January 05, 2023 Edition
-----
The New Year has broken but the world is still in a mess with the war in Ukraine and COVID running rampant it China.
In the US it seems we are near a recession with the sharemarket down 25% or so for the year.
In OZ we are actually having a Summer and the fireworks lifted spirits. I hope 2023 turns out to be a good one!
-----
Major Issues.
-----
The two big risks (and one opportunity) investors must assess in 2023
After a tumultuous 2022, investors must be prepared for even more uncertainty next year. Here are three ways to frame your thinking.
Updated Dec 21, 2022 – 5.39pm, first published at 11.51am
If you accept 2022 was an inflection point for the global economy and financial markets – war in Europe cementing a switch from globalisation to nationalism and the urgency of the energy transition, the highest inflation for generations and the end of 40 years of falling global interest rates – then it stands to reason that 2023 will be the year these chickens come home to roost.
But exactly what that looks like is anyone’s guess.
Asked to predict how the economy will perform in 2023, Australia’s top business leaders provided a wide range of responses to the Chanticleer CEO Poll, ranging from optimism in the retail and tourism sectors, to nagging doubts from bosses of industrial companies.
Having initially seen inflation as transitory, and having largely failed to predict the Federal Reserve’s hawkishness, Wall Street’s market strategists and economists are similarly having an each-way bet; consensus suggests there is another leg down for sharemarkets in the first half of 2023, before a new bull market starts stirring in the second half.
-----
How to super-size your super for a bright future: James Kirby
By James Kirby
11:00AM December 26, 2022
You probably want to do better financially in 2023 and there are many ways to get the ball rolling. But the opportunity most likely staring you in the face is superannuation: Unlike everything else, superannuation is not a choice, it’s mandatory.
Think about it: For every $10 you make when working, more than one dollar must, by law, go into your super through what is called the Superannuation Guarantee Charge.
You have no choice but to put that money into the super system, but crucially, you do have a choice what to do with those funds. After all, it’s your money.
You can get more bang for your buck in super by making sure you don’t have duplicate funds, by checking if your fund is not a dud, or you can take it to the limit and start your own self-managed super fund. (More on all these options later).
-----
Surging school fees cost more than a second house
Worried about how you’ll pay next year’s fees? Here are some strategies to help.
Duncan Hughes Reporter
Dec 26, 2022 – 5.00am
Private school fees are rising at more than twice the rate of inflation with the cost of primary and secondary school for two children expected to top $900,000 in 2023, or about 14 per cent more than the cost of a median house.
But rising costs are not affecting demand – the percentage of students attending private schools increased 14 per cent over the past five years, more than four times the growth in government schools.
Strategies for funding private school fees range from savings products (including tax-efficient education bonds) through to loans, investments and grandparents helping out.
Alternatively, many parents decide to move to a school zone for a leading government school, which can add another $500,000 to the cost of a house compared to surrounding suburbs.
-----
Arise Australia, our adolescence is behind us
Journalist and author
December 27, 2022 — 5.00am
Were one to design an institution that contradicted many of Australia’s most cherished nostrums it would not look dissimilar to a monarchy. This is a country that likes to think of itself as egalitarian and breezily informal, and yet it continues to embrace a system based on hereditary privilege and strict protocol.
Australians are supposed to be anti-authoritarian – a myth, I know – and yet they continue to countenance an institution founded on deference and compliance. This can be a fiercely patriotic nation – and seldom more so than when its cricket team takes the field against England – and yet its head of state remains a Pom. The Queen or King of Australia should be a distinctly un-Australian concept.
And yet, the national broadcaster, ABC, looks like it will be broadcasting the King’s speech on Christmas Day for years to come. Polling also suggests the “King Charles moment” that republicans here have been anticipating for decades has been anti-climactic. A Roy Morgan survey conducted after the Queen’s death in September found 60 per cent of Australians want to retain the monarchy, a “resounding majority”, up 5 percentage points from 10 years ago. Both genders and all age groups favour the status quo.
These numbers may have been inflated by a sympathy vote after the Queen’s death. Besides, Australians have always stood to applaud a long and dogged innings. But the pollsters also uncovered an attachment to the monarchy born of an anathema to change. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” was a common reply. That is what is so worrying for campaigners agitating for a homegrown head of state. Elizabethan republicans, who were so respectful of a beloved individual, may well have been superseded by Carolean shoulder-shruggers, who are willing to tolerate what they see as a benign institution.
For all that, there is no reason for the Australian Republican Movement to panic. Labor has made clear that a republican referendum would be a second-term agenda item. In the meantime, the Indigenous Voice to parliament is rightly the priority. If successful, Uluru would be an important confidence-builder, demonstrating that Australians are willing to modernise the constitution. Moreover, republicanism would be the next logical progression after Uluru, and another important step along the road to reconciliation. The monarchy, after all, has always been the most visible manifestation of this ancient land’s colonial occupier.
-----
Australia’s ‘misaligned’ housing market at risk of major crash as rates rise: IMF
By Shane Wright
December 27, 2022 — 5.00am
Property prices in Australia may be as much as 50 per cent above what an average household can afford as interest rates rise, a global analysis has revealed while warning the market is at risk of a major crash as interest rates are pushed up to bring inflation under control.
In a report on housing stability and affordability, the International Monetary Fund said Australia’s property and rental markets are some of the most “misaligned” in the developed world.
The combination of high prices on top of sharp increases in mortgage interest rates mean the average Australian household needs to spend more than 40 per cent of disposable income to afford a median-priced house.
During the pandemic, median house prices soared by more than 30 per cent across the country as prospective homeowners took advantage of record-low interest rates and government handouts to first time buyers.
-----
‘Lacklustre spending’: How Black Friday put a damper on Boxing Day sales
By Matt Wade
December 27, 2022 — 5.00am
The traditional end-of-year advertising blitz by retailers is in full swing, but there are signs Australian shoppers are becoming more cautious.
While consumers have been resilient in the face of rate hikes and high inflation, bank spending trackers have detected some pre-Christmas restraint.
Spending observed by ANZ in the month to December 18 was just 10 per cent higher than in 2019, even though price inflation has been 10.5 per cent in that period and the national population is nearly 2 per cent larger.
That points to “lacklustre spending” in the pre-Christmas period, says ANZ economist Adelaide Timbrell.
-----
Public servants call out corrupt behaviour
By BEN PACKHAM
10:00PM December 26, 2022
More than 3600 federal public servants say they have witnessed corruption in their workplace in the past 12 months, complaining of cronyism, nepotism and conflicts of interest across the bureaucracy.
About 3.1 per cent of the 120,662 public servants who responded to the 2022 APS Employee Census said they had observed behaviour by co-workers that “may be serious enough to be viewed as corruption”.
Ten per cent, or about 12,000 public servants, said they had been subjected to bullying and harassment in the workplace, and about the same number said they had been discriminated against due to their background or personal characteristics.
Federal public servants were generally happy with their work, with 74 per cent reporting they were satisfied with their jobs, and about 69 per cent saying they would recommend their agency as a good place to work.
-----
https://www.afr.com/wealth/personal-finance/prepare-for-an-economic-bushfire-in-2023-20221227-p5c8ya
Prepare for an economic bushfire in 2023
Expect a global recession, continuing asset price declines, and waves of defaults.
Christopher Joye Columnist
Dec 27, 2022 – 12.41pm
Unfortunately, the next 12 months are likely to be very difficult for business, households and investors. Many jobs will be lost and scores of firms will not survive a world in which money has suddenly become very expensive.
One cannot help but think many valuations will need to revert to the levels observed decades ago when interest rates were much higher. Of course, the gargantuan expansion in individual debt burdens, and the household debt-to-income ratio more specifically, means interest rate levels in the past cannot be easily compared to those that prevail today.
Our research, for example, shows that a Reserve Bank of Australia target cash rate of 3.5 per cent in 2023 would be equivalent to a 6 to 7 per cent cash rate in 2007 in terms of the amount of income borrowers have to exhaust on interest and principal repayments of their debts.
This makes forecasting especially complex because we have never really seen a world like the one we confront now. It also means the likelihood of policymaking errors is unusually elevated because economic models cannot easily anticipate the household and corporate reaction to financial circumstances that have never existed before.
-----
The stars have aligned for Albanese. But 2023 is another matter
The bookies have Labor being safely returned. But there are problems ahead next year in population, the economy, housing, energy, health and education.
John Black Election analyst
Dec 27, 2022 – 10.31am
The Albanese government finishes 2022 in rude good health in terms of public support, with opinion polls showing Labor’s primary vote nudging slowly up toward 40 per cent and rising to the mid-fifties after preferences. Almost two-thirds of Australians are satisfied Anthony Albanese is doing a good job and reckon he should stick around as Prime Minister.
The other bloke, Peter Dutton, is still in the doghouse vacated by his predecessor, Scott (“it wasn’t my fault”) Morrison, with the Coalition vote frozen in the mid-30s, with only one in four rating Dutton a better alternative for prime minister.
On the eve of 2023, Labor is looking a bit of a shoo-in to win the 2025 federal election, with the bookies offering $4.50 to the minority of Tory diehards who think Peter Dutton is the better man to displace Albanese from the Lodge.
What could possibly go wrong for Albo in 2023?
-----
Seven forces that will shape Australia’s economy in 2023
The fallout from colliding influences will have a large bearing on what the Reserve Bank of Australia does with interest rates and ultimately determine the path of growth.
John Kehoe Economics editor
Dec 28, 2022 – 5.00am
As Australians celebrate their long-awaited “freedom Christmas” for the first time in three years, an economic hangover awaits in the new year.
