Blogotariat

Cross-posted from Investing in Chinese Stocks. Chinese currency traders viewed the first day of trading in the Year of the Goat as ominous, as the renminbi barely moved on Thursday, effectively a dead market. The lack of activity comes as the yuan is sitting on the edge of the daily trading band. Unable to trade […]

The post China’s landing gets bumpy appeared first on MacroBusiness.

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“It is simply not good enough to run a government based overwhelmingly on the pursuit and hoarding of money”, reports Rob Marsh.

“Unless there is major structural change that is made to our welfare system over the next decade and beyond, over a generation, our social services expenditure will swallow the budget.”

The Daily Telegraph 22 February 2015:A SECRET plan to kick millionaires off the aged pension was shelved by the Abbott Government’s budget razor gang in favour of slashing the indexation of payments for every pensioner in Australia.The Sunday Telegraph can reveal that cabinet’s budget razor gang was asked to consider reforms to slash pension payments to wealthy seniors last year by changing the taper rate.In another stunning leak from the nation’s most powerful cabinet committee, senior mini

Some readers of this blog with know my preoccupation with the shortcomings of Vox Pop Democracy. Here are some aphorisms from David Van Reybrouck who’s book Against elections does not appear to have been translated out of Dutch at this stage.

When a doyen of political journalism, not given to extravagant language, described Tony Abbott as ‘programmed for aggression’, we knew that at last mainstream journalists have tagged him for what he is – a political pugilist.

Alex McAuley in Red Flag discusses the attempts of the government and the bosses to further cut, or even abolish, penalty rates. This drive won’t go away despite the ongoing crises in the Abbott government seeing the Employment Minister, Senator Eric Abetz, divorce the government from the Productivity Committee inquiry and from implementing any recommendations about either penalty rates or the minimum wage before or after the 2016 election. They know as well as anyone that embracing cuts to the minimum wage and penalty rates would destroy completely their very slim chances of re-election.

Calls for resignations are a day to day occurrence in Australian Federal politics at present. The vast majority are about PM Tony Abbott. However in my view Attorney General George Brandis is a far better candidate for instant resignation, if not actually expulsion. Here I list the numerous ways some might feel he has brought the position of Attorney General into absolute disrepute.

Don't even think about asking for that big pay rise.The latest figures from the Bureau of Statistics show wage growth has never been lower - not since the bureau began collecting accurate figures in the 1990s.In the 12 months to December wages grew by an average of just 2.5 per cent, around the same as the Reserve Bank's long run inflation target.

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Gaybies is ‘documentary theatre’, I suppose, with some added songs, six young actors and one middle-aged one speaking to the audience, and sometimes each other, about their varied experience of being raised by ‘two moms’ or ‘two dads’, sometimes after failed conventional marriages in which they were engendered, sometimes after long years on IVF, sometimes after a friend became a sperm donor, or a womb donor, sometimes happily, sometimes confusedly…

AGL Energy becomes first major retailer to launch zero-down solar PPA plan, with a "limited volume" offering in NSW and South Australia. Battery storage to be offered later this year.

The world is about to experience a fascinating experiment, when a solar eclipse hits Europe on March 20, taking up to 30GW of solar off line.

The editorial in the Age today suggests that “the Abbott government is cynically moving to de-legitimise certain institutions that perform vital roles in the democratic life of this nation.”