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The calm continues with Pres. Biden having done his first month in office and has attended the G7 for the first time saying “America is back”. Texas had a terrible freezing 4-5 days with many deaths and awful suffering. Climate Change was in full flight with weather variability really spiking!
In the UK vaccination is going on apace and it really does seem to be working.
In OZ we see the PM get his vaccination against COVID19 last Sunday and soul searching in Parliament continues on how the respond to the apparent assault on a young female staffer and how to improve the system overall. 4 enquiries announced to date so the Government is clearly spooked.
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Major Issues.
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ASX outage to trigger market shake-up
John Kehoe Senior writer
Feb 15, 2021 – 12.00am
The stockmarket’s snap trading shutdown last year has forced financial regulators to develop plans to inject more competition against the Australian Securities Exchange and move to compel stockbrokers to connect to its competitor Chi-X.
The Council of Financial Regulators had been investigating how to make competition with the ASX more effective, government officials said, after a software glitch caused the exchange to lock up thousands of buy and sell orders in November.
The ASX enjoys a near monopoly on stock exchange trading and clearing and is one of the world’s most profitable bourses.
Regulators are understood to be probing the ASX’s highly vertically integrated system as a barrier to entry, the ban on Chi-X competing in areas that ASX has a monopoly on, brokers not investing in the technology to use both the ASX and Chi-X platforms and brokers not switching to Chi-X to trade when the ASX was down.
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https://www.afr.com/markets/commodities/the-case-for-a-bull-run-on-commodities-20210214-p572cm
Commodities may be set for a 1970s-style boom
Fossil fuels may be on the nose but copper, nickel, silver and platinum could lead to a new commodities boom fuelled by governments’ COVID-19 stimulus spending.
Miichael Mackenzie
Feb 14, 2021 – 1.07pm
After what has been dubbed a lost decade, commodity prices are at last starting to see a revival as investors look to economic recovery.
Commodities have had a rough few years, hit by oversupply and crushed by economic fears as the COVID-19 pandemic broke out.
But now prices are being propelled higher amid hopes that a robust post-pandemic recovery during 2021 will release pent-up consumer and industrial demand for raw materials.
Oil prices rose above $US60 a barrel last week while copper hit an eight-year high. A broad index of commodity prices and one that measures industrial metals have both appreciated 17 per cent since November, when Pfizer announced its COVID-19 vaccine.
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‘The most significant change to insider trading rules in decades’
Jemima Whyte
Feb 15, 2021 – 12.00am
Changes to insider trading regulations, championed by some of the country’s most successful tech founders and investors, will make Australia more globally attractive to fast-growing companies but may require a toughening-up of the US rules if they are to be passed through Parliament.
The proposed changes would allow founders and, perhaps, company executives and directors to sell shares more easily by nominating upfront a set number of shares to buy or sell in the market at an agreed price over a set period.
“I think there is a real risk that some of the best and fastest-growing businesses in Australia look to the US, and the challenges around selling shares as a founder or executive is one of the key reasons why they would look to the US to list,” TDM Growth Partners’ Tom Cowan said, whose fund has investments in Tyro, Rokt and Guzman Y Gomez.
Under the existing regulations, founders and other “company insiders” must wait for trading windows when they are not in possession of sensitive company information and then typically sell shares at a discount.
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Active rotation the key to extra equity returns
As global growth bounces back strongly and corporate earnings return to pre-pandemic levels, further sharemarket gains are likely to be more gradual.
James Wright Contributor
Feb 15, 2021 – 12.00am
COVID-19 created significant volatility and disparate returns in equity markets across the globe through 2020. In 2021, Australian private investors will likely need to rotate their traditional Australian stock portfolios into different geographies, sectors and underlying factors to maximise the income and capital return opportunities on offer.
Dynamically managing these factor risks is likely to remain a high priority in a world where prospective risk and correlations of investments can change rapidly.
Usually the dislocation caused by severe shocks to the global economy gives nimble investors ample opportunities to invest in assets at deep discounts to their intrinsic value. While there were undoubtedly opportunities in 2020 in listed equity markets through March and April, the bounceback was swift and many investors failed to take full advantage.
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Adapting to change will drive future returns
Vimal Gor
Feb 15, 2021 – 12.01am
Normal. One word that signifies what so many of us hope for in 2021. Hugging family in another state. Maybe even another country by year’s end. Once taken for granted, such modest aspirations are now what we yearn for.
Commentators are now talking about markets returning to normal. However when talking about markets, what is normal? After almost 30 years in markets, I can assure you there is no such thing as normal. Trying to pretend there is risks wallowing in the rear view mirror. Even worse in markets it can mean hanging on to outdated notions, relying on hope that somehow the days that made sense to you will return. Economies evolve, markets evolve and ideas evolve. We can learn from the past but to generate returns it’s eyes on the future.
So what has changed as we enter 2021? Firstly, monetary policy is largely dead. It was already dying before the pandemic but 2020 finished it off once and for all.
The Reserve Bank grabs our attention from time to time and still has tools to move dials. The Term Funding Facility more than anything has driven retail rates down towards zero. However the ability to seriously drive an economy is gone with rates at zero. Negative rates seem a bridge too far, at least until physical cash has disappeared.
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economy are, and don’t take their results too seriously.
Unprecedented change under way as First Nations people take a seat at the table
By Pat Turner
February 15, 2021 — 12.10am
Each year in February, the Prime Minister delivers a statement in Parliament accounting to the nation for the status of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and outlines what more is needed to “close the gap”. It is a time when our country looks in the mirror and confronts our different status – a status that shows wide gaps between the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and other Australians.
Over the past two years, a movement has been under way to change how the nation approaches these gaps. It started when Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community-controlled bodies stood up and called for shared decision making with governments. We knew that having a seat at the table where decisions were being made was vital. And we knew that our voice needed to be equal to the voice of governments.
Last year, the Prime Minister spoke to Parliament about his commitment for this new way of working between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representatives and governments based on formal partnerships. This commitment is embedded in the historic Partnership Agreement on Closing the Gap, signed in March 2019 by all governments and the Coalition of Peaks, made up of over 55 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community-controlled bodies from across the country.
Twelve months on from the Prime Minister’s last statement to Parliament, as we expect his next statement today, this commitment is taking hold.
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Five strategies for managing through expensive markets
There are steps you can take to protect your portfolio and make the most of opportunities.
Scott Haslem Contributor
Feb 16, 2021 – 12.00am
All has not gone to plan over recent months. Hopes of exiting 2020 with the pandemic firmly in the rear-view mirror have not eventuated. Despite an accelerating rollout of multiple vaccines, there has been a nasty resurgence of the virus across the UK, Europe and the US. Australia and parts of the emerging markets have also had new outbreaks.
Economic growth in early 2021 is likely to step back temporarily from the encouraging pick-up during the latter months of last year.
