At the start of this year, Peabody Energy, the world’s biggest private sector coal company said it would cut its Australian metallurgical production by 2 million tonnes this year because of the global slump in demand from the steel industry.

Malcolm Turnbull turned debt, Government debt, into a big issue this week. He says he’s worried that Federal Government debt will rise by $200 billion over the next couple of years. Why he’s worried isn’t quite certain, after all we have nearly $700 billion of foreign debt and another $1.3 trillion or so of household and business debt.

There’s some not so good news for Australia contained in the latest gloomy world economic forecast from the International Monetary Fund: The growth has gone out of prices for energy, metals and food exports over the next five years and anyone expecting a return to the halcyon days of 2008 had better think again.

The global slump is worsening as the US and Japanese, and possibly part of Europe, lurch further into the mire.

There’s good news in the inflation figures, according to the AMP’s chief economist, Dr Shane Oliver.