Blogotariat

Developing nations worldwide are facing structural labour shortages and budget deficits amid ageing populations. Germany has proposed raising the retirement age to 73 to avert a pension crisis: Germany has proposed raising the retirement age to 73 in an effort to prevent the collapse of its pension system. This proposal comes from a new scientific

The post Should Australia lift its retirement age? appeared first on MacroBusiness.

It was going so well, and then thump! Westpac mulls what happened. Consumers appear to have been rattled by recent updates on inflation. ‘Partial’ measures released over the last month suggest annual inflation has lifted back towards the top of the RBA’s 2–3% target range. This news, and signs of firmer consumer demand and a

The post What smashed consumer confidence back down? appeared first on MacroBusiness.

The ferrous complex popped at the end of Golden Week yesterday. Pretty typical stuff. The steel profitability gap remains wide. We know a shakeout is coming for iron ore. The question is how deep it will need to be. Morgan Stanley has a crack at it. Downside risks to our long-term price target could emerge

The post Will China or BHP win the iron ore fight? appeared first on MacroBusiness.

Liberal leader Sussan Ley’s vote for the endangered Australasian Bittern raises eyebrows given her record on coal and climate policies.

The greenback is ripping. AUD is rolling over. CNY stalled. This is not good for gold. Or the silly AI metals rush. Which is feeding RIO. EM is also a DXY downplay. Junk is cracking lower. Which is odd given yields. Bubble paused. There’s no obvious reason for the sudden volatility, except that there is

The post Australian dollar hit hard by greenback hammer appeared first on MacroBusiness.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto on Wednesday accused Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk of “defending terrorists,” over comments about the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines. 

Tusk had claimed the day before in a post on X that “the problem with North Stream 2 is not that it was blown up. The problem is that it was built.”

The 2025 federal election campaign saw both sides admit that they wanted to see Australian home prices rise at a ‘sustainable rate’ from already record-high levels. Both Labor and the Coalition offered ‘affordability’ policies that were really aimed at pumping homebuyer demand and increasing prices. It was a theme that has been repeated throughout this

The post Mortgage affordability is not housing affordability appeared first on MacroBusiness.

Proposed 20-turbine wind project near Augusta seeks EPA approval, but has sparked a number of concerns, and memories of the impact of a BHP mine.

Australian researchers suggest a certification process and a digital passport could allow rooftop solar panels to be reused rather than recycled.

A lack of trust and complexity is making the idea of VPPs a very hard sell to the growing number of battery households, with only a tiny minority signing up.

Statistics New Zealand’s latest migration data showed that only 13,066 net overseas migrants landed in the country in the year to July 2025. This inflow was well below the decade average of 49,000 and more than 120,000 lower than the late 2023 peak. The following chart from Justin Fabo from Antipodean Macro shows that the

The post NZ rents fall amid migration slump appeared first on MacroBusiness.

I have just returned from a rock-n-roll thunder tour of the world that took in Tokyo, London, Amsterdam, Paris, and Rome. I have not visited any of these cities in forty years, so the changes were amazing. First, what had not changed. Everybody smokes, everywhere, thank god. Tokyo has barely changed as an experience, except

The post On the highway to Hellbourne appeared first on MacroBusiness.

With the release of the latest data from Statistics Canada, it was revealed that Canada’s fertility rate had fallen to just 1.25 children per woman. To put this into perspective, it’s lower than Japan’s fertility rate of 1.30 children per woman recorded during the height of lockdown during the pandemic in 2021. According to commentary

The post Western fertility rates turn Japanese appeared first on MacroBusiness.