Media release number 2024-19: The Reserve Bank of Australia today released the 2024 Assessment of the ASX Clearing and Settlement Facilities. This assesses the performance of the ASX CS Facilities against the Bank's Financial Stability Standards.
An update on my major project of the moment: launching my 30,000 page database of FOIA minutes. All of the minutes have been uploaded to my website, but generating an accessible and searchable database of these pdf files has taken significantly longer than expected. Expect the database to go live over the next two weeks. In the meantime, I’m covering some of the most explosive secrets these documents have to offer. There is so much juicy material in this treasure trove, so stay tuned!
This article was reposted, in slightly different form, from the Practice of Place blog, which focuses on the art and science of creating thriving public and shared places. It is shared here with permission. All images were provided by the author.
A group of Australia’s leading climate and environment organisations have signed an open letter, coordinated by the Australia Institute and published today in the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, and The Canberra Times, calling on the federal government to tell Australians when it will stop approving new coal, oil and gas projects.
The open letter comes as world leaders convene this week at the 79th session of the UN General Assembly in New York, to accelerate efforts to prevent the most dangerous impacts of climate change.
To ensure Australia is doing its fair share for a safe climate, the open letter signatories are calling on the government to:
Tell Australians and the rest of the world when Australia will stop approving new coal, oil, and gas projects.
Stop offsets being used to justify new fossil fuel projects.
End native forest logging.
“Even though the world’s climate scientists and the UN Secretary-General have all declared that new fossil fuels are incompatible with a safe climate future, the Australian government is stubbornly continuing to approve new coal, oil and gas projects” said Rod Campbell, Research Director at the Australia Institute.
“Just yesterday, the federal government approved three new coal mines out to the 2060s, which will produce over 1.3 billion tonnes of emissions.
“To approve huge new coal mines while world leaders meet to discuss the most dangerous impacts of climate change is absurd, but also consistent with Australia’s disappointing track record on the issue.
Editor’s note: The charts and figures presented in this post have been revised to correct for a minor coding error. The updated results are the same qualitatively and somewhat stronger quantitatively. October 8, 2025.
Trading activity in benchmark U.S. Treasury securities now concentrates on the last trading day of the month. Moreover, this stepped-up activity is associated with lower transaction costs, as shown by a smaller price impact of trades. We conjecture that increased turn-of-month portfolio rebalancing by passive investment funds that manage relative to fixed-income indices helps explain these patterns.
The approval of three new coal mines in the Hunter Valley, during a rapidly escalating climate crisis, is shocking given the federal government’s stated commitment to climate action, the Australia Institute has said.
Key Points:
The federal government has approved three coal mines in the Hunter Valley
The lifetime carbon equivalent emissions from these three projects are expected to be 1.357 billion tonnes.
This decision will extend the operating life of these coal projects into the 2060s.
The Australia Institute’s Coal Mine Tracker shows that these are the fifth, sixth and seventh coal mine projects to be approved in this term of government.
“These approvals are inconsistent with Australia’s climate goals and reinforces our country’s reputation as one of the world’s major fossil fuel exporters,” said Rod Campbell, Research Director at the Australia Institute.
At its meeting today, the Board decided to leave the cash
rate target unchanged at 4.35 per cent and the interest rate paid on Exchange
Settlement balances unchanged at 4.25 per cent.
Learn to identify disinformation and misinformation with games and courses collated by the Commons Library. Disinformation is often intentionally confusing! Having creative ways to learn can help you prepare for the real life battle around truth and meaning.
Prevention, not cure, may be a more effective way to combat misinformation. – Source
Don Watson joins Dr Emma Shortis on this episode of After America to discuss the cult-like support Donald Trump has manufactured, the “mad” AUKUS agreement, and his latest Quarterly Essay, ‘High Noon: Trump, Harris and America on the Brink’.
This discussion was recorded on Friday 20 September 2024 and things may have changed since recording.
Guest: Don Watson, author of ‘High Noon: Trump, Harris and America on the Brink’
Host: Emma Shortis, Senior Research for International & Security Affairs, the Australia Institute // @EmmaShortis
To mark PPE@10 this feature continues a series of posts to celebrate ten years of Progress in Political Economy (PPE) as a blog that has addressed the worldliness of critical political economy issues since 2014.
I have always been fascinated by the place of mining in capitalist development. Growing up West Australian in the 2000s, I witnessed first-hand the incredible wealth generated next to the inequality, violence and environmental devastation of the last mining boom. I soon came to understand that studying mining sharpens our focus on a bigger tension at the heart of global capitalism – the ever-present tension between modernisation and destruction mediated by social conflict and resistance.
Standard metrics point to an improvement in Treasury market liquidity in 2024 to levels last seen before the start of the current monetary policy tightening cycle. Volatility has also trended down, consistent with the improved liquidity. While at least one market functioning metric has worsened in recent months, that measure is an indirect gauge of market liquidity and suggests a level of current functioning that is far better than at the peak seen during the global financial crisis (GFC).
^^Click to View^^ Permission to display image granted by Mr. Abelardo Morell in memory of Gerald E. Frug, Louis D. Brandeis Professor of Law, Emeritus, Harvard Law School More “Featured Artist Abelardo Morell: $5”
Opportunity for faculty and graduate students whose work engages with capitalism as an analytic concept and/or as an object of social, political, or historical inquiry and critique
Opportunity for PhDs whose work engages meaningfully with financial history in any time period or region of the world and who earned a doctorate within 5 years of the application deadline. Applications due March 1
