Peter Hartcher
Peter Hartcher is the political editor and international editor of The Sydney Morning Herald. He is a Gold Walkley award winner, a former foreign correspondent in Tokyo and Washington, and a visiting fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy. His latest book is The Sweet Spot: How Australia Made its Own Luck and Could Now Throw it All Away. His 2005 book, Bubble Man: Alan Greenspan and the Missing Seven Trillion Dollars, foresaw the collapse of the US housing market and the economic slump that followed.
Peter Hartcher
Sound of silence as new debt woes grow
Peter Hartcher America has plenty of enemies but they can probably relax. Who among them could do to the US the amount of damage that it is doing to itself?
Seeing sense as end nears
Peter Hartcher Labor's budget this week is like the pyramid of an Egyptian pharaoh, says one of the party's federal MPs: "Gillard is building the monuments for her legacy, and she's sacrificing us slaves in the...
Real deficit is the will to get tough
Peter Hartcher Australia is in a state of national political schizophrenia.
Challenge of an ageing nation
Peter Hartcher The first time the nation tried to look across the generations to glimpse the problems beyond the horizon, it received a jolting wake-up call.
Blind allies of mass destruction
Peter Hartcher S moke was still pouring from the Pentagon, debris was still settling on the World Trade Centre site in New York when George W.
Peter Hartcher
New big noise on the block
Peter Hartcher Now that we've found out who will lead the US for the next four years, we can get back to the main game of figuring out who will lead the world for the next 400.
Peter Hartcher
We heart Howard: both sides want to be like the Little Master
Peter Hartcher It fell to a woman named Susan Katz to lob the proverbial dead cat into the middle of the American presidential debate this week. It was a stinker.
Peter Hartcher
Long and the short of US woes
Peter Hartcher A lot of wild and crazy things happen in America, but this one is a real shocker.
Peter Hartcher
Decline and fall in the US
Peter Hartcher Bob Carr was only trying to be helpful. Lately he's been giving the superpower a pep talk. He sees himself in America's corner, the trainer to a great but bloodied boxer, offering urgent words of...
Panic on the House floor
Peter Hartcher The past eight days laid bare the greatest fears of the leaders of both Australia's main political parties.
Peter Hartcher
Spoilt West invites its own decline
Peter Hartcher It is easy and natural to think of the woes of the West's main powers as an economic problem. Because that's the way it is presented to us. And it is economic - at least, superficially.
Money can't buy their love
Peter Hartcher It was framed as a question to the Prime Minister, but really it was the first of three consecutive demands from voters, all quite similar, that Julia Gillard faced live on national television:
Peter Hartcher
Toothless among Asian tigers
Peter Hartcher It was only seven months ago that Barack Obama and Julia Gillard stood together to jubilantly announce a permanent new deployment of US Marines to Darwin.
Peter Hartcher
For a few dollars more
Peter Hartcher When Julia Gillard challenged Tony Abbott to engage in a serious debate about the economy, the Opposition Leader revelled in the invitation.
Peter Hartcher
Rescuing the boom's benefits
Peter Hartcher The peak of the mining boom is now past. The best of the high prices and giddy rhetoric is a historical artefact: "Commodity prices declined for a few months last year and are noticeably off their...
Peter Hartcher
French fired up for new revolution on austerity
Peter Hartcher Even as the world's top finance officials built a new fortress Europe at the weekend, the people of France stormed it.
Small target, big letdown
Peter Hartcher The Gillard government is opening the way for Tony Abbott to stroll to power. The compounding scandals and stench merely confirm the impossibility that Julia Gillard can somehow persuade the...
Peter Hartcher
Bin Laden offers us a few lessons
Peter Hartcher The killing of Osama bin Laden was important because, until now, his existence was a standing rebuke to the West. It was evidence that the US could be struck violently with impunity.
Peter Hartcher
Crises of world worsened while we looked the other way
Peter Hartcher While we've been busy with our domestic festival of democracy, events in the wide world beyond have not paused in deference to our distraction. Seven of the most serious dramas have escalated.
Peter Hartcher
Behind the election stoush, the big issues they quietly agreed on
Peter Hartcher Elections define nations. This one has already redefined Australia even before the first vote is counted.
