The Money ABC listen

Making bucket loads of money from crime is one thing but what do you then do with it all? Investigative journalist Geoff White explains how big time crims are making their dirty money clean. 

Guest: Geoff White, author of Rinsed: From Cartels to Crypto, How the Tech Industry Washes Money for the World’s Deadliest Crooks.

Coffee prices have climbed on commodity markets but not so much in cafes. Why is that?

People are drinking less alcohol, especially Millennials and Gen Z. And the drinks industry has noticed.

Low-alc and no-alc drinks make up a tiny fraction of the market. But it’s growing at 7 percent a year. And, as more of us either moderate our drinking or stop altogether, the future for these drinks look bright.

But the way they’re advertised, marketed and packaged makes them look very like alcoholic drinks and there’s some concern they may act as a gateway to alcohol.

 

Guests:

Simon Strachan, CEO, Drinkwise

Elfrun von Koeller, Managing Director & Partner, Boston Consulting Group

Andy Miller, CEO, Heaps Normal

Dr Ashlea Bartram, Senior Research Fellow, National Centre for Education and Training on Addiction, Flinders University

 

TikTok, the phone app that sends a stream of viral videos to every user, is in trouble in the United States. 

The company must either change its Chinese ownership, or leave the American market.

In response, TikTok is underlining its economic contribution, in Australia and elsewhere.  So how much difference does it make?

Guests:

Dr Joanne Gray, Lecturer in Digital Cultures, University of Sydney

Ariana Hendry, Co-founder, Beysis

Kristian Kolding, Head of Consulting, Oxford Economics Australia

Professor Vili Lehdonvirta, Oxford Internet Institute, Oxford University

As they say a “diamond is forever”. But does it matter if that diamond is grown in a lab or mined from the Earth? Especially if they both are chemically, physically, and optically identical.

And given that cost of living pressures are colliding with consumers’ desire to not compromise on size or quality, more and more Australians can see the logic behind lab grown gems.  In America, lab-grown may have peaked.

Guests:

Cormac Kinney, Founder & CEO, Diamond Standard

Paul Zimnisky, Leading Global Diamond Industry Analyst

Talitha Cummins, Founder, the Cut Jewellery

Eloise Sohier, Customer, The Cut Jewellery

This year’s Budget tries to do several things at once. In the short term it offers cost-of-living relief but tries not to contribute to inflation. In the longer term it departs from decades of economic orthodoxy by picking industries to invest in.  Specifically, green hydrogen and critical minerals.   

But will it work? And how responsible is it? Three of the country’s leading economists offer their views.

Guests:

Shane Oliver, Chief Economist, AMP

Richard Holden, Professor of Economics, UNSW Business School

Luci Ellis, Chief Economist, Westpac Banking Group