December 30 2021 Edition
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First the good news – the James Web Space Telescope has safely made it into space – now for the next 6 months to get it all set up and working.
The rest of the world seems to continue to be gradually swamped by Omicron and we are all still wondering where it will all end.
Global tensions with Russia and China continue and are not helping at all!
In OZ we are
heading into the New Year with a feeling of some uncertainty which has not
eased just yet. We are all really sick of this! Worse we are seeing testing demand skyrocket as cases surge and Governments seem to be rather unsure just what to do. You get the feeling COVID is back with a vengance!
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Major Issues.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/big-super-s-offshore-equities-plunge-is-risky-20211219-p59itb
Big super’s offshore equities plunge is risky
Grant Wilson Contributor
Dec 19, 2021 – 2.35pm
When the pandemic arrived early in 2020, Australian investors were slow to react. They hit a collective panic button in March, and remained for the most part in damage limitation mode into fiscal year-end.
The balance of payments, published each quarter by the Australia Bureau of Statistics (ABS), provides an instructive and authoritative view of the period. Flows by residents in and out of overseas equities and investment fund shares is the best proxy overall.
Through the first half of 2020, residents (people, banks, corporates, government and mainly, superannuation funds) repatriated some $36 billion from the sector. This compares to repatriation of around $14 billion during the global financial crisis (GFC), when assets held by superannuation funds were approximately 40 per cent of the size.
While the risk-averse reaction functions were thus comparable, what has happened since is unprecedented.
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Short-sellers lick lips as Magellan flounders
Jonathan Shapiro and Aleks Vickovich
Dec 19, 2021 – 5.39pm
Hedge funds betting almost $250 million against Magellan Financial Group are bracing for a big payday when shares in the besieged fund manager resume trading following the shock loss of a material client account.
Magellan is expected to respond on Monday to widespread speculation that the lost contract, which sparked a trading halt on Friday, was its $18.6 billion mandate from British wealth manager St James’s Place.
The London Stock Exchange-listed, Gloucestershire-based firm is by far Magellan’s largest corporate client, accounting for one quarter of its institutional funds under management and contributing an estimated 10 per cent of the group’s base, or management fee revenue.
A Magellan spokesman said the company was unable to comment during a trading halt and St James’s Place did not respond to multiple approaches from The Australian Financial Review.
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Follow the Kiwi model to fix the house price nightmare
The New Zealand government has intervened heavily to fix bottlenecks in housing supply. There are equivalent things that Australia could be doing.
Brendan Coates Contributor
Dec 20, 2021 – 12.41pm
Within living memory, Australia was a place where people of all ages and incomes had a reasonable chance to own a home. But the great Australian dream of home ownership is rapidly turning into a nightmare for many young Australians.
Home ownership rates are falling. Between 1981 and 2016, the share of 25 to 34 year-olds who owned their own home fell from more than 60 per cent to 45 per cent. Half of the poorest 40 per cent of Australians aged 25-34 owned their homes in 1981. Now it’s just 30 per cent. Increasingly, younger Australians’ best chance of owning a home is to have parents who already own one.
The growing gap between the housing haves and have-nots is a big reason that wealth inequality is on the rise. The average house in Victoria made its owner $140,000 this year, more than twice what the average Australian worker takes home each year – and the average house in NSW made its owners more than $200,000.
What should the federal government do to fix the mess? It could do far worse than look across the ditch to New Zealand, where a bipartisan bill just passed Parliament that will make it easier to build more houses in the country’s biggest cities.
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RBA should stick to fighting inflation, and nothing else
Monetary policy is not a Swiss Army knife. Too many objectives undermine its purpose, and it is time to rewrite the RBA Act.
Wolfgang Kasper Contributor
Dec 20, 2021 – 1.07pm
The economic history of many countries shows that when economies are stimulated by a blown-up money supply that runs into inelastic supply, the result is serious and unmanageable price inflation.
Apart from the Whitlam-Fraser calamity of the 1970s, when the consumer-price level rose for a while at a clip of more than 15 per cent a year and “masochistic monetary restraints” under the Fraser government inflicted pain on businesses and home borrowers, living Australians have no experience with real inflation.
But history demonstrates that major waves of inflation – which may last decades – inflict great pain: unjust wealth redistribution from poor to rich; extreme poverty; growing homelessness; rises in crime, illegitimate births, and alcohol and drug abuse; the popular rejection of freedom and other fundamental values; even insurrections and a greater likelihood of international armed conflict. Credit for private enterprise becomes unpredictable. Governments often go bankrupt. Policy-induced recessions “we have to have” inflict repeated hurt, but often fail to restore stability.
The RBA is expected to attain three often incompatible economic objectives, plus the feel-good aim of promoting ‘the welfare of the people’.
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https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/religious-freedom-bill-is-bad-for-business-20211220-p59iyq
Religious freedom bill ‘bad for business’
Joanna Mather
Dec 20, 2021 – 4.58pm
The Diversity Council of Australia, which brings together some of Australia’s biggest companies and faith-based organisations, says the Morrison government’s religious freedom laws are “bad for business”.
The council says the “statement of belief” provision contained in the Religious Discrimination Bill 2021 could be used as a smokescreen for harassment, homophobia and sexism.
A standard antidiscrimation law designed along the same lines as laws for sex and race would be a better option, the council has told the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, which is examining the bill.
“The bill will interfere with the ability of organisations to foster inclusive cultures, which will be bad for business,” the council's submission says.
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https://www.afr.com/chanticleer/proxy-adviser-reform-rollout-is-a-shocker-20211221-p59j9o
Frydenberg’s action on proxy advice is a shocker
Whatever your views on the work of proxy advisers, the way the government has rolled out new regulations for the sector without due process amounts to more than a hit job.
Dec 21, 2021 – 11.56am
Australia’s business community might respectfully disagree on the need to reform the work of proxy advisers, but it should be shocked at the way Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has damaged these organisations by hurriedly ramming through new regulations for the nation’s proxy sector.
A week out from Christmas, Frydenberg has immediately stripped the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors (ACSI), CGI Glass Lewis, Ownership Matters and ISS of their financial services licences covering proxy advice.
They have just 52 days to apply for new ones under conditions that change the financial footing of these organisations forever – who can ever invest in them, who can lend money to them, who could ever eventually buy them.
The new regulations also force these organisations to hand over the intellectual property for no compensation and with no restrictions.
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Gifts that will keep on giving to your SMSF
Four tweaks to your DIY fund will make things easier not just for you but for your loved ones too.
Meg Heffron Contributor
Dec 22, 2021 – 5.00am
Why wait until next year to make changes that will take your self-managed superannuation fund to the next level? Use the holiday break to set time aside to make four tweaks to your DIY fund – “gifts” to your finances that will keep on delivering over the long term.
Switch to a corporate trustee
For anyone still with individual trustees, make this the time you finally convert your SMSF to a corporate trustee. Yes, no one likes extra costs and it will cost money to set up a company. There will also be ongoing fees to ASIC.
But a corporate trustee is better in every way. One of the many compelling reasons for a corporate trustee is how much easier it makes things when one of the members dies. That’s a time when there is just so much administration anyway – why make the burden on those you leave behind even heavier by also leaving them with the job of changing the SMSF trustee?
Technically, someone intending to wind up the SMSF when the first member dies can get away without making this switch. This is because an SMSF is often allowed to break the normal rules and have just one individual trustee for up to six months when this happens.
In theory, that should be plenty of time to sell all the assets, pay out any benefits and wind up the fund.
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14 disruptive trends you need to know about in 2022
The choices facing investors are daunting - to stay on track and miss out or take a leap into almost unimaginable change.
