The national economy is falling apart: Judo Bank chief executive Joseph Healy has warned the worst is still to come as omicron’s rapid spread and closed borders combine to stifle Australia’s economic recovery. Mr Healy slammed a lack of leadership from the top and said the federal government’s failure to articulate a clear course of
The ferrous complex has joined the commodity crazy town engulfing global markets. Everything was up on January 12, 2022: Commodity crazy town is here: A falling US dollar based despite Fed tightening. Strong US inflation. Chinese stimmies and OMICRON disruptions driving more inflation. This will now be a battle to the death between stagflationist robots
Chinese credit was out overnight and enjoyed a soggy bounce with TSF up 2.37tr yuan and banks 1.13tr: The flow of loans was up 34% year on year: The stock of loans was up a little to 10.3% M2 climbed to 9%: Year to date Chinese credit was down 10% for 2021: Once again, the
DXY crumbled last as EUR roared: Australian dollar broke out: Oil is raging: Base metals too: Big miners are out of control: EM stocks bounced: But EM junk is going south. One of these two will be wrong soon: The US curve flattened: Which gave stocks a muted bounce: US inflation is still red hot.
Like the astronomer scouring the heavens for new phenomena, the observer of economic history only very occasionally has the chance to put his name to something. I managed it once in 2010/11 when I coined the term “disleveraging” to describe the use of an external boom to deflate domestic credit excess. But it never took
The global energy shock that came out of nowhere last year and has rocked markets and economies ever since is once again easing, this time on a mild northern winter: European gas consumption is down and storage has lifted unexpectedly: The US has also been warm which has helped enable a flood of LNG across
Terrific note from Charlie McElligott at Nomura who manages to cut through his usual robot babble to offer a precise take on what the Fed is about to do to markets: Simply a massive week ahead for markets, with Powell testimony and bunches of Fed speakers, along with US economic releases headlined by the market’s
The ferrous complex was strong on January 11, 2022 as everything jumped: Encouraging bulls, steel production launched in late December: Even more bullish, mill steel inventories plunged over the period. However, I’d suggest that this is largely thanks to traders snapping up steel stocks amid the mad rush. I will add that it is likely
What is a hard landing in China? Pick a number. Not long ago, 4% would have easily qualified. Goldman Sachs with the downgrade: The zero-Covid policy has been a pillar of China’s efforts to contain the coronavirus and keep domestic economic activity largely normal after the initial early-2020 national lockdown. We noted last week that
DXY was weak last night and looks like it might break down: The Australian dollar popped with BTFD: Oil is raging higher: Base metals were strong: And big miners: EM stocks popped: But EM junk is still warning about growth ahead: So is the US curve as it suddenly flattened: Helping lift Growth: Westpac has
On every front, the Australian domestic economy is now in crisis. Morrison’s Government mismanagement has fingerprints over everything. There are no tests to keep anything open: Business groups warn that virus-exposed staff are unable to come back to work safely while rapid antigen tests remain in short supply, making eased isolation requirements designed to reduce
FTAlphaville with the note: Just when bitcoin and crypto and NFTs were finally being taken seriously with imminent mAsS aDopTiOn an inevitability as we headed for blockchain-based utopia, someone goes and puts something like this on the internet: Talk about a party pooper. Yes that’s an 18 minute 35 second presentation of “the world’s first
Morgan Stanley with the note. I agree. With rates having adjusted, our focus now turns to growth. The Fire part of our narrative is in full gear with both nominal and real rates moving sharply higher so far this year. This is having a disproportionate impact on expensive growth stocks, as it should, but the
In my view, CNY will fall in 2022. Property sales have not recovered at all seasonally adjusted and land sales remain a disaster. Only rate cuts can fix it and the longer PBoC waits the more that will be needed. Mizuho with the note. In view of ongoing delayed payments or defaults by Chinese property
Classic pent-up demand coming out lockdowns. Via the ABS: The November 2021 seasonally adjusted estimate: Rose 7.3% month-on-month. Rose 5.8% compared with November 2020. All about the stuff we could no buy locked down: And Victoria! Alas, the Morrison recession is back as “let it rip” bunkers households: ANZ-Roy Morgan Australian Consumer Confidence starts 2022
