The “miracle” Australian economy (with its famous run of 24 years without a recession) is an amalgam of pre-modern and post-modern industries with very little in between.
Most economies run at least partially upon the productivity gains produced out of manufacturing and ‘making things’ but in Australia productive investment is supplanted with commodity exports (which make up half of exports) and the recycling of the resultant income is deployed as cash flow for borrowings offshore to pump house prices.
The former step is basically the selling of dirt, a pre-modern activity. The second step is managed via the sophisticated use of derivative markets and is essentially a post-modern activity.
Not that GDP cares given it is only the mindless measure of whirring widgets.
However, both of these activities systematically reduce economic competitiveness by inflating both input costs and the currency. “Dutch disease” by another name. This continuous “hollowing out” of productive activity means the broader economy relies heavily upon the non-stop import of capital, either in the form of debt or in the form of assets sold to foreigners, to generate ongoing income growth.
So long as the underlying income from dirt keeps flowing then the leveraging into house prices that supports consumption can continue, supported by both tax distortions and government spending.
If, however, the dirt income flow halts the hollowing out of modern industry will leave the Australian economy very exposed to a current account adjustment. We saw this in the global financial crisis but the flow of dirt income was restored sufficiently quickly to prevent any deep adjustment.
A second risk is that the debt accumulation simply becomes overly onerous for the underlying economy to service, also resulting in a current account adjustment. Well north of $1trillion of the debt is owned externally and household debt is a world-beating 186% of GDP so this is a real risk.
It is offset by a relatively clean public balance sheet that deploys fiscal stimulus in times of economic stress. However, in recent years, as both of the two above risks have increased, the public balance sheet has deteriorated as well, setting Australia up for a famous adjustment to end its famous bull run.
MacroBusiness covers all apposite data and wider analysis of these issues daily.
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
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Via the AFR’s Joe Aston: …the veteran retailer’s 60 Minutes interview on Sunday was genuinely breathtaking. …the mob’s affront must have really bitten Harvey Norman’s sales. On Wednesday, Gerry backtracked, offering the least fulsome public apology… …Funny, because nobody at News Corp ever thought he was callous. Not a damned soul! Harvey’s outrageous comments hadn’t
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Over the past week, I have gone to pains to explain why I believe a temporary universal basic income (UBI) is necessary to ease the acute liquidity crunch afflicting Australian households and small businesses. To refresh, the UBI that I have proposed would work as follows: Every taxpayer and welfare recipient would receive a $1,500
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The Australian’s Judith Sloan has taken a timely dig at her own (and my) economics profession, claiming “economists have not shown themselves in a very good light” during the coronavirus outbreak. Sloan notes that some economists have argued that the costs of the coronavirus lockdown will exceed the costs of the virus itself. Some have
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Via Guy Rundle at Crikey: The Centrelink lines are going round the block, the government has made vague announcements of rent assistance, twitter buzzes with notes from the newly laid-off wondering how they’ll put food on the table and pay the rent and the mortgage. Here’s a suggestion. Do the former by omitting the latter.
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