After the exuberant economic rebound of 2022, next year is likely to feel more dreary for households and business after eight official interest rate rises and counting. The extent of the slowdown will be shaped by opposing forces working on consumer spending and inflation.
Economists have varying views on how the competing forces will play out and events in the last year have shown how crystal ball gazing is fraught with difficulty.
Positively, unemployment is at a 48-year low of 3.4 per cent, wages are picking up and the household savings stockpile is high. On the other hand, high inflation and soaring energy prices, rising interest rates and falling house prices will drag on people’s purchasing power.
The fallout from these colliding forces will have a large bearing on what the Reserve Bank of Australia does with interest rates and ultimately determine the path of the economy in 2023.
-----
Labor gains important ground in Queensland as states swing away from Coalition
By David Crowe
December 28, 2022 — 4.50am
Voters have cemented their support for Labor in a powerful trend that has lifted the party’s primary vote to 40 per cent nationwide and given it a clear lead against the Coalition in the five biggest states.
Labor has gained ground in every state and staged a dramatic advance in the key battleground of Queensland, where the party’s primary vote has jumped from just 27 per cent at the May election to 37 per cent in an exclusive new analysis.
The trend puts Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in a strong position against Opposition Leader Peter Dutton as preferred prime minister, with a lead of 53 to 19 per cent, but also shows Labor has held many of its gains since its “honeymoon” period after the election.
The quarterly analysis of the Resolve Political Monitor, conducted exclusively for this masthead, is based on responses from 4608 voters over three surveys from October to December.
-----
We know how to lower home prices, but our political leaders won’t have it
Executive director at The Australia Institute
December 27, 2022 — 4.50pm
In what could only be described as good news for first home buyers, the International Monetary Fund is warning that house prices in Australia could fall sharply in coming years. But in good news for those who already own a home, and who are banking on some nice tax-free capital gain, the policies proposed by the IMF to make housing more affordable have virtually no chance of becoming law in Australia any time soon.
Welcome to the topsy-turvy land of Australian housing policy, a land in which our leaders simultaneously pretend they want houses to be “more affordable” for those who don’t yet own them while reassuring those who own one or more houses that we want to “protect the value of their assets”. Talk about having a bet each way.
The confusion is no accident. It protects governments and oppositions from having to answer the simple question: “Do you want house prices to keep rising or do you think it would be better if they fell?” As it’s impossible to simultaneously please the third of the population which does not own a home and the two-thirds that does, the default politician response is to avoid this simple question with a complicated answer about “housing affordability”, a concept that owes everything to politics and nothing to economics.
Who can forget the time the then-treasurer, Joe Hockey, said the key to housing affordability was to get a good job. Thanks Joe.
-----
Scott Morrison’s booby trap: Buying US nuclear submarines is a huge mistake
Academic and former intelligence officer
December 28, 2022 — 5.00am
Submarines are in the news a lot these days. Nuclear-powered ones especially.
There is no doubt that submarines are an essential defence capability for a maritime nation like Australia. They raise the stakes for any adversary contemplating hostile action against us. Submarines are expensive, but countermeasures against them are much more expensive. They allow the government to act at a time of its choosing and under any realistic threat scenario.
Australia plans to build nuclear-powered submarines like the American Virginia-class boats.
Australia’s defence interests would be better served by conventionally powered submarines, not nuclear-powered ones. Air-independent propulsion (AIP) submarines are a proven technology. They go as deep as nuclear-powered submarines and can lurk in an area for months. They convert chemical energy into electric power at high efficiencies, and can go for up to three weeks without having to surface to recharge their batteries, a process known as “snorkelling”. Their hydrogen fuel cells and Stirling engines are much quieter than nuclear-powered submarines, which have large meshing gears between their steam turbines and propellers and must also keep their reactor cooling pumps running.
AIP submarines are lighter as well. They are better at shallow water operations. They are considerably cheaper than nuclear-powered boats, meaning many more could be purchased, with more local maintenance jobs throughout the life of the boats.
Japan, South Korea and Singapore use air-independent propulsion submarines, as do Norway, Sweden, Germany, Spain, Portugal and Italy. So does Israel, a nuclear-capable state.
-----
To rebuild Liberals, look to Labor’s history
12:00AM December 28, 2022
The federal ALP has far too much experience in picking itself up off the proverbial political mat. Three great stints in 1917 (the conscription split), 1931 (the Lang Labor split) and 1954-57 (the DLP split) taught Labor many painful lessons. To recover requires both leadership and vision for future government.
This is what confronts Peter Dutton as the Opposition Leader looks about the shattered remains of the federal Liberal Party thanks to the legacy of Scott Morrison’s government. For the Liberals to rebuild, it is absolutely necessary to consign that government to the dustbin of history. This can begin only with a difficult discussion between Dutton and the continuing member for Cook.
It is never easy to tell a leader or former leader when it is time to go. Senator Gareth Evans probably did it best in the dying days of the Hawke government when he told the then prime minister: “Cobber, they are pissing on your swag.” It was colloquial without the coolibah tree but utterly true. Bob Hawke had lost the confidence of his parliamentary party.
First, Dutton must make it a priority in 2023 to talk to Morrison frankly about his future, with the underlying reality being that Morrison has no future in the parliament. Morrison may dream of a comeback: most former leaders do at one stage or another. But prime minister Morrison is over. The electorate rejected the Morrison government for recurring bouts of mulishness, mendacity and misogyny. Dutton needs to rule off the page definitively.
-----
Young voters turn their backs on the Coalition
By David Crowe
December 29, 2022 — 4.50am
Younger voters have flocked to Labor in the biggest shift among all age groups since the federal election, increasing their core support for the new government from 31 to 42 per cent while shunning the Coalition and others.
The powerful shift has compounded the gains to Labor at the May election and highlighted a structural challenge for Opposition Leader Peter Dutton in keeping a crucial voter cohort that has slashed its support for the Liberal Party to historic lows.
But the new government has lost some of its gains among older voters, with an exclusive analysis showing that voters aged 55 and over have returned to favouring the Coalition after a big swing to Labor soon after the election.
The quarterly analysis of the Resolve Political Monitor, conducted exclusively for this masthead, is based on responses from 4608 voters over three surveys from October to December.
-----
Quantitative tightening – the easy money sequel that could ease rates pain
By Shane Wright
December 28, 2022 — 5.28pm
Home buyers could be spared a rise in interest rates through the new year as the Reserve Bank unwinds its unparalleled $450 billion quantitative easing program, with warnings it will slow the economy and keep a lid on inflation.
Quantitative easing was unleashed during the depths of the COVID pandemic in addition to the bank slashing the cash rate to 0.1 per cent, but the RBA is now embarking on quantitative tightening while being in the midst of its most aggressive increase in official interest rates since the late 1980s.
During the early stages of the pandemic, the Reserve Bank along with most other central banks slashed official interest rates to record lows. They also engaged in a series of unconventional policies known as quantitative easing.
In Australia’s case, quantitative easing included the purchase of $350 billion in federal, state and territory government debt and the extension of a $187 billion line of cheap credit to commercial banks aimed at supporting small and medium-sized businesses.
-----
The top 7 economic buzzwords you’ll need to know in 2023
Senior economics writer
December 29, 2022 — 12.05am
One of the fun parts of the summer news cycle is the pronouncement by various dictionaries of their words of the year.
For 2022, the Oxford English Dictionary chose goblin mode as its word of the year. It means “a type of behaviour which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations”.
Mirriam-Webster settled on the notion of gaslighting, while Collins Dictionary selected permacrisis, defined as “an extended period of instability and insecurity”.
This brings me to the outlook for the Australian and global economy in 2023.
After a tough few years, we must hope this is the year our economic permacrisis finally melts. There are reasons, I believe, for hope – although as always, only time will tell.
Meanwhile, here are my top seven economic buzzwords to help you not only dominate small talk this BBQ season but also navigate the year ahead.
-----
A race-based constitutional body would undermine democracy
Chris Merritt
12:32AM December 30, 2022
Anthony Albanese’s warning this week about the “corrosive, insidious forces” attacking democracy needs to be taken seriously, particularly by those seeking a constitutional entity to represent Indigenous Australians.
The Prime Minister’s remarks, delivered at the Woodford Folk Festival, are a reminder about the ease with which well-meaning initiatives can damage the principles that hold this nation together.
In the same speech in which Albanese defended democracy he recommitted himself to a policy that would threaten democratic principles: establishing a race-based constitutional body to be known as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.
If this is endorsed at next year’s referendum, it would send a permanent message that this country is no longer committed to equal rights for all.
-----
https://www.afr.com/property/residential/rising-rates-cut-new-home-loan-appetite-20221230-p5c9h5
Rising rates cut new home loan appetite
Michael Bleby Senior reporter
Dec 30, 2022 – 1.01pm
Soaring interest rates have halved the pace of home loan growth in just six months as the Reserve Bank’s war on inflation pulled the rug out from under the country’s once-booming housing market.
Owner-occupier home loans rose just 0.4 per cent in November in seasonally adjusted terms – half the 0.8 per cent monthly gain they posted in June – RBA figures published on Friday showed.
The sluggish increase that lifted the total stock of owner-occupier home loans to $1.44 billion reflected the surge in borrowing costs for buyers between June, when the cash rate was 0.85 per cent, and November, by which time it had jumped to 2.85 per cent.
Borrowing behaviour is closely linked to changing rates and the likely increase in the benchmark lending rate to 3.85 per cent – it stands at 3.1 per cent – will put further pressure on home loan demand, ANZ economists say.