Tony Featherstone Contributor
Dec 23, 2021 – 5.00am
In the sci-fi movie The Matrix, Keanu Reeves is offered a red or blue pill. The red pill represents an uncertain future and life-changing truth. The blue pill is contented ignorance.
For investors, choosing the red pill in 2022 means speculating in companies exposed to Web 3.0 (decentralised content), the metaverse (a three-dimensional internet), non-fungible tokens (digital uniqueness) and artificial intelligence (AI).
Investors who take the blue pill will stick with traditional industries. Some will resist the hype machine on tech disruption. Others know that picking long-term winners from technology disruption is like catching lightning in a bottle – dangerous and near impossible.
Many investors will defer to ignorance, believing disruption is something for the future, even though it is everywhere today. In doing so, they could miss the megatrend of megatrends: the digitisation of everything. They could own companies crushed by disruption.
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Proxy advice reform is about transparency and accountability
The government’s reforms to proxy advisers may not please everyone, but their purpose is to increase accountability and transparency in a highly concentrated industry, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg says.
Josh Frydenberg Treasurer
Dec 22, 2021 – 6.36pm
It’s no surprise vested interests, cheered on by the Labor Party, oppose the Morrison government’s reforms to proxy advisers. Indeed, many of the same voices opposed moves to introduce Australian Financial Service Licences for litigation funders and legislate the ‘Your Future, Your Super’ reforms.
But despite concerted attempts to frustrate these important microeconomic reforms, they failed, and these changes are now law. Changes that support the economy, enhance accountability and save consumers, in the case of the superannuation reforms, more than $17 billion.
So, too, when it comes to proxy advisers, the government is seeking increased transparency and accountability in a highly concentrated sector that plays an increasingly important role in Australia’s corporate governance regime.
There are four key reforms.
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There are better ideas on how to run an ICAC and NSW could learn from other states
7:24PM December 22, 2021
When the time comes for NSW to do something about its anti-corruption agency, the nation’s most populous jurisdiction could do a lot worse than copy a few ideas from interstate.
South Australia is now well ahead of NSW in protecting innocent people who are caught up in inquiries by its Independent Commission Against Corruption.
Both states have plenty of innocent people who have been hurt by these agencies. Yet South Australia has made changes while some of those in NSW cannot even understand the nature of the problem.
South Australia’s parliament unanimously approved amendments in September that replace the relatively benign reviewer of ICAC with a powerful independent inspector who will provide a real check on this agency.
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A bizarre force we still don’t understand has led to GPS, MRI and USBs
In his new book ‘Helogland’, physicist Carlo Rovelli reveals how a young man’s self-imposed exile on a remote Atlantic island changed the world forever through quantum mechanics.
Jeff Allan Art director
Dec 23, 2021 – 5.00am
Everything
we call real
is made of things that cannot be regarded as real. ― Niels Bohr, 1952
Matter, mass, none of it exists. It’s all an illusion. ― US astrophysicist Hakeem Oluseyi, 2021
It is 1922. In America, the jazz age is roaring through New York and Chicago, and Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid is setting the box-office alight, while in Italy, Mussolini is rallying the fascists to sweep himself into power.
In Germany, Franz Kafka begins work on his novel The Castle (Das Schloss), a book that revolves around a man trying to tackle an elusive, non-transparent system – the same thought that is troubling Danish scientist Niels Bohr as he heads to the University of Göttingen to give a series of lectures on atomic physics.
Bohr pulls at the starched collar around his throat. The talk is going well (but perhaps he should have passed on that last glass of wine at his honorary lunch just an hour earlier) when an elfin-faced student with windswept hair springs to his feet and challenges the Nobel-Prize-winning scientist’s equations.
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Buckle up, investors! It could be a wild ride in 2022
Senior business columnist
December 23, 2021 — 12.01pm
As 2022 looms, the outlook for economies, and investors, appears likely to be dominated by the same big influences seen this year. But the nature of those influences is evolving quickly and unpredictably.
The pandemic and its flow-on effects will remain a dominant feature of the global economic and financial markets’ landscapes. So will monetary policies as central banks start to back out of the unprecedented stimulus they have injected into their financial systems over the past 21 months.
The contest between the US and China for economic and geopolitical dominance will continue, as will the upheavals within China generated by the abrupt changes in its core economic policies and philosophies. Meanwhile, the divergence in domestic economic and financial conditions between the US and China, and between the developed world and developing world, may widen.
Some of the pandemic’s after-shocks – the supply chain chaos, rising inflation, the energy shocks – will persist into at least the first half of next year, with the supply-demand imbalances in energy that have produced crises in Europe and China potentially becoming entrenched as the effects of COVID on the sector intersect with the longer-term implications of a world trying to decarbonise.
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https://www.afr.com/world/asia/why-the-aukus-quad-and-five-eyes-pacts-anger-china-20211224-p59k2s
Why the AUKUS, Quad and Five Eyes pacts anger China
Iain Marlow
Dec 24, 2021 – 4.27pm
The newly sealed Australia-UK-US defence accord, known as AUKUS, reflects rising global concern over China’s ascendancy. So does renewed activity within two other groupings of leading democracies, Five Eyes and the Quad.
Aligning against the world’s largest exporter and possessor of the largest active military is no easy task, but the effort has been helped by China’s own actions toward some of its neighbours.
What’s the point of AUKUS?
It’s a security pact announced in September with the initial purpose of helping Australia develop at least eight nuclear-powered submarines, a project that could take more than a decade.
At the moment, only six nations - the US, the UK, France, China, Russia and India - have the technology to deploy and operate nuclear-powered subs, which are faster than their diesel-electric counterparts, can stay submerged almost indefinitely and have space for more weapons, equipment and supplies.
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Climate, the far-Left and the devilish problem facing the Greens
National Affairs Editor
December 24, 2021 — 5.00am
Rachel Griffiths, the Golden Globe-winning Australian actress, is no stranger to prompting public debate through outrageous stunts.
In 1997 the Muriel’s Wedding star famously paraded semi-naked outside Melbourne’s Crown Casino in protest of a state government she claimed was “raping” the city of its dignity, compassion and sense of community. When asked by a journalist why she felt the need to be topless, Griffiths replied: “If I didn’t flash my tits, you wouldn’t have put me in the paper.”
It’s what makes Griffiths’ most recent political commentary all the more interesting.
When the Australian Greens party announced a proposal to ban horse racing and impose a 1 per cent levy on all bets to fund a transition, Griffiths was outraged.
“When the planet is melting this will not help you save it. Focus on carbon emissions/boosting infrastructure and you might make a difference,” she wrote on Instagram this week.
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A year of resilience and bitter recrimination
It has been a year of punishment for most Australians – a year even tougher than 2020. But the catastrophe that started in China has become the ultimate signpost to a bigger story.
By Paul Kelly
From Inquirer
December 23, 2021
It has been a year of punishment for most Australians – a year even tougher than 2020 with Covid running its own course, people rethinking their lives, gaining a better appreciation of family and personal ties, prioritising health security and reassessing what matters to them.
This has been one of the most extraordinary years in Australia’s history. Coupled with 2020, it has no parallel for the impact it has had on most of today’s Australians – a pandemic that originated in China has forced home lockdowns, border closures, testing and tracing regimes, job losses, business hardships and closures, separation from loves ones, mental stress and isolation.
Covid-19 brought suffering, heartbreak, courage and spiritual rethink in different measures. In public terms the story is captured in three words – resilience, results and recrimination. The narrative has been stoic resilience by the public; a world-leading Australian performance against the pandemic; and a bitter year of political warfare that compromised the nation, fractured the Australian federation, damaged the Morrison government and left fissures across the country.
