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I have to say somehow the World seems so much calmer with Trump out of the White House! Sadly for the US both economically and virus wise they are still really in a terribly deep hole! In good news he virus does seem to be waning.
In the UK vaccination against COVID seems to be off and rolling in earnest. Now to see if it really works!
In Australia we had the start of parliament last week and all the usual items were under discussion and unresolved! Really it is sad just how slowly things progress it seems.
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Major Issues.
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https://www.afr.com/markets/equity-markets/the-game-is-not-over-20210131-p56y5s
The game is far from over
GameStop is a harbinger of an unpredictable year ahead. Those viewing the world through traditional lenses should pay heed.
Grant Wilson Contributor
Jan 31, 2021 – 12.05pm
A month ago we advised against putting too much emphasis on traditional means of forecasting and measuring risk, and to keep an open mind into 2021.
The wild events of last week only bolster this perspective. The S&P 500 achieved a new all-time high during Tuesday’s session. The next day VIX was testing 40, and 23.5 billion shares were traded, the highest volume day recorded since 2008.
This had nothing to do with the virus or the vaccine rollout. Nor was there a classic January shock such as the Swiss National Bank’s decision to depeg the franc from the euro in 2015, which blew up a series of retail FX brokers around the world.
This was something new.
The closest parallel is the epic squeeze in Volkswagen’s stock in October 2008, when markets were already in a state of GFC-induced distress. But that was principally a corporate play, in which Porsche effectively cornered the free float, forced hedge funds to cover, and then orchestrated a merger in the following year.
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Why cancelling Aunty would endanger our democracy
Right-wing critics ignore that the Trump riots may never have happened if the US had a taxpayer-funded independent national broadcaster like the ABC.
Joseph Gersh Contributor
Jan 31, 2021 – 12.35pm
Critics of the ABC, including the Federal Communications Minister Paul Fletcher, have attacked the headline (since amended) of an online article detailing Australia Day events. The article included events marking what for many has become known as “Invasion Day”.
Do these critics suggest that the ABC ignores such events or a debate that has been conducted across the entire community , and about which opinions widely differ?
No inappropriate instructions appear to have been issued issued to staff, and no political position has been adopted by the ABC. Yet critics were quick to hit their keyboards. Curiously, some who argue the ABC ought be privatised on principle now say it ought be privatised as “punishment” for perceived sins. Both reasons are wrong.
Two weeks ago it was former communications minister Richard Alston (The Australian Financial Review, January 12) who argued that there is no one in the federal parliament who favours privatising, gutting or defunding the ABC. This notion, apparently, is a “straw person trotted out by the ABC to distract criticism of its real shortcomings”.
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Liberal stalwart Kevin Andrews loses Menzies preselection to Keith Wolahan
Conservative stalwart Kevin Andrews has lost a preselection challenge from former SAS commando Keith Wolahan in his Victorian seat of Menzies, ending the 30 year-long Liberal veteran’s parliamentary career and damaging the Coalition’s hard- right flank.
Mr Andrews was defeated in a ballot of local Liberal Party members on Sunday 181 votes to 111.
The former defence and immigration minister went into the ballot with endorsements from Scott Morrison, Josh Frydenberg and former prime ministers John Howard and Tony Abbott.
The Treasurer himself attended the preselection in Ivanhoe.
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Commando’s victory is a defining moment for the Liberal Party
Aaron Patrick Senior correspondent
Feb 1, 2021 – 12.42pm
Liberal Party members who participated in the first removal of a sitting federal MP in Victoria in a generation said there was a moment when they realised Kevin Andrews was toast.
Sounding frustrated and defensive as he sought to keep his privileged position, Andrews cited the heavy responsibility of being defence minister in 2015, when Australian soldiers were fighting in Afghanistan, according to party sources.
Andrews’ opponent, Keith Wolahan, had a neat comeback, they said: he was a platoon leader in Afghanistan for the 2nd Commando Regiment.
The unit was involved in heavy fighting. One of its members, Tasmanian Cameron Baird, won the Victoria Cross for storming, three times, a building held by the Taliban, who killed him.
(Andrews’ office didn’t respond to a request for comment.)
Despite receiving explicit support from Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, who regards himself as leader of Victoria’s modest collection of federal Liberal MPs, Andrews was trounced by the soldier-turned-barrister 181-111 in the suburban Melbourne seat of Menzies, which has been branch-stacked for years.
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Why Australia is leading the China pushback
It’s about convincing Washington that because Canberra now squats in the dugout of the ‘new Cold War’, it cannot possibly abandon its ally at this anxious hour.
James Curran Columnist
Jan 31, 2021 – 12.19pm
When the outgoing Trump administration unexpectedly declassified its “top-secret” Strategic Framework for the Indo-Pacific last month, some Australian commentators quickly claimed credit for Canberra’s influence in shaping a tougher US-China policy.
Their judgment appeared rewarded when Axios quoted a former senior US official saying that Australia was “ahead of the curve” in understanding Chinese influence operations and domestic interference. Indeed, Canberra was elevated as the “pioneer” in awakening American eyes to the China threat.
That document represented the view of the Republican “adults”. Trump, then distracted by aftershocks of the Capitol riot, couldn’t squabble over who deserved credit for the policy. So his former National Security Adviser HR McMaster claimed it.
This designation of Australia’s pioneering role raises several significant questions.
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How economics could get better at solving real world problems
Ross Gittins
Economics Editor
February 1, 2021 — 12.00am
The study of economics has lost its way because economists have laboured for decades to make their social science more mathematical and thus more like a physical science. They’ve failed to see that what they should have been doing is deepening their understanding of how the behaviour of “economic agents” (aka humans) is driven by them being social animals.
In short, to be of more use to humanity, economics should have become more of a social science, not less.
This is the conclusion I draw from the sweeping criticism of modern economics made by two leading British economics professors, John Kay and Mervyn King, in their book, Radical Uncertainty: Decision-making for an unknowable future.
But don’t hold your breath waiting for economists to see the error of their ways. There are two kinds of economists: academic economists and practising economists, who work for banks, businesses and particularly governments or, these days, are self-employed as “economic consultants”.
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Looking through the fog of time for a way out of the chaos
Columnist and former adviser to Labor prime ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard.
January 31, 2021 — 11.59pm
Last week I read an account of London on the day in 2005 that bombs exploded on three trains and one double-decker bus, and 52 people were killed. One of the least important consequences was that people had to walk home from work that day – for many of them that meant three hours or more. It was, wrote the correspondent, like a movie “in which an entire city’s population is drawn into the streets by some mysterious magnetic force”. This was compelling, but the detail that struck me was that kiosks selling A-Z street directories sold out in minutes. Suddenly, everybody had to navigate, and nobody had any way to do so.
In art, and in columns like the one you’re reading, the observation that technology has changed things (look at those quaint people sending faxes) is trite. But encountering the proof of this in a primary document is invigorating, because of the connection it opens up between us and these strange people of the past, with all their strange assumptions, which in turn throw light on our own: in this case, that terrorism seems quite normal, while street directories seem odd. There is a kind of tender pity that flows in two directions: towards those people in the past, with their ignorance of what is coming, and towards our current selves, for having to live through what has come.
The description of London is from a book, Beyond the Newsroom, by former press gallery journalist Geoff Kitney. In another column, he wrote about John Howard taking over as opposition leader in 1985. Howard had previously struggled to become leader because of a “conflict of ideas”; now the conflict had turned his way. Reading this gave me a similar jolt as reading about the street directories. Last week there was some excitement about the Labor leadership, with several possible candidates mentioned. But in none of the dispatches I read was there any sense that those names might justify their inclusion on the basis of a “conflict of ideas”.
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Palmer leads list of big donors to federal political parties
By David Crowe and Nick Bonyhady
February 1, 2021 — 11.14am
Five big donors increased their influence in federal politics last year by making 46 per cent of all donations in a period that saw a fall in overall funding to $18 million.
Mining magnate Clive Palmer led the list of big spenders with $5.9 million in donations to his United Australia Party in the year to June 30, adding to at least $83.5 million the previous year to fight the last election.
He was followed by packaging billionaire Anthony Pratt, whose company gave $1.3 million to the Liberal Party and $250,000 to the Nationals, as well as $20,000 to Labor.
Gas company Woodside Energy donated $110,000 each to Liberal and Labor as well as $55,000 to the Nationals and smaller amounts to all three parties, possibly for attendance at events.
The Centre for Public Integrity, a non-profit group seeking reform to donations laws, estimated Woodside’s overall donations at $335,415.
Macquarie Group donated $251,230, spread across the major parties, and the Australian Hotels Association gave $232,301, according to the tally by the centre.
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Newspoll: Scott Morrison support dips, Labor’s best result in six months
Popular support for Prime Minister Scott Morrison has dipped in a new opinion poll that shows Labor’s best result in six months.