It still gets the least amount of press of any of the Morrison Government’s disgraces thanks to comprehensive MSM stupidity. But pound-for-pound, there is no more horrendous pillaging of Australia than that conducted by the Morrison Government’s protected gas cartel. Over the Christmas break, there were significant developments in the global energy crisis that illustrate
Goldman with the note. By year-end, it’ll be back to secular stagnation. A tragedy for the US. After negotiations on the Build Back Better (BBB) Act stalled late last year, the outlook for fiscal legislation is particularly unclear. While we think the Senate is very unlikely to pass a comprehensive bill similar to the House-passed
Deutsche wraps what’s bothering equities: In our recap of the December FOMC meeting we emphasized risks that liftoff would occur in March and that balance sheet rundown could commence this year. This week’s minutes confirmed these hawkish signals and this morning’s December employment report showed further progress towards maximum employment. Accordingly, we have updated our
China is still trying to fix property without really trying: China will accelerate investment in key projects and boost domestic consumption to help stabilize economic growth amid renewed downward pressures, according to a cabinet meeting chaired by Premier Li Keqiang, China Central Television reported. The State Council urged faster implementation of 102 key projects along
The ferrous complex was weak on January 10, 2022 as everything eased: There is some seasonal help coming from Brazil: Heavy rainfall in the iron ore hub of Minas Gerais state, southeastern Brazil, led to mining and railing disruption for Vale and other operators, supporting a recovery in benchmark China iron ore import prices. …Vale,
You can always judge what is the truth by assuming the opposite of whatever Australia’s pathologically lying PM says. Hence, yesterday afternoon, he lied about the pandemic on all fronts: Prime Minister Scott Morrison says he wants to “maximise the workforce”, with state leaders to tick off on new guidelines that will allow close contacts
The recent lift in bond yields driven by US inflation has delivered a reprieve for the Australian dollar. US yields have jumped faster than Australian over the past several months so the carry between the two has flipped materially negative at the short end of the curve and narrowed at the long: Short-end spreads are
CoreLogic with their early new year read on housing markets: “Housing market activity is typically very quiet through late December through to late January, however we are seeing some data flowing through that gives us an early view on activity. Based on the early readings so far, housing values are up across each of the
In early December I visited Sydney for a week. It was bizarre. At the airport, tourists were greeted with a battery of singing and dancing buskers. There was no hat to donate and they were clearly paid for by the airport or government. They bellowed befouled air over scuttling and frightened passengers. Presumably, the practice
A brief reprieve for Building Approvals today: Key statistics The seasonally adjusted estimate for total dwellings approved rose 3.6% in November. Private sector houses rose 1.4%, while private sector dwellings excluding houses increased 9.7%. The value of non-residential building approved rose 28.3%. Dwellings approved Download November key figures, seasonally adjusted Nov-21 Monthly change Yearly change
It’s about time the old goat stood up. His loyalty to the Liberal Party has often overridden the obvious national interest. As such, it is a measure of how far Morrison’s regime of secular sleaze has slipped from the mainstream that Howard is endorsing competing candidates: A rare, glowing endorsement written by Mr Howard for
Deutsche on the US. This is very likely to come here with consequent calls for ramped immigration, another policy to sustain secular stagnation: For the first time, the average American worker believes she is more likely than not to retire by the age of 62. That is a problem. Put simply, earlier retirement requires a
So says BofA via ZH: Well, we are finally here: 2022 has arrived and the rate shock that BofA’s bearish chief investment strategist Michael Hartnett has prophetically been warning about arrived right out of the gate, and with a bang as both nominal and real yields spiked sharply higher in just the first week of 2022. And unfortunately,
A month later and little has changed. Chinese property is still royally stuffed. There has been a little easing for developer spreads: But sales remain awful: As are land sales, still down 70% year on year: More: Land sales measured in area in China’s 300 major cities reached 2.05 billion square meters in 2021 as
The ferrous complex was mixed on January 7, 2022 as spot and steel lifted but paper fell: The rally over Xmas looks like pretty typical seasonality to me. Steel mills finished the year with low iron ore inventories, despite the great and growing port pile, and enough hope for stimmies that restocking made sense.