The pandemic shaped our personal and public life in a way no other single event has dominated since World War II. It touched every household and business. But the impact was greater for the elderly who were vulnerable, the 75 per cent of people working in the private sector, and residents of Victoria and NSW who bore the brunt of the sickness and deaths.
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Have a go, get a gong
1:02PM December 24, 2021
Roll up, roll up, to the 2021 Strewth Awards! Relive the highs and oh-so lows, the weird and wonderful, the shakes and the bakes. Thanks to the judging panel and all who contributed to the column this year. Without further ado, but some apologies, here are the winners (and the losers).
• Quiet Australian Of 2021: Jane Malysiak, the 84 year-old who accidentally gave an up-yours to the Prime Minister, instead of a peace sign, after getting her jab.
• Bill Shorten Memorial Lettuce (for the worst interaction with a member of the public): Scott Morrison for only being able to correctly spell “pariah” when quizzed by the country’s best young spellers. Highly commended: Anthony Albanese being baffled by children’s ages. He asked a year 6 student if they were in year 2.
• Down Periscope Diplomatic Domino: Emmanuel Macron telling Australian journalists he didn’t think, he knew the PM had lied to him about the $90bn French submarine contract.
• There’s A Hole In My Bucket: Whoever it was who leaked that text exchange between ScoMo and Macron.
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Interest rates will be a touchy subject in an election year
Australia has the world’s second-highest household debt, leaving borrowers exposed to rate rises. The good news is that the rate shocks of earlier decades are unlikely.
John Kehoe Economics editor
Dec 23, 2021 – 5.00am
Australian households are the second-most indebted in the world, according to new data published by the International Monetary Fund.
Only Swiss households are carrying more debt, the IMF’s global debt database shows.
At 123.5 per cent of GDP, Australian household debt has almost tripled since the early 1990s.
It’s no coincidence that during this 30-year period, the official Reserve Bank of Australia interest rate has fallen from 15 per cent to 0.1 per cent.
Structurally lower interest rates and deregulation of the banking system have enabled people to borrow more money and bid up house prices.
And with more women working, dual-income households have been able to afford to borrow more.
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COVID 19 Information
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https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-bad-will-omicron-get-gwnv0pws7
When will Omicron peak?
, Data Projects Editor
Saturday December 18 2021, 6.00pm GMT, The Sunday Times
The World Health Organisation classified the B.1.1.529 Covid strain, Omicron, as a “variant of concern” on November 26.
That same day two travellers who had recently returned from South Africa — one in Brentwood, the other in Nottingham — took tests that would confirm them as the first cases in Britain.
Omicron’s takeover needed under three weeks. On Tuesday it became the dominant variant in England. London has been an Omicron city since Sunday.
For evidence of its daunting growth, look no further than daily case numbers. Since “freedom day” in July, we have become used to tens of thousands of infections — but last week 59,610 daily cases became 78,610, then 88,376, then 93,045. For months cases were bumpy; now we are in exponential growth, where the language of “doubling times” takes over.
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Experts call for masks and pause on crowded events
Tom Burton Government editor
Dec 20, 2021 – 9.23am
Three leading medical specialists have called for a two-week pause on big indoor events and a return to mask-wearing to stem a major spike in COVID-19 cases, saying the national reopening plan needs adjusting for the more infectious omicron variant.
The head of the Doherty Institute, Sharon Lewin, and UNSW epidemiologists John Kaldor and Greg Dore called for a rethink of the reopening plans. The Doherty Institute led a consortium of modellers that underpinned the original national reopening plan.
“The combination of greatly increased transmission rates and uncertain levels of disease severity and vaccine protection means that for the next few weeks, and until the uncertainties are resolved, we must rethink our opening-up plans,” the professors said in an opinion article in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.
“Ramping up the booster program must continue, but will take months to implement fully and cannot be our sole weapon.
“Nationwide, restrictions that have not been removed must be reinforced, and some of those that have been removed must be reimposed.
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Omicron demands we bring back some restrictions
By John Kaldor, Sharon Lewin and Greg Dore
December 19, 2021 — 5.00pm
We should bring back some restrictions on how people mix for a few weeks, while we get more information on Omicron’s severity and its ability to evade vaccines.
The combination of greatly increased transmission rates and uncertain levels of disease severity and vaccine protection means that for the next few weeks, and until the uncertainties are resolved, we must rethink our opening-up plans. These plans were based on modelling using the Delta variant, not Omicron, which is suspected to be the strain responsible for most of the positive cases reported in NSW on Sunday.
Ramping up the booster program must continue but will take months to implement fully and cannot be our sole weapon. Nationwide, restrictions that have not been removed must be reinforced, and some of those that have been removed must be reimposed.
Most straightforward is the return of indoor mask requirements, which represent a minimal imposition and cost virtually nothing. Cancelling or at least heavily restricting large indoor events at which people gather in close proximity and alcohol is served will be unpopular, particularly over the Christmas New Year period, but must be understood as a temporary measure.
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NSW could have 100,000 active cases by New Year’s Eve
Aaron Patrick Senior correspondent
Dec 21, 2021 – 12.41pm
The total number of COVID-19 cases in NSW may hit 100,000 by New Year’s Eve, according to a Melbourne University forecast, adding to pressure on the state government to impose extra health restrictions during the summer holidays.
Infections in the state will double in less than five days and by December 31 there will be 87,363 to 105,239 cases, up from 18,667 now, according to a predictive model created by Associate Professor Ben Phillips from the school of biosciences.
The model assumes that 40 per cent of the infections are not being identified among people without COVID-19 symptoms, which often include fever, cough, tiredness or loss of taste or smell.
Even though the NSW government has said that it is focused on the number of people in intensive care units, heavy media coverage of a surge in cases over the otherwise quiet Christmas holiday could put pressure on Premier Dominic Perrottet to reverse last week’s relaxation of restrictions. Long waits for test results could compound the problem.
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Omicron cases could hit 200,000 a day next year without tougher restrictions, Doherty modelling warns
By Dana Daniel
December 21, 2021 — 5.01pm
Surging Omicron infections will overwhelm the health system unless some restrictions return, according to modelling prepared for national cabinet that also recommends bringing coronavirus vaccine boosters forward.
The Doherty Institute modelling predicts that without low-to-medium restrictions such as density and visitor limits, waning vaccine protection against the Omicron variant puts Australia on track to hit about 200,000 cases a day by late January or early February.
“Boosters alone will not be fast enough to halt the spread of Omicron,” the modelling, seen by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, says.
The modelling by a team of researchers including professors Jodie McVernon and James McCaw says rapidly growing case numbers would lift hospitalisation rates to 4000 a day. This would push emergency departments to capacity and fill the nation’s intensive care units, with between 8000 and 10,000 patients expected to be admitted to ICUs.
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Covid slams door shut on old ways of the world
The Economist
11:45PM December 21, 2021
Is it nearly over? In 2021 people have been yearning for something like stability. Even those who accepted that they would never get their old lives back hoped for a new normal. Yet as 2022 draws near, it is time to face the world’s predictable unpredictability. The pattern for the rest of the 2020s is not the familiar routine of the pre-Covid years, but the turmoil and bewilderment of the pandemic era. The new normal is already here.
Remember how the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 began to transform air travel in waves. In the years that followed each fresh plot exposed an unforeseen weakness that required a new rule. First came locked cockpit doors, more armed air marshals and bans on sharp objects. Later, suspicion fell on bottles of liquid, shoes and laptops. Flying did not return to normal, nor did it establish a new routine. Instead, everything was permanently up for revision. The world is similarly unpredictable today and the pandemic is part of the reason. For almost two years people have lived with shifting regimes of mask-wearing, tests, lockdowns, travel bans, vaccination certificates and other paperwork. As outbreaks of new cases and variants ebb and flow, so these regimes can also be expected to come and go. That is the price of living with a disease that has not yet settled into its endemic state.