Jade Gailberger
NCA NewsWire
February 1, 20219:13am
Popular support for Prime Minister Scott Morrison has dipped as Labor prepares to ramp up its attack on the government over jobs and the nation’s economic recovery from the pandemic.
A new opinion poll shows competition between the two major parties has tightened to 50-50 after the Coalition lost its one point lead to Labor.
The development follows Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese last week unveiling his new frontbench ahead of the next election that could be held as early as August.
It is the first time since August last year that both parties sit at 50 on a two-party preferred basis, according to the YouGov poll.
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https://www.ausdoc.com.au/news/should-ama-and-racgp-donate-political-parties
Should the AMA and RACGP donate to political parties?
Will it win friends and influence people as it has with the Pharmacy Guild of Australia which donated more than $200,000 in 2019/20?
1st February 2021
The Pharmacy Guild of Australia has again spent more on political donations than any other organisation in health, despite cutting its spend by two thirds on last year.
After splurging more than $700,000 in the previous financial year, which included a federal election, the lobby group for pharmacy owners donated $210,000 in 2019-20.
But many other regular political donors apparently said pass, or at least kept under the disclosure threshold of $14,000.
Pathology Australia and Healius were not listed in the Australian Electoral Commission’s donations data.
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Australia’s politicians must get to know the neighbours
When other democracies are watching see how we manage China, it is odd that Australia is looking so far away for inspiration.
Richard McGregor Columnist
Feb 1, 2021 – 12.50pm
The late Tim Fischer, the one-time National Party leader known for his cockie image and obsession with railways, isn’t at first blush an obvious avatar for modern Australian foreign policy.
But one of Fischer’s lesser-known obsessions provides a good antidote for the up-and-coming leaders who think they have the answer to the upheaval in Australian’s geostrategic neighbourhood.
Beijing’s illiberal turn under Xi Jinping, and the collapse of bilateral ties along with it, has prompted suggestions that Australia’s diplomatic priorities have been overly focused on China, and Asia.
The argument, that Australia should put less emphasis on the region and more on reinforcing ties with the Anglosphere and its core institution, the Five Eyes intelligence network, is a familiar one that comes around every few years.
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Apologising for China’s delinquency? We’ll be sorry
Peter Hartcher
Political and international editor
February 2, 2021 — 12.10am
For decades, we’ve been making excuses for China. Often they’re pre-emptive – we excuse Beijing’s bad behaviour even before it’s actually done something. Does this make us enablers or just apologists?
A long-standing excuse was that China was going to need more “strategic space” as it grew richer and more powerful. This was an argument whose most prominent advocates in Australia were Paul Keating and Hugh White.
The concept seemed to make sense. They argued that a rising China would want more power and should be allowed it. To accommodate this, the US needed to back off in the Pacific and create more “strategic space” in which China’s armed forces could operate more freely.
The historical and moral rationale was that the US itself had demanded more “strategic space” as it grew powerful. President James Monroe had declared the Americas to be a US sphere of influence, off limits to the great powers of Europe, in 1823, for instance, with the Monroe Doctrine.
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Give up the meat - I’ve been doing it for 50 years
By Peter Singer
January 31, 2021 — 11.55pm
Fifty years ago, together with my wife Renata, I stopped eating meat. I was a graduate student then, studying philosophy at the University of Oxford. The process that led to our decision began with a philosophy class. I had asked a question and after the class a Canadian student named Richard Keshen came up to ask what I thought of the answer I had been given.
It was lunchtime, and as the discussion looked like it might go on for some time, Richard invited me to continue it over lunch at his college. The options that day were spaghetti, with a nondescript reddish-brown sauce on top, or a salad plate. Richard asked if the sauce had meat in it, and when he was told it did, he took the salad plate. While I ate my spaghetti our discussion came to an end, and I asked Richard what his problem with meat was.
Today there would be nothing surprising about finding that your lunch companion didn’t eat meat, but I can’t recall ever meeting a vegetarian before. To become a vegetarian then, even in England, was to invite people to think of you as a crank – in fact, the best-known vegetarian restaurant in London then was called Cranks.
Richard’s answer to my question was simple and spoke directly to my own values: “I don’t think it is right,” he said, “to treat animals the way the animal whose meat you were eating just now was treated.”
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https://www.afr.com/policy/foreign-affairs/we-targeted-them-before-they-targeted-us-20210202-p56ynr
We targeted China before they targeted us
Repairing the bilateral relationship starts with owning up to the seven ways Australia singled out China for hostile treatment and provoked the reprisals against our exports.
Percy Allan Public policy economist
Feb 2, 2021 – 1.41pm
For the past nine months, China has blocked Australian exports of coal, cotton, lobsters, timber and meat while also levying anti-dumping duties on Australian wine and barley.
But we must not forget that Australia targeted China before it targeted us.
After signing the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement, which also covered investment, we:
- Blocked more than 100 Chinese imports using a dumping duty approach inconsistent with World Trade Organisation rules;
- Led the charge globally to ban Huawei from the 5G network;
- Officially condemned human rights violations in China without shaming neighbouring countries (e.g. India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, etc) for their transgressions or taking moral responsibility for our own Pacific Solution for refugees;
- Condemned China for breaching international law by seizing a disputed coral atoll in the South China Sea while ignoring Donald Trump tearing up international agreements such as the Paris Climate Change Accord, the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, the Iran Nuclear Treaty, and the Medium Range Missile Treaty;
- Banned China from promoting its interests and influence in Australia while not blocking other nations from doing so;
- Publicly requested the World Health Organisation to investigate the origins of COVID-19 after talking to the Trump administration, but not giving prior notice or let alone having any dialogue with China; and,
- Now banned virtually any investment from China or any bilateral co-operation between state governments and universities and their counterparts in China.
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Universities seek national cabinet rescue as student crisis deepens
Robert Bolton
Feb 3, 2021 – 12.01am
As many as 17,300 jobs have been lost in universities and $3.8 billion will be wiped off revenue by the end of this year, says Universities Australia, as pressure builds for national cabinet to rescue the international student market.
The Association of Australian Education Representatives in India, meanwhile, says demand for enrolments in Australia has slumped by 50 per cent while that for places at competitor universities in Britain and Canada – which have open borders for international students – has risen sharply.
And figures just released by the Department of Education show enrolments in the bellwether English Language Intensive Courses for Overseas Students have fallen by a massive 67 per cent, pointing to few new starts this year.
The chief executive of Universities Australia, Catriona Jackson, said no sector could continue to absorb revenue declines on such a scale without more staff losses.
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https://www.ausdoc.com.au/practice/7-tips-becoming-better-investor
7 tips to becoming a better investor
Human psychology has adapted to help us avoid daily risk, which can cloud our judgement when it comes to money
26th November 2020
From birth, we have been bombarded with too much information to be processed, sorted and stored, let alone recalled at the precise moment required. To help us survive, the brain simplifies and categorises information using pattern recognition.
This helps us to navigate our day-to-day lives by automatically performing certain actions. But in today’s complex world, these shortcuts trip us up more often than we realise.
There are more than 188 known cognitive biases, and at least 18 of them have a huge impact on how we make decisions in every area of our lives. However, just being aware of them can help us make better investment decisions — especially during times when we suffer financial challenges such as a market collapse.
Here are four of the main biases, as well as two emotions that influence our behaviour.
Loss aversion
This is our tendency to favour keeping what we have over risking it to acquire something better.
Nobody likes to lose money, but hanging on to some share or property that is doing poorly and has uncertain prospects keeps you from investing in better opportunities.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/tax-and-super/why-you-ll-work-till-you-are-dead-20210202-p56yw4
Why you’ll work until you are dead
Even reverse mortgages won’t make up for the ravaging of retirement incomes by cheap money policies.
Satyajit Das Contributor
Feb 3, 2021 – 2.00pm
The 2008 Great Recession and the 2020 pandemic are hastening the end of retirement as we now understand it. The problems of chronic underfunding, low returns, longer lives and increasing aged care and medical costs are accelerating. The pressure has been exacerbated by individuals forced to draw on funds during the pandemic.
Australia’s post-work savings system, a model for the world, illustrates the unsustainability of the arrangements. Despite its small population of about 26 million, Australia has about $3 trillion in private retirement savings. Mandatory contributions (currently 9.5 per cent of pre-tax income) and generous tax benefits underpin this savings pool, which is one of the largest in the world.
However, the typical accumulated balance at retirement age is about $200,000 for men and about half that for women. The averages are artificially increased by a small pool of people with large balances yet are well below the $600,000 to $700,000 estimated to be necessary for home-owning and debt-free couples to finance their retirements, which may last 20 years or more.
The shortfall forces increased reliance on a government-financed pension, originally intended only as a safety net. About 70 per cent of retirees are reliant in part or full on the state pension, which, at about 40 per cent of average weekly earnings, is substantially lower than the 65-75 per cent thought to be needed. With public finances stretched, access to the government pension is likely to become more restrictive over time.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/australia-must-have-a-new-macroeconomic-framework-20210202-p56yw5
Australia must have a new macroeconomic framework
Three key areas of economic policy – fiscal, monetary, and climate change – must all be made to talk to each other.