Still, with Australia’s reporting season well advanced, equity markets here and overseas continue to grind higher, pushing valuations to levels that likely challenge even the most glass-half-full investor.
Like the recent encouraging US and European reporting seasons, Australian companies are continuing the trend of improving revenue, better cost control and cautious optimism.
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No rights at work: MPs’ staffers are the Uber drivers of the political process
Jenna Price
Columnist and academic
February 16, 2021 — 12.10am
Yet another Liberal Party staffer has alleged she was sexually assaulted by a parliamentary colleague, this time in Parliament House.
The young woman, Brittany Higgins, reported the assault but felt forced to choose between justice or a career in politics. The response to the case, by Defence Minister Linda Reynolds, was dreadful. Higgins was interviewed about her experience in the very room where the assault took place. Just 18 months ago, another staffer, Chelsey Potter, reported she was pinned down and had her underpants torn off. Yet another said a fellow Liberal came to her house the same year and forced himself on her while masturbating.
Is the Liberal Party the worst workplace in the world? Is Labor any better? Can women only speak out after they leave?
At the beginning of 2020, the Liberal Party released its National Code of Conduct, which insists any victim of criminal conduct should report the complaint to the police and parliamentary staffers should refer the matter to Parliament or government departments. Labor is in the final stages of updating its code of conduct and harassment policies and procedures. In its draft form, it at least says it will support the victim through the complaints process.
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https://www.afr.com/chanticleer/continuous-disclosure-change-a-blow-for-investors-20210216-p57331
Continuous disclosure change a blow for investors
ASIC was right when it said “the economic significance of fair and efficient capital markets dwarfs any exposure to class action damages”.
Feb 17, 2021 – 12.05am
The federal government’s decision to erode Australia’s continuous disclosure regime is a blow to investors and capital markets.
The change to the disclosure regime, originally introduced as part of a suite of pandemic relief measures last May after intense lobbying by the Australian Institute of Company Directors, will mean directors will only be liable for civil penalty proceedings where they have acted with “knowledge, recklessness or negligence” in terms of disclosure.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg specifically says the measure will prevent opportunistic class actions – a huge bug bear of the director class – and bring Australia’s regime in line with that of the US and Britain.
ASIC can still prosecute criminal breaches, issue administrative penalties and infringement notices without proving fault. But shareholder redress via class actions will become harder.
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Exchange Traded Fund ‘spreads’ widen during lockdowns
By John Collett
February 16, 2021 — 10.00pm
Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) are often lauded as a fail-safe way of buying market returns relatively cheaply.
However, investors who sold some ETFs during last year’s sharemarket meltdown faced a blowout in “bid-ask spreads”, where big differences opened up in what buyers were willing to pay and what sellers were prepared to accept. Normally with ETFs, the spreads are low.
Most ETFs mirror the returns of a particular market; whether it be a benchmark share index or subindex, commodities, or even currency exchange rates. Their units are traded in the same way as shares, so they are usually easy to buy and sell and their management fees are low.
However, a study by Morningstar shows that those who sold some fixed-interest ETFs during the peak of the downturn in February and March faced spread costs of about 3 per cent, on average. The annual yield on those fixed-interest ETFs would have struggled to match that amount.
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Lessons learnt by SMSF trustees during market meltdown
By John Maroney
February 16, 2021 — 10.28pm
To put it mildly, 2020 was a harrowing year for investors. For Self-Managed Super Fund trustees, many sitting on their life’s retirement nest eggs, it was even more so.
On February 20, the S&P/ASX 200 Index closed at a record 7162.5. By March 23, it was floundering at 4546 – a drop of 36.5 per cent.
And it was not just equities; listed property was a major casualty, while volatility and a lack of liquidity defined fixed-interest markets.
Then sharemarkets did a remarkable U-turn – almost in inverse proportion to the spread of COVID-19 – to the extent that the sell-off and recovery occurred in time spans that were unprecedented.
The benchmark ASX index closed out the year not far from where it started.
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Super reforms ‘to save billions’, says Jane Hume
Superannuation Minister Jane Hume has pushed back at fund managers and Labor over the government’s superannuation reforms, declaring that the major overhaul of the $3 trillion system will pump billions of dollars into the pockets of working Australians.
Senator Hume said “no one likes change, particularly when you’re on a good wicket”.
“The superannuation sector has lobbied hard against the measures we’ve taken, and Labor has been their megaphone on the floor of the parliament. But, in the end, it’s hard to argue with changes that make super fund members, not super fund managers, better off,” she said.
Writing online for The Australian after the government introduced its Your Future, Your Super package into parliament on Wednesday, Senator Hume stresses that the reforms are aimed at ensuring fund managers deliver value for money.
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Parliament plays catch-up with the rest of society
The core cultural failing is that political management is wired into the place. Will it change now?
Phillip Coorey Political editor
Feb 18, 2021 – 8.00pm
Just over two decades ago, federal parliament was reeling following the suicide of a young Labor MP, Greg Wilton.
He took his life in June 2000 after the breakdown of his marriage and subsequent media coverage of his depressive condition, his likely resignation and who would win his seat in a byelection.
The whole building felt shamed at what eventuated and a day was set aside for MPs to make condolence motions.
Much of the focus was on the “toxic culture of politics”, the way people treated each other in the building, and the lack of support mechanisms for those needing help.
“The best thing we could do would be to rededicate ourselves to being kinder and gentler to each other,” Tony Abbott said.
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Trouble with paradise: the crisis Australia has hardly noticed
Kevin Rudd
Former Australian prime minister
February 19, 2021 — 12.05am
Few Australians would have heard much about the dramatic schism at the Pacific Islands Forum last week, but its consequences for our region could be long-lasting and disastrous.
Fiji’s suspension from the forum in 2009 presented a serious political crisis for the institution. But through active Australian and New Zealand leadership, working with our Pacific counterparts, the forum held together. Nothing, however, compares in the forum’s history to the decision last week by its five Micronesian members – Nauru, Kiribati, Palau, the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia – to voluntarily walk away from the institution. Even if a deal can be worked out before they formally exit a year from now, the fact is that Pacific regionalism will never be the same.
The challenge for the Australian government is to not just fiddle while Rome burns. These events have already shown the Morrison government’s Pacific “Step Up” has been little more than a giant Pacific “Stuff Up”. Australia’s role in the region is to constructively and respectfully help our island neighbours navigate their collective future. The risk now is that the Pacific Islands Forum disappears altogether, thereby fracturing longstanding regional solidarity. If the forum implodes, Australia too would lose its formal seat at the table of the Pacific family. That would be strategically disastrous for Australia. And great news for Beijing.
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Brittany Higgins calls police, demands proper investigation
Phillip Coorey Political editor
Feb 19, 2021 – 5.08pm
Former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins has officially requested the Australian Federal Police investigate her alleged rape by a co-worker in March 2019.
After five days of revelations and allegations which have had the Morrison government in damage control, Ms Higgins took the next step late on Friday.
