I went to Perth, once declared the best spot on earth.
Not this time. I came to bury my brother, who succumbed to a long struggle with cancer.
The flight home was on a packed plane flying directly to Canberra, a real boon not having to go via Melbourne or Sydney.
I had an economy aisle seat, my eyes closed and alone with my thoughts.
The “young thruster” beside me wanted to chat.
And he wanted to discuss economics!
He’d just visited Singapore, then Bali, and like so many people he knew it was part of Indonesia.
“Mr Middle Seat” was courteous and friendly, so we chatted.
He was an economics graduate and, yes, he also knew where Bahrain was.
Never been there, but was interested in Bahrain.
He was surprised when I slipped into my spiel that it was consistently the number one expatriate destination, year after year.
I spoke about tolerance, the openness of society, casual dress, freedom of religious acceptance, free healthcare, housing and welfare, that women had been allowed to drive for years.
About the parliament and independent judiciary.
Furthermore, members of the ruling family – including the Prime Minister – would regularly meet directly with members of the public, listening to complaints or issues and, where necessary, ordering matters to be remedied.
He responded: “I didn’t know that.”
He talked instead about the “forthcoming global financial crisis, which might happen in 2020”.
We had learned so little.
The prognosis was given by two professorial fellows from the London School of Economics.
When I returned to Canberra I looked them up.
Indeed, Roubini and Rosa counselled concern.
“World markets would face tougher economic and investment conditions as the global economy slows” and the “global expansion would continue because the US is running large fiscal deficits.”
The Federal Reserve may again have to bail out the banks, as happened in 2007, but the circumstances of changes in US policies and possible trade wars between the US, China and Europe made the forthcoming crisis less predictable.
Ramifications flow on from the US economy “with investors anticipating a slowdown in 2020 and (repricing) risky assets by the middle of 2019”.
The US economy is currently going gangbusters, but “Donald Trump is already attacking the Fed, when growth is (now) above four per cent”.
What will he do in 2020 when growth stalls below 1pc and job losses start?
An interesting article indeed.
When you throw policy weight around, like the US, everyone gets caught in the tsunami.
Later in the GDN I read the Prime Minister’s welcome calls for peace, following his meeting with a group of Nobel Peace laureates.
With Australian parliamentary delegations I sat in on meetings with F W de Klerk in Cape Town and I knew Anna Tibejuka, having called on her when she was banished to the Northern Transvaal while as a diplomat in South Africa, both instrumental in their separate ways in dismantling apartheid.
Similarly, I sat in on a meeting with Lech Walesa, in Warsaw.
His Highness, Prince Khalifa, was indeed in good company.
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