Warwick McKibbin Contributor
Feb 3, 2021 – 3.02pm
The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has been a significant shock to the global economy. There will be ongoing significant structural change and macroeconomic stress in all countries due to the pandemic. In addition to these disruptions, the primary greenhouse-gas-emitting countries will be undertaking significant global action on climate change.
The pandemic was an unexpected shock. Climate change and climate policy are known shocks that can have an even more substantial impact on economic structures and macroeconomic stability.
The new commitments by all countries of the group of seven to target greenhouse gas emissions reductions to be net zero by 2050 and China’s commitment to have zero net emissions by 2060 have particular significance for the Australian economy.
It matters far less to Australia what Canberra and state governments do on climate and energy policy. What is far more important is the impact of climate shocks and global climate policy changes. The macroeconomic adjustments and structural changes across all economies will significantly affect the Australian economy over the coming decades.
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Legion of the lost are fodder for the armies of extremism
Rootless young men find a home in the twisted purity of the political fringes. And it looks like a growth industry.
Tanveer Ahmed Contributor
Feb 3, 2021 – 4.01pm
The growth of extremism in its variety of forms is unlikely to cease.
The combination of a lack of social rootedness for sections of the community, retarded economic mobility and the power of social media to engender group think guarantees it. They could be white supremacists, Salafists or those who believe a cabal of paedophiles runs America.
Last month a group of neo-Nazis were discovered camping in the rural Victorian area of Grampians. They yelled Hitlerite and white pride slogans at passers-by, according to witnesses.
The event occurred days after Australia Day, which is no coincidence. If the display of nationalism is suppressed or stigmatised, it is no surprise that such impulses may be expressed in more sinister forms. In more sophisticated company this stigma against displaying Anglo pride may be expressed through celebration of Western ideals such as free speech or rule of law, but stripped of cultural content.
If there is no unifying national story, group identity is free to fracture.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/lowe-s-bedside-manner-tracks-a-steady-pulse-20210203-p56z9c
Lowe’s bedside manner tracks a steady pulse
RBA Governor Philip Lowe is relieved the economic recovery is better and quicker than expected and insists there’s no problem with rising asset prices – yet.
Jennifer Hewett Columnist
Feb 3, 2021 – 5.58pm
Dr Philip Lowe has the perfect bedside manner for a central banker. He sounds calm in an economic health crisis, cautiously confident about eventual recovery, open to new remedies but nothing too radical, and regularly tests the patient’s temperature while muttering reassuringly.
That has not been dramatic enough for a critic like Paul Keating. Six months ago, Keating – a radically successful reformer in his day – accused the RBA of “always being late to the party”. He described Australia’s central bankers as “high priests” too removed from the real economy and not doing enough to support recovery, in particular by more aggressively buying government bonds.
The mild-mannered Reserve Bank governor was never going to respond in kind – or in taking more extreme action. But as Lowe considers the course of last year and outlines what lies ahead for 2021, he is clearly reassured the economic bounceback is better and quicker than expected just a few months ago.
Even so, as he told the National Press Club on Wednesday, there’s “a long way to go” – particularly in getting back to higher wages growth and to RBA targets on unemployment and inflation.
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Morrison government’s magical super thinking
There’s a fatal flaw in the Callaghan retirement income review: its conclusion depends on people being able to buy a financial product that doesn’t exist.
Karen Maley Columnist
Feb 4, 2021 – 12.01am
Reading the breathlessly awaited Callaghan retirement income review, it’s hard not to think of that Grimms’ fairy tale where a hapless girl risks being put to death unless she is able to spin straw into gold.
Now, the challenge facing former Treasury heavyweight Mike Callaghan wasn’t quite this formidable, nor the punishment for failing as dire.
Still, the Morrison government did set Callaghan the daunting task of proving that people could enjoy a perfectly comfortable retirement if employers’ compulsory contribution to their super remained at 9.5 per cent of wages.
Which meant he had to find a way around the mountains of research that shows the superannuation guarantee levy needs to rise to at least 12 per cent to ensure most people have enough money set aside for their post-working life.
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Mass exodus from Sydney CBD doubles vacancy rate
Larry Schlesinger Reporter
Feb 4, 2021 – 12.00am
Key Statistics
- 8.6%Sydney CBD vacancy Jan 2021
- 5.6%Sydney CBD vacancy Jul 2020
The Sydney CBD office vacancy rate hit a seven-year high of 8.6 per cent in the six months to January, up from 5.6 per cent at the end of July, amid a slow return to office life following a mass exodus during the pandemic.
It means the city’s vacancy rate has more than doubled in the past 12 months, according to to the Property Council’s latest Office Market Report.
Sydney’s vacancy rate was 3.9 per cent a year ago (before the pandemic hit) and 3.7 per cent 18 months ago.
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More supply, less demand send office vacancy higher
Nick Lenaghan Property editor
Feb 4, 2021 – 12.29am
Office markets around the country have been caught in the crossfire, with the supply of fresh space pumping into CBDs at pre-COVID-19 levels even as demand turned negative in all capitals but Canberra.
The Property Council of Australia’s bi-annual Office Market Report released on Thursday will be one of its most eagerly anticipated in some time, telling the story of how CBD office markets weathered the disruption.
Vacancy rates have risen around the country. Sydney is at 8.6 per cent and Melbourne at 8.2 per cent – both more than double what they were a year ago, before the upheaval began. The other capitals have all experienced higher vacancy, except Canberra which has tracked sideways at 10.1 per cent as federal departments took up new accommodation.
“While it was not a surprise to see office vacancies increase in the middle of a pandemic, it is the new supply of office space that is responsible for three quarters of this impact, not reduced tenant demand,” the Property Council’s chief executive, Ken Morrison, said.
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Finally, US realises its Joint Strike Fighter a dud
It’s taken some two decades but finally the US is recognising that the Joint Strike Fighter, or F-35, is a failure. The aircraft also ordered by Australia can perform limited roles but the dream of the JSF leading western world air defence is in tatters.
Accordingly the US Air Force Warfighting Integration Capability office now recommends that the future US fleet of F-35s should be reduced from 1763 to 1050. That’s a way of adjusting for a failure but not officially announcing it.
By contrast Christopher Miller, who was acting US secretary of defence from November 9 2020 to January 20 2021, pulled no punches and declared the JSF/F-35 “a piece of shit”. I am grateful to David Archibald writing in the Wentworth magazine for the above information.
My long-suffering readers know that I have been writing about the problems of the Joint Strike Fighter for more than 15 years. I am very sad to have been proved right.
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University chancellors nudged on uni free speech by Alan Tudge
University chancellors will be pushed to speed up the adoption of a model free speech code after only nine institutions fully embraced the shake-up as federal Education Minister Alan Tudge makes academic freedom a top priority for 2021.
Former Deakin University vice-chancellor Sally Walker — the author of a scathing review into the higher education sector’s failure to implement the free speech code late last year — will be brought in by the government to talk to the University Chancellors Council on how they can protect free speech.
The Australian also can reveal Professor Walker will provide each university with a free speech report card, after she found last year that 16 out of 42 universities had failed to make any progress in adopting the freedom charter proposed by former federal chief justice Robert French.
Mr Tudge told The Australian on Wednesday the cabinet was determined to see the model code fully adopted as soon as possible.
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China trade war to cost farmers $36.9b this decade
Brad Thompson Reporter
Feb 5, 2021 – 10.19am
Farmers have put investment in long-term agricultural trade strategy at the top of their federal budget wish list.
The National Farmers’ Federation is pushing for the strategy in the wake of China trade sanctions on barley, some beef and sheep meat producers, wine, seafood and timber.
The NFF also warned Australia was not keeping up with the biosecurity safeguards needed to protect production and maintain the nation’s global reputation as a provider of clean and green food.
Farmers also want more than $400 million over the forward estimates to improve telecommunications in regional Australia.
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Government mulls budget options for self-funded retirees
Phillip Coorey Political editor
Feb 5, 2021 – 12.01am
The Morrison government is examining options for the May federal budget to support self-funded retirees struggling under record low interest rates.
Sources said Treasurer Josh Frydenberg was looking at measures, following Reserve Bank of Australia governor Philip Lowe indicating this week the cash rate could stay at its record low of 0.1 per cent until 2024.
“They will be a focus of the budget. The problem is well defined but we don’t have the solution yet,” said one member of government.
Options are limited but include looking at the taper rate for part pensioners so they get to keep more of a pension relative to their assets.
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Morrison government rules out subsidies in electric vehicle strategy
By Rob Harris
February 5, 2021 — 12.00am
Australian businesses will be encouraged to invest in plug-in hybrid and electric car fleets in an attempt to increase private uptake by flooding the second-hand market with new vehicle technologies at lower prices.