“Today I have re-engaged with Australian Federal Police and will proceed with a formal complaint regarding the crime committed against me in what should be the safest building in Australia,” she said in a statement.
She said her aims were twofold: “Firstly, I want a comprehensive police investigation into what happened to me on 22/23 March 2019 and for my perpetrator to face the full force of the law.
“Secondly, given my experience, I am determined to drive significant reform in the way the Australian Parliament handles issues of this nature and treats ministerial and parliamentary staff more generally.”
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State of paralysis as ministers hide behind a rape victim
It’s not just the workplace culture in Canberra’s Parliament House that is under scrutiny but also the culture of accountability in politics.
Laura Tingle Columnist
Feb 19, 2021 – 6.58pm
At the political heart of the harrowing personal story of a young woman being allegedly raped on the couch of a minister’s office in Parliament House is the idea that, beyond the assault itself, the incident may have been covered up, and the young woman made to feel a political liability.
In the light of this week’s revelations, the story of the young Coalition staffer Brittany Higgins is being spoken of as one that reflects an appalling workplace culture for women in Canberra’s Parliament House.
In the light of this week’s revelations, the story of the young Coalition staffer Brittany Higgins is being spoken of as one that reflects an appalling workplace culture for women in Canberra’s Parliament House.
But it also speaks to the more basic questions of the culture of accountability in politics, and of competent management.
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https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/rudd-revels-in-prosecution-of-murdoch-20210219-p57426
Rudd revels in prosecution of Murdoch
Andrew Tillett Political correspondent
Feb 19, 2021 – 5.26pm
Kevin Rudd has embraced plenty of personas during his time in public life: nerdy prime minister, foreign policy wonk, underminer-in-chief.
But Friday saw him add a new role, star witness in the show trial of Rupert Murdoch in absentia.
Rudd’s appearance at a Senate inquiry into media diversity – one he inspired after 500,000 people signed a petition calling for a royal commission – is the first time since 2004 a former prime minister (Gough Whitlam) fronted the “unrepresentative swill”.
Rudd started off by saying any monopoly as a matter of principle is bad but he quickly zeroed in Murdoch’s News Corporation in print media.
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Why the market has suddenly woken up to inflation
The mantra of ‘lower for longer’ is coming under pressure as investors realise the potential damage inflation could inflict on complacent portfolios.
Jonathan Shapiro Senior reporter
Feb 20, 2021 – 12.00am
If any investor – professional or “mum and dad” – in almost any part of the world had to get just one call right over the past decade, it was to believe in the “lower for longer” mantra.
That is that long-term interest rates, which had lingered at or around their all-time historical lows, would remain suppressed – thus ensuring that a raft of investments from US technology stocks to Australian housing remained valuable.
Despite repeated warnings and several false dawns, inflation – rising prices – never emerged. The consequence was that rates remained low, and asset prices elevated. Then the pandemic hit. Central banks responded by cutting rates to inconceivable levels. And governments finally stepped up with big spending plans.
Now the lower-for-longer doubters are re-emerging. They believe deliberately slow-to-act central banks in the US and in Australia, stimulus cheques and pent-up spending will turbo-charge economic activity and unleash the inflationary forces many thought were gone for good.
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Monstrous act exposes the cold inhumanity at the heart of the Morrison government
Peter Hartcher
Political and international editor
February 20, 2021 — 12.13am
A young woman has come forward to say that she was raped in the inner sanctum of Australian political power, the ministerial offices of Parliament House.
No one is denying it. Not her colleagues, not her employer of the time, not the prime minister in the government she served. On the contrary, her employer of that time, today’s Defence Minister, Linda Reynolds, shed tears of remorse in the Senate this week. The Prime Minister offered his apologies.
Brittany Higgins says she was raped two years ago. It turns out that dozens of people in the Morrison government and parliamentary staff knew. At least two cabinet ministers, women both. Political staff. At least one member of Scott Morrison’s personal staff. Senior public servants. Police and security attendants.
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Accused Liberal staffer ‘moved through the ranks too fast’
It’s not just newly minted MPs and senators who arrive in Canberra bright-eyed and excited. Staffers like Brittany Higgins work hard, play hard and adhere to one golden rule.
· 20 February 2021
It’s not just newly-minted federal MPs and senators who arrive in Canberra bright-eyed and excited. The often young and uniformly ambitious advisers populating the parliamentary and ministerial offices in the big house on Capital Hill are just as caught up by the intoxicating atmosphere.
They work hard, play hard and adhere to one golden rule: staffers are never, ever to become the story for the journalists who hover in the press gallery and frequent the same restaurants and nightspots in nearby Kingston.
But the unwritten code was torn up this week — arguably, not before time — when Brittany Higgins came forward to allege she was raped in the early hours of March 23, 2019, in the office of then-defence industry minister Linda Reynolds after a boozy Friday night out with colleagues. The man accused of the attack, a more senior adviser, cleared his desk three days later.
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Why equities investors need to watch bonds too
Jeremy Grantham, the legendary former bond market king at mega fund manager GMO, has described the current market as “a fully fledged epic bubble”. Many have also asked whether we are in the midst of a new dotcom bubble — the endgame of which boomers have had the mixed pleasure of experiencing, but millennials have not.
Still, I have challenged this view for three reasons:
First, bubbles in specific sectors of the market, such as the “buy now, pay later” sector in Australia, can inflate and collapse in isolation, and without disrupting the rest of the market, provided the assets crashing aren’t on the balance sheets of systemically important financial institutions.
Second, the overextended valuation of the broad market is being driven by a heavy weighting to five global businesses.
And finally, when compared to ultra-low bond rates, a simple calculation reveals the equity market is roughly fair value.
Against this backdrop, bond rates have been fluctuating in a rather one-sided direction — that is, upwards.
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Greening your investment portfolio
One of the most common questions now asked by investors is how to invest in the move towards a “greener economy”?
It’s not that investors are suddenly gripped with a horror over climate change: It’s something closer to FOMO — Fear Of Missing Out.
Whatever your views on the wider environmental debate, there is in fact no debate over the investing picture: the evidence builds year after year that green investing pays better than traditional profit-at-all-costs investing.
We can squabble about definitions ad nauseam, but the results keep coming out the same — the latest from Bloomberg’s New Energy Finance unit that shows the market capitalisation of “clean companies” growing exponentially, while “fossil fuel” stocks show a marked decline in market capitalisation.
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Coronavirus And Impacts.
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$1bn bid to go it alone with COVID-19 vaccine hub
A proposal for a state-of-the-art $1bn facility to manufacture vaccines and prescription drugs in Australia is being reviewed by the federal government in a bid to deal with critical drug shortages and bolster sovereign capabilities in the Asia-Pacific region.
Documents obtained by The Australian outline how the regional facility proposes to manufacture essential medicines to supply 40 million people, as well as ramp up the nation’s vaccine development capability.
