RBA prays to the stone dead confidence fairy

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From Deputy Governor Guy Debelle:

One of the ongoing themes in the global economy since the financial crisis has been the long-lasting paucity of business investment spending. This has been despite conditions that, in the past, have been very favourable for investment spending, such as low borrowing rates, strong corporate balance sheets and solid profitability.

In Australia, the story has been quite different. Investment spending here has been at a historically high level over much of the past decade. This has been primarily due to the strength of investment in the resources sector, which reached its highest share of activity in more than a century. So, unlike in other countries, there has been a significant addition to the capital stock in Australia over the past decade. We are seeing the fruits of that investment in the strong growth in resource exports.

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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.