We bet you didn’t know that Australia needs a ‘godfather’. China is trying to get Australia in line, strategically speaking. Is it because America is weak? Because Australia is vulnerable? Because China is strong? Or because China is weak? Surprisingly, the last part may be more likely than you think.

Economic activity in China is slowing down. The slowdown touches all parts of the economy, too. If you haven’t yet prepared your portfolio for a world with a lot less economic growth, there’s still time. But maybe not as much as you think.

Financial markets have all but decoupled from reality. The manipulation of interest rates has completely distorted prices. If prices don’t communicate useful information anymore, markets aren’t markets. They’re just vehicles for transferring money from one party to another.

Australian debt is bigger than it once was and likely to get bigger still.

The Aussie dollar is anything but a ‘safe haven’. It’s a proxy for commodities, it’s a proxy for China, and it’s a proxy for risk. All of those things make it a dangerous currency at the moment.

The homogenisation of money has led to a kind of debasement in the culture down to the lowest common denominator. But in terms of politics, it turns out the Nazis were way ahead of us on this homogenisation of political thinking. They called it gleichschaltung.

You can sometimes hear the desperation in the voices of credit addicts. When you need a hit, you need a hit. The people who make a living off perpetually expanding credit bubbles need a hit. The credit hit is what keeps financial asset markets expanding.