dubious, but they’re nothing worse than what Democrats and the media did for four years in promoting the false Russia-collusion story, refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of the Trump presidency, and trying to destroy it.
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Far right Trump supporters ‘will greet Biden with armed show of force’
David Charter | Henry Zeffman, Washington
Wednesday January 13 2021, 6.30am GMT, The Times
Members of the US Congress have been warned that “4,000 armed patriots” are planning to descend on Washington to disrupt Joe Biden’s inauguration amid anger among President Trump’s supporters over attempts to remove him.
Democratic politicians were told that plots were being discussed on right-wing internet sites to prevent them from attending the swearing-in a week today despite 15,000 national guardsmen being called up to defend the ceremony and the city. There were at least four plots involving potential assaults on the Capitol, White House and Supreme Court, they were told.
The threats are being taken seriously after warnings went unheeded about last Wednesday’s mayhem —including specific intelligence from the FBI in Virginia that agitators were planning to wage “war” on the Capitol. Mr Biden has vowed to be sworn in on the steps like his predecessors.
Democrats and Republicans viewed as opposed to Mr Trump are facing a barrage of threats for calling on Mike Pence, the vice-president, to use powers in the constitution to remove the president and for planning a vote tonight to impeach him for inciting insurrection.
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Trump impeached for a second time
Timothy Moore and Natasha Rudra
Updated Jan 14, 2021 – 9.17am, first published at 12.54am
Key Points
- Donald Trump will suffer the ignominy of being impeached twice today
- At least five House Republicans have said they will cross the floor to vote for the impeachment
Pinned post – 8.05am
Trump impeached for a second time
Timothy Moore
The House of Representatives voted 232 in favour of impeaching President Donald Trump. There were 197 members who voted against doing so. As a result, Mr Trump becomes the first president ever to be impeached twice.
Mr Trump was in the Oval Office as the House of Representatives voted to impeach him, according to AP.
Those who voted in favour included 10 Republicans. All 222 Democrats who voted, voted in favour.
The US President is on the verge of being impeached for a second time in a fast-moving House vote, just a week after a mob of his supporters stormed the US Capitol.
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Republicans accused of giving Capitol tours to insurrectionists
Luke Broadwater
Jan 14, 2021 – 7.55am
Washington | Democratic members of Congress on Wednesday (Thursday AEDT) accused unnamed Republicans of giving tours of the Capitol to insurrectionists ahead of last week's deadly siege of the Capitol, as federal agencies opened two new investigations into the extent to which Capitol Police and far-right lawmakers were complicit in the mob attack.
The inspector general of the Capitol Police is opening a potentially wide-ranging investigation into security breaches connected to the siege that could determine the extent to which some Capitol Police officers were involved, according to a senior congressional aide with direct knowledge of the investigation. The inspector general will suspend all other projects until the investigation is complete, the aide said.
Three officers have been suspended, and 17 others are under investigation by the force's Office of Professional Responsibility.
The Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan federal watchdog agency, has also signalled it will open an investigation that will include the roles that members of Congress may have played in inciting the mob seeking to overturn the results of the election, according to the congressman who requested the inquiry, Representative Jason Crow, a Democrat from Colorado.
Crow, a former Army captain, asked the comptroller general of the United States, who is part of the agency, last week to initiate a broad investigation into many aspects of the security breach, including the roles members of Congress played.
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https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/trump-is-blowing-apart-the-republican-party-20210114-p56txx
Trump is blowing apart the Republican Party
My No. 1 wish for America today is for the Republican Party to fracture, splitting off the principled Republicans from the unprincipled Republicans and Trump cultists.
Thomas L. Friedman
Jan 14, 2021 – 6.07am
When all the facts come out about the treasonous attack on the US Capitol inspired by President Donald Trump, impeaching him three times won't feel sufficient. Consider this Washington Post headline from Monday: "Video Shows Capitol Mob Dragging Police Officer Down Stairs. One Rioter Beat the Officer With a Pole Flying the US Flag."
That said, while I want Trump out — and I don't mind him being silenced at such a tense time — I'm not sure I want him permanently off Twitter and Facebook. There's important work that I need Trump to perform in his post-presidency, and I need him to have proper megaphones to do it. It's to blow apart this Republican Party.
My No. 1 wish for America today is for this Republican Party to fracture, splitting off the principled Republicans from the unprincipled Republicans and Trump cultists. That would be a blessing for America for two reasons.
First, because it could actually end the gridlock in Congress and enable us to do some big things on infrastructure, education and health care that would help ALL Americans — not the least those in Trump's camp, who are there precisely because they feel ignored, humiliated and left behind.
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The secret plan for countering China: Trump should have followed his own strategy
By Anthony Galloway
January 13, 2021 — 4.15pm
A highly sensitive document outlining the United States' strategy for the Indo-Pacific represented a strong blueprint for the region but Donald Trump never followed it.