And Covid-19 may not be the only such infection. Although a century elapsed between the ravages of Spanish flu and the coronavirus, the next planet-conquering pathogen could strike much sooner. Germs thrive in an age of global travel and crowded cities. The proximity of people and animals will lead to the incubation of new human diseases. Such zoonoses, which tend to emerge every few years, used to be a minority interest. For the next decade, at least, you can expect each new outbreak to trigger paroxysms of precaution.
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NSW virus cases doubling every four days amid testing crunch
Michael Read Reporter
Dec 22, 2021 – 12.37pm
COVID-19 case numbers in NSW are doubling every four days, but the state’s testing system is stretched and pathology labs may not have the capacity to identify very high caseloads.
Cases in NSW are doubling every 4.3 days, according to University of South Australia epidemiologist Professor Adrian Esterman. Each positive COVID-19 case in the state is, on average, infecting 1.9 other people.
The state reported a record 3763 cases on Wednesday, up from 1360 a week earlier. The number of people in hospital increased to 302 from 284, with 40 people in intensive care.
Deakin University chair of epidemiology Catherine Bennett told The Australian Financial Review the state would be “heading towards 20,000 cases a day by mid-January” at current rates, assuming nothing were to change.
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Omicron hospitalisation risk is far below delta’s
Naomi Kresge
Dec 23, 2021 – 8.47am
London | The omicron variant of COVID-19 may be less likely to land patients in the hospital than the delta strain, according to a trio of studies of preliminary data.
Researchers in Scotland suggest omicron is associated with a two-thirds reduction in the risk of hospitalisation when compared with the earlier variant, though omicron was 10 times more likely than delta to infect people who’d already had COVID-19.
An Imperial College London team working with a larger set of data from England found that people with omicron were 15 per cent to 20 per cent less likely to visit the hospital and 40 per cent to 45 per cent less likely to require an overnight stay.
The fresh data add to earlier findings Wednesday showing that South Africans contracting COVID-19 are 80 per cent less likely to be hospitalised if they catch the new variant, compared with other strains. Omicron infections are also associated with a 70 per cent lower risk of severe disease than delta, the study by the National Institute for Communicable Diseases showed.
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GPs at breaking point as COVID patients told to self-manage care
By Lucy Carroll
December 22, 2021 — 6.20pm
General practitioners say they are at breaking point with thousands of COVID-19 patients in NSW being shifted into their care as millions become eligible for boosters within weeks.
With almost 20,000 people in NSW testing positive to coronavirus in the past seven days, the state’s Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant has notified general practitioners that low-risk patients diagnosed with the virus will need to “undertake self-care at home” and GPs will be responsible for managing symptoms and treatment.
But NSW Australian Medical Association president Danielle McMullen said doctors will struggle to cope with thousands of patients needing care as Omicron infections surge.
“Shifting care of COVID-19 patients to general practice will have huge ramifications. Practices will need to hire extra staff for virtual care and triage patients, and this is on top of running booster clinics,” Dr McMullen said.
On Wednesday, the federal government announced GPs and pharmacies would receive an extra $10 per patient for administering booster shots.
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‘Stretching the limits’: Pathology stocks soar amid record COVID tests
By Emma Koehn
December 22, 2021 — 1.00pm
Pathology operator Healius says pre-travel COVID screening requirements are stretching the limits of available testing capacity as the sector struggles to meet demand in the lead-up to Christmas.
The nation’s largest listed pathology operators, Sonic Healthcare, Healius and Australian Clinical Labs, all recorded their highest closing share prices for the year on Wednesday as travellers line up for hours to get PCR tests.
Private operators have received significant subsidies to complete COVID tests throughout this year, with the major players processing tens of thousands of tests a day as new strains of the virus have emerged.
Amid projections that the country could be facing hundreds of thousands of positive cases by the new year, a Healius spokeswoman said the company was investing further to improve turnaround times. Healius operates clinics including Dorevitch and Laverty.
“As the positivity rate increases it requires more equipment to maintain the current capacity. Healius is currently investing in further expansion of capacity to meet demand and improve turnaround times,” she said.
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Two studies show big fall in hospitalisation with Omicron
By Jason Douglas and Denise Roland
Dow Jones
December 23, 2021
New data from Scotland and South Africa suggest people infected with the Omicron variant of coronavirus are at markedly lower risk of hospitalization than those who contracted earlier versions of the virus, promising signs that vaccines remain effective at warding off severe illness with the fast-spreading strain.
The findings begin to fill in unknowns around the severity of the disease caused by Omicron, a major variable critical to health authorities around the world as they gauge how to react to the new variant.
Scientists are still unsure how the positive findings around hospitalizations will stack up against another major variable: Omicron’s much increased transmissibility. Both variables are likely to change depending on local conditions, such as the proportion of the population that has been vaccinated against Covid-19.
“This is a qualified good news story,” said Jim McMenamin, incident director for Covid-19 at Public Health Scotland, and one of the authors of the Scottish study, at a briefing. “It’s important we don’t get ahead of ourselves. A smaller proportion of a much greater number of cases can still mean a substantial number of people that might experience severe Covid infections that could lead to hospitalization.” The University of Edinburgh study, drawing on the health records of 5.4 million people in Scotland, found the risk of hospitalization with Covid-19 was two-thirds lower with Omicron than with Delta. The new variant became dominant in Scotland last week.
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Omicron alarmism defies the science. Most of you can get on with life
The high probability is that omicron will disappoint the alarmists and frustrate those of a hairshirt puritan character who almost seem to want lockdowns as a form of self-flagellation.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Dec 23, 2021 – 10.02am
The COVID-19 modellers at Imperial College in London have begun to back down. About time, too. Over the past few weeks, they have made extreme claims about the omicron variant that cannot be fully justified by fundamental science, let alone by clinical observation.
Academic etiquette restrains direct criticism, but immunologists say privately that Professor Neil Ferguson and his team breached a cardinal rule by inferring rates of hospitalisation, severe disease, and death from waning antibodies, and by extrapolating from infections that break through the first line of vaccine defence.
The rest are entitled to question whether they can legitimately do this. And we may certainly question whether they should be putting out terrifying claims of up to 5000 deaths a day based on antibody counts.
“It is bad science and I think they’re being irresponsible. They have a duty to reflect the true risks, but this is just headline grabbing,” says Dr Clive Dix, former chairman of the UK Vaccine Task Force.
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Wait for booster shot cut to four months
By Cassandra Morgan, Timna Jacks and Melissa Cunningham
December 24, 2021 — 9.39am
The federal government has cut the recommended interval between the second and booster doses of a coronavirus vaccine.
The interval will be slashed to four months on January 4, and then to three months on January 31.
The change follows advice from the expert vaccination group, the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation, and is in response to the recent spread of the Omicron variant.
On Friday, Victoria recorded 2095 new cases and eight deaths as NSW confirmed a record 5612 new infections and one new death.
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Wait for booster shot cut to four months
By Timna Jacks, Cassandra Morgan and Melissa Cunningham
December 24, 2021 — 9.39am
The head of the nation’s expert vaccination group said the risk of rising hospitalisations and new research on the effectiveness of booster doses guided the committee’s recommendation to fast-track Australia’s coronavirus booster shot program.
The federal government announced on Friday the interval between the second and third vaccination doses would be slashed from five to four months on January 4, and then to three months on January 31, based on the Australian Technical Advisory Group’s advice.
The decision followed pressure earlier in the week from the Victorian and NSW premiers to bring boosters forward, and comes less than two weeks after the interval was shortened from six to five months.