-----
Albanese lines up to ride a global progressive wave
Columnist
December 31, 2022 — 5.00am
There is a tantalising prospect for Anthony Albanese and his team as they reflect on Labor’s most successful transition to government since 1983. The progressive wave that lifted them to power on May 21 appears to be part of a global trend. If it holds, Albanese could be seeking a second term in 2025 with the White House still in Democrat hands – whether the president is Joe Biden or his successor – and a Labour government in Britain led by Keir Starmer.
A two-term Democrat presidency matters to Albanese because it gives him more time to secure the most difficult part of Labor’s reform program, on climate change.
The time required to future-proof Labor policies against the next Coalition government is at least two full terms in office, preferably three or four. You could see that calculation in the prime minister’s speech to the Woodford Folk Festival on Wednesday when he paid tribute to one of the event’s greatest fans, and Labor’s longest-serving prime minister, Bob Hawke.
“Bob left a great legacy, and that’s because he understood that for any legacy to have staying power requires a government that lasts the distance,” Albanese said.
Hawke, of course, governed in the era of Reagan and Thatcher, when Labor pursued economic deregulation with a social safety net. Labor swam with, and across, a global conservative king tide in the 1980s which followed the collapse of the old protection consensus.
-----
Young voters don’t want a bar of us: the lament of Young Liberals leader
Young Liberals president
December 31, 2022 — 12.05am
Thursday’s Resolve Political Monitor revealed what many Liberals have been dreading – most young people just don’t want a bar of us. Now, just 21 per cent of voters aged 18 to 34 would vote for the Coalition, down from 27 per cent at the May federal election.
Unconvinced and unwilling to listen, Australia’s young voters are walking away from the Coalition. Coupled with the fact that Millennials and Gen Z are making up a larger proportion of the voter roll, it is clear this trend presents a structural barrier to future electoral success for the Liberal Party.
As a young Australian who cares deeply about the future of our country, I believe that Liberal values provide the best pathway for a brighter future. To achieve that, we need to win elections.
So, how do we win back young voters? Before we answer that, we must first ask: “How did we get here?”
-----
ASX rallies to close tumultuous year on a high
By Billie Eder
December 30, 2022 — 8.39am
The Australian sharemarket rounded out 2022 on a high, completing a volatile and unpredictable year, as global markets came to grips with higher interest rates, inflation and the war in Ukraine.
The S&P/ASX200 closed Friday’s session 0.3 per cent, or 18.6 points, stronger at 7038.70, with technology and lithium stocks capping off a healthy session.
A final session in the green left the benchmark index 6.3 per cent weaker for the past 12 months. Information technology, real estate and consumer discretionary were the three weakest sectors of the year, as people pulled inwards due to rising interest rates and inflation.
Chief economist at AMP, Shane Oliver, said that in the grand scheme of things, the Australian sharemarket had been relatively resilient compared to markets in the US and China, but that there were nevertheless losses in 2022. “It hasn’t been a terrible year... it’s been a poor year, but if you’re in global markets it’s been a lot worse,” Oliver said.
-----
The ‘stench’ of auction failure as property prices face further falls
By Shane Wright
December 30, 2022 — 10.30pm
Soaring interest rates, high inflation and the end of the COVID-pandemic price surge have combined to deliver the Melbourne and Sydney property markets their biggest annual correction in three decades with softness set to continue into the new year.
As new research shows a failed auction result leaves a “bad smell” that pulls down the property price by tens of thousands of dollars, the year of 2022 will mark the softest property sectors in the nation’s two largest cities since the 1990-91 recession.
Based on CoreLogic’s daily measure of home values, Sydney values tumbled by 12.3 per cent through 2022. All of that fall has been since late March with a drop of 1.4 per cent in December alone.
Despite the fall, the city’s property values are still 10 per cent above their pre-COVID levels due to a strong increase between mid-2020 and the end of 2021.
Melbourne values dropped 8 per cent through 2022 including 1.2 per cent in December. Values are now less than 2 per cent above their pre-COVID levels.
-----
Judges make it a roll of the dice on voice
12:00AM December 31, 2022
In the past few weeks there have been two quite remarkable articles in the pages of this newspaper, both arguing in favour of the federal government’s desire to amend our Constitution to establish an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voice.
Both were written by longtime supporters of this constitutional innovation. And both share the characteristic of implicitly portraying opponents of this amendment as misinformed (or, worse, dealing in disinformation) or lacking the empathy and moral credentials of those who support it – people like them, in other words.
These are all variants of what is known as the ad hominem argument, where you play the man, not the ball, and ignore the substantive criticisms being made in favour of implicitly painting a Manichean world where supporters are good moral beings and their opponents bad or otherwise deficient.
So let me tell readers where the authors of these articles go off the rails and why I do not think those in favour have superior moral antennae than do we opponents of the voice.
-----
Australia’s military capabilities in the firing line
Australia cannot afford more bad decisions and Defence dithering. China’s aggressive plans to dominate security in the Indo-Pacific and the cauldron of warfare in Ukraine show the need for a radical rethink of ADF structure.
December 31, 2022
In 10 weeks Stephen Smith and Angus Houston have the chance to dramatically change the shape of the Australian Defence Force. Defence Minister Richard Marles already has the first cut of their Defence Strategic Review, due in March 2023.
Through the pages of this newspaper we have seen a few hints – let’s call them authorised disclosures rather than leaks – pointing to a redesigned ADF.
Change can’t come soon enough. China’s aggressive plans to dominate security in the Indo-Pacific and the cauldron of warfare in Ukraine show the need for a radical rethink of ADF structure – if Defence is truly going to fulfil its mission to “shape, deter and respond” to regional events.
Over the past decade Defence has failed to shape anything much in Australia’s strategic environment. Big developments such as AUKUS and the revived Quad have been driven by political leaders acting well ahead of Defence advice.
-----
Worst investment returns since the global financial crisis, so what’s in store in 2023?
By David Rogers
8:17PM December 30, 2022
The year 2022 will be remembered as one of the worst for investment returns since the global financial crisis.
Not only were returns negative for most asset classes, but high inflation, surging interest rates, geopolitical tensions and recession fears caused an extremely volatile market environment, which made it very difficult for active fund managers to achieve much more than market returns.
Only the brave and nimble were able to generate positive returns on an absolute basis.
For the super sector, using balanced growth super funds as a proxy, the latest year-to-date data up to November showed returns were similar to 2011 – which was a time when the European debt crisis raged.
Simultaneous falls in sharemarkets and bond markets in December will make 2022 worse than 2011 for superannuation holders.
-----
Don’t underestimate the people advising Albanese on the Voice
January 1, 2023 — 5.00am
There has been much made of the Albanese government for its failure to provide enough detail about its proposed Voice to Parliament, but the strategy is clear.
While some criticism is valid, we should look at those who are the loudest critics of this “lack of detail”. They are either opponents of the Voice or people who would benefit politically from its demise.
There is a reason why the ‘No’ side wants more detail released now, and the ‘Yes’ side is holding fire. Both sides are acutely aware of the lessons of the 1999 republic referendum.
In that debate, the ‘No’ side benefited each time more detail was released. It succeeded in turning the debate from a yes or no about a republic to a debate about the best model for a republic. Many Australians who were supportive of a republic eventually voted against the proposed model and the ‘No’ vote won.
-----
Population boom caught the Howard government by surprise
By Shane Wright
January 1, 2023 — 12.01am
The Howard government was warned of huge budget and financial problems due to the nation’s low fertility rate and a rapidly ageing population that would require a substantial lift in tax revenues and far-reaching economic reforms.
But the warnings were based on a major miscalculation of how the nation’s population would grow, underestimating by 2.5 million the number of people who would call Australia home by the early 2020s.
Cabinet papers from 2002 released on Sunday by the National Archives show the deep concerns within John Howard’s government about the economic challenges posed by a slowdown in the nation’s population growth and Australia’s ageing profile.
Then-treasurer Peter Costello had that year released the first intergenerational report, which sought to map out how the budget would change over the coming 40 years. He had also announced the government’s signature baby bonus policy which originally provided up to $2500 a year to parents for five years.
-----
2002 Cabinet Papers: Former Treasurer Peter Costello says ‘we’ve lost our advantage’ through inaction on debt
12:01AM January 1, 2023
Peter Costello issued a stark warning to cabinet in April 2002 when he outlined the first intergenerational report that revealed significant future budget pressures as the population aged and demanded reconsideration of long term policy choices and the maintenance of a strong fiscal position.
But 20 years on, the former Treasurer says Liberal and Labor Treasurers have squandered the opportunity to use the intergenerational report to plan for and address future budget challenges, and have left the fiscal and debt position of the nation far worse than it needed to be.
“The contemporary lesson is you have got to seize opportunities and the IGA gives the Treasurer and the government a great opportunity to let the public in on long term thinking,” the former Treasurer told The Australian.
“If you don’t want to take that opportunity you will miss it.
“We put all these long term issues on the table – the decline in fertility, the ageing of the population, increasing expenditures – and the need to take gradual steps over a long period to address these things. I don’t think things have improved since the first IGA but we’ve just lost our stomach to deal with it.
-----
Cabinet Papers 2002: Why Howard government refused to say sorry to Indigenous Australians
By SARAH ISON
12:01AM January 1, 2023
The Howard Government refused to issue an apology to Indigenous Australians in 2002 despite recommendations in a milestone report, primarily because it would have implied present day generations were responsible for atrocities to generations of the past.
In cabinet minutes from 2002 released by the National Archives on Sunday, the then-Coalition government agreed it would not issue any kind of apology or pursue a treaty between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.
