Australian Economy

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has released export and import prices for the June quarter, which portends a lift in Australia’s terms-of-trade when the national accounts are released in early September.

Hoocoodanode? Via the excellent George Theranou at UBS: Q1 EBA’s tick down to 2.7% a.r., suggesting still soft wages pressure Enterprise Bargaining Agreements (EBAs) for Q1-19 ticked down to 2.7%.

Former Reserve Bank of New Zealand special adviser, Michael Reddell, has penned an excellent critique of a new paper by the Labor’s Dr Andrew Leigh – Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury – on “tackling Australia’s productivity crisis”.

Via The Daily Telegraph: Private investigators are getting “happy endings” so the City of Sydney can prosecute CBD massage parlours for providing sex without council consent.

It’s fun to watch Asian gas prices, via Bloomie: The latest bad news for bulls came this week, as China National Offshore Oil Corp.

From the AIG: Trend ugly.

Via Damien Boey of Credit Suisse on yesterday credit aggregates: Private sector credit was materially softer than expected, barely rising 0.1% in June, with downward revisions to prior months’ data.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has released the Consumer Price Index (CPI) data for the June quarter 0f 2019, which registered rising annual headline inflation but falling underlying inflation.

Fidelity International has produced an interesting chart which explains why many Australians believe that their cost of living is rising despite the low official inflation rate: Since 2000, CPI has risen by 57 per cent but wages have gone up by 78 per cent, which technically should cover any cost of living increase.

The following video from Martin North with John Adams (AKA Mr Armageddon) makes for interesting viewing.

Last year, the Australian Treasury released a propaganda report, entitled Shaping a Nation, which admitted that the lion’s share of Australian jobs growth has gone to migrants: Recent migrants accounted for two-thirds (64.5 per cent) of the approximately 850,000 net jobs created in the past five years.

Via the AFR: The influx of solar and wind power into the energy grid could trigger federal rules forcing retailers to guarantee supply, driving a wave of new gas power plants to reduce the chance of blackouts.

Via the AFR: An ANZ insights paper released on Tuesday found job ads and vacancy measures had been going their separate ways since May last year despite a strong jobs market; the bank’s job ads index has fallen by 5.6 per cent while vacancies increased by 3 per cent.

Here ’tis: Moronically, building material shave all been rising this year: Until today.

The obtuse AFR editorial gives us a good idea today: The HILDA data instead confirms that Australian prosperity will only be rebooted through a revival in productivity growth.

Via UBS: Implications: house prices set to rise modestly, but activity still set to drop Optimism has returned to housing following the surprise election result, and coordinated policy easing from APRA & the RBA.

Australia’s political economy has turned into one gigantic lie.