The Morrison government has ruled out offering taxpayer subsidies for the private uptake of plug-in hybrids and battery electric cars, arguing in its long-awaited strategy that subsidies would not represent value for money in efforts to drive down carbon emissions.
Energy Minister Angus Taylor will argue a “fleet first” strategy for new technology passenger vehicles is the smartest way to help Australia’s “planned and managed” transition to low-emission cars, while ensuring charging infrastructure and the national energy grid can support a switch.
Low-emissions vehicles are a key plank in the government’s technology road map, which it will rely on if it is to meet both its Paris emission targets and a potential commitment to net zero by 2050.
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Heard any good conspiracy theories? Don’t worry, you will
Columnist and communications adviser
February 7, 2021 — 12.00am
“We’re going to see extreme fake news this year,” @PRGuy17 tweeted on New Year’s Day, referencing a headline he didn’t like. “This is a war … it’s media vs you.”
Gizmodo has called PRGuy17 an anonymous user with a “knack for making pro-Dan [Andrews] and anti-Liberal hashtags trend on Twitter”. Podcaster Osman Faruqi has been threatened with legal action for claiming the hashtag is Labor-aligned. And Queensland University of Technology disinformation researcher Tim Graham has admired PRGuy17’s “masterclass in hashtag activism”.
Whoever PRGuy17 is, he managed to get a song that samples a Dan Andrews press conference into the Triple J Hottest 100, he hates mainstream media and tweets like he’s swallowed the manual on how to bring Trump tactics down under.
Welcome to the new decade. The Macquarie Dictionary has named “fake news” as the “word” of the past decade. It’s early days, but right now something conspiracy-related would get good odds for 2031. Competing versions of the truth will be the battleground of the future.
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Coronavirus And Impacts.
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‘Whatever it takes’: Vaccine strategy needs urgent rethink
By Steven Hamilton and Richard Holden
February 1, 2021 — 1.57pm
This once-in-a-century pandemic has conferred very high returns on out-of-the-box thinking.
Nowhere has the inadequacy of conventional thinking been more exposed than in Australia’s vaccine strategy. The cost of maintaining our current course couldn’t be higher.
In any normal time, the government’s strategy might seem sensible. Rather than order all the leading vaccine candidates in advance, they selected one from each technology – Pfizer over Moderna (mRNA vaccines); AstraZeneca over Johnson & Johnson (viral vector vaccines); and Novavax over Sanofi (protein vaccines).
They also favoured vaccines that could be readily produced locally – initially, the University of Queensland’s since-failed candidate, and subsequently AstraZeneca’s vaccine, which is to be produced here by CSL.
You could be forgiven for thinking that three or four vaccines would offer more than sufficient redundancy. But amidst a pandemic that has claimed millions of lives and trillions of dollars of global economic output, you’d be wrong. By a lot. The trouble with our vaccine strategy is it fails to match the truly massive cost the pandemic continues to impose on our economy and society –notwithstanding our world-class performance suppressing the virus.
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Cut it out, Craig: Maverick MP claims he is cancelled
Jacqueline Maley
Columnist and senior journalist
February 3, 2021 — 12.24pm
Every now and then a politician comes around with views so “crackpot” - the word used by the Australian Medical Association president to describe MP Craig Kelly’s interesting COVID opinions - that you have to ask: how the hell is this guy in Parliament?
With the eager assistance of Prime Minister Scott Morrison, that’s how!
Kelly, member for the Sydney seat of Hughes, has long tangoed with the more marginal opinion-holes of the internet, ranging from climate change “scepticism”, to his assertion that coral islands float.
Kelly is also an expert on foreign policy. On the 298 people killed aboard flight MH17, shot down by the Russians, he told Sky News in 2018, “If some of the things that Russia has gotten away with in the past has to be slightly looked over, well I’m sorry, that’s the price that we have to pay sometimes to have good relations going forward”.
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‘Huge piece of work’: the challenges facing the vaccine rollout
Finbar O'Mallon Reporter
Feb 4, 2021 – 3.21pm
Australia’s large expanses and the overseas supply shortages would provide the biggest challenges to the country’s vaccine rollout, logistics experts say.
Those administering the vaccine will also have to be cautious of wastage and should consider having measures in place to allow people to take the place of no-shows.
The federal government has already tapped DHL and Linfox on the shoulder to help deploy the jabs across the country.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison confirmed on Thursday that Australia had ordered an extra 10 million Pfizer vaccine doses.
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COVID-19 patients have died after being denied drugs by ‘big government’, claims Kelly
By Jacqueline Maley and Kate Aubusson
February 5, 2021 — 5.44am
Australians have died being denied access to potentially life-saving medical treatments by “big government”, claims Coalition MP Craig Kelly in comments about COVID-19 made on a podcast by controversial ex-TV host Pete Evans.
The maverick MP told Evans government has “interfered” with the doctor-patient relationship to prevent doctors prescribing the two medications Kelly pushes on his Facebook page - hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin.
Doctors and scientists have published overwhelming evidence that the drug Mr Kelly most admires does not effectively treat or prevent COVID-19, and may cause serious harm, including heart complications.
“Government says, ‘Well we don’t care what you think as a doctor or an expert in this field. We, as big government, know better, and you are not allowed to prescribe hydroxychloroquine’,” he said.
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I’m the virus expert cited by MP Craig Kelly. Vaccines are critical, but he’s not all wrong
By Robert Clancy
February 4, 2021 — 6.44pm
The airwaves have been awash with news about COVID-19 and vaccinations, much of it unhelpful. Amid the heat, my name has arisen as the immunologist cited by the Liberal MP Craig Kelly, whose views have been widely derided and, ultimately, shut down by the Prime Minister.
Let me state clearly from the outset: vaccines are critical; they will save lives; we should all get behind them.
Vaccines, however, do have limitations. They need to be paired with effective, safe drug treatment. I believe two candidates are safe, cheap, available and effective. They are ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. Australian health authorities, however, say there is not enough evidence to support their use in the treatment of COVID-19. I disagree with them.
I do not know Craig Kelly. There is much he has said that I disagree with, but on the matter of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, he has been right to raise awareness about these drugs and their potential to be effective in the early treatment of the disease.
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Prime focus now on airborne coronavirus transfer
Victorian health authorities have few clues on just how the quarantine support worker in Melbourne who was infected at the Grand Hyatt came to catch coronavirus from a positive guest, but they’re treating the case as a likely example of airborne transmission.
At the same time across town, COVID-19 spread between guests on the same floor at the Park Royal Hotel, even though they were at no time within physical proximity of each other.
The infection of a quarantine hotel security guard in Perth is also considered airborne transmission.
The cases highlight how easily COVID-19 can be transmitted through the air, and raise questions as to whether ventilation is adequate in quarantine hotels.
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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/politics/federal/pm-warns-of-pandemic-debt-burden-20210131-p56y4f
PM warns of pandemic debt burden
Phillip Coorey Political editor
Jan 31, 2021 – 10.30pm
The federal government will spend at least another $1.9 billion to vaccinate Australians against the coronavirus, but otherwise the era of big spending to combat the pandemic is over, says Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
In a speech outlining the government’s strategy for 2021, which could be an election year, Mr Morrison stresses that while sectoral support will continue to be provided where needed, “you can’t run the Australian economy on taxpayers’ money forever”.
The $1.9 billion, which the Prime Minister says is an “initial allocation” to fund the vaccine rollout, is on top of the $4.4 billion already spent on acquiring vaccines, taking the total to $6.3 billion.
Mr Morrison’s speech, to be delivered to the National Press Club on Monday, is unambitious in terms of flagging any new major reform. The government is of the belief that the virus-weary public has little appetite for more significant upheaval and it will be a big enough task this year just to roll out the vaccine program and get the country back on its feet.
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https://apo.org.au/node/310672
The looming iceberg: Australia’s post-pandemic debt risk
28 Jan 2021
Publisher Centre for Independent Studies
Resources The looming iceberg: Australia’s post-pandemic debt risk
Description
One of the major economic policy issues of the times is the growth of public debt in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and what this growth means for the future. Some economists believe the burden will be manageable. Others express varying degrees of concern.
The fiscal landscape has changed dramatically and rapidly since March 2020, and for several months it was difficult to quantify the effects on government budgets. The much delayed delivery of Commonwealth and state/territory budgets in recent months now makes it possible to construct a comprehensive picture of the debt outlook up to 2024. This includes the updated Commonwealth 2020/21 budget estimates released in the mid-year review in December.
Key points:
- After many years with low public debt, Australia is seeing a much higher debt burden as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. In the years ahead, it will reach levels (relative to the size of the economy) last seen in the early post-World War II years.
- The confidence often heard expressed that the debt burden will be manageable in the long-term should be heavily qualified. A steep decline in the debt burden such as was seen after World War II will depend on vigorous economic growth, continuing very low interest rates and the exercise of fiscal discipline, none of which is assured.