However, cabinet did cautiously endorse an “acknowledgment of the special place of Indigenous people in the life and history of Australia” on certain occasions such as citizenship ceremonies, marking the first step towards the acknowledgment and welcome to country that would become commonplace within coming decades.
-----
Hawke’s sex addiction: ‘The affairs were the least of it’
Bob Hawke personified the very best and worst in Australians. He was a deeply flawed person, and his behaviour would not be tolerated today.
From The Weekend Australian Magazine
February 26, 2022
In February 2019, Bob Hawke sat on the balcony of his sprawling multi-level home overlooking a gleaming Sydney Harbour. The summer sun streaked across his wrinkled face and the blustery wind ruffled his silvery-grey hair. His slim body, tanned and creased, folded compactly into a white plastic outdoor chair. He was slumped and leaning forward, and hardly moved, as if his ageing joints and muscles were fixed. He was not able to get entirely comfortable and the cushion behind his back had to be adjusted several times. But he flashed a smile, cocked an eyebrow and extended his hand in greeting as I sat down to interview him. He smoked a cigar until it extinguished; the stub remained clasped between his fingers. He drained a strawberry milkshake. Hawke loved being outside, soaking up rays like a lizard on a rock. In his final days, it was where he wanted to be. This was to be Hawke’s last interview. He knew the end was near.
The image of Hawke in these final days is lodged in my memory. He was tired and a little irritable. He had lived a long life: he was less than a year shy of his 90th birthday. He was fading. It was deeply affecting to see Hawke ready, even eager, to let go. This son of the manse did not know what afterlife there might be. He had long been agnostic, but never an atheist. He had thought about death, and was coming to terms with it. When I asked how he was feeling, his reply was blunt. “To be quite honest, mate, I’d be quite happy not to wake up tomorrow morning,” he said. Three months later, Hawke was dead.
It soon became clear this interview was different. Although brief in his responses, Hawke was more reflective than usual. He had been thinking about his life. He was concise but thoughtful when recalling his student days, his time in the union movement and his prime ministership. When asked about his parents, Clem and Ellie, or his wives, Hazel and Blanche, or his children, he got emotional. His eyes moistened when he talked about Paul Keating.
-----
COVID-19 Information.
-----
Chinese cities reveal COVID toll that far exceeds national tally
Bloomberg News
Dec 24, 2022 – 7.56pm
Two Chinese cities reported daily COVID cases that far surpassed the official national tally, in another illustration of the unreliability of data in a country grappling with infections after abruptly ending COVID zero.
The city of Dongguan in the southern province of Guangdong has 250,000 to 300,000 people being infected on a daily basis, the city’s health commission said on its WeChat account Friday, citing model-based estimates and expert assessments. The manufacturing hub had a population of about 10.5 million as of 2021.
Qingdao city in the eastern province of Shandong is seeing 490,000 to 530,000 daily cases based on data projections, according to a local newspaper report on Friday, citing the head of the city’s health commission. COVID cases have yet to peak in the city of some 10.3 million residents, the official said.
These local estimates show a huge discrepancy with the official tally of only 4,103 cases reported for China for Dec. 23. It also underscores the inaccuracy of government data, and points to the enormous challenge facing the country after its rapid relaxation of Covid rules.
-----
As cases explode, China’s low COVID death toll fools no one
By Keith Bradsher, Amy Chang Chien and Joy Dong
December 25, 2022 — 10.25am
Beijing: The hearses bearing black and yellow funeral paper flowers crept in a steady stream towards the Dongjiao crematory in eastern Beijing. Several dozen people crowded around the closed gate waiting to be let in. A man unable to get a spot in line could only watch, wondering what to do with the body of a relative who had just died of COVID-19.
The hospital could not keep the body – there were already too many in its morgue. When he called the crematory, an employee told him he had to wait a week. When he called again, nobody answered.
A country trying to mourn its dead from an explosive COVID outbreak is grappling with a system unprepared for the surge in fatalities. Two weeks after China abruptly abandoned its “zero-COVID” policy, cases have soared in cities like Beijing, along with reports of people dying.
Funeral home directors and sellers of funeral supplies describe a flood of phone calls from families needing help handling the bodies of relatives. On Chinese social media, people are sharing videos and photos of morgues crowded with bodies, as well as their own personal accounts of losing loved ones to the outbreak.
-----
China mysteriously stops publishing daily Covid figures
AGENCY WRITERS 26 Dec, 2022
China will no longer publish daily figures for Covid-19 cases and deaths, the National Health Commission (NHC) said on Sunday, ending a practice that began in early 2020.
Cities across China are struggling with surging virus cases, resulting in pharmacy shelves stripped bare and overflowing hospitals and crematoriums, after Beijing suddenly dismantled its zero-Covid regime earlier this month.
The decision to scrap the daily virus count comes amid concerns that the country’s blooming wave of infections is not being accurately reflected in official statistics.
Beijing last week admitted the scale of the outbreak has become “impossible” to track following the end of mandatory mass testing.
Last week, China also narrowed the criteria by which Covid-19 fatalities were counted — a move experts said would suppress the number of fatalities attributable to the virus.
-----
Chinese city hit by 500,000 Covid-19 cases a day
By Matthew Walsh and Jiawei Wang
AFP
2:47PM December 25, 2022
Half a million people in a single Chinese city are being infected with Covid-19 every day, a senior health official has said, in a rare and quickly censored acknowledgement that the country’s wave of infections is not being reflected in official statistics.
China this month has rapidly dismantled key pillars of its zero-Covid strategy, doing away with snap lockdowns, lengthy quarantines and travel curbs in a jarring reversal of President Xi Jinping’s hallmark containment strategy.
Cities across the country have struggled to cope as surging infections have emptied pharmacy shelves, filled hospital wards and appeared to cause backlogs at crematoriums and funeral homes.
But the end of strict testing mandates has made caseloads virtually impossible to track, while authorities have narrowed the medical definition of a Covid death in a move experts have said will suppress the number of fatalities attributable to the virus.
-----
COVID spreads like wildfire in China, new signs suggest
Chang Che
Dec 26, 2022 – 9.23am
Since China abandoned its restrictive “zero-COVID” policy about two weeks ago, the intensity and magnitude of the country’s first nationwide outbreak has remained largely a mystery. With the country ending mass testing, case counts are less useful.
The government has a narrow definition of which deaths should count as caused by COVID. Anecdotal evidence, like social media postings of hospital morgues overcrowded with body bags, is quickly taken down by censors.
Now, a picture is emerging of the virus spreading like wildfire.
One province and three cities have reported COVID-19 estimates far exceeding official tallies in recent days. At a news conference Sunday, an official in Zhejiang province, home to 65 million people, estimated that daily COVID cases there had exceeded 1 million.
-----
China’s COVID-19 surge raises chance of new coronavirus mutant
By Laura Ungar and Aniruddha Ghosal
December 26, 2022 — 2.55pm
Could the COVID-19 surge in China unleash a new coronavirus mutant on the world?
Scientists don’t know but worry that might happen. It could be similar to Omicron variants circulating there now. It could be a combination of strains. Or something entirely different, they say.
“China has a population that is very large and there’s limited immunity. And that seems to be the setting in which we may see an explosion of a new variant,” said Dr Stuart Campbell Ray, an infectious disease expert at Johns Hopkins University.
Every new infection offers a chance for the coronavirus to mutate, and the virus is spreading rapidly in China.
The country of 1.4 billion has largely abandoned its “zero COVID” policy. Though overall reported vaccination rates are high, booster levels are lower, especially among older people. Domestic vaccines have proven less effective against serious infection than Western-made messenger RNA versions. Many were given more than a year ago, meaning immunity has waned.
-----
What China’s skyrocketing COVID-19 wave means for Australia
Ronald Mizen Economics correspondent
Updated Dec 27, 2022 – 2.49pm, first published at 2.31pm
Economists warn inflation could linger longer than expected as China’s first serious national COVID-19 outbreak slows construction, manufacturing and shipping, and ripples through the global economy.
But while there is likely to be a short-term squeeze, an apparent step-change in China’s handling of virus outbreaks could make a period of adjustment in the economy quicker than expected.
Reports suggest China is grappling with millions of daily infections and a growing death rate after dumping its zero-COVID strategy, though the true extent is largely a mystery due to reporting anomalies.
After weeks of growing public discontent, the country downgraded the management of COVID-19 from the highest level to the second highest, in effect removing the legal justification for aggressive restrictions.
Beijing also announced on Tuesday it would no longer subject inbound travellers to quarantine from January 8, in a move that puts the country on track to emerge from three years of self-imposed isolation.
-----
US, Italy mandate COVID-19 tests for Chinese travellers as fears grow
Julie Steenhuysen
Dec 29, 2022 – 8.11am
Chicago | The United States will impose mandatory COVID-19 tests on travellers from China, US health officials said on Wednesday (Thursday AEDT), joining India, Italy, Japan and Taiwan in taking new measures after Beijing’s decision to lift stringent zero-COVID policies.
The officials told reporters that beginning on January 5, all air passengers two years old and older will require a negative result from a test no more than two days before departure from China, Hong Kong or Macao.
Passengers who test positive more than 10 days before a flight can provide documentation of recovery in lieu of the negative test result, the federal officials said.
The US move comes after Italian health authorities said earlier on Wednesday that they will begin testing all arrivals from China for COVID-19 after nearly half of passengers on two flights to Milan were found to have the virus.
-----
Climate Change.
-----
Futures market signals energy intervention will lower household bills
By Mike Foley
December 29, 2022 — 5.05pm
Forward prices for electricity have halved over the past two months, which Energy Minister Chris Bowen says points to the Albanese government’s unprecedented energy market intervention working, but experts say there’s a risk the cheaper futures market won’t flow through to household bills in full.