Australia is now in line with the UK, which has reduced the interval between doses from six to three months. New Zealand has chosen a four-month interval, while the US has stuck with a six-month waiting time between vaccines.
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https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/millions-set-for-early-fourth-covid-vaccination-3wng3drhx
Millions set for early fourth Covid vaccination
Data confirms Omicron is less severe but warns of fading booster protection after ten weeks
Rhys Blakely, Science Correspondent | Oliver Wright, Policy Editor
Thursday December 23 2021, 10.30pm GMT, The Times
Millions of Britons face having an earlier fourth Covid jab next year after data suggested that protection against Omicron from booster shots starts to wane within three months.
An official analysis of real-world cases confirmed that people infected with the new variant were up to 70 per cent less likely to be admitted to hospital — a similar finding to other studies this week.
However, the data also showed that booster protection was beginning to fade more rapidly against Omicron than for the Delta strain. Among those who received an initial two doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, protection was about 60 per cent two to four weeks after a Pfizer or Moderna booster. It then dropped to 35 per cent with a Pfizer booster and 45 per cent with Moderna ten weeks after the jab.
Officials stressed that this decline was only seen against mild symptomatic cases. Scientists expect protection against severe disease, which draws on different parts of the immune system, to be significantly higher and long- lasting.
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One in 10 Londoners infected as British PM urges caution
Alex Morales
Dec 25, 2021 – 12.04am
London | Boris Johnson urged Britons to take care at Christmas as he considers whether to tighten pandemic regulations, as government data indicated about 10 per cent of Londoners were infected with COVID-19.
An estimated 1 in 25 people across England -- more than 2 million people -- had coronavirus on December 19, according to Office for National Statistics modelling released Friday that also showed about one in 10 Londoners were infected as the fast-spreading omicron variant takes hold. A record 119,789 new confirmed COVID-19 cases were logged Thursday, while minutes of a meeting of Johnson’s scientific advisers said omicron hospitalisations are doubling every four to five days.
“As infections move into older age groups, a large wave of hospital admissions should be expected,” the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies said.
“Such a wave should be expected soon given infections are increasing rapidly in all age groups and regions, and earlier in London.
Johnson has already introduced new light-touch restrictions to try to limit the spread of omicron. He’s said he won’t do more before Christmas, while warning further measures are possible after the holiday -- a move that would likely anger rebels in his ruling Conservative Party.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/12/24/denmark-coronavirus-omicron-variant/
Denmark sees initial signs that dire omicron surge can be avoided
By Chico Harlan
Today at 11:19 a.m. EST
Early benchmarks from Denmark on infections and hospitalizations are providing grounds for guarded optimism that highly vaccinated countries might be able to weather the omicron wave.
The developments, coupled with Denmark’s speedy rollout of booster shots, have raised hopes the country can avoid the dire coronavirus surge for which it has been bracing.
Europe faces its second covid Christmas with lockdowns, cancellations and rising cases
“It’s too early to relax, but it’s encouraging that we are not following the worst-case scenario,” said Tyra Grove Krause, the chief epidemiologist at Denmark’s State Serum Institute.
Denmark’s detailed, nationwide program for coronavirus testing and analysis gives its scientists a trove of real-time data about the pandemic. Because of that — and because it was one of the first countries outside of Africa to witness omicron’s explosive potential — it has turned into a European bellwether for what to expect with the omicron variant.
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Climate Change.
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No entries in this section,
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Royal Commissions And The Like.
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No entries in this section,
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National Budget Issues.
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Mum and dad investors are being scammed by clone financial firms
Criminals are using sophisticated online tools and fake prospectuses to swindle millions of dollars from investors – and a Melbourne businessman and lawyer are alleged to be part of the scheme.
Michael Roddan and Jonathan Shapiro
Dec 22, 2021 – 10.12am
The email from esteemed global investment company Nomura’s fixed income and savings division hit Melbourne robotics specialist Rodrigo Garcia’s inbox at 3.19pm on January 11, this year.
Attached was a slick, 23-page prospectus for Nomura Australia’s Fixed Rate Active Plus Bond. After some consideration, Garcia decided it was the perfect place to park $200,000, a sum that represented a significant chunk of his life savings.
It had taken Philippines-born Garcia many years to build his nest-egg over a long career that included stints at Telstra and NBN Co.
With interest rates plumbing new lows amid COVID-19, Garcia was one of thousands of retail investors scouring the internet to compare options that would deliver higher yields with relatively conservative risks.
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Health Issues.
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Genetic breakthrough for cancer kids
7:00PM December 20, 2021
A landmark study of children with high-risk cancer has revealed how more personalised and better-targeted drug treatments can help improve therapy options and increase survival rates among children aged up to 14.
The new research, published in the Molecular Medicine journal on Tuesday, outlines the clinical results of 56 patients who participated in the Zero Childhood Cancer Program, which was designed by a group of Australian specialists at the Children’s Cancer Institute and Sydney Children’s Hospital to help identify the precise make-up of each child’s cancer by using genomic tests.
“We began a program about five years ago using genetic analysis to see whether we could better match the gene driving the cancer to targeted drugs,” said the program’s clinical lead Glenn Marshall, who co-authored the publication along with more than 50 researchers.
“Today there are about 1500 young adults and children with cancer in Australia and about 200 of them will have a relapse. At the moment we don’t have very good tools to predict that or to treat it, so the majority of those people will die. And that’s unacceptable to us,” Professor Marshall said.
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Health insurance premiums to rise by 2.7 per cent next year
By Dana Daniel
December 23, 2021 — 10.43am
Australians with private health insurance will pay more for their premiums next year, but some funds will defer the increase.
Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt has approved an average 2.7 per cent increase across all health funds, saying the government worked to secure a “record low premium change” because it “understands the importance of the cost of living for Australian families”.
The change means the average single person will pay an extra $1.12 per week, and a family $2.42.
While premiums are scheduled to rise in April, Mr Hunt said “under proposed arrangements, many consumers will not receive a premium change until later in 2022” as some insurers have agreed to defer their premium rises.
The 2022 average premium increase is the lowest in 21 years, down from 2.74 per cent this year.
Many funds have given members partial refunds on premiums paid during the pandemic, when lockdowns and elective surgery bans prevented them from using their insurance to pay for medical treatment.
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International Issues.
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Indo-Pacific allies agree there’s no countering China without America
The US alliance is boosting Canberra’s strategic agency, enhancing its regional standing and helping to forge constructive coalitions to push back against Beijing.
John Lee Contributor
Dec 19, 2021 – 12.05pm
The United States and China have oversized impacts on the fortunes and policies of Australia for obvious reasons. The year began with the indecorous exit of Donald Trump and the swearing in of a far more conventional administration led by Joe Biden. Regardless, US-China relations hardly improved, while Beijing’s standing with almost every advanced economy and democracy deteriorated over the past year.
It is evidence that the greater challenge and disruption to Australian foreign policy and the world as we know it in recent years was never the election of Trump but the stridency and menace of Xi Jinping’s China. This reality is what Australian external policy had to respond to and will continue to define what we can expect in 2022.
Australian actions over the past year have been based on two assessments: Beijing will persist with its coercive and expansionary plans in the absence of significant resistance and there can be no effective balance or counter without the US.
China continued its economic and diplomatic offensive against Australia. While Beijing knows Canberra is not for turning, the former is seeking to ward off other countries from pursuing a similarly proactive and defiant mindset. After all, the more countries persuaded to remain strategically neutral or inactive, the easier it is for China to divide, rule and conquer.
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https://www.afr.com/world/asia/succession-vacuum-quietly-dogs-singapore-s-politics-20211219-p59iru
Succession vacuum quietly dogs Singapore’s politics
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong appears as a visibly tired place-holder, occupying the seat of power but not really leading.
