Via Gottiboff: First, Australia needs to recognise that it is not all China’s fault. In past years we have behaved badly and contributed to the current situation. At the same time China is now a different country and is ruled by a strongarmed dictator plus the Communist Party. Not surprisingly “The Art of War” offers
Via Deloitte: 18 January 2020: We assume that: (1) Australia succeeds in keeping virus numbers mostly suppressed, state borders remain mostly open, and that domestic restrictions gradually ease as vaccines roll out (2) Vaccines begin to be available from February, and achieve the equivalent of herd immunity by late 2021 (3) International borders re-open
Via The Australian: A union-commissioned poll showing the ALP faces the loss of two seats in its political heartland at the next election has prompted a senior CFMEU official to call on Labor to dump Anthony Albanese as party leader. With speculation increasing that an election could be held in the second half of the
God help me, I agree with Innes Willox for once: A leader of a powerful business group has called for a better alignment of the nation’s economic and strategic interests, urging Australian companies to resist bullying from China and for diplomats to get “their hands dirty’’ by helping to find alternative export markets. Australian Industry
I missed this last week but it is important. New yuan loans in December were reported by the PBOC and came in quite soft with headline aggregate financing at 1.76tr yuan as banks made up 1.26tr of that: Non-bank lending is retracing sharply: Year on year lending fell 18% and the 3MMA has rolled: As
More from the ABC’s chief propagandist on the weekend, Stan Grant: I have missed America. I have missed that surge of anticipation and excitement getting off a long plane ride and walking through the terminal of LAX or JFK airport. I have missed waiting in the immigration queue and hearing foreign languages all around me,
Via Goldman: President-elect Biden is proposing $1.9 trillion in new fiscal relief measures, in addition to the roughly $950bn Congress approved in December 2020.He has proposed substantial spending in all of the areas we expected, including an additional $1,400/person in stimulus payments, further extension of expanded unemployment benefits (through September 2021 and including a $400/week
Via BofA: Discharged from hospital. We saw a 2,091 person decrease in the number of people hospitalized in the US with Covid-19 over the last week, the first decline since September 23rd. Just four days ago there was a 7,167 person weekly increase and since then the number has declined gradually. While the decrease
Iron ore prices for January 15, 2021: Everything firm. Port stocks fell last week to around 125mt. China imported 96.75mt in December and 1.17bn in 2020, up 9.5%: As for the year ahead, my thoughts are these: Chinese iron ore restocking is ongoing (bullish); Chinese mills have run down COVID steel stocks (bullish); global recovery
Via Goldman on the US dollar: USD: Risks to bearish consensus in focus.The Biden transition team hasannounced plans for a $1.9tr fiscal stimulus, more than our economists hadexpected. Although they do not expect the full amount to become law, theyraised their stimulus assumptions on the news (to $1.1tr from $750bn) andhaveupgraded their US GDP forecasts.
The “evil” Murdoch press carried a must-read story for every Australian on the weekend about the CCP’s attempted re-education of Australian Olympic gold medalist, Mack Horton: On a mild October day last year Cheryl Horton was cleaning the backyard pool at the family home – a chore she rigorously avoids until it can be ignored
Via CCP mouthpiece, The Global Times: The price of liquefied natural gas (LNG) has surged to record highs in recent tradings, with the weekly spot price assessment settled at an all-time-high price of $21.45 per million British thermal units. While most market analysts are focusing on the underlying market factors including seasonable price movement, a
As usual, we turn to the ABC for the worst possible take on US politics. Stan Grant has taken a leaf straight out of the “we’re all rooned, said Stanrahan” playbook: CNN called this a “solemn” moment. The impeachment — again — of Donald Trump is about the soul of America. It is more accurate
Dictator Dan says Melbourne is now a permanent ghost city, at the AFR: In a sign that Melbourne’s CBD may never fully recover, Mr Andrews predicted workers would continue to work remotely and said many businesses had reported high productivity levels since the shift to remote work caused by the coronavirus pandemic. “We will see
Via the AFR: Policy changes flagged by politicians and government departments in Vietnam, Indonesia and Bangladesh, and a full moratorium on new coal plants in the Philippines, may result in just 25 gigawatts (GW) of new coal-power projects getting built this year. That is an 80 per cent reduction from the 125GW planned five years ago,
