Australian leading indexes crash into recession

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Via Damien Boey at Credit Suisse:

The NAB business confidence survey for August was quite soft. Business confidence fell to +1 from +4, while firms’ assessment of business conditions also fell to +1 from +3.

Compositionally, firms reported softer growth in trading activity, weakness in new orders, and contraction in profits. Interestingly, hiring intentions rose modestly to +2 from 0, while labour cost inflation picked up to 1.2% over the prior quarter. Capacity utilization rose to 82% from an upwardly-revised 81%.

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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.