Blogotariat

England’s privatised water system leaves us incapable of responding sensibly to droughts.

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian  17th July 2025

Independent performance tables to 30 June are in, and the AFR  has listed the best‑performing large super funds. Our flagship MB Growth fund finished near the very top with a 12.1 % return for FY‑25¹. We’re proud of the outcome, but prouder still of how we achieved it. What made the difference? Driver Our positioning Why it

The post MB Growth Tops Super FY25 League Tables—Here’s What Drove It appeared first on MacroBusiness.

8:00 – Polls have just opened for election day for Tasmania’s 2025 state election.

I won’t be blogging during the day today, but I will be covering the results tonight in a separate live blog. I’m also going to try posting some updates on Instagram during the night, so please give me a follow over then.

When the latest Q4 2024 net overseas migration figures were released by the ABS in June, they revealed that annual rolling net migration had fallen to 340,800. While this represented a significant reduction from the peak of 555,800 recorded in Q3 2023, it remained significantly higher than the 250,000 initially forecast by the federal Treasury.

The post Australia on the verge of a new migration boom appeared first on MacroBusiness.

The cabinet of former German Chancellor Olaf Scholz allocated nearly €590,000 ($640,000) in public funds for makeup artists and stylists for government officials between 2022 and March 2025, Bild has reported, citing government data.

Germany’s Baerbock spent €250 a day on makeup – Bild

International Reading: Student-loan borrowers are at high risk if Trump dismantles the Department of Education, 11 organizations told Elizabeth Warren – Business Insider Texas ranks as No. 1 state with the most people in financial distress – Dallas Culture Map The number of first-time homebuyers is plummeting. Why that’s bad news for the US economy.

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

Australia leads the world in the uptake of rooftop solar and other consumer energy resources. But unlike other markets, it has yet to develop a proper system to manage it.

The economy must suffer, and workers in particular, because the Reserve Bank of Australia will not, under any circumstances, mention immigration. And so, it carries on like a pork chop about the risk of rising wages; when it is not fighting 620k unemployed, it is fighting 50 million unemployed in India, or 350% unemployment. There

The post Blind RBA needs to cut 50bps appeared first on MacroBusiness.

Call for new mechanism to pay big batteries and other demand-side assets participating in the electricity spot market to provide “load headroom” to soak up excess solar.

In June, Australian property values reached a record high, as illustrated by PropTrack below. The Westpac Consumer Sentiment Index, released this week, confirmed that Australians had turned hyper-bullish on property prices, expecting large increases in the coming months. As illustrated below by AMP chief economist Shane Oliver, consumer expectations for house price growth have hit a

I have noted the pivot at Crikey to Wokey over the past few years. Gone are hard-hitting critiques based upon a push for political and national interest transparency. In their place now is a conga line of whingers seeking to cancel anybody who upsets a snowflake. This is its choice, and reducing its coverage to

The post Albo releases tide of China grovelling appeared first on MacroBusiness.

The Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA), which took effect in 2005, was a bad deal for Australia that favoured the United States at our expense. The Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University (ANU) analysed AUSFTA and discovered that a decade later, the agreement had diverted more trade than it created.

The post Australia should withdraw from its FTA with the USA appeared first on MacroBusiness.