Blogotariat

Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.

I’m now using Substack as a blogging platform, and for my monthly email newsletter. For the moment, I’ll post both at this blog and on Substack. You can also follow me on Mastodon here.

According to analysis from the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO), the federal budget could face a $58 billion revenue decline if average productivity growth remains at 0.5% over the next four years. This forecast is deemed credible by economists amid criticism of Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ higher estimate of 1.2%. Australia’s productivity growth has averaged only 0.1%

What a difference a few months makes. The last time Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump met at the White House in February, the two countries were riding high.

By Harry Ottley, Economist at CBA It was an exceptionally quiet week in Australia with a drop in consumer sentiment the only data of note. RBA Governor Bullock appeared before the Senate Economics Legislation Committee but kept communication very much in line with recent statements. Offshore, the US government shutdown continued, delaying key economic releases

The post The economic week ahead appeared first on MacroBusiness.

Unfair criticism has often been levelled at the UN. None has been so gratuitously nasty than President Trump’s 23 September 2025 General Assembly address.

Media coverage highlighted Trump’s more outrageous comments, but did not provide deep and comprehensive analysis of the policy implications of his speech.

Ronald C. Keith

The news of the week that Deloitte had somehow managed to get AI to invent references in a report, for which they harvested 400 thousand dollars, should be a warning for all of us. What it means—Field Exercise So, for this weekend, the Macrobusiness cognoscenti has a field exercise that everyone is to complete. For

The post Chatbot consultancy vampires bleed Aussie taxpayers dry appeared first on MacroBusiness.

In March 2018, David Roberts wrote a piece in Vox bemoaning the state of the op-ed page of the New York Times; the main thrust being that these pages do not have enough diversity of opinion, but particularly, he stated that while it carries some conservatives, these authors do not reflect the madness of US conservative politics; they are “alienated from the animating force of US conservatism, which is Trumpism”1. One of the paragraphs that struck a chord with me was the following: 

Democrats have said they will not agree to end the US government shutdown unless Republicans meet their demands, with one senior aide telling CNN it would take an airline catastrophe for the party to back down.

Western surveillance and censorship is eroding digital freedom and is turning the internet into a “tool of control,”Telegram founder Pavel Durov has warned.

The Russian-born billionaire has long portrayed Telegram as an outpost for free speech and privacy, contrasting it with what he describes as authoritarian censorship efforts by Western governments.

West turning internet into ‘tool of control’ – Telegram founder

International Reading: ‘We are on the precipice of an incredibly contracting workforce,’ says jobs expert – CNBC White House announces radical new plan to allocate tariff revenue without Congress – MSNBC Bank of England Warns of Impending AI Disaster – Futurism Soybean farmer says $10B bailout is a ‘band-aid on an open wound’ – Yahoo

The post Weekend reading and MB media appearances appeared first on MacroBusiness.

    AUD/USD EUR/USD USD/JPY GBP/USD Gold WTI Brent Australia 200 US S&P 500 UK 100 Japan 225     Vids                 .…..they should be banned from government contracts for a year…..  

The post Macro Afternoon: 10 October 2025 appeared first on MacroBusiness.

Queensland scales back Copperstring, but says this is where big wind and solar may be built. It also flags renewable micro-grids to power big new mines.