Michael Barr Contributor
Dec 19, 2021 – 1.10pm
Singapore’s politics appears confused, directionless and overwhelmingly defensive on nearly every front.
The leadership transition – choosing the next prime minister – has dragged into its fifth year without resolution, and has now creaked to a halt that leaves Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, at 69, as a visibly tired place-holder, occupying the seat of power but not really leading.
Widely publicised instances of provocative, racist behaviour shocked the government and perceptions of economic injustice and insecurity are worrying it, too, but neither have prompted serious revision of policy settings and the issues continue to fester.
There are only two areas of policy where the government appears energised and focused: harassing critics and the opposition; and managing COVID-19 and its economic challenges.
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A correspondent farewells the madness and sadness of America
As a human being, I was alarmed by much of what I was witnessing. As a journalist, I was electrified.
December 19, 2021
Melania Trump had just finished speaking when the gunshots rang out. It was August 2020, the second night of the Republican National Convention. In a normal election year, I would have been covering the event in a battleground state, mingling with fellow reporters and political operatives in a packed arena. But this was no normal year in America and no normal presidential election.
Much to Donald Trump’s annoyance, the original plan for him to officially accept the Republican Party’s presidential nomination in North Carolina had to be abandoned because of coronavirus restrictions. A fallback attempt to hold a traditional convention in Florida was ditched when infections started soaring there.
Instead, Trump’s re-election pitch was held at the White House: the first time in American history the presidential residence had been used for such blatant electioneering. I covered the virtual convention at home alone in my Washington apartment, just a 12-minute drive away.
Focused on filing an online news story on the first lady’s speech, I didn’t pay much attention to the sound of gunfire on the street below. I still didn’t think much of it when two police officers knocked on my door and asked if I’d noticed anything outside my window. It was only when I went downstairs the next morning that I discovered the glass front doors of my apartment building were smeared in blood. The concierge informed me that someone had been shot dead there the night before.
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Rebel Democrat torpedoes Joe Biden’s reform package
December 20, 2021
Joe Biden’s reform agenda is in tatters after a key senator declared he wouldn’t vote for the Democrats’ signature ‘build back better’ reform, throwing the party’s political strategy into disarray leading into the 2022 elections.
After months of tense negotiations, West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin revealed on Sunday he wouldn’t support the roughly US$2 trillion build back better package, signalling he would use his balance of power vote in the 50-50 senate to torpedo the most ambitious piece of legislation in fifty years.
“When you have these things coming at you the way they are right now … I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation,“ the Senator said, speaking on Fox News on Sunday morning and alluding to a jump in inflation and large and growing federal budget deficits.
The legislation, passed by the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives a month ago, would have made sweeping changes to the US welfare, health and climate change policy, including ‘free’ childcare and preschool, expanded child welfare payments, four weeks of paid leave, and massive electric car and renewable energy subsidies.
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Something has broken as Boris Johnson’s leadership loses its way
THE ECONOMIST
4:34PM December 17, 2021
Two years into their terms, governments often languish. But any supporters of Boris Johnson who may be tempted to fall back on that excuse for the increasingly feeble grip of his premiership would be guilty of self-delusion. Britain’s Prime Minister is facing a double crisis. One half of this is the growing sense that he is temperamentally unfit to hold the highest office in the land. The other is the fear that his government will be incapable of bringing about the reforms it has promised – some of which Britain badly needs.
The depths of Johnson’s difficulties became clear on Tuesday, when 99 Conservative MPs voted against his “Plan B” to deal with the Omicron variant. It was one of the largest rebellions against a Conservative prime minister and it put Johnson in the unsustainable position of depending upon the opposition Labour Party for one of his government’s central policies.Things only got worse on Friday AEDT when voters had their say in a by-election in North Shropshire, the truest of blue seats. The seat fell to the Liberal Democrats by nearly 6000 votes.
Even before the poll result, Johnson was looking personally wounded. He has always been accident-prone, but he has usually matched this with an extraordinary knack for wriggling out of trouble. When lesser politicians bluster and contradict themselves, voters sneer at their sleaze, lying and hypocrisy. By contrast, Johnson has had an uncanny ability to make them feel as if they are in on the joke.
But his greatest political gift is failing him. First, sleaze cut through to ordinary voters. Last month Johnson tried to save Owen Paterson, then MP for that North Shropshire seat, from being censured for breaking the rules over paid lobbying. (The Prime Minister said that to punish him would offend natural justice.) The next to cut through was lying. This month it emerged that, whereas Johnson had claimed to know nothing about who paid for a renovation of his Downing Street flat, which cost £112,549 ($209,000), he had in fact been asking for money from the man who turned out to be the donor. (No. 10 says that appearances are deceptive.) And most recently it was hypocrisy. A video showed senior aides joking about one of several parties held in Downing Street last Christmas, when the rest of the country was locked down with only the television for company. (Johnson said he knew nothing of it.)
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The Fed remains well behind the curve in fighting inflation
There are serious reasons for concern at the US Federal Reserve’s moves to restrain inflation as history shows a recession could be looming.
Lawrence H. Summers
Dec 19, 2021 – 2.53pm
The Federal Reserve’s recognition that inflation is not transitory, that the US labour market is very tight and that priority now must be given to price stability is welcome, if belated. Without this pivot, entrenched inflation followed by a recession would be likely.
A recognition of the need to change direction, as manifest in the Federal Open Market Committee statement and Chair Jerome Powell’s news conference Wednesday, was necessary but not sufficient for successfully achieving price stabilisation and sustained growth. I see grounds for substantial concern in both the intrinsic difficulty of the task at hand and in misconceptions that the Fed still seems to hold.
There have been few, if any, instances in which inflation has been successfully stabilised without recession. Every US economic expansion between the Korean War and Paul Volcker’s slaying of inflation after 1979 ended as the Federal Reserve tried to put the brakes on inflation and the economy skidded into recession. Since Volcker’s victory, there have been no major outbreaks of inflation until this year, and so no need for monetary policy to engineer a soft landing of the kind that the Fed hopes for over the next several years.
The not-very-encouraging history of disinflation efforts suggests that the Fed will need to be both skilful and lucky as it seeks to apply sufficient restraint to cause inflation to come down to its 2 per cent target without pushing the economy into recession. Unfortunately, several aspects of the Open Market Committee statement and Powell’s news conference suggest that the Fed may not yet fully grasp either the current economic situation or the implications of current monetary policy.
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Investors scramble for inflation protection as worries mount
Richard Henderson Reporter
Dec 20, 2021 – 2.10pm
Investors have ploughed a record $US70 billion ($98 billion) into inflation-protected US bond funds this year, in a global rush to shelter fixed-interest portfolios from the effects of sharply rising consumer prices, which can sap the value of bonds.
Last week marked the 63rd week of consecutive positive inflows into funds that invest in US Treasury inflation-protected securities, or TIPS, sending the amount since the year began to $US70.2 billion, according to data from EPFR Global.
The tally since the start of 2021 is drastically more than any year tracked by EPFR going back to 2004 and includes a monthly record for November this year of $US8.8 billion – the same month US inflation reached a four-decade high.
In November, the US consumer price index shot 6.8 per cent higher, the biggest year-on-year increase since 1982.
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Low turnout the true measure of Hong Kong voter sentiment
The low voter turnout in Sunday’s Legislative Council elections is a more accurate barometer of the political mood in the city than the results themselves, which are stacked in Beijing’s favour.
Michael Smith North Asia correspondent
Dec 20, 2021 – 5.40pm
Tokyo | It was a last-ditch attempt to boost voter numbers in an “election” stacked in the favour of pro-Beijing “patriots”.
