Australian Perspective
China's investment rebalance
I am embarrassed to say that I made a mistake in the analysis below (I should have realised the results were too clear to be true!). In fact, the relative price of investment…
Police massacre threatens Philippines peace deal
The best chance for peace in Muslim Mindanao in the Philippines has just noticeably faded.
The deadly clash in the early morning of Sunday 25 January between the Special Action…
The IMF's pessimism is misplaced
When the IMF produced its last World Economic Outlook in October, one of the risks it forecast was a possible oil price increase. A US$25 per barrel increase, the IMF said, would…
How Chinese media covered Obama's State of the Union
In his State of the Union address on Wednesday, President Obama mentioned China a total of three times.
One was to praise China's commitment to cut carbon emissions. The second…
Is China slowing down? Not much
The Wall Street Journal:
China's economic growth slowed to 7.4% in 2014, downshifting to a level not seen in a quarter century and firmly marking the end of a high-growth heyday…
Australia and UN peacekeeping: Time for a reset
The UN is the go-to organisation for virtually every forgotten international crisis.
While the West has struggled on in Afghanistan and Iraq, the UN and its peacekeeping missions…
Freedom of the press in Fiji under pressure
Fiji held its highly anticipated election in September 2014, but does that make it a democracy?
There's much more to a functioning democratic system than people putting a mark…
Australia must push for regional adoption of Arms Trade Treaty
On 24 December 2014, two decades of campaigning and several years of negotiations culminated in the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) entering into force as an internationally legally…
Indonesia leads on petrol subsidies, but will others follow?
The fall in the world oil price has created the opportunity to eliminate petroleum subsidies in a number of Southeast Asian countries. These subsidies have been the long-standing…
No, the IMF did not cause the Ebola crisis
Headlines blaming the IMF for the Ebola crisis are something you may expect in the tabloid press. However, a robust debate on the role of the IMF in the spread of Ebola was…