The West is arraying financial weapons never deployed before against a country of Russia’s size, forsaking some of the principles that have defined it.
Part of what has defined the West – and most of what has been the world’s engine of prosperity for the past century and a half – has been the free flow of goods across borders, a working banking system, and property rights.
Rainy Sydney in 2011, much the same now
In Sydney right now anyway. How about where you are, everybody?
I hope all hoydens and hoyden-adjacent folks are safe and sound during the latest manifestations of the climate emergency.
We are about to find out whether we’ll lose a tax break worth up to $1,080 a year.
Wes Mountain/The Conversation, CC BY-ND
If you told someone a year ago unemployment was about to dive below 5%, to just above 4%, they wouldn’t have believed you.
If that person was an expert, and you said it would happen despite a Delta outbreak and lockdowns in our two biggest states, they might have said you had little idea of how the economy worked.
Sometimes the best things you can do are invisible.
Such as fighting cholera by ensuring drinking water wasn’t contaminated by sewage, as happened in London in the 1840s.
What’s the boldest thing the Morrison government could do in next month’s budget?
It would be to forecast an unemployment rate below 4% (a rate of three-point-something), then to pledge to go further, to two-point-something.
The events over the next week in NSW could have massive ramifications for the whole country.
There is a lot going on the NSW at the moment, however, I fear worse may be yet to come.
I don't need to know about that bit.
- Gladys Berejiklian to Daryl Maguire
An earlier version of this post focused on the fact that the budget was announced last week, and right now there are compromises and horse-trading underway to get it passed into law, and that any member of the federal parliamentary press gallery worth their salt should be onto this and what it might mean for our country in these uncertain times.