Tuesday, February 8, 2011

The End of Multiculturalism in the Age of Austerity

I pose the question whether the pain of economic stagnation is leading to the revival of anti-immigration sentiment in Britain following PM David Cameron's pronouncements that multiculturalism is dead.

Counter-factual evidence to support that link between economic and social policies comes from Australia where the economy is set to continue its upward trajectory and where multiculturalism is alive and well; this according to former Victorian premier Jeff Kennet as reported here.

Friday, January 7, 2011

The impact of North-East flooding on coal exports

With all the news coverage of the flooding in Queensland tending to look editorially at the "human tragedy" created by the situation, it's easy to forget that an event of this magnitude casn have far reaching impacts on the Australian economy and on those of it's trade partners.

This is something that hasn't been lost on overseas commentators. This short video-blog report from STRATFOR (time 2:47) puts the effect of the floods on the country's coal exports in a regional and global contex.

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

PIIGS* might...

Welcome all to THE CONVERSATION for another year!

To kick things off, The Economist has an interesting sidebar on the IMF's outlook for  Ireland and the other hard-up Euro-nations in 2011. Worth a look. And if you're thinking about your holidays, Dublin is beautiful in the northern Spring (and probably very economical).

* If you're wondering (as I was) PIIGS is an acronym used by pundits and other acronym-philes to describe Portugal, Italy, Ireland (a more recent inclusion), Greece and Spain; those countries which, as adopters of the Euro, were hard hit by the GFC due (at least in part) to their inability to use independent monetary policy as a tool to combat the economic downturn (thankyou Investopedia).