Since my last report, the All-Ords share price index rose by 3.2% from Friday 3rd May to Thursday 16th May, but then fell by 2.2% to Friday 31st May. But for a 0.9% uptick last Friday there would have been no gain in the last four weeks. Market trends My technical models show: On short-to-medium-term Continue reading »
Economy
It has always seemed to me that the Northern Territory, and especially its Indigenous peoples, have been Australia’s ‘poor relation.’ Out of sight, inaccessible, incomprehensible, hostile, threatening. From the birth of what became a Nation, the vast expanses of the Northern Territory, and its unfamiliar peoples, were unwanted, bumped from one State to another, then Continue reading »
What is it going to take, asks climate activist Violet Coco, to stop the death machine, to save humanity and the living world? We first need to find the engine, the beating heart of this global materialist-consumerist-industrial civilisation. Jared Diamond observed, in Collapse, that some past civilisations’ greatest accomplishments came just as they began to Continue reading »
Treasurer Jim Chalmers has chastised Opposition Leader Peter Dutton for proposing temporary cuts to permanent immigration numbers, claiming the 25% cut would cost ‘the budget’ tens of billions of dollars. But the far bigger costs of providing durable assets for immigrants are routinely overlooked, or mis-counted as a plus because they add to the GDP. Continue reading »
Although rarely acknowledged, China is the world’s biggest economy, and it will most probably continue to grow faster than the US, its main competitor. A core American belief is that America is exceptional. A belief that is underpinned by the presumption that the US is the most powerful country in the world, both economically and Continue reading »
China keeps building infrastructure in other countries that is needed by those other countries. Surely this is sinister. But all is not lost. As Joe Biden wonders if cannibals may have eaten his uncle Ambrose during World War II, Washington discovers remarkable new instruments in its geopolitical tool kit. American local and geopolitical behaviour today Continue reading »
Released last week, the Australian government’s Future Gas Strategy states that “our trade partners […] are relying on Australian gas to transition their economies to net zero”, but falling demand and over-contracting from Japan, our largest LNG export customer, raise questions over this claim. Japan has on several occasions stressed the importance of Australian LNG for its energy security. Continue reading »
Imagine you have been asked by the Australian government to draft its new population policy. You first ask to see the old policy but are told there isn’t one: immigration policy has been the de-facto population policy for as long as anyone can remember. You start to make a list of relevant issues. First, you Continue reading »
Liu Bin, chief expert of China Automotive Technology & Research Centre (CATARC), explained that raising the temporary tariff rate on imported cars with large engines can further accelerate the green transition in China’s auto industry; and an article analysing the Biden Administration’s Section 301 Tariffs on China by a think tank affiliated with China’s Ministry Continue reading »
Russian weakness has enabled China to emerge as Eurasia’s dominant power. But it also limits the partnership of the two. Visits by heads of state to each other are cloaked in symbolism. But insensitivity to cultural or historical nuances can see the best of intentions go awry. In March 2013, when Xi Jinping made his Continue reading »