Via FTAlphaville: MMT is a theory that people love to love, and love to hate. The idea, which stands for Modern Monetary Theory, is frequently cited by academics and politicians on the left as evidence that the state has further capacity to spend without serious consequences to the economy (yet!). On the right, meanwhile, it’s
Via The Australian comes the brawling of Neo-Nazis: In a submission to the senate inquiry into Scott Morrison’s Foreign Relations Bill — which aims to give Canberra a veto over state government and university deals with overseas powers — ambassdor Cheng Jingye also accused other Beijing critics of having “minds of malice”. Addressing the senator
Sir Fomo McSpruikerson is an expatriate billionaire and proud proprietor of The Strayan, a vanity media project designed to boost his assets. Melbourne wins 2020 World’s Most Leaveable City Award Melbourne has been awarded the prestigious “World’s Most Leaveable City” Award for the first time since the early 1990’s. Melbourne shocked a tightly contested field
Via Bill Evans at Westpac: Our views on the likely decision by the RBA on November 3 have been clear since our note on September 23. “All the key policy rates – cash rate; three year target bond rate; and rate on Term Funding Facility will be cut from 25 basis points to 10 basis
Via Markit: The recovery in the Australian private sector economy gathered momentum during October amid a further easing of containment measures, according to the latest PMI data. Business activity growth accelerated at the start of the fourth quarter, led by the service sector. The upturn in output was accompanied by a further rise in new
Iron ore prices for October 22, 2020: Spot down. Paper down. Empty apartment sales have stabilised but that is not enough. They must grow or steel demand will shrink as catch-up growth rolls off: CISA is bearish: That’s only mill inventories. Trader inventories are also immense, combined for easily the highest ever seasonally-adjusted: There should
DXY was up last night: The Australian dollar was roughly flat: Gold fell: Oil rose: Metals fell: Miners were mixed: EMs stocks stalled: Junk too: US yields backed up some more: Stocks firmed: Wesptac has the wrap: Event Wrap US September home sales surged 9.4% to an annualised 6.54m homes (est. 6.30m) on the back of record low
I know it’s PR but…well…it’s Borat: The news is appropriate enough: [Rudi] Giuliani went to the hotel room thinking he was being interviewed about the Trump administration’s COVID-19 response. The young woman is flirtatious with him and invites him to the bedroom, which is rigged with hidden cameras. Giuliani then asks for her phone number
Kevin07 has his problems but I can’t see how having a media diversity RC can do anything but good: Reason: Our democracy depends on diverse sources of reliable, accurate and independent news. But media ownership is becoming more concentrated alongside new business models that encourage deliberately polarising and politically manipulated news. We are especially concerned that
Via RealClear some movement to the incumbent at the headline: Battlegrounds not so much: Betting still all over the joint: No gap closure at FiveThirtyEight: An embarrassingly Trump worshipping Zero Hedge makes a big deal of registrations: Last week, we published an article detailing a warning from JPMorgan’s top quant Marko Kolanvoci to all those expecting
It likes to pretend it can hurt our commodities but, in the end, the Chinese paper tiger is desperately short of pretty much everything, via Bloomie: Mill shutdowns in China, along with weaker demand for textiles, had “turbo charged” a downturn in the market earlier in the year, Robert Hermann, managing director at adviser Mecardo,
In his recent Lowy Institute commentary, RBA alumnus John Edwards demanded MOAR: Just as the Australian government has little choice but to continue for some time with the expansionary fiscal stance it adopted in response to the pandemic, so too the RBA has little choice but to continue its expansionary monetary stance. In the RBA’s
The Australian dollar is down sharply this morning after last night’s leap: Bonds are bid except way out past the RBA’s QE horizon: XJO is off sharply: Big Iron is mixed: Big Gas bashed: Big Gold still can’t break the corrective trend: Big Banks have reversed the recent gains: US futures are weak. Also, for
News has a nice Swedish panic feature today: Coronavirus cases have exploded in Sweden as authorities try to keep hold of twin battles – containing the virus and controlling the narrative. The breakaway Nordic nation divided experts by refusing to lock down its citizens when the virus swept through the country earlier this year. But
Iron ore prices for October 21, 2020: Spot up. Paper up. Really just following broader trends of USD weakness. China’s empties are rebounding: ‘ It looks like sales have been pushed around a lot by stimulus-led discounting waves: But there are still signs of weakness creeping in. Price growth is weak, starts have softened and
