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Shame, but it’s pretty unlikely we’ll see a recession now. Business Indicators came in strong:
DECEMBER KEY FIGURES
 | | |
Sep Qtr 16 to Dec Qtr 16 |
Dec Qtr 15 to Dec Qtr 16 |
| | |
% |
% |
|
| ||||
| Sales of goods and services (Chain volume measures) | | | ||
| Manufacturing | | | |
| | Trend |
-0.7 |
-3.2 |
| | Seasonally Adjusted |
0.1 |
-2.4 |
| Wholesale trade | | | |
| | Trend |
2.1 |
7.9 |
| | Seasonally Adjusted |
3.1 |
9.0 |
| Inventories (Chain volume measures) | | | ||
| Trend |
0.7 |
1.8 | |
| Seasonally Adjusted |
0.3 |
1.6 | |
| Company gross operating profits | | | ||
| Trend |
9.3 |
20.0 | |
| Seasonally Adjusted |
20.1 |
26.2 | |
| Wages and salaries | | | ||
| Seasonally Adjusted |
-0.5 |
1.0 | |
Profits to add, wages to subtract but the big one is inventories which withdraw 0.2%. It probably needed to draw down further to deliver a recession.
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Bummer, it might have triggered some much needed soul searching and genuine reform.
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.