The CSIRO is advising on the project, named The Resilience Partnership, which is a consortium of leading biopharmaceutical, biosecurity, engineering and infrastructure organisations.
The Australian Medical Association backs the proposal, pointing out that both Commonwealth Serum Laboratories and the CSIRO were formed in response to the Spanish flu pandemic 100 years ago.
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Welcome to our new COVID-19 vaccine data tracker
By Craig Butt, Mark Stehle, Reginal Sengkey and Richard Lama
February 17, 2021 — 8.40am
The worldwide battle against COVID-19 has moved to its next phase as vaccines are rolled out across the globe. Most countries now face the enormous logistical challenge of vaccinating enough people so that spread of the virus can be stopped and life can return to normal.
This fresh battleground means a whole new set of data to follow, so our visual stories and data teams have launched a new vaccine data tracker to show you the progress countries are making in vaccinating their citizens. And just like the COVID-19 data centre we launched last April, this vaccine data centre will be continuously upgraded and tweaked.
We are also planning to create a pane on the dashboard dedicated to Australia’s progress once the rollout begins here. We’ve decided to use the total number of people fully vaccinated as our main metric of success rather than the number of doses administered.
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Coronavirus: New mutant strain discovered that weakens vaccine
· The Times
A new variant of the coronavirus with a worrying cluster of mutations has been identified in the UK, leading to calls for further enhanced testing to contain its spread.
The variant, known as B1525, has been identified 33 times, according to University of Edinburgh researchers. It was first spotted in the UK on December 15 and then about two weeks later in Nigeria. It contains the E484K mutation, which appears to lessen the effectiveness of existing vaccines and is also seen in strains of the virus that appear to have originated in South Africa and in Manaus in Brazil.
It also contains two mutations known as deletions. One has shown signs in laboratory tests of increasing the virus’s ability to infect new cells; the other appears to make some types of antibody work less well.
The British government’s Nervtag committee of respiratory virus experts is expected to meet this week to discuss whether B1525 is sufficiently worrying to be identified as a “variant of concern”.
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Negative coronavirus antibody test hits jab duration
The earliest suspected cases of COVID-19 detected in Wuhan no longer have antibodies, the lead investigator of the World Health Organisation mission to China has revealed, indicating that a year after contracting the virus they no longer had immunity.
In another announcement — divulged in the same interview with American broadcaster CNN — Peter Ben Embarek said the group found 13 different genetic sequences of the coronavirus in December 2019, indicating that COVID-19 was percolating in China well before it was first detected.
During the 28-day trip, Chinese scientists gave the investigators analysis of 92 suspected COVID-19 cases from October and November 2019.
In January this year, all of the cases who agreed to be tested returned negative antibody results, indicating that a year after contracting the virus, they may no longer have immunity.
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My Covid diary: an ICU doctor reports from the front line
Dr Jim Down has spent the past year fighting Covid in the intensive care unit of University College Hospital in London. Now he’s published his diary from the early months – a terrifying, moving account of the fight to save patients from a disease that was still totally unknown
MARK HARRISON
Thursday February 18 2021, 5.00pm GMT, The Times
March 24, 2020
“Jim, they need you in bay 5. The young guy – Adam – in bed 36 has crashed his blood pressure.”
“Right, OK. Thanks.” I walked back to the table of personal protective equipment, dropped my valuables into the tray and picked a new mask from the box.
“Has his temp gone up again?”
“Don’t know. I’ll ask.” Taciana, the staff nurse who’d called me, spoke into her walkie-talkie.
“Jim’s coming in. What’s his temperature? In bed 36.”
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Climate Change.
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No entries this week.
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Royal Commissions And The Like.
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MPs targeted in campaign to lift aged-care funds
A coalition of church-backed, charity and private aged-care providers covering 1000 organisations will launch a political campaign across 15 marginal federal electorates warning Australia will need to spend an extra $20bn a year to bring the sector in line with world standards.
With the royal commission into the aged-care crisis due to report at the end of the next week, the powerful new lobby is poised to name and shame MPs to force a radical overhaul of the sector’s resourcing, regulation and workforce training.
The Australian understands that the spending review committee of cabinet met last week to discuss the Morrison government’s response to what is expected to be damning final findings and recommendations from the royal commission into the abuse and neglect of elderly Australians in residential care.
But threatening to follow the heated school-funding campaign undertaken by the Catholic and independent school sectors against the Turnbull government in 2018, the newly formed pact will release a report on Monday claiming a shortfall of 100,000 home-care packages needs to be urgently addressed.
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Aged care ‘must get its house in order’
Nursing homes will have to address their culture and leadership before the ailing sector can improve, the Health Department says, warning the aged care royal commission’s lawyers had ignored the issue altogether.
In a newly released submission to the commission, the department and the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission conceded significant improvements to aged-care compliance and governance were needed, but said quality of care ultimately depended on the values and leadership of providers.
“It is accepted by the commonwealth that major reforms are required in aged-care financing, provider governance, and quality and safety regulation,” the submission, which responded to the commission’s lawyers’ own damning final submission to the inquiry last October, said.
“A key element not addressed in counsel assisting’s submissions, however, which should also be considered by the royal commission, is provider culture.
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‘It’s a facility not a home’: What will it take to reform aged care?
By Rachel Clun
February 20, 2021 — 5.00am
It’s past midday, but Merle Mitchell’s breakfast dishes were still on her table when staff at her Melbourne aged care facility brought in her lunch.
“I wouldn’t say this place is a bad place, unlike lots of places,” she says.
Her facility did not experience the catastrophic outbreaks of COVID-19 experienced in other homes last year, but staffing levels mean there’s one nurse at night to 79 residents.
“It’s still a facility, it’s still not a home, and it never will be while we have the current arrangements for how we run these places.”
Mitchell, a former president of the Australian Council of Social Service, moved into the Melbourne facility two years before Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced a Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety in September 2018.
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National Budget Issues.
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Flogging the monetary policy horse harder won’t get us anywhere
Ross Gittins
Economics Editor
February 15, 2021 — 12.01am
It didn’t quite hit the headlines, but when Reserve Bank governor Dr Philip Lowe appeared before the House of Reps economics committee a week or so ago, he came under intense questioning from the Parliament’s most highly qualified economist, Labor’s Dr Andrew Leigh.
In my never-humble opinion, Leigh had the wrong end of the stick.
One criticism was that the board of the Reserve Bank is dominated by “amateurs” – business men and women appointed by successive federal governments. According to Leigh, pretty much every other central bank has its decisions on monetary policy (whether to raise or lower interest rates) made by committees of outside monetary experts, who are well equipped to challenge the bank’s own technical analysis.
This is a chestnut I’ve been hearing for decades. It smacks of the old cultural cringe: Australia is out of line with the big boys in America and Europe, therefore we’re doing it wrong. The people in our financial markets spend so much time studying the mighty US economy that their line’s always the same: whatever the Yanks are doing we should be doing.