Falling prices for electricity futures – the market is where large energy users, such as manufacturers, buy contracts for electricity supply in coming years – is a positive sign as they give an indication of where future retail power prices will end up. The government has claimed price caps would shave $230 off the increase in power bills next year and Bowen said he was pleased to see the “trend on wholesale prices continuing downwards”.
“If this trend keeps up the energy price relief plan will be effective at shielding Australian businesses and households from the worst impacts of Russia’s energy price crisis,” he said.
Price caps of $12 a gigajoule for wholesale gas and $125 a tonne for thermal coal, which generate about two-thirds of the electricity for the east coast, were imposed for the next 12 months by state and federal governments to rein in energy prices after Treasury forecast that retail electricity prices would rise about 50 per cent over the next two years and gas prices 20 per cent, driven by an international embargo on Russian fossil fuel exports that spurred a global scramble for energy supply.
-----
Royal Commissions And The Like.
-----
No entries in this category.
-----
National Budget Issues.
-----
Tall tales and grand narratives: Why economists make bad storytellers
Economics Editor
December 26, 2022 — 6.58am
Tell me, are you planning to read any good books over the break? Maybe go to the movies? Certainly, watch a fair bit of streaming video? I bet you are. And I bet most of what you read or watch will be fiction.
If it’s non-fiction, it’s most likely to be a biography – the story of someone’s life.
How can I be so sure? Because, though it’s taken economists far longer than anyone else to realise – and many of them still haven’t read the memo – humans are a story-telling animal.
It’s something psychologists and other social scientists have long understood – although, being academics, they prefer to use the more high-sounding “narratives”.
Humans have been telling themselves stories since we lived in caves and sat around campfires. The eminent American biologist, E.O. Wilson, said storytelling was a fundamental human instinct. Evolution has wired our brains for storytelling.
-----
RBA warns of coming consumer crunch as interest rate rises bite
By David Ross
3:03PM December 27, 2022
Almost two in three borrowers are expected to slash non-essential spending in response to a run of interest rate rises, as the Reserve Bank warns almost 6 per cent of borrowers will be unable to meet ballooning mortgage payments.
In a series of documents released by the RBA under Freedom of Information laws, the bank has laid bare its thinking about the effect of a string of rate rises that have left borrowers reeling, questioning whether they will have the desired impact.
An email exchange in October shows several senior RBA figures discussing household responses to rate rises.
“Many households will be able to manage reductions in their spare cash flows (their income after meeting loan repayments and essential living expenses) by reducing their non-essential spending and/or their rate of saving,” one RBA figure noted.
-----
Health Issues.
-----
Cuts to therapy on Medicare will hurt our poorest Stephanie Louise
12:00AM December 29, 2022
In October 2020, as Covid-19 played havoc with Australians’ mental health, the Morrison government introduced 10 additional Medicare-subsidised individual psychological sessions a calendar year. This meant Australians could access up to 20 rebated sessions with a psychologist.
This decision was welcomed by GPs, mental health professionals, academics and consumers, who had been advocating for an increase in the number of rebated sessions since they were slashed from 18 to 10 sessions a year in 2011.
Last week, the Albanese government decided to end the Morrison government initiative. It has halved the number of Medicare-rebated sessions Australians can access for psychology services, slashing the additional 10 sessions. In doing so, Health Minister Mark Butler took just a weekend to disregard the scientific evidence and clear recommendations of a review by the University of Melbourne. He decided eight hours and 20 minutes (10 50-minute sessions) were all the psychological treatment that Australians needed a year.
Think about it. Are eight hours and 20 minutes enough support for a woman who has had a stillbirth and is struggling to get out of bed, let alone care for her existing child because of severe depression? Or a young person who cuts their thighs to try to take their mind off the voices they hear that tell them to kill themself? Are eight hours and 20 minutes really enough consultation time for them?
-----
Reuters, Bloomberg
https://www.smh.com.au/healthcare/meet-the-canaries-in-our-health-coalmine-20221230-p5c9et.html
Meet the canaries in our health coalmine
Medical director
December 31, 2022 — 5.30am
On Thursday, our doctor arose before 6am, and after pottering around the home for a while, opened up their laptop and spent half an hour checking on patient results and letters to ensure no urgent issues for the day.
After kissing their partner goodbye, they headed off to work before 8am, to find a full day of bookings, five extra urgent patients already seeking ‘on-the-day’ review – most elderly patients with acute COVID infections requiring prescriptions for anti-viral medications – and started on the work of the day.
In the midst of this fully booked day, an elderly veteran called in, having cut a finger with a knife, and still bleeding profusely, clearly requiring sutures to repair the injury.
Our GP was faced with a choice – either suggest the patient go straight to the emergency department at the local public hospital, where in all likelihood as a low urgency case he would wait for some considerable time before having his wound effectively treated, increasing the stress and workload in a busy department, contributing to delays in care for other, perhaps sicker, patients and negatively reinforcing the impressions on the current standard of general practice, or they could put the patient in their treatment area and suture the hand themselves.
-----
International Issues.
-----
‘Bomb cyclone’: Arctic blast sweeps across US, Canada
By Rich McKay
Updated December 26, 2022 — 9.04amfirst published December 25, 2022 — 2.53am
Millions of Americans have hunkered down against a deep freeze to ride out a winter storm that has killed at least 28 people across the United States and is expected to claim more lives after trapping some residents inside houses with heaping snow drifts and knocking out power to tens of thousands of homes and businesses.
The scope of the storm has been nearly unprecedented, stretching from the Great Lakes near Canada to the Rio Grande along the border with Mexico. About 60 per cent of the US population faced some sort of winter weather advisory or warning on Sunday, and temperatures plummeted drastically below normal from east of the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachians, the National Weather Service said.
Over 200 million people, which is approximately 60 per cent of Americans, are under weather warnings as a historic bomb cyclone pummels the country.
In Canada, Ontario Provincial Police Sergeant Kerry Schmidt told TV network CP24 that there were reports of more than 100 vehicles involved in several collisions along Highway 401. While no serious injuries were reported, heavy snowfall and strong winds were resulting in a pile-up situation.
-----
Vladimir Putin is being kept alive on cancer drugs to continue Ukraine war, report claims
An extraordinary report claims that the Russian President is about to enter what could be his last year at the helm of the superpower.
Isabel Keane – New York Post
December 26, 2022 - 10:19AM
Russian President Vladimir Putin is reportedly being treated for cancer with Western medicine as he enters what could be his last year at the helm of Russia.
Amid a slew of sanctions imposed on Mr Putin, the Kremlin and his regimen, the 70-year-old leader is allegedly being kept alive by Western treatments to slow the cancer’s spread, according to Russian historian and political analyst Valery Solovey, the New York Postreports.
“I can say that without this [foreign] treatment he would definitely not have been in public life in the Russian Federation,” Mr Solovey told Ukrainian media.
“He uses the most advanced treatments, [and] target therapy which Russia cannot provide him with,” Mr Solovey said.
-----
https://www.afr.com/world/europe/why-2022-was-the-year-the-strongmen-stumbled-20221225-p5c8p9
Why 2022 was the year the strongmen stumbled
Gideon Rachman Columnist
Dec 25, 2022 – 5.01am
This time last year, I was putting the finishing touches to a book. In an effort to finish Age of the Strongman on a note of qualified optimism, I wrote: “Strongman rule is an inherently flawed and unstable form of government. It will ultimately collapse . . . But there may be a lot of turmoil and suffering before [it] is finally consigned to history.”
Two months later, Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. His decision was a textbook demonstration of the flaws of strongman rule. After decades in power, leaders often become prone to megalomania or paranoia and preoccupied by their own place in history.
They have usually eliminated all sources of effective opposition. If they decide on a disastrous course of action, there is nobody and nothing to stop them.
Putin came to power on New Year’s Eve 1999 and quickly established a new style of strongman leadership for the 21st century — famously posing bare-chested for the photographers.
Behind the macho posturing, there was real violence. Domestic opponents were imprisoned, forced into exile or murdered. Brutal military campaigns were waged in Chechnya and Syria. The Russian leader also positioned himself as the leader of a global backlash against western liberalism, telling the Financial Times in 2019: “The liberal idea has become obsolete.“
-----
Global economy headed for recession in 2023: new research
Philip Aldrick
Dec 26, 2022 – 12.29pm
London | The world faces a recession in 2023 as higher borrowing costs aimed at tackling inflation cause a number of economies to contract, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research.
The global economy surpassed $US100 trillion ($150 trillion) for the first time in 2022 but will stall in 2023, as policymakers continue their fight against soaring prices, the British consultancy said in its annual World Economic League Table.
“It’s likely that the world economy will face recession next year as a result of the rises in interest rates in response to higher inflation,” said Kay Daniel Neufeld, director and head of Forecasting at CEBR.
The report added that, “The battle against inflation is not won yet. We expect central bankers to stick to their guns in 2023 despite the economic costs. The cost of bringing inflation down to more comfortable levels is a poorer growth outlook for a number of years to come”.
The findings are more pessimistic than the latest forecast from the International Monetary Fund. That institution warned in October that more than a third of the world economy will contract and there is a 25 per cent chance of global GDP growing by less than 2 per cent in 2023, which it defines as a global recession.
-----
https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/is-the-inflation-storm-letting-up-20221227-p5c8vq
Is the inflation storm letting up?
There has been a big reversal. Last year, optimists were trying to explain away the bad news. Now pessimists are trying to explain away the good news.