You can’t keep a good Goldman bull down: How? Booming catch-up growth: Driving booming EPS: And booming margins: So far, so good, in my view. But it starts to get more tricky when we come to valuation. The equity risk premium plays the key role. It’s a permanently high platuea! Driven by Wall
Never waste a good crisis they say. China isn’t. Via Credit Suisse: The headline trade surplus widened further from USD75.4bn in November toUSD78.17bn in December, noticeably above the consensus expectation ofUSD72.35bn and predominantly driven by higher-than-expected export growth. In quarterly space, real exports in Q420 were 10.9% higher than that of Q3 20 while real
Via Societe Generale: After a tumultuous first year, it looks like president Lagarde’s ECB is gradually finding its feet and defining its new modus operandi. Wisely, we believe the ECB will now be less sensitive to market pressure and inflation expectations, calling increasingly on fiscal policy to be engaged in determining future inflation.This also reflects
Sir Fomo McSpruikerson is an expatriate billionaire and proud proprietor of The Strayan, a vanity media project designed to boost his assets. Josh Frydenberg announces dob-in line for Australians who haven’t bought an investment property Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has announced a new national dob-in line for Australians that are suspected of not owning an investment
Via Micheal Green at Foreign Policy: First, Campbell is widely recognized as an early and important architect of a strategy to build up alliances and partnerships to keep Beijing in check as Chinese power grew. In the mid-1990s, he was appointed as the senior U.S. Defense Department official on Asia, arriving with relatively little regional
Via ING: USD:Biden’s $2tn plan causes re-steepeningBack-end US yields are back on the rise following a media report that claimedBiden’s pandemic relief stimulus will likely be around $2tn–bigger than what most investors were forecasting–and will include direct payments to families, state and local funding. This has further endorsed the recent rise in inflation expectations and
Four and a half years after the vote, Britain is properly out of the European Union and moving into a new era. It will surely be a freer nation, but will it be a richer one? Anatole has argued that the UK faces a long period of sub-par growth that will leave it worse off.
Via the ABC: As soon as it became clear COVID-19 was going to wreak havoc, most backpackers hastily left Australia and made their way back home. Fearing the nation’s fresh produce would be left to rot, the Federal Government and agriculture bodies lobbied young Australians to take up farming jobs instead. Some farmers flaunted attractive
Who knows? All of the evidence says not. But it needs to happen, at the AFR is former Costello staffer David Alexander: The benign view of the rise of authoritarian China, a view underpinning three decades of policymakers pressing for ever greater integration with that country, suffered a mortal blow when the superpower handed over
Via Goldman come a few charts. The answer is a lot: Nearly 10% in fact: With Europe the leading laggard: Bring on those vaccines.
Via Ben Phillips, Matthew Gray and Nicholas Biddle: Australian National University calculations suggest JobKeeper and the boosted JobSeeker payment have saved about 2.2 million people from poverty. It’s a remarkable outcome without precedent in Australia. JobKeeper was set at A$1,500 per fortnight and the Coronavirus Supplement was set high enough to double JobSeeker and associated payments, increasing them to about
Some high-frequency indicators for ya. Steel output is still crazy as new property area sales soldier on: But COVID is back: Hitting high touch segments: And global lockdowns have landed on exports: Still fine but the virus third wave is clearly posing headwinds for now.
Via Cornerstone: Long-term Treasury yields have risen sharply since the beginning of the year, as we know. The ten-year rate is up 22 bps; the vast majority of the increase happened starting on January 5th. •The move is also outsized by historical standards: Ten-year yields have moved on net more than that on any othe
Congress has just voted to impeach El Trumpo over the Capilo riot. Will Trump now face an impeachment trial? Not by Republicans in the next few days he won’t: NEWS —> McConnell’s office called Schumer’s people today + told them McConnell would not consent to reconvening immediately under the 2004 emergency authorities, a person familiar
Via Domain: Source: Domain Rent Report, December quarter 2020 UNITS – MEDIAN WEEKLY ASKING RENT Capital City Q4 2020 QoQ Change YoY Change Sydney $470 -5.1% -7.8% Melbourne $388 -3.0% -7.6% Brisbane $400 1.3% 3.9% Adelaide $340 0.0% 7.9% Perth $350 2.9% 12.9% Canberra $495 3.1% 3.1% Darwin $420 7.7% 7.7% Hobart $400 0.0% -2.4%
