Alan Kohler

If you're wondering how we got into this mess, Viktor Shvets explains it well in his new book, The Twilight Before the Storm: From the Fractured 1930s to Today's Crisis Culture – How to Avoid a World on Fire.

The boom in immigration and the shift in the economy from goods to services has made the normal aggregate data that the ABS measures meaningless.

It is, or should be, the solemn duty of a first-term government to take a program of reform to its first election as incumbent.

The central recommendation of last year's RBA Review has been chewed up and spat out by politics, and in the process the bank is being politicised.

On the one-year anniversary of the terrible Hamas attacks on Israeli citizens, the price of oil is still US$10 per barrel below what it was on that day, even though it has surged US$8 or 12 per cent in the past seven days.

According to the latest polling, 43.1 per cent of Americans have a favourable view of Donald Trump and 46 per cent say they will vote for him.

The climate policies of both of Australia's main political parties are based on bullsh-t.

Why has a succession of inquiries and reports, along with a plethora of academic papers, not led to effective action to improve housing affordability? Because the work has been aimless and unsupported by a national consensus.

The Victorian government’s blizzard of housing announcements this month is the first serious effort to deal with housing affordability.

There are so many aspects to Tuesday’s US election, it feels like one column simply won’t do. So, here's seven in one.