Paul Krugman
Dec 27, 2022 – 6.22am
The average US price of regular petrol this Christmas was almost 20 cents a gallon lower than it was a year earlier. Prices at the pump are still higher than they were during the pandemic slump, when economic shutdowns depressed world oil prices, but the affordability of fuel – as measured by the ratio of the average wage to petrol prices – is most of the way back to pre-COVID levels.
Now, petrol prices aren’t a good measure either of economic health or of successful economic policy – although if you listened to Republican ads during the midterms, you might have thought otherwise. But subsiding prices at the pump are only one of many indicators that the inflationary storm of 2021 to 2022 is letting up. Remember the supply chain crisis, with shipping rates soaring to many times their normal level? It’s over.
More broadly, recent reports on the inflation measures the US Federal Reserve traditionally uses to guide its interest rate policy have been really, really good.
So is this going to be the winter of our diminishing discontent?
After the nasty shocks of the past two years, nobody wants to get too excited by positive news. Having greatly underestimated past inflation risks myself, I’m working hard on curbing my enthusiasm, and the Fed, which is worried about its credibility, is even more inclined to look for clouds in the silver lining. And those clouds are there, as I’ll explain in a minute. It’s much too soon to declare all clear on the inflation front.
-----
Ukrainian drone targets Russian airbase for second time this month
By Hanna Arhirova and E. Eduardo Castillo
December 27, 2022 — 5.32am
Kyiv: The Russian military reported on Monday that it shot down a Ukrainian drone approaching an airbase deep inside Russia, the second time the facility has been targeted this month — again revealing weaknesses in Russia’s air defences.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said debris killed three servicemen at the Engels airbase, which houses Tu-95 and Tu-160 nuclear-capable strategic bombers that have launched strikes on Ukraine in the 10-month-old war.
Russia’s Baza news outlet reported that four people were wounded and said a fire had broken out, with explosions, sirens and flashes on a video it posted on its Telegram channel. The Defence Ministry claimed no Russian aircraft were damaged. It wasn’t clear whether the drones had been launched from Ukraine or Russian territory.
Engels is located in Russia’s Saratov region on the Volga River, more than 600 kilometres east of the border with Ukraine.
-----
China sends wave of warplanes near Taiwan
By Joyu Wang
The Wall Street Journal
8:46AM December 27, 2022
China’s People’s Liberation Army dispatched a swarm of jet fighters and other military aircraft on sorties near Taiwan on Sunday in a move that Beijing said was a response to provocation by Washington and Taipei.
A total of 71 Chinese warplanes were detected flying in the region surrounding Taiwan, with a few dozen crossing the median line of the 100-mile-wide Taiwan Strait that separates the island from mainland China, according to Taiwan’s Defense Ministry. The ministry also said it detected seven Chinese naval vessels in waters near Taiwan on Sunday.
On Monday, the PLA’s Eastern Theater Command released footage on China’s Weibo social-media platform showing several jet fighters taking off and Navy officers carrying out reconnaissance duties. A Chinese military spokesman said in an online statement that Sunday’s joint combat readiness patrol and live-firing drill was a response to “escalating collusion and provocation by the U.S. and Taiwan,” though he didn’t elaborate.
The Biden administration and Taiwan’s government separately criticized China’s military maneuvers, which the White House’s National Security Council called provocative. The Chinese action “is destabilizing, risks miscalculations, and undermines regional peace and stability,” the NSC said.
-----
War in Taiwan would be an economic ‘global disaster’
By Glen Norris
6:43PM December 26, 2022
Taiwan’s business elite warn that any invasion by China of the tech-rich island democracy would bring the global economy to its knees.
The nation of 23 million supplies more than 60 per cent of global demand for chips – the tiny components that power the electronics in everything from jetliners and trains to game consoles and e-bikes. As mainland China ratchets up its threats against Taiwan, the vulnerability of major chip makers including TSMC, UMC and Macronix have been exposed, sparking concerns across the global supply chain.
Macronix founder and chairman Miin Wu told The Australian in Taipei that any war would be a “disaster for the world.” “The whole world economy would be in trouble because of our leading position in chips,” he said at Macronix’s giant manufacturing complex at Hsinchu, south of Taipei.
“I don’t have a crystal ball but both the US and China want it (Taiwan’s chips) so if they both want it why would they bomb? Maybe if some one doesn’t get it.” Foreign affairs experts in Taiwan said this week that any invasion would likely be “very fast” to prevent intervention from the international community and would target the leadership in Taipei.
-----
These old-fashioned hedge funds are cashing in like it’s the GFC
Global stocks have dropped 20 per cent this year, while bonds have delivered their biggest declines in decades. But hedge funds that can bet against bonds or treat currencies as an asset class have leapt ahead.
Laurence Fletcher
Updated Dec 27, 2022 – 11.21am, first published at 8.47am
London | Hedge funds trading bonds and currencies are on track for their best year since the global financial crisis, boosted by the steep interest rate rises that have inflicted heavy losses on equity specialists and mainstream investors.
So-called macro hedge funds, made famous by the likes of George Soros and Louis Bacon, endured a barren period when markets were becalmed by trillions of dollars of central bank bond buying after 2008. But this year they have thrived thanks to seismic moves in global bond markets and a bull run in the dollar as the US Federal Reserve and other central banks battle soaring inflation.
Among the winners have been billionaire trader Chris Rokos, who recovered from losses last year to gain 45.5 per cent in 2022, helped by bets on rising interest rates, including during the UK’s market turmoil in the autumn. It leaves the Brevan Howard co-founder on track for his best year since launching his own fund, now one of the world’s biggest macro funds with about $US15.5 billion ($23 billion) in assets, in 2015.
Caxton Associates chief executive Andrew Law gained 30.2 per cent to mid-December in his $US4.3 billion Macro fund, which is shut to new money, according to an investor. Said Haidar’s New York-based Haidar Capital has gained 194 per cent in its Jupiter fund, helped by bets on bonds and commodities, having at one stage this year been up more than 270 per cent.
-----
https://www.afr.com/world/europe/staying-dry-is-the-key-to-winning-a-winter-war-20221219-p5c7gc
Staying dry is the key to winning a winter war
Cold is a killer in the European winter but so, too, is getting wet. The Ukrainians have advanced techniques for staying dry, but the Russians aren’t as skilled.
Jack Watling
Dec 28, 2022 – 5.00am
Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine has descended into a gruelling attritional assault on defensive positions around the town of Bakhmut.
Each day companies of Russian paratroopers, mercenaries and undertrained mobilised conscripts attempt to storm dense networks of trenches and observation posts, covered by Ukrainian artillery. The outcome of the fighting over Bakhmut is likely to determine who has the initiative for a renewed offensive in the spring.
Despite the scale of the fighting the significant factors over the next two months are likely to be personal discipline and junior leadership in winter fighting.
In terms of the morale and cohesion of units, casualties that are an indirect consequence of fighting are likely to be as significant as those resulting from enemy fire. Winter warfare is unforgiving.
The practicalities of fighting in winter, when the ground is waterlogged or covered in snow and there is little foliage to provide cover, is that soldiers will get wet. Even those equipped with waterproof clothing will get wet from sweating as they dash and dive through mud and icy slurry.
-----
Republicans wish Trump would vanish but won’t dare make him disappear
Writer
December 28, 2022 — 5.00am
There will be a delightful development in US politics in 2023. Yes, Donald Trump will still run clumsily rampant, with legal and political imbroglios surrounding him. But in a very real sense, things will be different. Trump is out of office, and the courts have made clear that, since he is a private citizen, he will face whatever justice due him as one, even as formal indictments loom.
Last week in Washington, the committee of the House of Representatives investigating the January 6 insurrection made criminal referrals against Trump to the Justice Department; the next day, a different committee voted to release six years of his tax returns to the public. He lost his bid for re-election two years ago, of course, and just led a motley crew of hand-picked senatorial candidates to defeat in the November midterm elections.
And yet, despite all of this, he is a declared candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. This prospect would seem an incipient catastrophe to the few remaining adults in the party, but Trump is keenly aware of his loopily obsessive base of support, and has the sociopathic capability to deliberately undermine the party in the 2024 general election if he doesn’t get his way. This leaves the Republican Party stuck between a Trump and a hard place. And since these folks showed a long time ago they didn’t have the spine to stand up to Trump, it’s hard to feel sorry for them.
So what will happen in 2023? Remember that the important battles go on behind the scenes. First, watch how the Republican primary race coalesces. A large field helps Trump. His superpower is running with an implacable base against a disparate slate of opponents who split the vote.
-----
Is this the end of peace through trade?
By Paul Krugman
December 27, 2022 — 3.45pm
In the early 20th century, British author Norman Angell published a famous book titled “The Great Illusion,” which declared that economic progress and growing world trade had made war obsolete.
Nations, he argued, could no longer enrich themselves through conquest: Industrial workers couldn’t be exploited like peasants, and even small nations could prosper by importing raw materials and selling their wares on world markets. Furthermore, war between economically interdependent nations would be immensely costly even to the victors.
Angell wasn’t predicting the immediate end of war, which was good for his credibility, since the carnage of World War I was just around the corner. He was, however, hoping to persuade politicians to abandon their dreams of military glory. And an implication of his logic was that closer economic links among nations might promote peace.
Indeed, the idea of peace through trade was to become a cornerstone of Western statecraft in the aftermath of World War II.
-----
UK outlook cloudy with a chance of uncertainty Patrick Hosking
The Times
3:53PM December 27, 2022
Awkward things, predictions. The chances of egg on face are high. Irving Fisher, the great monetary economist, was never allowed to forget his assertion that share values had “reached what looks like a permanently high plateau” — uttered nine days before the 1929 Wall Street crash. But the crystal ball malarkey is as traditional at this time of year as turkey curry, needle drop and poinsettia watering anxiety. Here are my forecasts* for 2023.