Millions of people piled onto Hong Kong’s trains and buses on Sunday after the government offered free transport on the day of the city’s Legislative Council elections.
But instead of heading to the polling booths, which are typically within walking distance of a voter’s home anyway, they flocked to country parks, food fairs and Disneyland.
The Hong Kong government’s efforts to encourage voting was the latest example of the Mickey Mouse policies that are now part of daily life for people living in a city run by administrators willing to overcompensate to keep Beijing happy.
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Washington’s fear and loathing matched only by Beijing’s confidence
While American analysts worry about civil war, China’s big thinkers dream of global ascendancy.
Gideon Rachman Columnist
Dec 21, 2021 – 10.25am
Greg Treverton used to be America’s forecaster-in-chief. As chairman of the National Intelligence Council, he oversaw the US government’s quadrennial Global Trends report.
His 2017 report contained a cautious acknowledgment of America’s own weaknesses. It noted “rising inequality” and “highly polarised politics”.
But the report concluded optimistically that America’s “inclusive ideal ... remains a critical advantage”.
Four years on Treverton, now in academia, takes a dramatically more pessimistic view. Last week, he published an article, co-written with Karen Treverton, headlined Civil War is Coming. It argues that the divisions between red and blue America are now so extreme that some sort of split is inevitable.
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https://www.afr.com/world/asia/xi-jinping-s-dangerous-2022-20211221-p59j7s
Xi Jinping’s dangerous 2022
A cult of personality has been built around Chinese President Xi Jinping while he rallies patriotic support for an unprecedented third term as supreme leader.
Geoff Raby Columnist
Dec 21, 2021 – 12.53pm
As President Xi prepares for the most significant year in his ten-year tenure, political, social, and economic controls will continue to be tightened. Rigorously pursuing a zero-COVID policy, sustaining economic growth, managing debt, deleveraging in the real estate sector, will all challenge the skill and political will of the central leadership group.
Official, clayton’s boycotts of the Winter Olympics by some liberal democracies, and a more confronting international environment led by the West are assets Xi will use to rally patriotic support as he seeks an unprecedented, in the reform era, third term as supreme power.
At the Twentieth Party Congress which will be held after the National Day holidays in October next year, Xi Jinping is widely expected to be elected by the Party delegates for a third term as president. The Party’s massive propaganda and ideological machinery has been directed at shoring up this ambition for some time.
Over the course of Xi’s current, second, lustrum a cult of the personality has been built up around Xi. Daily newspapers in print and on-line, for example, report on Xi’s musings on everything from science, economics, culture and even parenting. As was the case for Mao, Xi is portrayed in official media also as the “great helmsman”. The “chairman of everything” as many quip privately in China.
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Crypto paranoia: US regulators catch stablecoin jitters
Senior business columnist
December 21, 2021 — 12.00pm
US financial regulators are so concerned about the perceived threat to financial stability and investors of stablecoins that they are warning they will act unilaterally if Congress doesn’t legislate.
Last week the US Treasury’s key body for monitoring the financial system, the Financial Stability Oversight Council, issued its annual report. Digital assets, and stablecoins in particular, were one of the key concerns it identified.
It said the rapid growth of digital assets, including stablecoins and lending and borrowing on digital assets trading platforms, was an important potential emerging vulnerability for the system.
In relation to stablecoins – crypto assets backed by traditional financial assets, most commonly the US dollar -- the council said that while they might be marketed with the claim that they will maintain a stable value they might be subject to widespread redemption and asset liquidations if investors doubted the credibility of the claim.
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Distrust born from Watergate still lingers
11:00PM December 21, 2021
Next year marks the 50th anniversary of an extraordinary episode in Western politics.
On the evening of June 17, 1972, a group of burglars penetrated the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate complex in Washington DC. It was a presidential election year and incumbent Richard Nixon, as paranoid as ever he had been since first elected to the House of Representatives from California in November 1946, was concerned about the possibility of an “October surprise”.
Nixon had been outmanoeuvred in 1960 when he narrowly had lost the presidential contest to John F. Kennedy. The burglars, who were an offshoot of the White House Plumbers, created to combat leaks in Nixon’s administration, were aiming to penetrate the office of the Democrats’ national chairman, Larry O’Brien, on an intelligence-gathering mission.
Now they were the employees of the Committee to Re-elect the President, which made their Republican loyalties intriguing. The links of some to the CIA, sometimes as far back as the Bay of Pigs, made the burglars’ history even more beguiling.
The burglars were caught because of their own incompetence and an alert security guard, Frank Wills. Arrested by the DC police, the burglars and their handlers, including G. Gordon Liddy, E. Howard Hunt, and James McCord Jr, appeared the next morning before a Republican judge named John Sirica.
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The slow meltdown of the Chinese economy
Thomas J. Duesterberg
December 22, 2021
China is experiencing a slow-motion economic crisis that could undermine stability in the current regime and have serious negative consequences for the global economy. Despite the many warning signs, Western analysts and policy makers are optimistic that Xi Jinping is up to the task of managing the crisis. Such optimism is misplaced.
The U.S. and its allies have many tools to influence China’s economy and need to weigh the consequences of an acute crisis against the threat its current trajectory poses to the U.S. Policy makers should be thinking of how best to deploy these tools, instead of passively assuming the rapid growth and stability of the Chinese economy will continue.
In December real-estate developers China Evergrande and Kaisa joined several other overleveraged firms in bankruptcy, exposing hundreds of billions in yuan- and dollar-denominated debt to default. Real estate represents around 30% of the Chinese economy, nearly twice the levels that led to the financial crisis of 2008-09 in the U.S., Spain and England.
The real-estate industry has been key to keeping annual growth above 6%. Yet a debt bubble has inflated by 20% annually between 2014 and 2018. Originally intended to accommodate rapid urbanization for the industrial economy, the urban property market is now overbuilt. Some 90% of urban households own their own properties and enough vacant units are available to accommodate 10 years of urban immigrants. Sales and prices have tumbled this year, and overleveraged builders and creditors are suffering the consequences.
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https://www.afr.com/world/europe/why-bojo-has-some-lessons-for-scomo-20211222-p59jix
Why BoJo has some lessons for ScoMo
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is in trouble mostly because he has lost the Conservative base. It’s a key principle of politics.
Alexander Downer Columnist
Dec 22, 2021 – 12.07pm
No matter how popular you are in politics, it’s hard to maintain the pace. Boris Johnson won a huge majority just two years ago and was on top of the world. Since then, he has successfully taken the UK out of the European Union – or to use the phrase Tories like – “got Brexit done”.
But in the last few weeks, his popularity has collapsed. His Conservative Party has fallen behind the opposition Labour Party in the opinion polls and his personal approval has plunged. There is now Australian-style discussion about whether the party should choose a new leader.
Why has this happened? Well, first there is COVID-19. The government has had to focus on that for the best part of two years. It hasn’t done a bad job. Its rollout of vaccines has been close to the fastest of any country in the world and now the rollout of booster jabs is running apace.
The government has tried to balance the crackdown on civil liberties with Johnson’s understandable commitment to his libertarian principles. It’s been, and it still is, hard to get the balance right, and it’s not that which is responsible for his sudden decline in popularity.
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Will the end of ‘the world’s most important number’ be a Y2K moment?
Senior business columnist
December 22, 2021 — 12.15pm
A Y2K moment is imminent for the world’s funding and derivatives markets as the benchmark for global interest rates is effectively and compulsorily retired from use.
The London Interbank Offered Rate - used as the reference rate for short-term unsecured loans, and the pricing of almost all floating rate financial markets from corporate debt to home loans and complex derivatives for half a century – will essentially be regulated out of existence on December 31.
