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Asian share markets are following the overnight lead with some mild falls and scratch results across the region. The USD rallied against Yuan and Yen, whereas the oversold Aussie has had a little bounce back following the Chinese coal debacle. The Shanghai Composite is steady going into the close, basically up only a handful of
From the IMF today: These charts are meant to reassure that it’s all under control. But what I find most important about the chart on the left is the trigger point for the great Australian housing bubble was the turn of the Millennium. The reason was Peter Costello’s halving of the capital gains tax on
Via Domain: All new Sydney developments would be subject to a minimum 30 per cent affordable housing target in a bid to address the city’s housing crisis under a NSW Greens proposal. The Saving Sydney package, announced on Friday by Greens MP and planning spokesman David Shoebridge, would also abolish priority precincts and restore planning
From China Stats Bureau today comes Chinese house prices up 0.6% in January and 10% over the year: Top tier cities have picked up recently: The advance decline ratio remains quite strong: And the raw data: Still strong enough for gains in starts but they are going the other way for now:
By Leith van Onselen Overseas retailers that sell inexpensive products to Australians recently had to start paying the goods and services tax (GST). The new impost collected $81 million in its first quarter of operation, significantly higher than the $17.5 million that had been forecast by Treasury. From The AFR: Governments have collected $81 million,
In this week’s webinar we explored the retaliation of China on a number of fronts (recorded before today’s big coal escalation). Join MB Fund’s Head of Investments Damien Klassen, Chief Strategist David Llewellyn Smith and Tim Fuller as we bring you up to speed on the levers China can pull to exert influence on the
Via Banking Day: The plaintiff law firm said the class action was being run in the Federal Court on behalf of people who, after 1 January 2011, were given “unsuitable loans” by Westpac, in breach of its responsible lending obligations. …Principal lawyer and managing partner with Maurice Blackburn, Ben Slade, said: “This case will seek
Via FTAlphaville: March 1 may no longer be a “magical date” for President Trump, but the deadline after which tariffs on $200bn worth of Chinese imports are set to more than double is fast approaching. Now in their ninth round of negotiations, the US and China remain at odds on a number of issues, despite making some
By Leith van Onselen Chief economist for The Australia Institute, Richard Denniss, has penned a brilliant article explaining why Labor’s franking credit reforms are justified: Some of the wealthiest Australians pay negative tax and still get to call themselves self-funded… Most self-funded retirees have been receiving enormous amounts of other people’s money for a long
It is this. The jobs growth is all in NSW and VIC: With all other states falling away fast: Bulls will see this as good with jobs preventing an unruly house price crash. But NSW and VIC are the epi-centre of the house price shakeout and it will be in both states that the downdraft in
By Leith van Onselen It was dubbed the “biggest public policy scandal in Australian history: the systematic rorting of the vocational education and training system (VET)”. It was the reckless policy first introduced by the Howard Government and then expanded by the Gillard Government, which gave private VET providers virtually unregulated access to government subsidies for
There is one big difference between the global and local slowdowns right now. It is that while much of the world is entering an industrial recession with services economies holding up, Australia is the complete opposite. The US is seeing an industrial slowdown with services booming: Same in Europe exemplified by Germany: Same in China
Via Banking Day: APRA fronted the Senate Economics Legislation Committee – better known as the Senate estimates committee – yesterday and covered a grab-bag of topics, with the overarching theme that this year will be a much tougher brand of regulation. APRA and ASIC will need to be tougher, in order to justify a raft
Cross posted from Investing in Chinese Stocks. With the January surge in liquidity looming in the distance, the Chinese real estate market is hitting an important turning point. iFeng: 2019年楼市或加速分化 楼市成交整体走低 According to the statistics of the Krui Real Estate Research Center, during the Spring Festival, the data of more than 40 key monitoring cities showed that
By Leith van Onselen Australia’s dwelling construction industry is literally falling apart. After firefighters last month identified 10,000 buildings along Australia’s east coast with suspected flammable cladding, the fiasco has now spread to Australia’s suburbs, with nine more materials commonly used on low-rise dwellings also classified as non-compliant. From The ABC: The alert affects an
Right on cue in Parliament comes the Governor of the Lunatic RBA: My colleagues and I welcome this opportunity to share our views on the Australian economy and the RBA’s important policy responsibilities. These hearings are an essential part of the accountability process. Two weeks ago, we released our latest forecasts for the Australian economy.
More nice work from Marty North (who is surely in line for some kind of knighthood) as he takes Kochie to the woodshed: Great to see some socks stuffed into that blabbermouth.
By Leith van Onselen CoreLogic has released an interesting report suggesting the surge in first home buyer (FHB) activity is fading as housing values fall: The latest data on housing finance from the Australian Bureau of Statistics for December 2018 shows that perhaps that trend is reversing… In December 2018, there were 8,476 finance commitments
The housing panic has set in for the incoming government, via the AFR: Labor will outbid the Coalition on banks today by promising a vastly more generous compensation scheme for victims of financial service wrongdoing, including payments of up to $2 million for individuals and small businesses. …It will announce the lender will pay an
In case of emergency break glass for Recessionberg, via Bloomie: Australia’s Treasurer Josh Frydenberg downplayed reports that a major port in northern China has banned coal imports from Australia and says trade ties between the two nations are “exceptionally strong.” Frydenberg cautioned against “jumping to conclusions,” after Reuters said Dalian Port Group has imposed an
Iron ore prices for February 21, 2019: Spot down. Paper down more. Steel up. Steel output remains very high. If bulks are really going to come off owing to weak demand I’s like to see output fall from these levels. Argus has some nice texture on mill raw materials management: Most mills surveyed by Argus
By Chris Becker A muted night on risk markets with US stocks retreating and European bourses treading water as continued Brexit and US/Chinese trade talks have stalled – or at least no news is being positioned as bad news. The USD remained relatively strong overnight, with the only standout being continued falls in the Aussie dollar
DXY firmed last night as EUR fell: It was wall-to-wall Australian dollar carnage: Gold was bashed: Oil eased: And base metals: Big miners fell at last: EM stocks too: But junk was OK: Treasuries pulled a Costanza: As did bunds: Stocks fell: The global industrial economy is slowing fast as Chinese demand fades away. Europe
There it goes. The Australian property bubble is bursting and it is not going to be pretty. MB has previously posited an ultimate fall in house prices of 20-30% in nominal terms from respective city peaks over two price fall periods. That could translate to a 40% fall in real terms over the long term.
For years, the RBA has argued that an economic recovery is “just around the corner” with wages and inflation about to increase. So far the RBA has been wrong – their preferred trimmed mean inflation has been below target for 3 years and counting. The issue is the penalty for being wrong during a housing
By Leith van Onselen The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has released the Average Weekly Earnings (AWE) data for the six months to November 2018. A breakdown of the key changes are provided below: According to the ABS, on a seasonally-adjusted basis, national total AWE increased by 1.2% in the six months to May 2018
By Leith van Onselen In the week ended 21 February 2019, the CoreLogic 5-city daily dwelling price index, which covers the five major capital city markets, tanked another 0.22%: Values fell across all major markets except Adelaide: So far in February, home values have fallen by 0.70% at the 5-city level, with all major markets
By Leith van Onselen Yesterday’s ABS labour force release for January revealed a softening Australian youth labour market – i.e. those aged 15 to 24 years old – with both full-time and total jobs growth weakening. The trend headline unemployment rate also rose marginally to 11.4%: Total employment growth for those aged 15-24 years of