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What’s gone wrong with our interest rate policy
The RBA has been forced into lockstep with a misguided US Federal Reserve held hostage by volatile financial markets.
Stephen Grenville Contributor
Feb 15, 2021 – 12.57pm
The current debate on Australian monetary policy is misdirected. Interest rates are abnormally low because the US Federal Reserve has pushed them down through excess liquidity and sustained quantitative easing.
All other developed countries (including Australia) have been forced to match these low rates in order to avoid a damaging loss of international competitiveness through an overvalued exchange rate. With policy already so accommodative, further easing would be as ineffective as doubling the prescribed dose of medicine.
Where did this go wrong? The current episode began in America with the 2008 global financial crisis. Interest rates were, correctly, lowered substantially to offset the crisis. QE began as a measure to rescue the housing-finance market but was also aimed at lowering the long-term interest rate – a key price in US finance.
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‘On the cusp of a boom’: Double-digit house price rise tipped as banks continue rate cuts
By Shane Wright
February 15, 2021 — 7.30pm
Economists for the nation’s biggest mortgage lender believe a new housing boom will push home prices in Sydney and Melbourne up by at least 12 per cent over the next two years as banks drive lending rates below 2 per cent.
But tumbling interest rates could leave the Reserve Bank with few options to deal with any future economic downturn, with warnings it may have to print money to finance government spending programs.
At the start of the coronavirus pandemic, economists and housing analysts feared a collapse in home prices that would feed into a downward economic cycle of wealth destruction and subdued consumer spending.
Instead, on the back of record low interest rates and large government support programs including the JobKeeper wage subsidy and the COVID supplement for welfare recipients, prices in all capital cities bar Melbourne have risen over the past 12 months. Regional areas have seen even larger increases.
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Economy adds 30,000 jobs as unemployment falls to 6.4pc
Matthew Cranston Economics correspondent
Feb 18, 2021 – 11.57am
The unemployment rate has fallen to 6.4 per cent from 6.6 per cent, surprising economists and leaving the labour market just shy of its pre-COVID-19 level.
Seasonally adjusted employment increased by 29,000 jobs in January, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. But the participation rate – the percentage of working-age people employed or actively looking for work – edged lower by 0.1 of a percentage point to 66.1 per cent.
Full-time employment increased by 59,000 to 8.8 million jobs, and part-time employment decreased by 29,800 to 4.1 million jobs.
Economists expected overall employment would jump 40,000 in January, pushing the unemployment rate down to 6.5 per cent.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/endless-fiscal-stimulus-can-t-be-the-new-normal-20210217-p573gi
Endless fiscal stimulus can’t be the new normal
Keeping fiscal policy’s pedal to the metal until unemployment is below 4 per cent is a recipe for waste and a debt mountain that will handicap future prosperity.
Robert Carling Contributor
Feb 18, 2021 – 1.52pm
Governments everywhere are being urged to take advantage of near-zero interest rates, throw caution to the wind, shrug off the size of deficits and spend freely. Many of them took this advice in the corona-crisis conditions of 2020.
Whether or not they were right to do so then, they would be ill-advised to remain on the same path in 2021. It is time to think about a path back to fiscal consolidation, discipline, and responsibility – what is pejoratively labelled “austerity”.
This doesn’t mean that surplus or even balanced budgets are imminent, but it does mean rejecting the notion that debt no longer matters and that fiscal stimulus should be part of the new normal.
There are many expert voices arguing against a shift away from fiscal laxity. Writing on these pages on Wednesday, for example, professors Richard Holden and Bruce Preston (“Perverse logic of the push for higher interest rates”) advocated adherence to expansionary fiscal policy until unemployment falls below 4 per cent.
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Retail trade up, highest January rise since 2015
Matthew Cranston Economics correspondent
Feb 19, 2021 – 12.01pm
Consumers spent $30.5 billion on retail sales in January - a bounce of 0.6 per cent on December sales, but were on the soft side of economists expectations due to sporadic COVID outbreaks during the month.
Figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show all states reported higher seasonally adjusted retail sales except Queensland which fell 1.5 per cent, because COVID-19 restrictions in Brisbane dampened sales across household goods, clothing, footwear and personal accessory retailing, and department stores.
Sales in NSW were strongest, up 1 per cent, as Greater Sydney’s COVID-19 restrictions eased.
ANZ economists expected retail sales growth in January of 1 per cent, while most market economists had expected a 2 per cent rise.
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‘Alarm bells’: Auditor-General budget cuts will see agencies avoid scrutiny for decades
By Katina Curtis
February 19, 2021 — 3.33pm
The watchdog in charge of keeping the government accountable for its use of taxpayer money says his budget has fallen so much some agencies might only face scrutiny once every 20 years and auditors are tolerating “uncomfortable” risks in financial statements.
Auditor-General Grant Hehir says over the next four years he has to cut the number of performance audits his office does, which in the past year has uncovered the sports rorts scandal and the $30 million paid for the Leppington Triangle land valued within a year at just $3 million.
The cut will bring down the number of audits by a quarter, from a historical average of 48 a year to 36, the lowest number this century, bar 2016 when the double dissolution of Parliament meant fewer sitting weeks to deliver his reports.
“In effect, I am unable to provide the Parliament to the same extent with the evidence it has used to hold executive government to account, thereby reducing accountability and transparency,” Mr Hehir on Friday told a parliamentary committee reviewing the Australian National Audit Office.
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Health Issues.
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Old age can soon be ‘cured’ scientists believe
Old age is a massacre,” wrote Philip Roth, long before the pandemic underscored its hazards. Even those who count as young must often watch the ineluctable drift of loved ones into decrepitude. Andrew Steele has a hopeful message for all those facing this prospect (i.e., everyone). Old age needn’t be a massacre; in fact, old age needn’t even be old.
Mr Steele’s thesis in “Ageless” is that ageing can be cured — and, at least in part, that it very soon will be. The giant tortoises of the Galapagos Islands show no age-related decline, in some ways seeming as youthful at 170 as at 30. Mr Steele thinks this phenomenon, known as negligible senescence, is within humanity’s grasp, too.
Whether or not readers are persuaded that ageless humans could ever be more than a theoretical possibility — and it is a stretch — this book will convince them that discounting the theoretical possibility altogether is based on nothing but prejudice. Western art may have something to do with it, bristling as it is with morality tales about the folly of wanting to turn back the clock; but there is actually no good reason to assume an upper limit to longevity, or that ageing must come with decline. And there is quite a lot of evidence to the contrary. Without the rich world’s denizens really noticing, a life that ends after the biblical three score years and ten has already come to seem a life cut short; instead, 90 is now seen as a good innings.
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International Issues.
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https://www.afr.com/markets/currencies/bitcoin-s-rise-reflects-america-s-decline-20210215-p572j8
Bitcoin’s rise reflects America’s decline
The rise in popularity of highly volatile cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin could be an early signal of a new world order in which the US and the dollar will play a less important role.
