The Murdoch press is truly nation destroying. Let me be a little more specific. Paul Kelly is truly nation destroying. Having grovelled and crawled his way through months of Morrison Government blundering, today he crowns it all with this little gem: The Morrison government has averted a depression in Australia. This is the most momentous
Via ANZ: ANZ-Roy Morgan Australian Consumer Confidence: ‘Future finances’ and ‘inflation expectations’ rose, but we aren’t getting carried away. ‘Current economic conditions’ fell >9% and are down ~50% over 2 weeks, to the lowest ever level. Here’s the longest time series I can find for the Westpac series: Only around 1990 lows. We can lower
Via the excellent Damien Boey at Credit Suisse: The Australian government has pledged an additional $130 billion over the next 6 months in wage subsidies. Eligible firms will be paid $1500 per fortnight to subsidize workers stood down in the wake of COVID-19 shutdowns. The stimulus comes on top of the second $66 billion stimulus
Is the WHO biased? I don’t know. How could I? What we can say is that it is clearly biased in favour of the Communist Party of China. We have seen that in its delayed responses throughout the Wuhan flu pandemic. Now there is this, via the BBC: Taiwan is seen as one of the
Iron ore prices for March 30, 2020: Spot was hit. Paper was mauled as contracts rolled forward. Steel too. This is what I expect for the rest of the year. More and more pricing pain as the global depression sucks away demand more fully than supply is curtailed by the virus.
DXY was up overnight: The Australian dollar was roughly stable as the rocket flamed out: But surged against EMs: Gold yawn: Oil is worthless: Which does not bode well for dirt: Miners were OK: EM stocks too: US junk rallied. Not EM: Bonds were mixed: Stocks tacked on gains: Westpac has the wrap: Event Wrap
Via Goldman: …without medical breakthroughs of some kind, the next few weeks could be challenging for markets as we price in a deep global recession.”…the Dollar pulled back this week as risk assets rebounded, but our best guess is that the historic rally is not quite over. … the real trade-weighted Dollar has perhaps 3-5% upside
Via APRA’s Wayne Byers today: “In an environment such as this, you want the financial system to be a shock absorber to the broader economy.” “In 2008, the financial system was at the heart of the crisis, and actually amplifying the crisis through the rest of the economy. What you would hope, by building up
Via Bloomie: American pipeline operators have begun asking oil producers to voluntarily ratchet back their output in the clearest sign yet that a growing glut of crude is overwhelming storage capacity. Plains All American Pipeline LP, one of the biggest shippers of crude in the U.S., sent a letter this week asking its suppliers to
Via Domain: US President Donald Trump has extended his administration’s social distancing guidelines until the end of April, abandoning his goal to have the country running normally by Easter. Trump’s announcement came as the federal government’s top infectious disease expert, Anthony Fauci, predicted that up to 200,000 Americans could die of the coronavirus and millions
Evans Dixon warns: Another one bites the dust: “significant reduction in the market value of funds under advice” Give Switzer a call.
From One Nation Friday: China Must Be Held Accountable for the Coronavirus Pandemic ===== A statement from One Nation leader Senator Pauline Hanson When the dust settles, Australia needs to seriously rethink how we progress the growth of our nation and pay back what will most likely be one trillion dollars of debt. The Coronavirus
The Aussie dollar is still firm this morning after a brief hiccup: The bond bid is back bigly: XJO is trying hard not to fall: Big Iron is mostly off Big Gas should be at new lows because oil is: Big Gold yawn: Big Banks are trying: Big Realty too: Because you can’t talk down
We’ve already seen it in Italy, now the UK, via The Tele: Intensive care for coronavirus patients is now being limited to those “reasonably certain” to survive, a major NHS London trust has conceded. A department head at Imperial College Healthcare revealed on Sunday that fewer and fewer marginal patients are being selected for ventilator treatment because so
There’s this one: And there’s this one: That looks awfully like an unsustainable divergence.
The embattled Peter Switzer had a crack at those that saw it coming on Saturday: Some irresponsible media players have already pulled out the D-word for clickbait reasons. I hope one day I can bring them to book for over-scaring Australians, when it was the last thing people locked out of jobs, needed to see,
Via Bloomie: Since last week, emails from foreign clients have been flooding into export manager Grace Gao’s in-box, asking to delay orders already made, putting goods ready to be shipped on hold until further notice, or asking for payment grace periods of up to two months. Gao’s firm, Shandong Pangu Industrial Co., makes tools like
That it will be a depression is yesterday’s news. What kind then? Greg Jericho kicks us off with some useful musing: Through my lifetime there have been three “worst since the Great Depression” times for the economy – the early 1980s, the early 90s and the global financial crisis. In each case we never really
SloMo has lost control of the narrative, of policy and of the nation. Australia’s elite commentary is ripping in all directions. Some are still hopelessly biased, such as Paul Kelly: Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg are determined to keep open Australia’s productive economy. Morrison criticises those calling for “lockdown” and affirms his goal is to
The DXY flame out continued Friday night. CNY is still looking dubious: The Australian dollar tore the roof off: Gold is useless: Oil is going down, down: Dirt did better: Miners did not: Nor EM stocks: US junk flew, EM fell: Bonds were uber-bid: But stocks also flamed out: The virus is still out of
Via Domain: Victoria’s powerful construction union is pushing for the building industry to be classified as essential when the state moves to a stage 3 shutdown, arguing construction sites should be allowed to operate 24 hours to minimise the number of workers at any one time. The proposal has been backed by Master Builders Victoria
After spreading the virus through schools for a month, SloMo has caved, not that you’d know it from all the smoke he’s blowing: “In each of the States and Territories they will be pursuing their own arrangements directly with those schools between now and the end of term. Over the next few weeks, the schools
Chris Richardson taking a shot at redemption: Deloitte Australia has produced the attached document – as a declaration of what Australia needs to do to combat the, in particular, economic and business impacts of COVID-19, and to provide a summary of policy responses across federal and state/territory governments to date. In a nutshell, the Deloitte
Via the excellent George Theranou at UBS: Fiscal stimulus of $75bn, or 3.7% of GDP so far; but only 1.5% of GDP is in Q2 The total Government (Federal + State) fiscal stimulus, so far, is ~$75bn, or ~3.8% of (2019) GDP – but only ~$31bn (or 1.5% of GDP) in Q2-20. In addition, the
This much. Via Deutsche: A week ago, in the wake of news that China had reported a much greater drop in domestic spending in January-February than had been expected, we wrote that the global economy was moving into a severe recession and that Europe and the US would record the largest quarterly declines in GDP
From the heart of the swarm: The Real Estate Institute of Australia has already publicly stated that it understands how tenants are feeling at this time and that it has a responsibility and duty of care to look after, not only their interests, but that of the property owners and those managing and maintaining the
Via Domain: Four out of five childcare centres are on the brink of collapse and the out of school hours care industry fears it may never recover from the COVID-19 crisis, with both sectors being told they must wait for financial relief until the government orders them to close. The Early Learning and Care Council
The AUD is still running hot: Bonds are bid: But the ASX is sagging: Dalian is stable: Big Iron down: Big Gas up too much versus oil: Big Gold is big shite: Big Banks have rolled: Big Realty is still lovin’ zero income: Where this market goes next is anybody’s guess.
The China bounce rolls on slowly: As the globe crashes: Global economy entering recession.
I alway thought SloMo was a babbling fool, able to talk under wet cement without saying anything. The bushfires crisis showed that he is worse than that: a kind of banal psychopath capable of acting like his countrymen but unable to empathise with them in person. Worse still, recently I heard from a very serious