1. Inflation will stay high. Yes, it will come down quite quickly at first from the present 10.7 per cent in the UK, as base effects kick in and energy costs decline, but the biggest cost for most businesses is not energy but manpower, and nominal wages are still hurtling higher, by an annualised 6.9 per cent at the last count. That will feed into higher selling prices. Inflation expectations are getting baked in, hence the strikes in the public and private sectors. Consumer prices index growth will still be above 5 per cent this time next year and will remain well above the Bank of England’s 2 per cent target for years.
2. Base rate won’t come down. Analysts expect the official rate, at 3.5 per cent after nine increases in the past year, to peak somewhere between 4 per cent and 4.5 per cent in early summer and to start to fall in the autumn. The markets are pricing in a 0.25 per cent reduction by November. But the Bank, already under fire for failing to anticipate the inflation surge, won’t want to risk being accused of unleashing a second phase.
3. Top pay will be incendiary. Pay packages for FTSE 100 chiefs will be under scrutiny as real wages continue to fall for most people, but companies in sectors such as energy, pharma and banking are producing strong profit growth, which feeds into bonuses. Bosses also can expect a boost now that easy-to-meet and easy-to-cheat ESG targets are included in bonus formulae. Expect someone to exceed the record £16.85m ($30m) jackpot bagged this year by Sebastien de Montessus, of Endeavour Mining.
-----
The (tiny) AI assassins set to become weapons of mass destruction
Microdrones might be using facial recognition within a few years to decide who lives and who dies.
Henry Bodkin and Aisling O’Leary
Dec 28, 2022 – 5.00am
Drones are in the news again, but not as we have come to know them. In August, Britain announced it was sending 850 Black Hornet “microdrones” to Kyiv for use in close-quarters combat.
The idea was (before the spectacular Russian collapse) that they would lend Ukrainian troops a crucial edge in the vicious urban fighting that was expected as they sought to liberate their towns and cities.
These machines are a far cry from the large unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) associated with the war on terror, the ubiquitous Predator and Reaper drones that delivered death from the upper skies with almost god-like insouciance.
Black Hornets are piloted by a frontline soldier via a small iPad-style screen and a hand controller that would not look out of place on a 1990s games console.
Black Hornets are actually more like a child’s toy. Measuring about 10cm and weighing a little less than a plum, they will literally peer around corners and sneak through windows.
Due to their minimal rota noise, they can creep right up on the enemy, entering Russian compounds and defensive positions (any that are left) and beam back high-definition footage and stills via three cameras mounted in the nose.
-----
‘I’m just blown away’: The Webb Telescope is just getting started
By Dennis Overbye
December 28, 2022
So far it’s been eye candy from heaven: The black vastness of space teeming with enigmatic, unfathomably distant blobs of light. Ghostly portraits of Neptune, Jupiter and other neighbours we thought we knew. Nebulas and galaxies made visible by the penetrating infrared eyes of the James Webb Space Telescope.
The telescope, named for James Webb, the NASA administrator during the buildup to the Apollo moon landings, is a joint project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. It was launched on Christmas one year ago — after two trouble-plagued decades and $US10 billion ($14.8b) — on a mission to observe the universe in wavelengths no human eye can see. With a primary mirror 21 feet wide, the Webb is seven times as powerful as the Hubble Space Telescope, its predecessor. Depending on how you do the accounting, one hour of observing time on the telescope can cost NASA $US19,000 or more.
But neither NASA nor the astronomers paid all that money and political capital just for pretty pictures — not that anyone is complaining. “The first images were just the beginning,” said Nancy Levenson, temporary director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, which runs both the Webb and the Hubble. “More is needed to turn them into real science.”
-----
The five big risks that could bring more pain to global markets
By Richard Henderson
December 29, 2022 — 5.00am
After the worst year for global stocks in more than a decade, and a rout in bonds that’s unmatched this century, some investors aren’t prepared to take anything for granted in 2023.
While optimists are betting on central banks pivoting to interest rate cuts, along with China fully emerging from its COVID isolation and conflict in Europe abating, others are on the lookout for risks that may throw markets back into turmoil.
Below are five scenarios that threaten to bring more trouble for investors in the year ahead.
Entrenched inflation
“The bond market is expecting inflation will pretty neatly come back into zone in 12 months,” said Matthew McLennan, co-head of the global value team at First Eagle Investment Management.
But that may be a big mistake. There is a real risk that wages growth and supply-side pressures like elevated energy costs keep fuelling consumer price gains, he said.
-----
Ukraine can’t avoid talks with Russia to end war
Emeritus Professor with the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Deakin University
December 29, 2022 — 5.00am
Vladimir Putin’s call for negotiations towards ending the war in Ukraine has been dismissed by President Volodymyr Zelensky and analysts in NATO-aligned countries as insincere and aimed at buying time to prepare for a new Russian offensive. Dismissing negotiations, however, might be a mistake.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has instead called for a UN-hosted summit in February, excluding Russia unless it first faces war crimes hearings. Ukraine’s desire to further isolate Russia is understandable, but excluding Russia would achieve little in practical terms. It takes two to tango, but Ukraine wants Russia excluded from the dance.
Ukraine’s position is that war will only end when Russia leaves or is pushed from all militarily occupied territory. Putin’s position is that Ukraine, or significant areas of it, are part of historical and conceptual Russia (Russkiy Mir), reflected in Russia’s claimed incorporation of the districts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson in September.
To press his claim, the Russian president has escalated attacks against Ukraine’s infrastructure. Most Ukrainians are paying a bitter price for these attacks, suffering through a brutal winter without heat, sometimes without adequate water, and with attacks targeting civilians.
-----
Could Xi’s ‘great ship of socialism’ be running aground?
The party state and especially the President personally have hit the doldrums. Can citizens now hope to re-assume greater control over their own lives?
From Commentary
December 29, 2022
The surge in China’s global influence this century has been driven by its economic dynamism and by the vibrancy of its discourse that “the West is declining, the East rising”, and that to stand with China is to position yourself on “the right side of history”.
It’s only a couple of months since Xi Jinping concluded his report to the Chinese Communist Party’s five-yearly congress by pledging that “we will ensure that the great ship of socialism with Chinese characteristics catches the wind, cuts through the waves, and sails steadily into the future”.
Since he became paramount ruler 10 years ago, Xi has seized full and unquestioned control of the China story. Every challenge – including some exacerbated by Beijing’s own relentless “fighting spirit” – has been met, at least rhetorically, by firm formulas from the top.
When Covid-19 hit China, the party’s leaders were at first perplexed, but soon enough they found a new narrative – Xi as “the people’s leader” commanding “the people’s war” against the pandemic and winning through severe but necessary lockdowns – and regained their stride.
-----
https://www.afr.com/world/europe/why-do-russian-tycoons-keep-falling-to-their-deaths-20221229-p5c981
Why do Russian tycoons keep falling to their deaths?
The sheer frequency of unusual deaths befalling so many prominent businessmen who have criticised President Vladimir Putin is bound to lead to questions.
Oscar Williams-Grut
Dec 29, 2022 – 5.01pm
The deadliest threat to Russia’s oligarchs this year? Heights. At least eight businessmen have died from falls in 2022, variously tumbling down stairs, off boats, over balconies and out of windows.
The latest to succumb to a bout of fatal vertigo is Pavel Antov, a Moscow-born politician and mogul nicknamed Russia’s “sausage king” for founding meat producer Vladimirsky Standart.
Antov was found dead at the Hotel Sai International in Rayagada, India, after apparently falling from a third-floor window.
He was reportedly visiting the hotel to celebrate his 66th birthday. Days earlier, another member of the party, Vladimir Bidenov, was also found dead surrounded by empty wine bottles.
-----
‘Senseless barbarism’: Russian missile barrage rocks Ukraine
Dan Peleschuk and Pavel Polityuk
Dec 30, 2022 – 7.51am
Kyiv | Russia fired scores of missiles into Ukraine on Thursday (Friday AEDT), targeting Kyiv and other cities including Lviv in the west and Odessa in the southwest, sending people rushing to shelters and knocking out power in one of Moscow’s largest aerial assaults.
“Senseless barbarism. These are the only words that come to mind seeing Russia launch another missile barrage at peaceful Ukrainian cities ahead of New Year,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted.
Ukraine’s military said it had shot down 54 missiles out of 69 launched by Russia. Air raid sirens rang out across Ukraine, and for five hours in Kyiv.
“The downing of 54 missiles saved the lives of dozens of people & protected key parts of our economic infrastructure,” Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov said in a tweet. “Every day of military success brings our victory closer.”
-----
‘Curb your enthusiasm’: Is the inflation storm really letting up?
By Paul Krugman
December 30, 2022 — 7.58am
The average national price of regular petrol in the United States this Christmas was almost US20¢ a gallon (about A7¢ a litre) lower than it was a year earlier. Prices at the pump are still higher than they were during the pandemic slump, when economic shutdowns depressed world oil prices, but the affordability of fuel — as measured by the ratio of the average wage to petrol prices — is most of the way back to pre-COVID-19 levels.
Now, petrol prices aren’t a good measure either of economic health or of successful economic policy — although if you listened to Republican ads during the midterms, you might have thought otherwise. But subsiding prices at the pump are only one of many indicators that the inflationary storm of 2021 to ’22 is letting up.
Remember the supply-chain crisis, with shipping rates soaring to many times their normal level? It’s over.
