From Communist Party of China’s foreign ministry late yesterday: “It is totally understandable and reasonable for Chinese students and other Chinese citizens overseas to express indignation and opposition against such words and deeds that attempt to separate China and smear its image’” “Second, we also hope overseas Chinese can express their patriotism and protect themselves from
Via Stuff: Jamie Cameron and Kylie Thomson have nailed the tiny house concept. The New Plymouth owners of NZ Tiny Homes have acquired a social media following of 26,000, which is why they have just sold their tiny house show home in three hours after posting it on Facebook – they have received 554 comments
So says Jim Rickards at the AFR: He said there is only a 35 per cent chance of a recession in the US over the next year, thanks to the Federal Reserve’s change in monetary policy direction in July when the central bank cut rates by 25 basis points to 2-2.25 per cent. …He said
There is no god, via Roy Morgan and ANZ weekly consumer confidence: Note the rise of “bad times” coming. If there is a god, she is not happy with ScoMo.
Via Damien Boey at Credit Suisse: Minutes from the RBA’s early August meeting were somewhat dovish in tone. We note the following key paragraphs: The Bank’s response function only allows for a brief pause to “wait and see”: “Having eased monetary policy at the previous two meetings, the Board judged it appropriate to assess developments
Via Reuters: The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) said it will improve the mechanism used to establish the loan prime rate (LPR) from this month, in a move to further lower real interest rates for companies as part of broader market reforms. Analysts say the move, which came after data that showed weaker than expected
You honestly would not read about it. Following the RBNZ marvelous and necessary move to lift bank capital ratios to something approximating safe, APRA has declared war upon it: The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) has released a strengthened prudential standard aimed at mitigating contagion risk within banking groups. The updated Prudential Standard APS 222
Gerard Minack at Real Vision:
Via the ABC: Brisbane commuter Amy Miller has tried every option to get to work faster, but her 14 kilometre journey takes her up to an hour or more regardless of which route she takes. Ms Miller is not alone with commuters across south-east Queensland spending an increasing amount of time traveling each day, with
Via New Daily: Australia’s apartment sector is reaping the costs of a “poorly oversighted industry with a lack of competence and, in some cases, a lack of integrity”, says the author of a landmark report into Australia’s building industry. Bronwyn Weir has told an ABC Four Corners special investigation into the apartment construction industry that “commercial imperatives have really
Some amusing analysis here for you with BHP’s new result. It missed consensus profits above $10bn pretty badly: But that’s history. Looking forward is much more concerning. It’s all about iron ore and coking coal, the two major drivers of returns: Here’s the realised prices: My outlooks for CY2020 are $50 (FOB) for iron
Via Patrick Commins at the AFR: …there are plenty of reasons to fear another leg higher in the property market. For one, many younger Australians already despair at the thought of ever owning a home, just as many if not most parents are worried their children won’t ever enjoy the stability of home ownership. Social
Via Martin North: Last week the Judge delivered his verdict in the ASIC-Westpac HEM case, essentially because of the ~260,000 loans examined in the case less than 5,000 would have potentially had their loans tweaked lower if the HEM was not used, whereas the bulk of the loans would have been bigger if HEM was
Yesterday we saw Westpac’s credit quality on the slide: Banking Day has more: Westpac is now starting to count the cost of its aggressive pitch for mortgage volumes at the peak of the housing market in 2016. According to the bank’s latest trading update published on Monday, credit quality across most of the group’s lending
Via the ABC: Authorities are investigating after fake Chinese police cars were spotted in Adelaide and Perth amid pro-Hong Kong demonstrations across Australia, but the owner of one of the cars has told police it was a “joke”. In South Australia photos have surfaced of a car — bearing Chinese characters — parked at various
“Tiny” Tim Wilson is back today with more wage smashing crusade, at the always enthusiastic AFR: Australia should never give up on creating an industrial relations system that boosts wages and jobs. …If the IR system promotes pragmatism, collaboration and fairness we all win. If it promotes legal disputes, conflict and inequality we all lose.
