Oh wait, that’s old. 33 years and counting.
It must be rather gloomy working at the UN.
Alarming news from the UN
Year: 2022
Give the customers what they want
The best way to succeed in business is to give the customers what they want. This announcement from Rio Tinto clearly pleases one campaigner from the Conservation Foundation, but I’d be surprised if she is a Rio customer.
Rio customers looking for a supply of aluminium that is high quality, reliable and low cost are unlikely to be pleased with the outcome of this decision.
It’s not about the virus
I can’t imagine that there is anybody left, anywhere in the world, who still believes zero COVID by lockdown, mass testing, contact tracing and so forth is possible.
Consequently, this latest action from the Chinese Communist Party cannot have anything to do with a pandemic response. It’s not about the virus. It’s much more likely to be about maintaining power and crushing dissent. The virus is just the excuse.
US excess mortality
Further to the non COVID excess mortality data in Australia that I assessed at this post, data from the US is well established in a similar vein.
How multiple decrements and standard deviations affect Australia’s senior citizens
The ABS most recent publication on Australian mortality experience was released towards the end of May, with the rather noteworthy key point that for the first two months of 2022, all cause mortality is up over 20% compared to normal, Figure 1.
When it comes to vital statistics of mortality, departures of this magnitude are rare, indeed. This represents about two standard deviations (more on that below) over the baseline, which was measured over the seven calendar years to 2021 inclusive. So, I obtained the full set of data from the ABS website to review the results in more detail, given the data are broken down by state, age group, cause of death and by both sexes.
20% increase in mortality?
I haven’t yet read the report properly. No doubt many statisticians, demographers and actuaries will be doing so now. It feels to my old actuarial bones that a 20% increase in mortality, relative to trend, is notable. That’s a big deviation. Worth reading in full.
True compassion, or perhaps not?
Here’s an interesting business news item regarding Woolworths, one of the biggest national supermarket chainstores in Australia. The CEO is reportedly calling for an increase in his workers’ wages so their real purchasing power keeps up with inflation. Calling for? Who is he calling upon?
Continue readingAsleep at the wheel
Being asleep at the wheel. Being like a rabbit caught in the car’s headlights and too frightened to move. Struck dumb. Several phrases, none of them polite, but each of them could be applied to the senior executives of Australia’s Reserve Bank, the RBA. No competent person in a position of authority at the RBA would keep in place the current monetary policy settings.
Continue readingInflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon
Milton Friedman coined the phrase “inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon”. He would have been aghast, I think, if he were still around to see this chart of the US monetary base:
Continue readingTrouble brewing in Europe
Germany is the largest economy in Europe. Things are not going well there. It is less than four years ago that President Trump spoke at the UN and was openly laughed at by the German delegation. Trump’s laughable comments, as perceived by the Germans, were to warn of impending serious problems since Germany had deliberately wound back its power generation capacity in favour of long term access to Russian gas.
Now look what two stories appear on the same page of the FT:
Continue reading
Australian Actuary 