- The increase in debt from the pandemic is due in large part to net operating deficits (the cost of current government services exceeding current revenue) totalling $515 billion at the Commonwealth level and $120 billion at the state level over the five years to 2023/24, rather than to investment in infrastructure.
- NSW and VIC have already suffered downgrades to their previous AAA credit ratings since their budget announcements, and further downgrades in those and some other states and territories would not be surprising.
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No more ‘blank cheques’: Morrison outlines economic comeback, vaccine rollout
By David Crowe
January 31, 2021 — 10.30pm
Prime Minister Scott Morrison will commit $1.9 billion to ramp up vaccinations at hospitals, surgeries and pharmacies in a pledge to protect health while weaning the economy off the “blank cheque” of endless federal payments.
Outlining his agenda for the year, Mr Morrison will talk of delivering the first jabs in late February as part of a “comeback” in the economy that will see Australians return to work.
But he will spurn industry calls for another big stimulus to replace the JobKeeper wage subsidy when it stops at the end of March, saying the economy is still gaining the benefit from federal payments worth $251 billion.
“You can’t run the Australian economy on taxpayers’ money forever,” Mr Morrison says in a draft of a speech to be delivered to the National Press Club in Canberra on Monday.
The speech puts the priority on suppressing the virus and delivering the vaccine, while placing heavy emphasis on the need for industry to recover without relying on federal funding.
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Low inflation ‘stalling wages growth’, economists say
Without massive annual rises in tobacco tax the Reserve Bank has failed to meet its inflation target for almost seven years, increasing uncertainty in the economy and leaving wages and growth lower than they would be, economists say.
Ahead of the first Reserve Bank board meeting of the year on Tuesday, new Commonwealth Bank analysis has found excluding cigarette prices (which have risen more than 330 per cent over the decade to 2020) means the annual inflation rate has been below 2 per cent for every quarter since 2014.
“Having inflation much lower than it’s meant to be makes it harder for businesses and households to know where prices will be, harder to make contracts,” said Stephen Kirchner, a monetary policy expert at the US Studies Centre.
The consumer price index, which tracks price changes for 87 different goods and services, rose 0.9 per cent last year, while tobacco, which makes up 3.2 per cent of the CPI, increased over 20 per cent owing to increases in tobacco excises — which raises more than $15bn a year.
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This COVID-19 health advice is making us sick
Do you floss every day? Have no more than 10 standard alcoholic drinks a week? I confess I follow this health advice less than religiously, especially over the summer months.
Stay out of the sun, exercise for 20 minutes a day, don’t smoke. Let’s face it, most of us ignore much of the health advice in our daily lives, judging life is about living as well as simply being alive.
None of this advice is trifling, either. More than three million people die of alcohol-related diseases year after year, according to the World Health Organisation.
Tobacco-related cancer kills about 10,000 people annually in Australia, according to the Cancer Council. In the US, where 40 per cent of adults are obese, diabetes killed 270,000 Americans in 2017.
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https://www.rba.gov.au/media-releases/2021/mr-21-01.html
Statement by Philip Lowe, Governor: Monetary Policy Decision
Number 2021-01
Date 2 February 2021
At its meeting today, the Board decided to maintain the targets of 10 basis points for the cash rate and the yield on the 3-year Australian Government bond, as well as the parameters of the Term Funding Facility. It also decided to purchase an additional $100 billion of bonds issued by the Australian Government and states and territories when the current bond purchase program is completed in mid April. These additional purchases will be at the current rate of $5 billion a week.
The outlook for the global economy has improved over recent months due to the development of vaccines. While the path ahead is likely to remain bumpy and uneven, there are better prospects for a sustained recovery than there were a few months ago. That recovery, however, remains dependent on the health situation and on significant fiscal and monetary support. Inflation remains low and below central bank targets.
In Australia, the economic recovery is well under way and has been stronger than was earlier expected. There has been strong growth in employment and a welcome decline in the unemployment rate to 6.6 per cent. Retail spending has been strong and many of the households and businesses that had deferred loan repayments have now recommenced repayments. These outcomes have been underpinned by Australia's success on the health front and the very significant fiscal and monetary support.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/rba-s-lowe-is-not-for-tapering-20210202-p56ysw
RBA’s Lowe is in no rush to taper
John Kehoe Senior writer
Feb 2, 2021 – 5.25pm
Reserve Bank of Australia governor Philip Lowe is fast-tracking the monetary policy accelerator entering the new year, paradoxically while he is becoming more upbeat about the quicker-than-anticipated economic recovery.
By swiftly announcing plans to double down on the RBA’s $100 billion money printing program beyond April, the governor has sent a clear message to local borrowers and international financial markets that he is no mood to taper the extraordinary easy money.
In an era of near-zero interest rates and pandemic-economics, no central banker wants to create a sense of tapering any time soon.
Many RBA watchers were expecting the RBA to wait a little longer before extending the duration – and possibly easing back – on its government bond buying program.
But with other major central banks already flagging they are not intending to back off on their more than $US10 trillion ($13.1 trillion) in asset purchases since COVID-19 struck early last year, Lowe would have felt he risked further fuelling upward pressure on the Australian dollar if he showed any indecisiveness or hint of contemplating a taper.
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Lessons from schools snapshot
Government spending on private schools has increased 3.3 per cent on average over the past decade compared to just 1.4 per cent for public schools, a new report on government services finds.
While the average annual public spend on each student in Australia is $16,748, the amount varies widely depending on location, the Productivity Commission report says, with students in the Northern Territory the costliest to the taxpayer at $25,280 a year and those in Victoria the cheapest at $15,438.
But in the remote areas of the NT it remains a struggle to get kids to go to school, with Year 1-10 attendance rates sitting at 58 per cent, compared to 92 per cent for children in the major cities.
In government schools across the nation, an average of $19,328 per student came from the public purse in 2018-19, the most recent available figures. This was up from $17,078 per student (in 2018-19 dollars) in 2009-10, an average annual increase of 1.4 per cent.
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Interest rates may remain at record lows until 2025: RBA governor
By Shane Wright and Jennifer Duke
February 3, 2021 — 12.30pm
Interest rates could remain at record low levels until the middle of the decade, Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe says, even though he believes the economy is recovering far better and faster than expected from the coronavirus pandemic.
Giving his first ever address to the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday, Dr Lowe said it would be “premature” to withdraw the significant economic support being delivered by the RBA through both interest rates at 0.1 per cent as well as more than $300 billion in direct support through government bond purchases and cheap cash to commercial banks.
Dr Lowe said official interest rates would not be increased until inflation was “sustainably” between 2 and 3 per cent which also required much stronger wages growth.
“It is difficult to determine exactly when this condition might be met but ... we do not expect it to be before 2024 and it is possible that it will be later than this,” he said.
“[The] cash rate will be maintained at 10 basis points for as long as is necessary.
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‘A fairness issue’: Morrison boxed in after Lowe backs JobSeeker rise
By Shane Wright
February 3, 2021 — 4.31pm
Philip Lowe has removed any last vestige of political cover the Morrison government may have had for not permanently increasing the JobSeeker base payment.
Dr Lowe, who as the Reserve Bank governor spends much of his time trying to avoid being boxed into a position, made it clear where he stands on the support payment about 1 million Australians currently rely upon.
The payment will revert to $565.70 a fortnight or $40 a day on March 31 when the government ends the coronavirus welfare supplement as well as the JobKeeper wage subsidy program.
Those 1 million unemployed Australians are set to lose $150 a fortnight once the supplement disappears.
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Rejected by Canberra, universities turn to the states for help
Robert Bolton Education editor
Feb 5, 2021 – 4.19pm
Universities will have to turn to the states for help in getting overseas students back to Australia after Prime Minister Scott Morrison failed to mention higher education in his wrap-up of national cabinet on Friday, according to the International Education Association of Australia.
Chief executive Phil Honeywood said he was frustrated that competitor countries such as Canada, the UK and New Zealand have come up with solutions for overseas entry, but not Australia.
“Surely our nation’s leaders can reach consensus as to how to bring already enrolled students back without interrupting the flow of returning Australians,” he said.
“If national cabinet is not going to provide a way forward then we will take the PM at his word and ask individual states to be bold and brave.”
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RBA governor outlines his reasons to be cheerful on economy’s bounce-back
Ross Gittins
Economics Editor
February 6, 2021 — 12.00am
If you think the coronacession made last year a stinker for the economy, Reserve Bank governor Dr Philip Lowe has good news: this year pretty much everything will be on the up except unemployment.
All Reserve governors see it as their duty to err on the optimistic side, and Lowe is no slouch in that department. In his speech this week foreshadowing Friday’s release of the Reserve’s revised economic forecasts for the next two years, Lowe was surprisingly upbeat on what we can expect in “the year ahead”.