Rana Foroohar Contributor
Feb 15, 2021 – 10.24am
A little over 100 years ago, there was a bubble asset that rose and fell wildly over the course of a decade. People who held it would have lost 100 per cent of their money five different times. They would have, at various points, made huge fortunes, or seen the value of their asset destroyed by hyperinflation.
The asset I’m referring to is gold priced in Weimar marks. If this reminds you of bitcoin, you are not alone. In his newsletter Tree Rings, analyst Luke Gromen looked at the startling similarities in the volatility of gold in Weimar Germany and bitcoin today. His conclusion? Bitcoin isn’t so much a bubble as “the last functioning fire alarm” warning us of some very big geopolitical changes ahead.
I agree. Central bankers have over the past 10 years (or the last few decades, depending on where you put the marker) quashed price discovery in markets with low interest rates and quantitative easing. Whether you see this as a welcome smoothing of the business cycle or a dysfunctional enabling of debt-ridden businesses, the upshot is that it’s now very difficult to get a sense of the health of individual companies or certainly the real economy as a whole from asset prices.
The rise in popularity of highly volatile cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin could simply be seen as a speculative sign of this US Federal Reserve-enabled froth. But it might better be interpreted as an early signal of a new world order in which the US and the dollar will play a less important role.
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Acquittal confirms cult of Trump dilemma for GOP
Now that Republicans have passed up an opportunity to banish him through impeachment, it is not clear how they can transform their party into something other than a vessel for a semi-retired demagogue who was repudiated by a majority of voters.
Alexander Burns
Feb 14, 2021 – 4.39pm
During the first trial of Donald Trump the former president commanded near-total fealty from his party. His conservative defenders were ardent and numerous, and Republican votes to convict him – for pressuring Ukraine to help him smear Joe Biden – were virtually non-existent.
In his second trial, Trump, no longer president, received less ferocious Republican support. His apologists were sparser in number and seemed to lack enthusiasm. Far fewer conservatives defended the substance of his actions, instead dwelling on technical complaints while skirting the issue of his guilt on the charge of inciting the January 6 riot at the Capitol.
And this time, seven Republican senators voted with Democrats to convict Trump – the most bipartisan rebuke ever delivered in an impeachment process. Several others, including Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, intimated that Trump might deserve to face criminal prosecution.
McConnell, speaking from the Senate floor after the vote, denounced Trump’s “unconscionable behaviour” and held him responsible for having given “inspiration to lawlessness and violence.”
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Failure to convict Trump over Capitol riot does not mean it was a mistake to try
The Economist
Few expected that Donald Trump’s impeachment for inciting the mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6 would lead to his conviction. That would have needed the unlikely votes of 17 Republican senators. In recent weeks there were no signs that so many were ready to turn on the former president. Now those expectations have been met.
Did the failure to convict Trump mean it was a mistake to try? Hardly. The trial served various ends. It was a first attempt — and other legal efforts will follow, at least for lesser figures, in criminal courts — to assign responsibility for the deadly attack on the US Capitol. The Senate trial drew avid public attention. Dramatic fresh footage of the assault by the mob, presented last week by Democrat congressmen serving as the prosecution, was witnessed by millions of Americans following events online and on television. Those videos, often shot by the rioters themselves, were at times harrowing and cruel. The presentation was effective, and a reminder that political violence is a real threat in America. Even Trump’s lawyers frankly condemned the assault on the Capitol as “horrific” and said it was conducted by criminals. Whatever the result, the trial may thus have gone some way to helping to draw a line against anti-democratic violence — as low a bar as that might seem.
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Trump opens door to 2024 White House run after Senate acquittal
Donald Trump has hinted at a political comeback after being acquitted in his Senate impeachment trial of inciting an insurrection for his role in the deadly Capitol riots.
Forty-three Republican senators voted on Sunday AEDT to acquit the former president, with 57 senators finding him guilty, short of the two-thirds majority needed to convict.
Seven Republicans broke ranks to vote alongside Democrats, reflecting the divisions in the party over Mr Trump’s role in the Capitol riots on January 6 that left five people dead.
The Senate trial lasting just five days — the shortest on record — leaving Mr Trump as the first president to be .impeached and acquitted twice.
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https://www.ausdoc.com.au/news/how-many-lives-did-trump-presidency-cost
How many lives did the Trump presidency cost?
'He committed crimes against health': Lancet report details the alleged damage of his policies
15th February 2021
A Lancet report claims that 461,000 fewer Americans would have died in 2018 as a result of the Trump administration's policies.
It said that last year some 40% of US deaths from COVID-19 would have been averted if the US death rates had been in line with those of the other G7 nations: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the UK.
The report by the Lancet Commission on Public Policy and Health in the Trump Era also estimates the impact of his administration's rollbacks of environmental protections at 22,000 deaths in 2019.
"The main message from this report is that Trump committed crimes against health in America," said commission co-chair Professor David Himmelstein, a GP and a lecturer at the Harvard Medical School, Boston.
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Why Trump’s sin against America can’t just be forgotten
Helpful foreigners who say Americas should just ‘move on’ from the Capitol assault don’t quite get the sacredness of the constitution.
Janet Daley Contributor
Feb 15, 2021 – 12.12pm
There has never really been any doubt about the outcome of the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump. Neither of the opposing camps in Congress, nor any major American political commentator, has suggested that enough of the Senate’s Republican members would agree to convict, whatever evidence or arguments were presented to them.
So what was the point? Given the irreconcilable enmity between the parties, which will be fed by what could be portrayed as an exercise in partisan showmanship, what useful purpose was to be served?
This is the view I hear repeatedly in overseas circles, both from people who were once Trump apologists and, perhaps more surprisingly, those who have always detested him. Why not move on? Just put this ugly misadventure behind you, bury it as a dark chapter in the nation’s history and proceed with the proper business of the day – tackling the pandemic and, if you are inclined to support it, enacting Joe Biden’s presidential program.
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‘It’s a fricken civil war’: Republican Party tears itself apart
Jacob Greber AFR correspondent
Feb 15, 2021 – 5.53pm
There are now three kinds of Republicans in America.
The first blindly love Donald Trump and everything he’s done to the party – including losing its majorities in the House and the Senate as well as the White House itself.
The second is an anti-Trumper who plans to reluctantly stay inside the tent but reform the GOP back into an election-winning machine that doesn’t alienate centrist conservative Americans.
The Republican Party is tearing itself apart.
And the third, racked with despair, wonders whether now’s the time to create a third party, pitched at the growing legion of old-time supporters who say they’re done with the GOP under Trump.
“It’s a fricken civil war,” Chip Felkel, a top South Carolina-based adviser to more than 100 Republican political campaigns around the US, told The Australian Financial Review.
