| Hi all, it's Jackie here. We're doing a deep dive on some of the economic conundrums facing the government as the jobs and skills summit starts in Canberra today. But first... Today's must-reads: - Queenstown remains unscathed by New Zealand's housing downturn
- Passengers may hate Qantas, but shareholders love it
- Australia's sovereign wealth fund gets by with a little help from hedge funds
Kicking off. It's the first day of the jobs and skills summit, where the government will try to forge conflicting views of unions and business into a policy agenda. PM Anthony Albanese hosts execs, union officials and experts who will try to form a consensus on tackling inflation, falling wages and labor shortages. We examine six key problems confronting leaders at the meeting. Skiers might be the only things going down in Queenstown. Prices at the billionaire ski resort are holding up even as New Zealand's housing market slows. Property values in the district rose 20.5% over the past year, outstripping all other main urban areas and a gain of just 5.8% for the nation, according to CoreLogic data for August. Meanwhile, Australian home prices posted their steepest monthly drop in almost four decades. Customers hate businesses with excessive market share, knowing how little choice they have to seek alternatives. For the same reasons, shareholders love them. So long as that situation prevails, Alan Joyce's job at Qantas will be safe, Bloomberg Opinion's David Fickling writes. Weathering the storm. Australia's sovereign wealth fund avoided most of the losses that rattled global markets over the past year, largely thanks to bets on hedge funds that got a kicker from rampant inflation. The Future Fund shed just 1.2% in the year to June 30 as it ramped up alternative strategies like macro hedge funds and inflation-linked infrastructure assets. Looking ahead, the fund says market volatility will continue. US stocks and bonds ended a turbulent August lower as traders recalibrated rate-hike expectations after central banks across the globe vowed to step up their fights against inflation. Loretta Mester reinforced the message that the Fed has more to do, saying it should raise its benchmark above 4% early next year and downplaying the odds of rate cuts in 2023. "Even if the economy were to go into a recession we have to get inflation down." The Cleveland Fed chief's comments underpin the notion that Jerome Powell is aiming for a so-called growth recession — a period of meager expansion and rising unemployment that stops short of an outright contraction. Donald Trump is unlikely to face any potential charges for keeping classified documents at his Florida home until after the November midterm elections. Under long-standing DOJ policy, prosecutors are barred from taking investigative steps or filing charges that would harm a candidate or party traditionally 60 days before an election. That'd be by Sept. 10, which makes it unlikely anything would be announced until after Nov. 8. - Day 1 of the jobs and skills summit
Staying single and forgoing parenthood has a bigger payoff for American women than men, new research from the St. Louis Fed shows. Single women without kids had an average of $65,000 in wealth in 2019, compared with $57,000 for single, child-free men. For single mothers, the figure was only $7,000, while unpartnered dads had slightly more wealth than their child-free counterparts. | 
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