The declassified document outlines how the US and its allies, including Australia, should defend against the threat of a rising China.
Dated February 2018, the strategy was previously classified "secret" and "not for foreign nationals".
It was supposed to be released in 2043 but instead was declassified by the Trump administration last week and released on Wednesday afternoon Australian time.
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FBI has opened over 160 cases tied to pro-Trump Capitol riot
· The Wall Street Journal
America’s military leadership has denounced last week’s storming of the US Capitol by a pro-Trump mob as a plot to overthrow the government, while federal prosecutors said they were examining more than 160 cases and weighing sedition charges in some of them.
The resolute stance from the country’s top military and law-enforcement institutions comes as Washington grapples with continuing security concerns and threats of violence centred around next week’s inauguration of president-elect Joe Biden, a Democrat. The overrunning of the Capitol drew widening criticism from politicians and others, who said federal authorities weren’t prepared for the possibility of violence last week.
The Tuesday (Wednesday AEDT) statement from the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the heads of the branches of the US military called the January 6 assault, in which a violent, pro-Trump mob forcibly entered the Capitol where politicians were certifying Mr Biden’s presidential victory, “a direct assault on the U.S. Congress, the Capitol building, and our constitutional process.”
The statement also knocked back unfounded claims of some Republican politicians and Trump supporters that he was the election’s actual winner, an unusual situation for a military that typically steers clear of domestic politics.
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America’s political crisis runs deeper than ideology
You can only counter the legacy of Trump if you first grasp why he was so potent to start with.
Gillian Tett Contributor
Jan 14, 2021 – 2.01pm
It’s just two months since former US president Barack Obama solemnly told The Atlantic magazine that his country was “entering into an epistemological crisis”. “If we do not have the capacity to distinguish what’s true from what’s false, then by definition the marketplace of ideas doesn’t work,” he declared. “And by definition our democracy doesn’t work.”
How true those words now seem. America and the wider world – is still reeling in horror at the vicious political chasm exposed by the violence in the US Capitol in Washington last week. But with the reckoning of those events under way, it has become clear that this is not just an ideological fight.
As Obama earlier suggested, this is also a battle around knowledge and thought that has been escalating since Donald Trump hit the presidential campaign trail in 2015. Future historians may conclude that one of Trump’s largest legacies was to expose and crystallise this struggle.
The national reaction to the Washington attacks is only the latest example. Democrats and those who belong to the country’s educated elites have generally portrayed the assault in terms of an abuse of the constitution, which needs to be countered by logic and law.
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https://www.afr.com/politics/beware-the-anti-trump-tyrants-20210113-p56tvx
Beware the anti-Trump tyrants
John Roskam Columnist
Jan 14, 2021 – 1.43pm
The year recently ended revealed that the authoritarian impulse is never very far from the surface. It may lay dormant for a time but it never goes away. Here in Australia, and indeed around the world, their response to COVID-19 revealed politicians and bureaucrats eager to grasp every opportunity to take control of other people's lives. When presented with a range of options to manage the pandemic governments invariably chose, and continue to choose, the most draconian.
Now, in 2021, there's (for a few days still) President Donald Trump. Whether his tweets last week intentionally, negligently or even accidentally incited the violence and tragedy of the invasion of the Capitol Building in Washington is for the moment beside the point. The nature of Trump's presidency and its effect on America and democratic politics in other countries too is a separate topic.
Donald Trump's Twitter ban decision is wrong – but a private company is entitled to make it.
What's relevant in the context of a discussion about authoritarian impulses is the reaction that Trump has provoked. In the space of a few days we've gone from his initial tweets, to Trump as president of the United States for whom 74 million Americans voted being banned by social media companies, to calls in Australia for the censorship of the internet to prevent the dissemination of "dubious advice and outright lies", to now Malcolm Turnbull demanding the Morrison government stop members of parliament from debating the benefits of wearing masks and the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.
It's ironic that so many of those who complain about Donald Trump's supposedly authoritarian tendencies are so eager to suggest solutions more authoritarian than anything Trump could ever have contemplated.
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https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/trump-s-humiliating-exit-20210114-p56u69
Trump's humiliating exit
Jacob Greber United States correspondent
Jan 14, 2021 – 7.39pm
Donald Trump's tumultuous term is ending as it began amid chaos and controversy after becoming the first president to be impeached twice in a devastating bipartisan rebuke that could see him barred from ever returning to the White House.
As Mr Trump for the first time condemned the violent mob that stormed and sacked the Capitol in his name a week ago, Washington was thrown into further tumult as one of the president's staunchest enablers and supporters opened the door to convicting him in a Senate trial on inciting insurrection.
Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate Majority Leader, said he had not made a final decision on how he would vote following Wednesday's (Thursday AEDT) historic House impeachment.
"I intend to listen to the legal arguments when they are presented to the Senate,” Senator McConnell said in a message to party colleagues, an excerpt of which was released by his office.
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Revenge of the bottom half: Biden's spending blitz spells trouble for the rich
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Updated January 15, 2021 — 9.06amfirst published at 8.42am
We know more or less what will pop the US equity bubble in the end, with inevitable fallout across the world. It is called a taper tantrum. We have had the first taste of it over the last week.
Every time since the Lehman crisis that the US Federal Reserve has tried to dial down quantitative easing (QE) and restore normality, it has been forced to beat a hasty retreat. It famously happened under Ben Bernanke in 2013 when tough talk sent the emerging market universe into a tailspin.
It happened again in 2018 when Jay Powell said the US economy was strong enough to withstand quantitative tightening (reverse QE) on "auto-pilot". Wall Street fell out of bed. European bourses slumped in sympathy. Asian credit markets shuddered.
Each time reminded us that the Fed is a superpower central bank unlike any other, the giver and taker of global dollar liquidity, the arbiter of international borrowing rates.
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Generations will discuss Trump’s descent into madness
Schoolchildren, decades from now, will ask their teacher: What went wrong with him at the end?
January 14, 2021
The impeachment of Donald Trump for the second time is the climax of an astonishing post-election meltdown which will be discussed by presidential historians for generations.
Trump’s trajectory from election night on 3 November, where he seemed the likely winner in early counting to the ignominy of his current predicament is a riches to rags tale.
Trump’s impeachment is the direct result of an appallingly misjudged speech that will haunt him for the rest of his life.
But that speech and the crowd’s violent response to it at the Capitol building was also the culmination of months of bad behaviour by Trump which has bordered on loopy and deranged.
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https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/biden-s-plan-to-fix-a-broken-america-20210114-p56u63
Biden's plan to fix a broken America
Joe Biden's pathway to success – and America’s by extension – is narrow and fraught. But it does exist.
Jacob Greber United States correspondent
Jan 15, 2021 – 8.01pm
Chaos begets chaos. Escalation invites retaliation and retribution. Ugliness dominates headlines and imaginations.
The past 10 days in America have been some of the bleakest in its 248 years since independence from Britain.
Fuelled by an industrial scale unhingement as a tumultuous presidency crashes towards history’s exit, what’s left is a Washington besieged; troops garrisoned in the Capitol for the first time since the Civil War; streets blockaded by law enforcement, and through it all, a sense of impending doom at what the coming week might bring as Joe Biden prepares for inauguration.
Friends and acquaintances who have visited downtown in recent days tell me it’s a resolutely bleak place. They’re struggling to remember what life was like down there before COVID-19 and the ravages of riots and political insurrection. They can’t wait for it to be over.
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Washington sends Xi a quiet message not to touch Taiwan
While the world was distracted by Trump's antics, American planners were developing a strategy to push back against Beijing in the South China Sea.
Laura Tingle Columnist
Jan 15, 2021 – 4.09pm
When Donald Trump shocked the Washington establishment – and much of the world – by getting himself elected as United States President four years ago, the message from diplomats and foreign policy analysts both in Australia and the United States was one of quiet reassurance.
No matter how flaky the president might look (and, remember, this was in the days before anyone realised that he wasn’t just likely to be flaky but sometimes dangerous), the institutions of government and diplomacy would grind on to plot a steady path through a dangerous world.
As what seemed an unending turnover of senior staff in the White House, and open warfare with agency heads continued unabated, it was hard to believe that steady path was possible, let alone happening.
Now, the turmoil – at least in the White House itself – is set to stop with the inauguration of Joe Biden as the 46th President on Thursday morning Australian time.
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Trump and his legacy 'diminished' among Australian conservatives
By David Crowe
January 16, 2021 — 12.00am
Donald Trump has always had his supporters on the conservative side of Australian politics, but he is a disgraced and diminished figure after the insurrection at the United States Capitol.
Many Australians who could agree with Trump on some things – tax cuts, most of all – see him very differently after he falsely claimed electoral fraud and incited a violent mob to march on the Congress.
“Trump and his legacy have been severely diminished,” NSW Liberal senator and retired army major general Jim Molan says.
Another Liberal, Andrew Bragg, is especially damning of the US President in the light of the physical damage to democratic institutions in Washington, DC.
“Most mainstream liberals and conservatives would be shocked by the scenes in Washington,” Bragg, also a NSW Liberal senator, says.
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Joe Biden has America, and world, on his shoulders
The presidential inauguration of Joe Biden is imminent. Intense controversy about the election, and the mob assault on the Capitol, is set to climax in the second impeachment of Donald Trump. But that drama aside, what should be your priorities, if you were Biden? What should be your first order of business and what should be your political strategy?