More broadly, recent reports on the inflation measures the Federal Reserve traditionally uses to guide its interest rate policy have been really, really good. So, is this going to be the winter of our diminishing discontent?
After the nasty shocks of the past two years, nobody wants to get too excited by positive news. Having greatly underestimated past inflation risks myself, I’m working hard on curbing my enthusiasm, and the Fed, which is worried about its credibility, is even more inclined to look for clouds in the silver lining. And those clouds are there, as I’ll explain in a minute. It’s much too soon to declare all clear on the inflation front.
-----
After $26.5trn rout, global stocks face more hurdles in 2023
Jan-Patrick Barnert
Dec 30, 2022 – 4.44pm
More tech tantrums. China’s COVID-19 surge. And above all, no central banks riding to the rescue if things go wrong. Reeling from a record $26.5 trillion wipeout, global stocks must surmount all these hurdles and more if they are to escape a second straight year in the red.
With a drop of more than 20 per cent in 2022, the MSCI All-Country World Index is on track for its worst performance since the 2008 crisis, as jumbo interest rate rises by the Federal Reserve more than doubled 10-year Treasury yields – the rate underpinning global capital costs.
Bulls looking ahead at 2023 might take solace in the fact that two consecutive down years are rare for major equity markets – the S&P 500 index has fallen for two straight years on just four occasions since 1928.
The scary thing though, is that when they do occur, drops in the second year tend to be deeper than in the first.
Here are some factors that could determine how 2023 shapes up for global equity markets:
-----
Wall Street extends drop, ending hopes of a rally to close out 2022
Stephen Kirkland
Dec 31, 2022 – 5.47am
Big tech led stocks lower again on the last trading day of 2022, closing out the worst year in more than a decade for global equities and bonds.
The S&P 500 briefly dipped to session lows in thin trading, taking the shine off Thursday’s best-of-December rally and leaving it down almost 20 per cent in 2022.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 fell the most among benchmarks on Friday, (Saturday AEDT), poised to lose a third of its value this year as tech stocks emerged as some of the most vulnerable to rising rates.
Treasuries fell, sending yields higher across the board. The dollar extended declines against major peers. The yen rallied even after the Bank of Japan unveiled an unprecedented third day of unscheduled bond purchases.
Losses this week scuppered hopes for a rally to close out 2022 — a year when inflation reasserted itself to wipe a fifth in value from global stocks, the worst run since the financial crisis. Bonds lost 16 per cent of value, the biggest decline since at least 1990 for one leading measure, as central banks raced to slow rising consumer prices by hiking interest rates around the world.
Bloomberg
-----
US scrambles to stop Iran from providing drones for Russia
David E. Sanger, Julian E. Barnes and Eric Schmitt
Dec 31, 2022 – 6.00am
Washington | The Biden administration has launched a broad effort to halt Iran’s ability to produce and deliver drones to Russia for use in the war in Ukraine, an endeavour that has echoes of the years-long US program to cut off Tehran’s access to nuclear technology.
In interviews in the United States, Europe and the Middle East, a range of intelligence, military and national security officials have described an expanding US program that aims to choke off Iran’s ability to manufacture the drones, make it harder for the Russians to launch the unmanned “kamikaze” aircraft and – if all else fails – to provide the Ukrainians with the defences necessary to shoot them out of the sky.
The breadth of the effort has become clearer in recent weeks. The administration has accelerated its moves to deprive Iran of the Western-made components needed to manufacture the drones being sold to Russia after it became apparent from examining the wreckage of intercepted drones that they are stuffed with made-in-America technology.
US forces are helping Ukraine’s military to target the sites where the drones are being prepared for launch – a difficult task because the Russians are moving the launch sites around, from soccer fields to parking lots. And the Americans are rushing in new technologies designed to give early warning of approaching drone swarms, to improve Ukraine’s chances of bringing them down with everything from gunfire to missiles.
-----
Xi’s dream of world order ruined by COVID disaster
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
December 31, 2022 — 9.45am
China’s lurch from extreme zero-Covid to extreme herd immunity is a watershed moment in the global ideological struggle of our age, an unanswerable illustration of why autocratic regimes are less successful in the end than messy liberal democracies.
Leadership cults and totalitarian media control can at times enable breathtakingly destructive policies, and it is hard to think of a policy more unhinged than suddenly exposing a “naive” population with inadequate vaccination to mass infection in mid-winter, and just before the great internal migration of Chinese New Year.
What was the purpose of lockdown torment - and the economic slippage that came with it - a full 18 months after the rest of the world had reopened and moved on?
Most regional governments are suppressing COVID data but Zhejiang province south of Shanghai, with a population the size of England, says it faces a million new cases a day. It expects the figure to double again this week. Sichuan is in the eye of the storm already.
China’s National Health Commission fears that up to 37 million people a day are being infected and that 248 million caught the virus over the first 20 days of December, according to leaked but unverified minutes posted online.
-----
‘Kamikaze’ drones attack Ukraine, a day after the biggest aerial assault of the war
By Dan Peleschuk and Pavel Polityuk
Updated December 30, 2022 — 6.42pmfirst published at 5.51am
Kyiv: Russia launched 16 “kamikaze” drones into Ukraine overnight, Kyiv’s military said on Friday, a day after Moscow fired dozens of missiles in the biggest aerial assault since it started the war in February.
The Ukrainian Air Force said that all 16 drones, which it said were sent from the south-east and north, had been destroyed by air defences.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on his Telegram channel that seven drones had been aimed at the capital, and that five were destroyed within the city and two before reaching Kyiv.
An administrative building in the city was partially destroyed, according to Serhiy Popko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, who also said there was no information about any casualties.
-----
https://www.smh.com.au/national/the-year-liberal-democracy-staged-a-fightback-20221228-p5c93i.html
The year liberal democracy staged a fightback
Journalist and author
December 31, 2022 — 5.00am
In a year when liberal democracy squared off against autocracy, on the battlefields of Ukraine, in the suburbs of Iran and even the turnstiles at the World Cup in Qatar, how stands the scorecard at the end of 2022? With such a ceaseless cascade of news, it has been hard to keep track. History has been on fast-forward. In many ways, 2022 has been reminiscent of 1989, when academics would dramatically rip up their usual lecture notes because they were so quickly being overtaken by events.
Back then, the storyline was straightforward. The Berlin Wall had fallen. The Soviet Union, along with its vassal states behind the iron curtain, would soon be finished. Even after that year’s Tiananmen Square massacre, it was hoped that the corollary of China’s rapid economic development would eventually be democratic reform.
In 2022, things were more confused. The tides of history have often felt more like swirling cross-currents.
In this end-of-year audit, first we should start with the positive side of the ledger. The Ukrainian flag is still flying over the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. The resilience of its people has been a wonder to behold. The former comedian Volodomyr Zelensky has emerged as an unlikely champion of freedom, lauded in Washington as he delivered a rousing speech before Congress wearing one of his iconic olive-green shirts. The widespread expectation was that his country would fall within days, but few anticipated the haplessness of the Russian military or the tactical skill of the Ukrainian forces. For Vladimir Putin, a misguided invasion has been catastrophically mismanaged. Putin’s Russia, far from being glorious, is rotten to the core.
The West, following a feeble response to Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, has rallied. Joe Biden has tried to reassert US leadership after the chaos of America’s 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan. The European Union, partly perhaps because US leadership was no longer a given, has finally demonstrated it can be a force in foreign affairs. For leaders such as Anthony Albanese, visiting Kyiv has become the modern-day equivalent of making the Cold War pilgrimage to West Berlin. Ukraine presented liberal democracy with its biggest stress test since the end of communism, and it proved more hardy than most supposed it would be.
-----
Four senior Russians died suddenly over Christmas
Four senior Russians died suddenly over Christmas. Whatever the cause, the festive season fatalities represent Putin’s last effective weapon: Fear.
January 1, 2023 - 5:47AM
Was it a coincidence? Was it by design? Four senior Russians died suddenly over Christmas. Whatever the cause, the festive season fatalities represent President Vladimir Putin’s last effective weapon: Fear.
The Russians’ deaths comes as Moscow continues to batter Ukraine with missiles. On New Year’s Eve at least one person died as Kyiv and other cities were hit by Russian arms.
Ukraine said it shot down 12 of 20 missiles fired at it.
Some two dozen of Russia’s most senior oligarchs have died mysteriously in the past year. Many have fallen from windows. Others have tumbled down stairs. Some experienced sudden but fatal symptoms. Several allegedly resorted to murder-suicide.
Christmas offered no respite.
-----
Benedict’s lasting mark on papacy will be his resignation
Jan 1, 2023 – 8.30am
Vatican City | Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI had a long and illustrious career as one of the Roman Catholic Church’s pre-eminent theologians. For all his accomplishments and accolades, however, Benedict will forever be known as the first pope in 600 years to resign.
The former German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was the Vatican’s doctrinal watchdog before becoming pope.
Then, after being elected pontiff in 2005, he continued the conservative course charted by St John Paul II, using intellectually rigorous sermons that decried how the world seemed to think it could do without God.
Benedict died on Saturday at the age of 95.
Here are some highlights of his life before, during and after his eight-year papacy.
Doctrinaire in chief
During nearly a quarter-century as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Ratzinger became known for disciplining errant theologians, particularly those who espoused the Liberation Theology popular in Latin America in the 1970s and ’80s.
As John Paul’s right-hand man on doctrinal matters, Ratzinger wrote documents reinforcing church teaching opposing homosexuality, abortion and euthanasia, and asserting that salvation can only be found in the Catholic Church.
-----
David.
