Blogotariat

In assessing the new world situation, we should start here in the U.S. At this moment, the epicenter of the struggle is Minneapolis. What’s happening there poses a fundamental question that is germane to the changing world situation, the global class struggle and the struggle for world socialist revolution. The same conditions, the repression and the angry mass response of the people are spreading and will continue to spread throughout the country.

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas has said she “will be very smart” by the end of her term thanks to her reading habits.

Kallas made the remark at a press conference on Thursday after a journalist offered to give her a book on Kurdish history by Masoud Barzani, the first president of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region.

Science in the Arctic — and Greenland — is on the frontline of pressing challenges facing humanity, like climate change and genetics. Some researchers worry international collaboration is at risk.

Decades of successful scientific collaboration could be at risk if political relations between Europe and the US continue to fray over trade and defense issues.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has stated that the principle of self-determination does not apply to the people of Crimea and Donbass, drawing sharp condemnation from Moscow.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov earlier this week accused the UN Secretariat of “playing into the hands” of Kiev and failing to act with impartiality, citing what he called glaringly different stances on self-determination for Crimea and Greenland.

Nobody wants US dollars. But they want Bitcoin even less. This is a pretty stark break from the narrative we’ve been sold about BTC being “digital gold” or some kind of alternative “reserve currency” that can’t be debased. Indeed, markets are consumed by a global fiat debasement trade at the moment, yet BTC keeps falling.

The post Is this the end for Bitcoin? appeared first on MacroBusiness.

BNEF says a more needs to be done, and quickly, for Australia to meet its renewable targets. Storage looks good, but wind and solar comes up short. Bowen is batting on.

The post Will Australia reach its renewable targets on time? It will need a lot more wind and solar appeared first on Renew Economy.

When I moved to Hellbourne from Sydney (oh, the regret) in 2009, after successfully selling The Diplomat in Japan on the eve of the GFC, I met the rulers of the incipient Grattan Institute to see if they might be worth my time. It was a jarring experience. My freewheeling intellect and entrepreneurial style clashed with their

The post Sign up for Grattan’s ‘capturing public policy’ program appeared first on MacroBusiness.

The ferrous jaws must close! A 2% pop yesterday, driven by news of the easing of the “three red lines” for some Chinese property developers, faded overnight. This is quite right, but it shows that sentiment is in no mood for reflexive recoveries. The news flow wasn’t bullish on the ground, either. Inventories of imported

The post Iron ore fails to launch appeared first on MacroBusiness.

Origin starts tapping into revenues from the first stages of the two biggest battery storage projects currently being built in Australia.

The post Origin taps into revenues from the first stages of the two biggest battery projects in Australia appeared first on Renew Economy.

Seriously, who would want to be a tenant in Australia? Advertised rents have soared by 43% over the past five calendar years, adding nearly $10,700 to the annual cost of renting for the median household: As a result, tenant households are paying a record share of income to rent the median home: Meanwhile, competition is

The post Renters are second-class citizens appeared first on MacroBusiness.

The February RBA meeting is a closer call than markets are pricing it for, according to Deutsche Bank. The bank notes that headline CPI increased 1.0% monthly/3.8% year over year in December, about 0.2 points higher than expected. Although year-ended slightly above consensus at 3.4% (3.35% yoy to two decimal places), key core metrics were

The post Why the RBA won’t hike rates appeared first on MacroBusiness.

DXY is not recapturing former support levels. This is TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) as his “massive armada” closes in on Iran. AUD literally exploded last night: up, down and sideways. North Asia is still supportive. Can oil catch gold? Military preparations look more like surgical strikes than an all-out war, despite the rhetoric, so

The post Australian dollar explodes appeared first on MacroBusiness.