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https://www.afr.com/world/middle-east/arab-spring-lessons-10-years-on-20210216-p572zz
Arab Spring lessons 10 years on
Bret Stephens Contributor
Feb 16, 2021 – 3.19pm
Ten years ago, as masses of demonstrators filled Cairo’s Tahrir Square, I made a modest bet with a friend that Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s dictator of nearly 30 years, would hold on to power. My thinking was that Mubarak controlled the army, and the army could see that the choice Egypt faced wasn’t between democracy and dictatorship. It was the choice among Islamism, chaos – and him.
I lost the bet, but I wasn’t entirely wrong.
Mubarak himself, of course, soon fell, raising broad hopes that decent, stable, representative democracy might yet establish itself not just in Egypt but throughout the Arabic-speaking world. But as a devastating report Sunday from The New York Times′ Ben Hubbard and David Kirkpatrick reminds readers, virtually none of those hopes survive.
In Tunisia, where it all began, the economy and government splutter. In Syria, the dead number in the hundreds of thousands and refugees in the millions – and Bashar Assad is still in power. In Libya, Moammar Gadhafi’s ouster has led to a decade of militia warfare. Iraq and Syria were both brutalised by Islamic State until it was largely snuffed out. Yemen has collapsed into a regional proxy war while millions face starvation. Lebanon – a garden without walls, as my late friend Fouad Ajami used to say – is a failed state. Egyptian politics went from dictatorship to democracy to Islamism to dictatorship within the space of 30 months.
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China targets rare earth export curbs to hobble US defence
Sun Yu and Demetri Sevastopulo
Feb 16, 2021 – 6.02pm
Beijing/Washington | China is exploring whether it can hurt US defence contractors by limiting the export of rare earth minerals crucial for the manufacture of F-35 fighter jets and other sophisticated weaponry, according to people involved in a government consultation.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) last month proposed draft controls on the production and export of 17 rare earth minerals in China, which controls about 80 per cent of global supply.
Industry executives said government officials had asked them how badly companies in the US and Europe, including defence contractors, would be affected if China restricted rare earth exports during a bilateral dispute.
“The government wants to know if the US may have trouble making F-35 fighter jets if China imposes an export ban,” said a Chinese government adviser who asked not to be identified.
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‘We are thoroughly disgusted with you!’ Republican denounced by own family for opposing Donald Trump
By Katie Shepherd
February 17, 2021 — 8.09am
Washington: After former president Donald Trump’s acquittal over the weekend, several Republicans who supported impeachment faced backlash and calls for censure from GOP officials in their home states.
But one Republican was condemned by a more intimate group: His own family.
“We are thoroughly disgusted with you!!” wrote relatives of Representative Adam Kinzinger in a two-page letter first published by the New York Times on Monday. “And, oh, by the way, we are calling for your removal from office.”
Kinzinger, a six-term Republican from Illinois, was one of the 10 GOP House members who joined Democrats to impeach Trump following the January 6 riot at the Capitol. After that vote, Kinzinger was censured by Republicans in his home district and then received a handwritten letter from a cousin that was signed by several other family members decrying his decision as a disappointment “to us and to God.”
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‘Unsmiling political hack’: Trump lashes McConnell, deepening GOP civil war
By Matthew Knott
February 17, 2021 — 9.40am
Washington: Former US President Donald Trump has lashed out at Mitch McConnell, the most senior Republican in the US Congress, in a scathing statement that will exacerbate the rapidly deepening divisions within the Republican Party.
In his most extensive public comments since leaving the White House, Trump described McConnell in a statement as a “dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack”.
McConnell, the Republican Senate leader, voted to acquit Trump in his impeachment trial but lambasted the former president’s behaviour in the lead-up to the January 6 riot at the Capitol.
In a speech on the Senate floor that was widely interpreted as an attempt to drive Trump out of the party, McConnell said Trump was “practically and morally responsible” for the Capitol attack.
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Trump, Giuliani accused of conspiring to incite riot in new lawsuit
By Eric Tucker
February 17, 2021 — 3.44am
Washington: A Democratic congressman has accused Donald Trump in a federal lawsuit of inciting the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol and of conspiring with his lawyer and extremist groups to try to prevent the Senate from certifying the results of the presidential election he lost to Joe Biden.
The lawsuit from Mississippi’s Representative Bennie Thompson, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, is part of an expected wave of litigation over the January 6 riot and is believed to be the first filed by a member of Congress. It seeks unspecified punitive and compensatory damages.
The case also names as defendants the Republican former president’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and groups including the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, extremist organisations that had members charged by the Justice Department with taking part in the siege.
A Trump adviser, Jason Miller, said in a statement on Tuesday local time (Wednesday AEDT) that Trump did not organise the rally that preceded the riot and “did not incite or conspire to incite any violence at the Capitol on January 6th”. A lawyer for Giuliani did not immediately return an email seeking comment.
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‘Perfect chief’: Who is Dr Ngozi, the woman charged with fixing the WTO?
By Emma Farge and Andrea Shalal
February 16, 2021 — 2.11pm
Geneva: Three months after the Trump administration rejected her, former Nigerian finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has received unanimous official backing to become the first woman and first African director-general of the World Trade Organisation.
During a virtual meeting on Monday (Tuesday AEDT) the WTO’s 164 members unanimously selected the 66-year-old development economist to serve a four-year term as director-general.
After withstanding a veto of her candidacy by the now-departed Trump administration, Okonjo-Iweala takes the helm of the Geneva-based WTO at a precarious time for the world economy and just as the organisation itself is mired in a state of dysfunction.
A self-declared “doer” with a track record of taking on seemingly intractable problems, Okonjo-Iweala will have her work cut out for her at the trade body, even with Trump, who had threatened to pull the United States out of the organisation, no longer in the White House.
Okonjo-Iweala, who co-wrote Women and Leadership with former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard), is also a dual US citizen, meaning she’s also the first American to hold the organisation’s top job.
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The coming global recovery isn’t going to lift all boats
The gap between the developed world and emerging economies could widen dangerously even as the virus retreats.
Kenneth Rogoff Columnist
Feb 17, 2021 – 12.34pm
Economic recovery, like COVID-19 vaccines, will not be evenly distributed around the world over the coming two years.
Despite enormous policy support provided by governments and central banks, the economic risks remain profound, and not just to frontier economies facing imminent debt problems and low-income countries experiencing an alarming rise in poverty.
With the coronavirus far from tamed, populism rife, global debt at record levels, and policy normalisation likely to be uneven, the situation remains precarious.
This is not to deny the overall good news of the past 12 months. Effective vaccines have become available in record time, far sooner than most experts originally anticipated. The massive monetary and fiscal response has built a bridge toward a much-hoped-for end to the pandemic. And the public has got better at living with the virus, with or without the help of national authorities.
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How the US can avoid an all-out war with China
· The Times
Back in the late 1880s German naval officers used to clink glasses and drink to “Der Tag!”, the day of reckoning with the British. Do Chinese officers make similar toasts with an eye on America, the country that has to be challenged at sea if an insurgent power is to make the grade?