Texture from Reuters: Iron ore pulled back during afternoon trade amid market talk that China’s top steelmaking city of Tangshan has ordered deeper production cuts over a four-day period – Aug. 18-Aug. 21 – to curb pollution. Reuters could not immediately verify this. Expectations that iron ore supply will further improve also weighed on prices.
DXY is breaking out. EUR and CNY both fell: The Australian dollar was smacked versus DMs: EMs were worse: Gold was hit: Oil lifted though: And metals were mixed: Plus big miners: EM stocks gained: And junk: All bonds were sold: Stocks took off: Westpac has the wrap: Event Wrap FOMC member Rosengren (who dissented against the rate cut
Via Domain: Job insecurity is no longer confined to low-skilled workers, but is emerging in highly skilled professions including law and computer programming, a leading US employment expert has warned. David Weil from the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University in Boston and a visiting professor at the University of Sydney
Via CoreLogic, the leading mortgage index roars on: New listings are now rising but total is falling as demand outpaces supply: Needless to say, this is a recipe for price gains. If this runs through H2 without any external shock and more rate cuts then I’ll be upgrading price forecasts for next year. Full report.
Via Grattan: Today’s young Australians are in danger of being the first generation in memory to have lower living standards than their parents’ generation. Older Australians today spend more and have higher incomes and greater wealth than older Australians three decades ago. But living standards have improved far less for younger Australians. The wealth of households
Via Business Insider: Ryan Mitchell, age 35, completely underestimated the positive impact moving into a tiny house would have on his life. Mitchell, who runs the blog The Tiny Life and is based in North Carolina, told Business Insider he began building his 150 square-foot tiny house seven years ago. While he spent $US30,000 on building costs (including solar panels) over
Via BlackRock: Unprecedented policies will be needed to respond to the next economic downturn. Monetary policy is almost exhausted as global interest rates plunge towards zero or below. Fiscal policy on its own will struggle to provide major stimulus in a timely fashion given high debt levels and the typical lags with implementation. Without a
Via HeraldSun: Energy stressed Victorians are turning off heaters or going without food to cope with winter bill blowouts. Welfare agencies expect a big spike in financial help requests from this month as mammoth costs flow through. Vinnies spokesman Gavin Dufty said the shock of heating bills left some on low incomes choosing between keeping
Via Domain: Ambassador Cheng Jingye told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age that the affairs of Hong Kong were “solely the internal affairs of China”, warning that any effort to “mess up” the former British outpost was doomed to fail as pro-democracy protesters there again gathered en masse on Sunday. …The intervention follows escalating
Via Robert Rennie at Westpac: Westpac A$ ‘fair value’ down 7% so far this quarter, with the 12% drop in Westpac export weighted commodity price index over the same period being a key driver. Midpoint for fair value model is now at 0.6550, above 0.68 the A$ would be deemed ‘expensive’ by this model.
Via Martin North: New research commissioned by the construction union has revealed that Australia’s building and construction crisis will cost $6.2 billion in remediation and associated costs. The independent research, undertaken by Equity Economics and contained in the report ‘Shaky Foundations: The National Construction Crisis’ being launched today, analysed the additional costs to owners of remediating water
Via the AFR: Andrew Forrest’s pioneering gas import venture has approached the NSW government seeking approval to potentially double the capacity of the reprocessing terminal it plans to install at Port Kembla. Australian Industrial Energy, which is half owned by the iron ore billionaire, formally flagged the need to restart its approvals process in meetings
Via Dr Ed Yardeni: The Fed, the European Central Bank (ECB), and the Bank of Japan (BOJ) came up with lots of headline-grabbing shock-and-awe programs over the past 10 years in reaction to the Great Financial Crisis. Over time, they seemed to lose their effectiveness and ability to shock or awe. Nevertheless, the US economy
The ScoMo Government is a masterful fake. It is currently pretending to cut immigration, pretending to reform banking, pretending to build infrastructure, pretending to be a good economic manager, pretending to care about weak wages, pretending to care about energy prices, pretending to care about anything and everything other than rising house prices. This we
