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The ABS has released “Business Indicators” which are partial inputs into this week’s GDP figure and they portend badly:
DECEMBER KEY FIGURES
 | | |
Sep Qtr 14 to Dec Qtr 14 |
Dec Qtr 13 to Dec Qtr 14 |
| | |
% |
% |
|
| ||||
| Sales of goods and services (Chain volume measures) | | | ||
| Manufacturing | | | |
| | Trend |
-0.3 |
-2.1 |
| | Seasonally Adjusted |
0.0 |
-2.5 |
| Wholesale trade | | | |
| | Trend |
0.3 |
1.1 |
| | Seasonally Adjusted |
0.3 |
0.7 |
| Inventories (Chain volume measures) | | | ||
| Trend |
0.4 |
0.4 | |
| Seasonally Adjusted |
-0.8 |
-0.5 | |
| Company gross operating profits | | | ||
| Trend |
-1.8 |
-7.3 | |
| Seasonally Adjusted |
-0.2 |
-5.9 | |
| Wages and salaries | | | ||
| Seasonally Adjusted |
0.3 |
1.8 | |
|
| ||||
The big one is inventories, dropping 0.8% versus 0.1% expected. That is going to drag sharply on GDP and most forecasts, which are around 0.6% and 2.5%.
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About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific's leading geo-politics and economics portal.
He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.
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