His first reason for optimism is that, though last year saw the economy plunge into severe recession for the first time in almost 30 years, it didn’t go as badly as initially feared.
For one thing, he says, Australians did what they usually do: respond well in a crisis. As a community, we have pulled together in the common good and been prepared to do what’s been necessary to contain the virus.
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RBA channels Keynes after learning some lessons from the pre-virus world
By Shane Wright
February 5, 2021 — 3.30pm
John Maynard Keynes remains one of the most influential economists of all time.
He’s also often credited with one of the most important quotations by an economist: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?”
There are huge doubts whether Keynes actually uttered that line (Nobel laureate Paul Samuelson is the most likely candidate) but there is no question the Reserve Bank has found its inner Keynes and changed its economic tune.
Bank governor Philip Lowe this week made absolutely clear he and the rest of the RBA have learned some hard lessons from the pre-virus world that are going to be put to use in the post-pandemic environment.
It may seem an eternity ago, but back at the start of 2019, well before the pandemic, the Reserve Bank believed the Australian economy was picking up speed and may need higher interest rates.
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Health Issues.
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Blood cancers now second-most common and deadly in Australia
By Stuart Layt
January 31, 2021 — 11.00pm
Blood cancer advocates have sounded the alarm, as the overall rate of all forms of the cancer continues to rise.
Figures compiled by the Leukaemia Foundation has found that when combined, all the types of blood cancer add up to the second-highest diagnosed cancer in Australia, and the second-most deadly.
The Foundation’s newly appointed CEO, Chris Tanti said the figures, compiled from those released by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, show the scale of the problem when it comes to all forms of blood cancer.
“By assessing this captured data and combining the data for all blood cancers and blood disorders, we can gain a much truer picture of the sheer size and scale of what we are facing when it comes to national incidence and mortality for all blood cancers,” Mr Tanti said.
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Cancer deaths down more than 20 per cent over 20 years
By John Buckley
February 1, 2021 — 12.01am
Improvements to the screening and treatment of cancer have reduced deaths in Australia by more than 20 per cent between 1996 and 2015, with 107,000 lives saved, a Cancer Council NSW study reveals.
The study found that there were 20.6 per cent fewer cancer deaths among Australians aged under 75, despite a 2 per cent increase in diagnoses.
The figures highlight the importance of early detection programs, said Dr Eleonora Feletto, a Senior Research Fellow at Cancer Council NSW. But she warned the coronavirus pandemic could undo some of the work done in previous decades.
“Medicare services for the diagnosis of breast cancer were down almost 40 per cent at the peak of lockdown,” Dr Feletto said. “And we don’t yet know the impact that this may have had on future cancer rates.
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Brain research shows how tau toxin helps Alzheimer’s spread
The process by which normal neurons become poisoned by a toxic protein, then release its “seeds” to colonise other neurons, may be the mechanism by which Alzheimer’s disease spreads in its vast majority of victims: people who have no family history of the condition.
Research by Queensland Brain Institute research fellow Juan Polanco and led by University of Queensland dementia expert Jurgen Gotz has found this can happen in mice and engineered cultured human cells when a normal protein called tau becomes toxic and a neuron’s usual ability to dispose of it is compromised.
“We knew the tiny sacs that encapsulate the tau, exosomes, could induce toxicity, but we didn’t know how they took over the whole cell, or helped the toxicity spread to other cells,” Dr Polanco said.
The compromised neuron’s attempt to destroy the toxic tau causes the exosomes to trigger a reaction that punches holes in the neuron’s “stomach”, known as the lysosome. Once the toxic tau has escaped, it begins an irreversible spread into surrounding areas.
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Study shows vaccine’s potential to stop viral spread
Jill Margo Health editor
Feb 4, 2021 – 7.44am
New research suggests the vaccine being manufactured in Australia may reduce the risk of the virus spreading, even after the first dose.
Although it is a two-dose vaccine, the research suggests the Oxford/Astra Zeneca vaccine has the potential to reduce transmission in two thirds of those who received the first shot.
While their research study, published in Preprints with The Lancet, is yet to be peer reviewed, if it proves correct, it would be the kind of news the world has been waiting for.
It’s established the vaccine stops people getting ill, but reducing transmission too could reshape the pandemic, making it easier to bring under control.
If validated by reviewers, this will be very good for Australia, which is manufacturing this vaccine onshore at CSL’s plant in Victoria.
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Scientists and government pushing for ways to make mRNA vaccines here
By Emma Koehn and Liam Mannix
February 3, 2021 — 11.47pm
The federal government is working with the biotech industry on ways to establish large-scale mRNA vaccine manufacturing in Australia as a group of senior scientists work on a parallel plan to enable local production of the cutting-edge jabs.
The mRNA coronavirus vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna yielded remarkably strong results in clinical trials and are expected to be much easier to reconfigured to cover new viral variants than more conventional inoculations such as AstraZeneca’s, which is being made in Australia by CSL.
Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are manufactured overseas and a group of Australian scientists, spurred on by the rise of the variants, have been assembling a coalition of private companies to explore ways to start manufacturing them here.
“It is feasible. It’s just a matter of the will to make it happen,” said Professor Colin Pouton, a Monash University vaccine developer who is part of the team.
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Research finds ‘Trojan horse’ spreading Alzheimer’s-causing toxin
By Stuart Layt
February 4, 2021 — 11.00pm
Researchers have discovered how a protein linked to Alzheimer’s disease uses the brain’s own cells as a “Trojan horse” to spread.
The protein, called tau, is present in healthy brain cells and is used by the brain as part of its normal function but is also thought to be connected to the neuron “tangles”, which are the hallmark of Alzheimer’s and other dementias.
The team from the Queensland Brain Institute at UQ have been trying to find how the protein spreads through the brain after an initial build-up, eventually causing these tangles.
Dementia expert Professor Jürgen Götz said their research revealed that the protein is carried by small sacs of material produced by brain cells called exosomes, which function a little like letters - physical packets sent between two points which contain information.
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International Issues.
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Renowned short-seller laments politicisation of ‘surreal’ GameStop saga
Ortenca Aliaj and Robin Wigglesworth
Jan 31, 2021 – 3.07pm
New York/Oslo | Renowned short-seller Jim Chanos says the GameStop saga has been the most “surreal” episode in his career, and worries that things are going “completely off the rails” as populist politicians look to capitalise on the situation.
“This was a week even us ancients haven’t seen before,” Mr Chanos said in an interview with the Financial Times. “I have been doing this for 40 years and I don’t remember a period like the past 10 days.”
The remarks by Mr Chanos, the founder of Kynikos Associates, come after a dramatic spell for the US stock market. Shares in companies such as video game retailer GameStop and struggling cinema operator AMC Entertainment rose stratospherically as retail traders laid siege to short-sellers betting against the businesses.
“One of the most surreal aspects is that it has become political and the corollary is they are blaming short-sellers, the guys who got killed,” Mr Chanos said.
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In Russia, the struggle is between a fake democracy and a movement for hope
By Mark Galeotti
February 1, 2021 — 8.19am
London: When the Russian opposition decided this time to hold a demonstration in front of the Lubyanka, headquarters of the fearsome secret police Federal Security Service, they were raising the stakes.
In response, the Kremlin opted to double down. Last week’s protests were met with sporadic police violence which, however horrific, seemed simply to result from local overreaction and indiscipline.
Sunday’s response was not just more heavy-handed, it was systematically so.
All of central Moscow was turned into a fortress; tear gas and tasers were used in St Petersburg; detainees were forced to lie down in the snow in Kazan.
Overall, while perhaps fewer came out to march this time, the tally of arrests was higher: over 5000.
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Russia starts to believe Vladimir Putin is not the only option
· The Times
Russia is not on the cusp of a revolution. But protests over the past ten days suggest that a sizeable chunk of society is deeply unhappy with its leaders.
These rallies can be exhilarating – marching shoulder to shoulder with like-minded people, chanting “Russia will be free” and feeling like they are on the brink of some kind of victory. There is a strong camaraderie as they dodge the batons. Alexei Navalny’s words as he headed to jail are ringing in their ears: “I am not afraid, and I call on you to not be afraid.”
Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, the World Health Organization and climate campaigner Greta Thunberg are among those nominated for this year's Nobel Peace Prize, all backed by Norwegian politicians who have a track record of picking the winner. Soraya Ali reports.
But the truth is that the Kremlin still holds many cards. There are no cracks in the military or security apparatus; rally numbers are not critical; parliamentary opposition to President Putin’s rule is long crushed; and the foreign response is too feeble to make officials and their business pals, such as the billionaire Arkady Rotenberg, fear for their Tuscan villas and Knightsbridge mansions. Rotenberg has said that he is the true owner of the so-called Putin palace, with suspicions that he is covering for his old friend.
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Vladimir Putin misjudges his greatest threat: the Russian people
· The Times
Russia in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union was a wild and dangerous place. An alcoholic President Boris Yeltsin held court in the Kremlin. Mobsters were fighting it out on the streets. One day a rocket-propelled grenade fired from a busy road blasted through a wall in the American embassy, destroying a copying machine.
