Category Archives: Australia

Wolf Richter: “Severe Collapse” of Home Prices Might Trigger a “Financial-Institution Crisis” in Australia: OECD Frets about the Banks

Australia looks to be on the verge of a nasty unwind of its housing bubble. A plunge would damage not only its banks but also retirement funds, since banks play an outsized role in the Australian stock market.

Protecting Coral Reefs: Sustainable Scuba Diving Practices

PADI, the world’s largest scuba diving training and certification group, and British conservation charity Reef-World Foundation, have joined forces to support the Green Fins scheme, to mitigate the impact of recreational diving on already-stressed coral reefs.

Australia’s New Grain Deliveries Plunge Due to Drought

Another sign of climate change induced stress, this one from Australia.

Shall We Kill the Hay Exports or the Cows?

Hay has become a scarce resource in Australia, and not for the best reasons.

EU Shows Up UK Brexit Trade Fantasies by Opening Bi-Lateral Negotiations With Australia and New Zealand

Yet another Brexit black eye.

China Warns Australia Against Being a Democracy

China throws its weight around even more casually than the US does, achieving the difficult task of making Trump look not so bad.

BIS Warns on Household Debt

Credit booms tend to go hand in hand with a misallocation of resources – most notably towards the construction sector – and a slowdown in productivity growth, with long-lasting adverse effects on the real economy.

The Bank Competition Myth

Why banks should not be considered to be private enterprises.

Book Review: Game of Mates

A new book. Game of Mates, documents how rentier capitalism and soft corruption operate in Australia. Many of its findings apply to the US.

IMF Blames Fall of Middle Class on Globalization and Technology

An IMF report comes up with some orthodoxy-reinfocing conclusions by failing to address some key issues.

The Clean Carbon Bad Joke

How viable are “cleaner” coal technologies? And can carbon sequestration save the day?

There Is No “Independent” Foreign Policy Choice for Australia

In the absence of that countervailing force, then, if we elect to turn away from the US and ANZUS then what we are most likely going to achieve is to accelerate the rise of a new imperial order.