Blogotariat

Israel Supporters Are Some Of The Worst People In The WorldNo political faction I have ever interacted with is as immoral and dishonest, or so frequently says things that are so jaw-droppingly disgusting I am sure I must be misinterpreting it at first. I’ve never tangled with a more odious group of people.

Managers need to recognise that the best way to dissipate authority is to fail in its exercise

My latest in Inside Story

Authority is powerful yet intangible. The capacity to give an order and expect it to be obeyed may rest ultimately on a threat to sanction those who disobey but it can rarely survive large-scale disobedience.

Over the pandemic, we saw a record share of mortgages taken out at cheap fixed rates. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), fixed-rate mortgage lending peaked in August 2021 at 46% of total lending, or $26 billion in dollar terms: The latest data from the ABS shows that fixed-rate mortgage lending collapsed to

The post Australian fixed-rate mortgage lending collapses appeared first on MacroBusiness.

Australian Chamber of Commerce & Industry (ACCI) CEO Andrew McKellar says the inflation outlook means it is likely to seek a lower increase in the minimum than the 3.5% rise that it advocated in 2023. “I’d be very surprised if we were at the same level this year”, he told The AFR. “Fundamentally, we’re seeing

The post Business lobby pushes for real wage cuts appeared first on MacroBusiness.

Oxfam Australia Media Release Gaza farmers’ two-month-long “golden time” of agricultural production has been destroyed by Israel’s military bombing and sealing of northern Gaza, ruining the enclave’s richest farmlands which are one of its biggest sources of fruit and vegetables. With Israel’s actions also severely restricting humanitarian aid, the loss of local agricultural production is…

TD Securities has joined ANZ Bank in tipping that the Reserve Bank of New Zealand will hike the official cash rate (OCR) at its Wednesday monetary policy meeting. TD cite last week’s Q1 Household Inflation Expectations data, claiming that the rise in 2-year and 5-year expectations is too difficult for the Reserve Bank to ignore.

The post Interest rate hawks squawk loudly appeared first on MacroBusiness.

The AEC last week officially commenced a redistribution of the Northern Territory’s two federal electorates.

I’ll keep this blog post short and sweet. I won’t bother with a map, since there are only two seats, making the equation simple.

Antony Green’s blog post from early February included a useful chart which compared enrolment for the two divisions of Lingiari and Solomon since 2017.

The two electorates had roughly equal enrolment in mid-2019, but Lingiari has tended to have higher enrolment since then.

So say Marko Kolanovic at JPM. In the last 3 years, narratives for the macro regime went from the ‘roaring 20s’ post-pandemic secular recovery, to imminent recession, to the current goldilocks and best of all worlds when it comes to growth, inflation and monetary easing. Optimism now is quite high and some describe the current

The post Is an inflation “second wave” coming? appeared first on MacroBusiness.

French energy giant EDF splans to build a pumped hydro project in the New England region of NSW after buying the asset from Walcha Energy.

Iron ore futures were belted again yesterday: Iron ore fell to the lowest since October — after dropping almost 9% last week — with hopes for a rebound in Chinese steel demand following the Lunar New Year holidays fading. Futures for the steelmaking ingredient lost as much as 3.6% in Singapore on Monday, a worrying

The post Iron ore in free fall appeared first on MacroBusiness.

The US senses that the clock is running rapidly down on its power. The question in Washington regarding war with China is not if, but when–and how.

In many traditions, when you paint or sculpt a Buddha, the eyes are the very last part to be painted. It’s only after the eyes have been completed that the sculpture is fully alive and empowered.

As a child of the Cold War, action movie star Steven Seagal told RT that he was taught to fear Russia, but that visiting his grandparents’ homeland made him realize that it was home to some of the “deepest and most beautiful culture on Earth.” 

Born in Michigan at the dawn of the Cold War in 1952, Seagal said that he was “raised in a Russian household,” but that his parents soon instructed his grandparents not to speak Russian around him.