A heavyweight think tank, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), warns that Taiwan is becoming the most dangerous flashpoint in the world for a possible war that involves the United States, China and probably other big powers. That might just be a bit of early-term alarmism (after all, plenty of other foreign policy crises are jostling for Joe Biden’s attention) but it’s certainly remarkable how little a Taiwan crisis is publicly discussed in the West given the earth-shattering bang that would follow from an armed showdown between Washington and Beijing.
It was easier for past US administrations to inhabit the realm of strategic ambiguity when it came to the defence of Taiwan. With Xi Jinping’s increasing assertiveness and his huge military investment, that position can’t hold for long. Not when Xi’s commandos carry out exercises on a full-size mock-up of the Taiwan presidential palace. Biden thus faces plenty of unanswered questions on what could turn out to be existential issues.
If China were to invade Taiwan, how long would it take before the US came to its aid? Would the US risk all-out war? If Beijing tried to slowly suffocate Taiwan, as it has Hong Kong, at what stage and at what level would the Biden administration intervene? Would it do so alone, or with allies?
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North Korea turning to cryptocurrency schemes in global heists, US says
· The Wall Street Journal
North Korean hackers are increasingly focusing their criminal activity on the world of cryptocurrency and have recently built malicious cryptocurrency apps, launched ransomware attacks, and even promoted a fraudulent initial coin offering in pursuit of digital cash, the Justice Department said on Thursday.
Federal prosecutors provided the new details in a grand jury indictment returned in December and unsealed on Thursday AEDT, charging two alleged members of North Korea’s military intelligence services, Jon Chang-hyok and Kim Il, with a wide-ranging scheme that included attempts to steal $US1.3bn ($1.67bn) over the past half-decade for Pyongyang.
A third man, Park Jin-hyok, who is also named in the indictment, was previously charged in a September 2018 case that accused him of playing a role in the 2016 theft of $US81m from Bangladesh’s account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the 2014 Sony Pictures hack, among other intrusions.
The hackers also allegedly sent spear phishing emails to employees at the State and Defence Departments and multiple US technology companies in January and February 2020, the indictment said.
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Shutdown is on the cards, Swedes told
· The Times
Sweden has warned that it could be forced to shut down shopping centres, restaurants, gyms and swimming pools as it attempts to ward off a third wave.
Those who break Swedish coronavirus rules could also be fined $300 in the first serious penalty for violating restrictions, the government announced.
The country’s infection rate has dropped substantially since the peak of the second wave in December, but progress has ground to a halt and appears to have gone into reverse in some parts of the country. It emerged on Wednesday that the number of cases in Stockholm had risen by almost a quarter within a week.
“I know we all feel a strong yearning for normality,” Swedish Health Minister Lena Hallengren said. “But the situation in Sweden is still serious. The infections are spreading at a fast rate.
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Republicans feel blast of Texan rage over blizzards
· The Times
A political row is raging over the future of America’s energy supply after more than three million Texans were left without power or running water when the state’s electricity system failed and another winter storm moved in.
A spell of freezing weather has been blamed for causing more than 30 deaths across the country and some cities have recorded the lowest temperatures in more than a half-century.
In Texas, where the electricity network is independent of the national grid, a surge in demand for power to heat homes coincided with the failure of power stations and pipelines in the freezing weather.
Greg Abbott, the state’s Republican governor, sought to blame the failures on renewable energy plants and suggested that the crisis demonstrated the flaws in a plan promoted by Democrats in congress to move away from oil and natural gas. “This shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States,” he told Fox News. However, he acknowledged that renewable sources of energy amounted to only 10 per cent of the state’s supply and he conceded that the failures also affected natural gas, coal and nuclear plants.
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https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/texas-land-of-wind-and-lies-20210219-p573yg
Texas, land of wind and lies
Republican state leaders pursued reckless policies that set the stage for catastrophe, then tried to evade responsibility.
Paul Krugman Nobel prize winning economist
Feb 19, 2021 – 9.32am
Politicians are neither gods nor saints. Because they aren’t gods, they often make bad policy decisions. Because they aren’t saints, they often try to evade responsibility for their failures, asserting either that they did as well as anyone could have or that someone else deserves the blame.
For a while, then, the politics surrounding the power outages that have spread across Texas looked fairly normal. True, the state’s leaders pursued reckless policies that set the stage for catastrophe, then tried to evade responsibility. But while their behaviour was reprehensible, it was reprehensible in ways we’ve seen many times over the years.
However, that changed around a day after the severity of the disaster became apparent.
Republican politicians and right-wing media, not content with run-of-the-mill blame-shifting, have coalesced around a malicious falsehood instead — the claim that wind and solar power caused the collapse of the Texas power grid, and that radical environmentalists are somehow responsible for the fact that millions of people are freezing in the dark, even though conservative Republicans have run the state for a generation.
This isn’t normal political malfeasance. It’s the energy-policy equivalent of claiming that the January 6 insurrection was a false-flag antifa operation — raw denial of reality, not just to escape accountability, but to demonise one’s opponents. And it’s another indicator of the moral and intellectual collapse of American conservatism.
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Biden says world must prepare for ‘long-term’ competition with China
By Latika Bourke
February 20, 2021 — 6.57am
London: Joe Biden has called on Europe to prepare for “long-term competition” with China, warning the world is at an “inflection point” but expressing confidence democracy will prevail.
Addressing the virtual Munich Security Conference in his first international foreign policy speech, the US President said Western nations needed to prove to their voters the benefits of democracy.
“How the United States, Europe and Asia work together to secure the peace and defend our shared values and advance our prosperity across the Pacific will be among the most consequential efforts we undertake,” he said.
“Competition with China is going to be stiff, that’s what I expect and that’s what I welcome [...] we can own the race for the future.”
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Biden pleads for democracy over autocracy, repudiating Trump
Justin Sink and Nancy Cook
Feb 20, 2021 – 8.20am
President Joe Biden urged US allies to uphold democracy in his first major speech to an international audience on Friday (Saturday AEDT), warning that the world faces an “inflection point” in history that could result in a tilt toward autocracy.
“We are in the midst of a fundamental debate about the future direction of our world,” Biden said in remarks delivered remotely to the Munich Security Conference. “Between those who argue that -- given all of the challenges we face, from the fourth industrial revolution to a global pandemic -- autocracy is the best way forward and those who understand that democracy is essential to meeting those challenges.”
The new US President seeks to persuade other industrialised democracies that his country is ready to repair alliances and work collectively to confront global challenges, abandoning the “America First” posture of the Trump administration.
In the opening minutes of his speech, Biden committed to observe NATO’s mutual defence guarantee, known as Article 5 -- something Donald Trump initially declined to do while president, sparking controversy.
“We’ll keep faith with Article 5,” Biden said. “It’s a guarantee. An attack on one is an attack on all. That is our unshakable vow.”
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I look forward to comments on all this!
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David.