The Depressionberg Unstimulus will take a little time to wreck the joint. This week’s payrolls plunge is probably early evidence that the radical fiscal tightening embedded in the budget, somehow missed by all and sundry, has already hit the economy hard: The dramatic plunge in SME payrolls is precisely what we expect as JobKeeper is
Via CNBC: AstraZeneca shares turned negative Wednesday after a Brazilian health authority said a volunteer in its coronavirus vaccine study died. The Federal University of Sao Paulo, which is helping coordinate late-stage trials in Brazil, separately said that the volunteer was Brazilian, according to Reuters. Shares of AstraZeneca, a front-runner in the Covid-19 vaccine race, gave
DXY sank last night with CNY and EUR blasting higher: The Australian dollar joined in: Gold too: Not oil: Metals liked it: Miners firmed: EM stocks too: Junk is stable: Treasuries are backing up at the long end: As stocks fell again: Westpac has the wrap: Event Wrap Brexit: After a series of encouraging comments
A few more charts today on the waning hope of the great vaccine cure for COVID-19. Availability is inexorably being pushed out: Take-up is going to be abysmal: But the US had better give it out to the elderly! I remain of the view that treatments and lightning-fast tests offer greater hope for economic recovery.
Via Post-Growth Australia: The Federal budget was made public on October 2006 with the usual disappointment we have come to expect from the coalition government (well from both major parties really). So what SHOULD the budget have looked like as we enter into the pandemic flecked decade of consequence? Host Michael Bayliss talks to Leith
Via the excellent Jonathon Mott at UBS: What to expect with the 2H20E bank results starting Thursday 29th October The 2H20E reporting season (to September) will be unusual, with the banks operating in a false economy, given: almost half the labour force was on wage subsidies, unemployment benefits or employed by the government; mortgage &
Via Martin North: There was a slight recovery, but nothing which takes our index out of the “gloom” zone. The latest reading is 78.07 still well below the neutral setting. By our affluence segmentation, those mortgage free, and holding market investments improved as markets improved, while those with mortgages and those renting saw little change.
Via Ross Gittins today, one of the few doing a good job on the Depressionberg Unstimulus: I’m sorry to have to agree, but Grattan Institute boss Danielle Wood is right to say this is a “blokey” budget. As are those who add it’s a blokey budget from a blokey government. …The first place a bias
Via The Fake Left: Under a plan to get the population excited about the event, at least 2,000 schools have been instructed to include winter sports in their curriculum by the end of the year and a giant clock in Beijing counts down the time left before the Games begin. The official slogan is: “Joyful
From Labour Market Information Portal: Expect further slowing ahead as we launch off the fiscal cliff.
The new and improved bullish Bill Evans returns this morning: • The six-month annualised growth rate in the WestpacMelbourne Institute Leading Index, which indicates the likely pace of economic activity relative to trend three to nine months into the future, rose from –2.28% in August to –0.48% in September. Momentum continues to show a significant
Corss-posted from FTAlphaville: A European Central Bank research paper on the feasibility of the digital euro has garnered a lot of attention over the past couple of weeks. It would, as the FT’s Martin Sandbu writes here, appear as though the writing is on the wall and the eurozone will launch its own central bank-backed digital currency in
Via Crikey’s Janine Perret yesterday: Any lingering doubts about Gladys Berejiklian’s judgment were put to rest yesterday after a sleazy interview with shock jock Kyle Sandilands. She obviously has none. Forget her political acumen over corruption allegations, or even her personal life choices — she’s now appears to be lacking even basic common sense as
It is a long-held tradition in independent media to despise the Murdoch Press. I have, myself, pioneered several mastheads at The Diplomat and MB in part designed to attack Murdoch’s legacy. It is true across other independent outfits as well. At Crikey and The Conversation, Murdoch hatred is a religion, for instance. But it is
Iron ore prices for October 20, 2020: Spot stable. Paper too. Chinese property sales remain questionable: The big news is Vale and it’s not good for prices: Here’s the production resumption timetable: That’s production increases of: 6mtpa more this year. 23mtpa in H1,21. 34mtpa in 2022. 17mtpa in 2023 20mtpa in 2024. 100mt over 2.5
