US President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced a new round of sweeping tariffs, part of what he has branded his ‘Liberation Day’ plan, raising concerns over a potential global trade war.
Washington is introducing customs duties on all countries based on the principle of reciprocity, Trump has announced, calling it a day of economic independence for the United States.
DXY is falling again after Liberation Day tariff announcements. AUD was up big, down big, then did little. Lead boots will be interesting today. Gold to the moon. Oil toppy. Base metals are screaming “hard landing”. Big mining’s big bear knows no bottom. EM meh. Credit not stressed enough. Yields fell as growth worries mount.
Ben is joined by journalist Rachel Withers, writer of the Crikey column ‘Well Hung’, to discuss the prospects for independent candidates, including teal and Muslim independents, at the 2025 federal election.
Last week, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) released Q4 2024 data on household debt. As illustrated in the chart below, the ratio of household debt to income was 182% in Q4 2024, tracking close to a record high. This was driven by mortgage debt, which was tracking at 135% of household disposable in Q4.
The post Australian households remain buried in debt appeared first on MacroBusiness.
The German government plans to nominate Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock as its candidate for the chair of the UN General Assembly during the 2025-26 session, media reports indicated earlier.
I wrote the forward to a time travel anthology a while ago. And for my sins, they sent me a bunch of bookplates to sign.
These things sat in my PO box for a while because the email from the editors telling me about them got swallowed up by Apple’s latest iOS update—which has turned the Mail app into a bit of a bin fire. Eventually, though, the team tracked me down and said, “Hey, you’ve really got to sign those bookplates.”
It has two main strategies, and you can see them both at work, right here, right now.
By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 28th March 2025
You can’t do it differently until you imagine it differently.
By George Monbiot, adapted from a BlueSky thread, 2nd April 2025
One of capitalism’s greatest successes is to shut down our imaginations. With the help of its favoured tools – neoliberalism and fascism – it persuades us that “there is no alternative”. Our first task is to re-ignite our moral imaginations and name our alternatives.