As the Sunday Times correspondent, I watched in fascination as the capital of a superpower slipped into anarchy and Yeltsin bombarded parliament in 1993 to dislodge rebels clamouring for the return of the Soviet Union. I will never forget the sight of documents fluttering down from the sky when a tank scored a direct hit on an office on the top floor.
Vladimir Putin, the sober, fiercely competent former KGB officer who succeeded Yeltsin at the end of the decade and steered his country back from co-operation with the West to confrontation, often evokes the “lost” 1990s as part of his survival strategy. The message is: without me, Russia will return to chaos.
Today, nevertheless, there could be real chaos: the arrest of the anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny, after a botched attempt to assassinate him has unleashed the greatest wave of anger against Putin in his two decades in power.
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Myanmar leader Suu Kyi and party leaders rounded up
Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s civilian leader, has been detained along with senior members of her governing National League for Democracy (NLD) party in early morning military raids, a spokesman for her administration said, amid signs that a coup is underway.
Spokesman Myo Nyunt told Reuters news agency that Ms Suu Kyi, President Win Myint and other leaders had been “taken” in the early hours of the morning.
“I want to tell our people not to respond rashly and I want them to act according to the law,” he said, adding he also expected to be detained.
The BBC reported earlier that there were soldiers on the streets of the capital, Naypyitaw, and the main city of Yangon, and that telephone and internet lines in Naypyitaw have been cut.
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US sends warships to Black Sea in Kremlin warning
· The Times
The US navy has increased its presence in the Black Sea after President Biden warned that he will “act firmly” against Russian aggression in the region.
The USS Porter, a guided missile destroyer, entered the sea late last week, joining another, the USS Donald Cook, and a refuelling ship, the USNS Laramie. The vessels have joined Nato patrols and exercises in the area.
The largest deployment of the US navy in the Black Sea since 2017 has prompted Russia to deploy a Bastion missile defence system to Crimea, the peninsula it annexed from Ukraine in 2014. The Russian navy also deployed one of its warships, the Admiral Makarov, to conduct exercises in the area, including locking on to air targets and jamming electronic communications.
In a statement, the US sixth fleet said: “The ultimate goal of these operations is to refine joint air defence procedures to better defend US navy ships.”
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Donald Trump recruits new lawyers to run impeachment defence
· AFP
Former US president Donald Trump said on Monday AEDT he had picked two lawyers to head his defence team days before his historic second impeachment trial, as Republicans braced for a battle over the future of their party.
Mr Trump’s Senate trial is due to start on February 9, but he parted ways with several members of his initial legal team on Sunday.
His lead lawyers, David Schoen and Bruce L. Castor, Jr, are “highly respected trial lawyers” with backgrounds in criminal law and defence, according to a statement from Mr Trump.
Mr Schoen has represented Trump ally Roger Stone, and said he was in discussions to join the legal team for Jeffrey Epstein in 2019 days before the disgraced US financier killed himself while in jail on allegations of trafficking underage girls for sex.
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Central banks take rare step of flagging currency sales in advance
Policymakers have little room to cut interest rates further without moving below zero, with some having already slashed them in response to the coronavirus pandemic. That leaves outright currency sales as a key option.
Eva Szalay
Feb 3, 2021 – 10.20am
London | Several central banks have ventured into unusual territory in the opening weeks of this year, announcing currency sales in advance as they tread a delicate line between dulling the impact of a sliding dollar and dodging the ire of the US Treasury.
Since the start of January, central banks in Chile, Israel and Sweden have all outlined plans to sell their currencies in foreign exchange markets. Policymakers in Poland also issued a verbal warning to zloty bulls that they may intervene.
The moves underline the pressure on small currencies that are pushing higher in response to a broad slide in the dollar, holding down inflation in their domestic economies and threatening exports at a time when global trade remains fragile. But the advance warnings also suggest policymakers are keen to avoid being labelled currency manipulators — a title Switzerland and Vietnam earned from the US last year.
“We are in an interesting moment when it comes to central banks straddling the fine line between [foreign exchange] intervention and [foreign exchange] manipulation,” said Alan Ruskin, chief international strategist at Deutsche Bank in a recent note to clients.
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Deadlocked Italy turns to euro crisis veteran Draghi for rescue
Hans van Leeuwen Europe correspondent
Feb 3, 2021 – 9.18am
London | Italian President Sergio Mattarella has asked former European Central Bank boss Mario Draghi, the man who pledged “whatever it takes” to rescue the eurozone in 2011-12, to form a unity government that might break Italy’s political deadlock.
“I have a duty to appeal to all political forces [to support] a high-profile government that can deal promptly with the serious emergencies in progress,” Mr Mattarella reportedly said, as he revealed he would hold talks with Mr Draghi late on Wednesday (AEDT).
That came after former prime minister Giuseppe Conte failed to form a new administration following the collapse of his previous coalition in the second half of January - right in the middle of COVID-19′s second wave and a savage recession.
Mr Conte lost office after another former PM, Matteo Renzi, pulled his Italia Viva party out of the governing coalition in mid-January in a wrangle over how to spend €200 billion ($317 billion) of EU recovery funds.
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‘He was a beacon of hope’: UK’s coronavirus hero Captain Tom Moore dies at the age of 100
By Latika Bourke
February 3, 2021 — 3.10am
London: Captain Tom Moore, the British World War II veteran who raised millions of pounds for health service workers on the frontline of the battle against COVID-19, has died aged 100, his family said on Tuesday.
Sir Tom was admitted to hospital with coronavirus on Sunday and he had been treated for pneumonia in the weeks prior to testing positive for COVID-19 last week.
“It is with great sadness that we announce the death of our dear father, Captain Sir Tom Moore,” his daughters said in a statement.
On Twitter, Sir Tom’s account was updated with a photograph of the war veteran with the words: Captain Sir Tom Moore, 1920-2021, to signify his passing.
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Trump, House Democrats lay out impeachment trial strategies
· The Wall Street Journal
House impeachment managers said they were on solid constitutional ground in seeking to convict Donald Trump of inciting an insurrection ahead of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, as the former president’s team denied that he sparked the deadly riot and argued that it was unconstitutional for the Senate convict an impeached former officeholder.
In a trial brief submitted to the Senate Tuesday, the managers wrote that “it is unthinkable that those same Framers left us virtually defenceless against a president’s treachery in his final days, allowing him to misuse power, violate his Oath, and incite insurrection against Congress and our electoral institutions simply because he is a lame duck. There is no ‘January Exception’ to impeachment or any other provision of the Constitution.”
US House Democrats have accused former President Donald Trump of aiming a mob of supporters "like a loaded cannon" at the Capitol Hill building as they make their case to permanently ban the former president from office.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers argued in their 14-page filing that the aim of convicting a president in the Senate is removal, making it unconstitutional to hold such a trial for one who has left office, and called for the case to be dismissed.
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Canada formally declares Proud Boys a terrorist group
Ian Austen
Feb 4, 2021 – 6.48am
Ottawa | Canada formally designated the Proud Boys as a terrorist entity under its criminal law on Wednesday (Thursday AEDT), a move that could lead to financial seizures and allow police to treat any crimes they commit as terrorist activity.
Government officials said that they believe Canada is the first nation to label the Proud Boys a terrorist group. The events last month in Washington, they added, contributed to the move, which was already under consideration.
An official, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified, said that while information gleaned following the attack on the Capitol in Washington was a “contributing factor, it certainly wasn’t the driving force”.
Members of the Proud Boys, a far-right, all-male organisation that lauded street brawling as part of its founding idea, played a prominent role in storming the US Capitol on January 6.
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The lessons of GameStop: How Wall Street can stop markets being manipulated
By Andrew Ross Sorkin
February 4, 2021 — 8.32am
There will be academic case studies on the mania around GameStop’s stock. There will be philosophical debates about whether this was a genuine protest against hedge funds and inequality or a pump-and-dump scheme masquerading as a moral crusade. Eventually, we will learn whether this was a transformational moment powered by social media that will shift the investing landscape forever, or a short-term blip that soon fades away.
What’s less up for debate is this: The public has a deep distrust of the stockmarket and everything it represents. That lesson has been laid bare by the anger coursing through the Reddit posts and Twitter threads of GameStop traders and throngs cheering them on.
What the Reddit investors did, more than anything else, was demonstrate in the starkest terms that they could manipulate the market in the way that so much of the public believes hedge funds and wealthy investors do every day. In doing so, they exposed the fallacy that the stockmarket was ever a level playing field.
So now what? If any good can come from this beyond the feel-good story of some retail traders profiting at the expense of hedge funds — which may reverse before this story is over — it requires a real conversation about how to make a more fair market that nobody can manipulate, that provides the same opportunities for everyone to create wealth.