LIBOR’s withdrawal from service has been flagged and enormous work to prepare for this has been done from the middle of the last decade. But the ubiquity of the rate as the reference rate for loans and derivatives contracts, some of which extend well beyond 2021 and even in perpetuity, means there is potential for unintended and potentially very costly consequences.
Y2K, or the “Millenium Bug”, was feared at the turn of the century amid concerns that the widespread use of only two digits for years in computer programs would create a global IT crash as clocks ticked over at midnight December 31, 1999 to 2000.
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Russian foreign minister: Talks with US, NATO to start next month
By Maria Kiselyova
December 23, 2021 — 8.55am
Moscow: Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia will enter talks with US negotiators on the security guarantees it wants from the West at the start of next year, amid concerns over a Russian military build-up near Ukraine’s border.
Ukraine and the West have accused Russia of considering a new attack on Ukraine as early as next month. Russia denies that, despite moving tens of thousands of troops to staging posts closer to Ukraine.
President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that Russia had no room to retreat in its standoff with the United States over what Moscow views as Washington’s unacceptable military aid for Ukraine and would be forced into a tough response unless the West dropped its “aggressive line”.
He said that Moscow wants legally-binding security guarantees that certain offensive weapons will not be deployed to countries that neighbour Russia and for NATO to halt its eastwards expansion.
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Russia is ready to fight, says Putin
By Evan Gershkovich
AFP
6:17PM December 22, 2021
Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned he is prepared for a military response to “unfriendly” Western actions over the Ukraine conflict.
Ramping up his vitriol against the US, NATO and other European countries, Mr Putin said Russia “will react toughly to unfriendly steps”, adding that he wanted to underscore that “we have every right to do so”.
He also accused the US of planning to deploy hypersonic weapons to Ukraine.
“We are extremely concerned that elements of the US global missile defence system are being deployed next to Russia,” he told a meeting of military leaders on Tuesday (Wednesday AEDT).
Mr Putin called for “serious negotiations” on Russian security demands put to the US and NATO during his first call with new German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, who in turn called for “de-escalation”.
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https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/japan-us-create-taiwan-emergency-plan-report-20211224-p59jyn.html
Japan, US create Taiwan emergency plan: report
By Kiyoshi Takenaka
December 24, 2021 — 9.01am
Tokyo: Japanese and US armed forces have drawn up a draft plan for a joint operation for a possible Taiwan emergency, Japan’s Kyodo news agency said on Thursday, citing unnamed Japanese government sources, amid increased tensions between the island and China.
China claims democratically governed Taiwan as its own “sacred” territory and in the past two years has stepped up military and diplomatic pressure to assert its sovereignty claims, fuelling anger in Taipei and deep concern in Washington.
Taiwan’s government says it wants peace, but will defend itself if needed.
Under the plan, the US Marine Corps will set up temporary bases on the Nansei island chain stretching from Kyushu, one of the four main islands of Japan, to Taiwan, at the initial stage of a Taiwan emergency, and will deploy troops, Kyodo said.
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Solomons turns to China for riot help
5:06AM December 24, 2021
The Solomon Islands has accepted China’s help in defusing months-long riots on the streets of Honiara, a move that threatens to inflame domestic tensions and spark diplomatic troubles for Australia.
The Solomon Islands government announced on Thursday that Chinese police officers and equipment would be installed to help train members of the Solomon Islands police force.
China’s involvement comes after the Australian government deployed 73 Australian Federal Police and 43 Australian Defence Force personnel to the country in November, following a request from the nation’s Prime Minister, Manasseh Sogavare.
Ongoing civil unrest in Honiara is understood to be fuelled by economic issues and the Sogavare government’s decision to break diplomatic ties with Taiwan in favour of China in 2019.
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Amid fears Russia will invade Ukraine, Putin slams West
Isabelle Khurshudyan and Mary Ilyushina
Dec 24, 2021 – 1.05am
Moscow | In an annual, marathon news conference, Russian President Vladimir Putin, facing a television audience across Russia, said the West was to blame for tensions on the Ukraine border and fears of war.
Russia has massed some 100,000 troops, along with military hardware, on its border with Ukraine, preparing what Western officials have warned could be a full-scale attack on its southwestern neighbour. In one of Putin’s highest-profile, public-facing events of the year, an opportunity to sway his domestic audience, Putin said Russia would rather not fight a war, and doubled down on his claim that Russia is facing a threat from the West - and not the other way around.
He was twice given the opportunity to state his military intentions toward Ukraine. He did not say definitively that Russia would not invade. He instead reiterated his demand for a promise in writing that NATO would not seek to expand eastward.
“We need to think about how Russia is going to live,” he added, ominously. “Are we supposed to always look behind our shoulder and wait?”
Russia’s Foreign Ministry last week published sweeping demands it presented to the United States and NATO that would effectively bar all other former Soviet republics - including Ukraine - from joining or cooperating with the alliance.
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Satellite pics show Russia bolstering forces along Ukraine border: report
Satellite images have outed thousands of Russian tanks amassing, an escalation that the US believes is an indication of an imminent invasion.
Mark Moore, New York Post
December 25, 2021 - 4:44PM
Russia continues to bolster its forces along the Ukrainian border, adding hundreds of tanks and armored vehicles even as President Vladimir Putin demands security guarantees from the United States, according to a report.
Reuters reported Friday that new satellite images from US-based Maxar Technologies show an increased buildup of forces in Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014.
Russia began sending forces and heavy military equipment to its western border with Ukraine in April and has amassed as many as 175,000 troops, an escalation that the US believes is an indication of an imminent invasion.
The images Maxar released Thursday show a base in Crimea filled with armored vehicles and tanks as of Dec. 13, according to Reuters.
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The most powerful telescope ever built launches to see the dawn of starlight
Dennis Overbye and Joey Roulette
Dec 26, 2021 – 7.16am
The dreams and work of a generation of astronomers headed for an orbit around the sun Saturday in the form of the biggest and most expensive space-based observatory ever built.
The James Webb Space Telescope, a joint effort of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, lifted off Saturday morning (US time) from a spaceport near the equator in Kourou, French Guiana.
“The world gave us this telescope, and we’re handing it back to the world today,” Gregory Robinson, the Webb telescope’s program director, said during a post-launch news conference in French Guiana.
In Baltimore at the Space Telescope Science Institute, the flight operations team watched as Webb deployed its solar array, then its communications antenna minutes later.
Roughly 100 mission personnel will command the spacecraft’s deployments, alternating between 12-hour shifts, 24 hours a day throughout the process, as it begins its journey to a point beyond the moon.
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NASA launches revolutionary space telescope to give glimpse of early universe
December 26, 2021 — 2.05am
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, built to give the world a glimpse of the universe as it existed when the first galaxies formed, was launched by rocket early Saturday from South America’s northeastern coast, opening a new era of astronomy.
The powerful infrared telescope, hailed by NASA as the premiere space-science observatory of the next decade, was packed inside the cargo bay of an Ariane 5 rocket and blasted off at 7:20am from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) tropical launch base in French Guiana.
The flawless Christmas Day launch, with a countdown conducted in French, was carried live on a joint NASA-ESA webcast.
“From a tropical rain forest to the edge of time itself, James Webb begins a voyage back to the birth of the universe,” a NASA commentator said as the two-stage launch vehicle, fitted with double solid-rocket boosters, roared off its launch pad into cloudy skies.
The $10 billion Webb telescope will then take a month to coast to its destination in solar orbit roughly 1.6 million kilometres from Earth - about four times farther away than the moon. And Webb’s special orbital path will keep it in constant alignment with Earth as the planet and telescope circle the sun in tandem.
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I look forward to comments on all this!
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David.
