Afternoon with Gin Fizz, 1961, Elisabeth Cummings, Art Gallery of NSW China: Canary in the Hong Kong housing market? Why one Mid-Levels mortgage default is a case study in financial engineering – SCMP China’s Stocks, Bonds, Yuan Are a Triple Losing Bet This Month– Bloomberg China’s Central Bank Raises Yuan Fixing by Most Since
Chris Weston, Chief Market Strategist at IG Markets Clearly traders had warmed to the Bloomberg article (22 April) centering on offering liquidity to Japanese banks and effectively paying them in the process. This speculation started from a belief that we were going to get aggressive broad based easing, hence the aggressive reaction. In fact, we
Cross-posted from Independent Australia: Has the time come to consider criminalising tax avoidance and making boards and senior officers liable for prison sentences, asks former ATO Assistant Commissioner, John Passant. IN A SPEECH in 2013, Barack Obama labelled inequality “the defining challenge of our time”. Oxfam has argued that 85 people own as much of the world’s
By Leith van Onselen The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) today released Producer Price Index (PPI) data for the March quarter, which registered a 0.2% quarterly Decline in final (stage 3) prices and an increase of only 1.2% over the year: The 0.2% decrease in final (stage 3) prices was driven primarily by decreases in
Cliffs CEO Lourenco Goncalves is back via The Oz: “Jimmy Wilson was fired,’’ Mr Goncalves said. “Mr Wilson was the most vocal Australian on how to intentionally destroy international iron ore prices. He is on record with the statements about deliberate overproduction and his lack of concern on the impact that might cause on others,’’ Mr
By Leith van Onselen During the Howard Government’s reign we had “Howard’s battlers” – ordinary middle-class nuclear families who reveled in middle-class welfare dished-out over the Government’s 12-years in office. In 2016, we have “Malcolm’s battlers” – those so-called ordinary middle-income property investors using negative gearing to “get ahead” in life, as explained by Treasurer
Big iron ore and gas are off to the races again today as Dalian keeps surging (up another four points during the day from overnight gains) and the USD keeps falling: The culprit is easy to find with yen breaking out: Which is enabling China to appreciate the yuan as well: For those that do
By Leith van Onselen The Australian’s Adam Creighton has penned an insightful piece today on the high number of bureaucrats involved in Australia’s health system, which is growing much faster than employment growth: Australia’s health bureaucracy is growing faster than national employment and now rivals the country’s 17,300-strong army and airforce reserves, with one administrator
The AFR has a terrific piece today on the long running Ross Garnaut versus Mr Rainbow debate around Australia’s post boom adjustment: The first vision, outlined by professor Ross Garnaut in his widely read and compelling 2013 book, Dog Days: Australia after the Boom, mapped a future in which the country was set to pay the
It is this chart from Macquarie: We know bank margins are under pressure from funding costs and bad debt rises so they are going to pull the trigger on another out-of-cycle rate hike sooner rather than later and after the election looks a damn good prospect based upon recent history. Thus the RBA will need
By Leith van Onselen The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has released its private sector credit aggregates data for the month of March: A chart showing the long-run breakdown in the components is provided below: Personal credit growth (-0.2% MoM; -0.7% QoQ; -1.0% YoY) is still in the gutter, whereas business credit growth (0.3% MoM;
By Leith van Onselen As reported in Fairfax today, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is set to announce a new scheme that would boost investment in big-ticket infrastructure projects across Australia’s major cites: To be called Smart Cities, the project will begin with a $50 million allocation for planning and the brokering of deals between the
The latest figures for Australia’s bank fund cost rocket are that we’ve seen virtually no movement in a week with CBA CDS still stuck at 103bps yesterday: There’s been little movement in our US and European proxies, either, so the Ponzi Index is also unchanged: In looking at what might be ahead for the rocket
From Deutsche: The first question to ask is which credit rating are we talking about? In the first instance we think the pressure will be on the foreign currency rating, not the local currency rating, although we cannot rule out agencies simultaneously acting on both. It is quite common for countries to have a
by Chris Becker No stimulus for you? Impossibru! But yes the Bank of Japan did not follow up as expected with any further QE, even though CPI slipped further into deflation as household spending fell off a cliff. In Europe German unemployment came in as expected at 6.2% and CPI came in just above deflation which
By Leith van Onselen Victorian Treasurer, Tim Pallas, has responded to criticism over the state Budget’s surplus projections, claiming that the Budget is sustainable despite its heavy reliance on the booming property market. From The ABC: “We’ve made modest assumptions about the revenue we get from land going forward,” he said. “We’re actually assuming that
At The Oz, David Uren begs Treasury to pull its finger out today, quite rightly: If the economy had behaved in line with Treasury’s predictions for it over the past five years, the economy would be $90 billion bigger than it is and the budget would be heading for a surplus. Treasury is facing yet another
From The Australian today: Like a well-drilled army unit, the big banks rallied together to dismiss a royal commission, firing off the scary reasons why it was a bad idea. They did the same when the Murray inquiry threatened higher capital requirements. So if negative gearing changes were such a disaster, why have the banks been
By Leith van Onselen After conducting a statewide survey of its 14,000 members, the Real Estate Institute of Queensland (REIQ) has argued that changing negative gearing would have a “crippling effect” on Queensland’s property market by lowering dwelling values while magically raising rents. From The AFR: “We now know for a fact that 79 per cent
By Leith van Onselen In the week ended 28 April 2016, the Core Logic-RP Data 5-city daily dwelling price index, which covers the five major capital city markets, was flat (down 0.01%): Values fell in three major capitals but rose in two: So far in April, values have jumped by 1.48%, led by Sydney: Since
The BOJ’s failure to act helped calm the Mining GFC further last night as it weakened the US dollar: And strengthened the yen: Commodity currencies were all stronger: And oil marched on: Base metals yawned though: Miners firmed: As did US and EM high yield debt which is approaching a point of recovery where oil
The Brent oil price continued its charge last night settling at $47.58 as I wrote. Henry Hub fell back to earth -4.5% to $2.05mmBtu: The $50 mark I’ve been targeting for a few months to renew shale is now on everybody’s lips, from Bloomie: The new magic number in the oil industry is $50. BP
Iron ore charts for April 28, 2016: It’s baaack. Tianjin benchmark roared 4% to $62.90 as it chased another wild day in paper. Rebar rebounded! From Reuters, the orders to snuff this out came from on-high: China’s securities regulator ordered the country’s major commodity futures exchanges this week to control speculative trading activity, sources told Reuters,
Overnight the US reported a lousy 0.5% annualised GDP for the first quarter, from the BEA (chart from ZH): Real gross domestic product — the value of the goods and services produced by the nation’s economy less the value of the goods and services used up in production, adjusted for price changes — increased at
Cross-posted from Investing in Chinese Stocks. NBS has a report on China’s migrant population: 2015年农民工监测调查报告. Slowing migrant population growth Most migrant population growth is from locals: Age breakdown, with China’s aging demographics clearly visible: The a geographic breakdown. Non-local migrants are those heading to other cities in their province or to other provinces: Industry breakdown:
