Are we heading for another Saturday Night Massacre? – Woodward and Bernstein.
The wall Street “correction” is a financial phenomenon, only loosely connected to the real economy. As ABC Business Editor Ian Verrender explains, “markets — and particularly Wall Street — disconnected from economic fundamentals years ago”. High American share values have been driven by years of easy monetary policy, and more recently by Trump’s fiscal recklessness. Mild monetary tightening has caused a panic.
Just in time for Valentine’s Day, the ABC has kicked off its new program The Economists with a session on the economics of love. Peter Martin discusses the economics of loyalty – to one’s companion, friends, children, country. Such loyalty may not align with the “rational” economics of self-interest, but it has huge evolutionary advantages.
Fairfax journalist Jessica Irvine writes about corruption. No the brown-paper-bag-full-of-$50-notes corruption, but the corruption that emerges when governments regulate markets. She points out that “rent-seeking, the practice of attempting to manipulate government decisions to earn profits above what would otherwise be required to stay in business, is now rife”.
Dispatchable wind and solar will be the death of coal and gas – RenewEconomy
Why not fund an Australian tobacco industry? We’re doing it for weapons – Crispin Hull
Security agencies use their cock-ups to demand more power they don’t need – Jack Waterford
NSW minister altered Barwon-Darling water sharing plan to favour irrigators – the Guardian..
Why Antonio Gramsci is the marxist thinker of our times – New Statesman
Church leaders never fully acknowledged that the culture, structure, processes of the church were part of the problem – Fatima Measham
The family who owns Tasmania’s gambling industry – the Canberra Times.
An aspiring Democrat Presidential candidate takes on a bank and wins – New Republic
Is private health insurance a con? The answer is in the graphs – Greg Jericho
Tesla big battery is already bringing Australia’s gas cartel to heel – RenewEconomy
“Private health insurance rebates don’t serve their purpose. Let’s talk about scrapping them” – the Conversation.
On Saturday Extra with Geraldine Doogue this 10th February: political controversy continues in Kenya that now has a President and a “People’s President”, guests Nic Cheeseman from the University of Birmingham and columnist with Kenya’s Daily Nation and Njoki Wamai, a Kenyan researcher at the University of Cambridge; how the manslaughter charge of a junior British doctor who has also been struck off the medical register has concerned the medical profession in Australia with former President of the AMA and former chair of the WMA Mukesh Haikerwal and health economist Stephen Duckett; the Winter Olympics have begun in South Korea and Scott Snyder, from the Council on Foreign Affairs compares today’s situation with that of the Summer Olympics thirty years ago in South Korea and North Asia expert Rana Mitter on the lingering tensions between Japan, China and the Korean Peninsula and the promising situation of an upcoming summit between these countries (sans North Korea). In a good news story, journalist Lisa du Bode discusses the success of women farming seaweed in Zanzibar. www.abc.net.au/rn/saturdayextra
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