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Painful lessons: The GameStop revolt by the masses will be short-lived
Stephen Bartholomeusz
Senior business columnist
February 4, 2021 — 12.10pm
The GameStop bubble has burst after a crazy 10 days that have triggered billions of dollars of both profits and losses across the market. Has anything been learned from it?
The early lesson was for short sellers. Overly aggressive short positions in stocks with limited liquidity are vulnerable to a short squeeze. The GameStop experience is, however, more of a reminder than a revelation.
Back in 2012, renowned short seller Bill Ackman took a big short position against US nutrition supplements company Herbalife. For a while, as the Herbalife share price plunged, it looked a very profitable trade. Then another hedge fund, followed by billionaire Carl Icahn, bought in.
Five acrimonious years later Ackman walked away with a $1 billion loss while Icahn is thought to have generated an equivalent profit from putting the big squeeze on. In GameStop, hedge fund Melvin Capital lost more than 50 per cent of its assets in a couple of days and had to be bailed out to the tune of $US2.75 billion as it covered its short positions.
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‘Loony lies and conspiracies’: The Republican Party’s identity crisis
By Matthew Knott
February 4, 2021 — 11.08am
Washington: As Scott Morrison works to convince Craig Kelly to rein in his more eccentric views on the coronavirus, he need only look at the US Congress to see that things could be far worse.
Kevin McCarthy, the most senior Republican in the US House of Representatives, is facing the challenge of how to deal with Marjorie Taylor Greene, a first-term congresswoman from Georgia whose inflammatory rhetoric makes Kelly’s Facebook posts seem tame.
Before entering Congress, Greene voiced support for QAnon - the wild conspiracy that regards Democrats as Satan-worshipping paedophiles. She berated mass shooting survivors in public, claiming mass shootings were actually hoaxes.
She used Facebook to advocate the killing of prominent Democrats like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and argued that laser beams from space started the deadly 2018 California wildfires.
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Nuclear war now a very real possibility, warns US admiral
· The Times
Nuclear war with Russia or China has become a “very real possibility” and the United States must adapt urgently to meet the threat, one of its most senior military commanders has warned.
Over the past two decades Moscow and Beijing have challenged international norms and global peace “in ways not seen since the height of the Cold War – and in some cases, in ways not seen during the Cold War”, according to Admiral Charles Richard, the head of US Strategic Command, which is responsible for nuclear strike capabilities and missile defence.
In a bleak analysis, published just as President Biden embarks on what is expected to be an era of belt-tightening at the Pentagon, Richard wrote that the US had concentrated largely on counter-terrorism over the past two decades and “grown accustomed to ignoring the nuclear dimension” when assessing threats to security.
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Vladimir Putin is the ex-boyfriend from hell
There was a time when Russia was very important to us but it is long gone. Our most important global rival today is China.
Thomas Friedman Contributor
Feb 4, 2021 – 12.48pm
The recent discovery of a massive, highly sophisticated hack, almost certainly by Russia, of key US technology companies and government agencies puts the new Biden team in a real quandary: How, when or even whether they should retaliate against Russia’s president? I have a lot of sympathy with that quandary – because Vladimir Putin has become America’s ex-boyfriend from hell.
There was a time when Russia – formerly the core of the Soviet Union (a country with double the population of the one Putin now rules) – was very important to the United States. It once threatened to conquer all of Europe and spread communism across the globe. That time was the Cold War. That time is long gone. The most important global rival today for the US is China.
Putin is not very important to the US at all. He’s a Moscow mafia don who had his agents try to kill an anti-corruption activist, Alexei Navalny, by sprinkling a Soviet-era nerve agent, Novichok, in the crotch of his underwear. I’m not making that up! Russia once gave the world Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Dostoyevsky, Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn. Putin’s Russia will be remembered for giving the world poisoned underwear.
But to distract his people from his corruption and maintain his grip on power, Putin presents himself as the great defender of the Russian Motherland, and its Orthodox Christian culture, from godless, pro-gay Westerners. And to inflate his importance – in his own eyes and in the eyes of Russians – he keeps stalking us. He meddles in the US elections, hacks its companies, while denying it all with a smirk and relishing the notion that so many Americans think he installed Donald Trump as president.
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‘Diplomacy is back’: Biden to reverse Trump’s foreign policy moves
Justin Sink and Mario Parker
Feb 5, 2021 – 9.27am
Washington | President Joe Biden announced he is halting and reversing Trump administration foreign policy initiatives – including troop draw-downs in Germany and support for a Saudi-led offensive in Yemen that turned into a humanitarian disaster – as he sought to boost morale at the State Department.
Mr Biden said on Thursday (Friday AEDT) that he was ordering a full Pentagon review of the US military posture worldwide. That includes freezing former President Donald Trump’s plan to withdraw about 9500 soldiers from Germany – a move that stunned European allies and generated bipartisan protest in Congress.
Mr Biden’s vision for foreign policy stands in stark contrast to Mr Trump’s “America First” approach in which the former president often shunned alliances and resisted acting against adversarial moves taken by Russia and other countries.
“America is back,” Mr Biden said in a speech at the State Department, flanked by Vice-President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “Diplomacy is back.”
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Republican conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene removed from House committees
By Matthew Knott
February 5, 2021 — 10.45am
Washington: The Democrat-controlled US House of Representatives has stripped controversial Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments for espousing conspiracy theories and supporting violence against her political opponents.
The decision came against the will of the vast majority of Greene’s Republican colleagues, who said it was unfair to punish her for comments she made before entering Congress and without allowing her due process.
In recent days Democrats have sought to make Greene the face of the modern Republican Party and associate their political opponents with dangerous conspiracy theories.
Greene, a first-term congressman from Georgia, will no longer serve on the House budget, education and labour committees as a result of the vote on Friday (AEDT). Just six of the 211 Republicans in the House voted to remove Greene from the committees.
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https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/pumps-and-dumps-and-chumps-20210206-p5704c
Pumps and dumps and chumps
It’s not clear who exactly pushed GameStop, but many WallStreetBets posts are reportedly coming from bots, not actual human beings — and somebody made a lot of money selling it to bag holders.
Paul Krugman
Feb 6, 2021 – 7.38am
In a more reasonable world, hardly anyone would care about the ups and downs of a smallish retailer’s stock price. Even near the top of its Reddit-fuelled roller coaster, GameStop accounted for only about 0.06 per cent of the total value of US stocks. Furthermore, the stock market itself is mainly a sideshow to the real economy.
But we don’t live in a reasonable world, we live in a world where the GameStop story briefly commanded global attention. And the craziness did offer some important lessons — not so much about economics and markets as about psychology and politics.
For it turns out that despite four years of Donald Trump, our society remains remarkably gullible. And it is not just members of the public who believe what they see on social media; far too many influential people still keep falling for fake populism.
The story so far: GameStop is a chain of stores selling video games and other electronic goods. With the rise of online gaming the company’s underlying business has been in gradual decline. Recently some hedge funds, which believed that this decline wasn’t fully reflected in its stock price, began selling the stock short — that is, borrowing stocks and selling them, expecting to buy the stocks back at lower prices.
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House Republican reckoning
· The Wall Street Journal
Minorities in the House of Representatives are rarely relevant, but the current GOP minority is only a few seats from taking back control. That makes its deliberations Wednesday over two of its Members an important message about the party’s potential return to power.
A few dozen backbenchers want to depose Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney from the House leadership for voting to impeach Donald Trump. Other Members are concerned about the high public profile of Marjorie Taylor Greene, a freshman Member from Georgia with kooky views. If the House GOP punishes Ms Cheney while saying nothing about Ms Greene, it will deserve a longer time in the wilderness.
Ms Cheney’s impeachment decision was a vote of conscience, as GOP leaders said at the time. She joined nine others in voting to impeach Mr Trump after an assault on the Capitol that followed weeks of false election claims from the White House. Some Republicans say Ms Cheney has special obligations to reflect the GOP conference as a leader, but GOP leaders didn’t whip the vote and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy was offering little guidance.
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Senate impeachment trial to put Donald Trump back in the spotlight
By Matthew Knott
February 7, 2021 — 5.34am
Washington: Another February in the United States, another impeachment trial for Donald Trump.
When the Senate met on February 5, 2020 and declared Trump “not guilty” on two articles of impeachment, he was enjoying one of the best weeks of his presidency.
His approval ratings were at an all-time high and the Republican Party’s campaign war chest was overflowing with donations from fired-up conservatives. Democrats, who were struggling to decide on a presidential nominee, felt demoralised.
The trial had failed to captivate the American public, reflecting how removed the issues at hand, such as US military aid to Ukraine, were from people’s daily lives.
The day after his Senate trial ended, Trump stood at a podium and triumphantly brandished newspaper front pages declaring him “ACQUITTED”.
“Honey, maybe we’ll frame it,” he quipped to wife Melania.
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I look forward to comments on all this!
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David.