This is a good thought experiment for us as Australians, because a great deal hangs on the condition and viability of the American republic. Its strength and its international role have underwritten the security and growing prosperity of the global order since 1945. If it falters or withdraws into its shell, the implications for us are serious. We got a foretaste of that in 2020, as the Chinese Communist Party attempted to make us bow to its will.
To paraphrase president Kennedy, however, ask yourself not what Joe Biden can do for us but what he can do for his country — and its global role. Depending on your worldview and political leanings, you are likely to have widely differing opinions about this — from the passionately left-wing to the defensively conservative. But whatever your initial notions, the thought experiment requires that you put yourself in his position and think in responsible ways.
Suppose you’re somewhere on the green left of the political spectrum. You might respond: push through sweeping gun law reform, abolish Republican and racist gerrymandering, confer statehood on Washington DC and Puerto Rico, overhaul campaign finance, launch a Green New Deal, undertake police reform across the board, re-enter the Paris Agreement on climate and then some, re-establish good relations with allies and restore calm in relations with China; introduce steeply progressive income tax, strengthen Obamacare — oh and, of course, rejoin the WHO, quash the pandemic in the US itself, set up a new national and then international early warning system for disease control and subsidise vaccination for the poorer countries of the world. How’s that, for a start?
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Covid mutations the biggest risk to markets: Hamish Douglass
Hamish Douglass has defended the recent performance of his Magellan Global Fund after it failed to keep up with a sharp rise in the market in the final two months of the year, and warned that the assumptions underpinning record share prices leave little margin for error.
In his latest global strategy update, the chairman, CIO and lead portfolio manager of Magellan said he wouldn’t “lose sleep” after “missing out on some of this short-term rally”.
Since inception in July 2007, the Magellan Global Fund has returned 11.5 per cent per annum versus 6.8 per cent for its benchmark MSCI World Net Total Return in Australian dollars.
But in the year to December 2020, the fund was flat while its benchmark rose 5.6 per cent.
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https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/four-rules-that-should-guide-bidenomics-20210116-p56ukl
Four rules that should guide Bidenomics
Smart government spending can be effective, do not obsess about debt, do not worry about inflation and do not expect Republicans to help in any way.
Paul Krugman
Jan 16, 2021 – 8.17am
Here we go again. For the second time in 12 years a newly elected Democratic president is inheriting an economy in deep distress. And while it's hard to focus on such things after last week's Trumpist putsch, a lot depends on whether Joe Biden's plan to deal with our economic woes is effective.
The narrow Democratic margin in Congress means that the most ambitious progressive goals will have to be put on hold. But the rescue package Biden unveiled on Thursday (Friday AEDT) already indicates he won't exhibit the excessive caution that inhibited President Barack Obama's response to economic crisis.
Still, in case anyone on the Biden team is feeling cautious, let me offer four rules, based on hard experience, that should encourage them to be bold in dealing with the mess we're in.
Rule No. 1: Don't doubt the power of government to help. The last time Democrats took the White House, they were still in something of a reflexive cringe, halfway accepting the conservative dogma that government always does more harm than good. But everything that has happened since 2009 says that government spending can be hugely beneficial.
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FBI warns of more armed violence across US over inauguration
· The Times
The FBI has warned of “extensive” planning for protests as the US braces for the possibility of nationwide violence around Joe Biden’s inauguration.
Christopher Wray, director of the FBI, sought to assuage fears that law enforcement will be caught out as badly as when President Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol last week.
Mr Biden will be sworn in as US president on Wednesday (Thursday Australian time) in front of the Capitol, two weeks after far-right agitators laid siege to the complex, leading to six deaths and more than 100 injuries.
At a briefing with Mike Pence, the US Vice-President, whom some of the rioters wanted to see hanged, Mr Wray said the FBI was “seeing an extensive amount of concerning online chatter”. He warned of “potential armed protests”, both in Washington DC and state capitals.
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North Korea parades new sub-launched missile
· AFP
Nuclear-armed North Korea has unveiled a new submarine-launched ballistic missile at a military parade in Pyongyang in a show of strength to the incoming Biden administration.
The display came after the five-yearly congress of the ruling Workers Party of Korea, where leader Kim Jong-un decried the US as his country’s “foremost principal enemy”.
Kim oversaw the parade on Thursday night, wearing a black leather coat and fur hat as he watched infantry troops, artillery, tanks, and a fly-past with aircraft forming the number “8” to commemorate the party meeting.
“The world’s most powerful weapon, submarine-launch ballistic missile, entered the square one after another, powerfully demonstrating the might of the revolutionary armed forces,” the official Korean Central News Agency said on Friday.
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I look forward to comments on all this!
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David.
