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I read some disturbing research over the weekend about the rapidly declining terrestrial water storage (TWS) that is now becoming a global issue with drying regions linking up to form mega-drying areas that will be nearly impossible to reverse. While global warming gets a lot of attention in the media the surface water issue is…

Last Tuesday (September 9, 2025), the US Bureau of Labor Statistics published a news release – Preliminary benchmark revision for March payroll employment is -911,000 (-0.6%) – which told us that its employment estimates for the current year are likely to be significantly overstated. Given that the BLS has been under intense political scrutiny in…

Over the weekend, I was a presenter at a Fabian’s Society meeting which sought input on ‘alternative taxation policies’ under the general tenet of the need for the Australian government to raise revenue to ensure a socially just society. The other presenter was John Quiggin and I think we provided a good complementarity for the…

I don’t have much time today as I am travelling a lot in the next few days for various work commitments. But recently I did a podcast for Real Progressives in the US about trade and the external economy. I started the discussion with an interesting quote that I will reproduce here. Regular readers will…

The Australian Bureau of Statistics released the latest – Australian National Accounts: National Income, Expenditure and Product, March 2025 – today (September 3, 2025), which shows that the Australian economy grew by 0.6 per cent in the June-quarter 2025 (up from 0.2 per cent) and by 1.8 per cent (up from 1.3) over the 12…

I started my undergraduate studies in economics in the late 1970s after starting out as an Arts student in the early 1970s studying philosophy, politics, history, anthropology and statistics. The Vietnam War movement and other things interrupted my first years of studies and it wasn’t until the Federal government introduced the National Employment and Training…

Episode 3 in the third season of our Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) manga – The Smith Family and their Adventures with Money – produced by MMTed is now available (August 29, 2025). The Smith Family is a middle-class family living in a city somewhere in the world. The second-generation parents are university educated and have…

Central banks around the world tightened interest rates starting late 2021 in some places and there was a systematic period of hikes over the next year or more despite the inflationary pressures mostly showing signs of abatement as a result of factors that were not sensitive to the rising interest rates. In Australia, the RBA…

I often get asked about cryptocurrency. And I immediately become bored. The sort of claims that people have made about this phenomenon, which is historically just another speculative asset, are over-the-top to say the least. There are two realities that seem to be ignored. First, we already have mainstream digital money and have had for…

We knew in the 1980s, when neoliberal-influenced governments started selling off public trading enterprise for not much that the strategy would not deliver on its promises. At least some of us knew and wrote about it then. I was part of a team that analysed the disasters that would follow the sell off of the…