CoreLogic’s head of research, Tim Lawless, has released analysis suggesting the epic mining property bust has finally ended: Since conditions peaked in line with commodity prices and a wind down in infrastructure spending, dwelling values in these regions have moved through a long and deep downturn. Some suburbs have seen the median value of a
Via Martin North:
By Leith van Onselen The NSW Nationals have conducted polling and One Nation is reportedly scooping up voters in the bush. From SBS News: The numbers gathered for the Nationals show One Nation is likely to poll better than the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party on first party preferences in up to 13 seats, The
Via Morgan Stanley today which has cut its house price correction base case to -10-15%: We struggle to see improvement in any of our components over the next year. We now see a 10-15 per cent peak to trough decline in real house prices (from 5-10 per cent), which would mark the largest decline since
MB has already won the immigration debate. At current levels it is a policy of: massive dis-economies of scale; dilutes the nation’s resource endowment; does nothing to fix an aging population; drives up house prices; drives down wages; crush-loads Sydney and Melbourne dramatically lowering public amenity and living standards, and there are no solutions to
Via the NAB quarterly property survey: The boom in Australian real estate sales to foreign investors has run its course, with NAB’s latest survey results continuing to highlight a decline in foreign buying activity resulting from policy changes in China on foreign investment outflows and tighter restrictions on foreign property buyers in Australia. In Q3,
Via Labor employment spokesman Brendan O’Connor in response to “migrants to the regions”: “…we have over 700,000 unemployed Australians, and we have 1.1m Australians looking for more work.” “That is over 1.8m Australians looking for any work, or looking for more work, and yet we watch the government continue to allow the explosion of temporary visa
Via Martin North today: So what is in store for the next few months? Well, in short its more of the same, only more so, with more households reporting difficulties in obtaining finance, fewer expecting to transact in the next year and to see home prices rise. So we start with transaction intentions. The first
By Leith van Onselen Back in 2016 I penned an article, “Aussie dieticians are wrong about fat”, which criticised Australian dieticians’ staunch defence of existing failed dietary guidelines that promote a high carbohydrate / low fat diet: Since the Australian food pyramid was first introduced in 1982, it has told Australians to consume large quantities
Via Ian Verrender at the ABC: Celebrated physicist Isaac Newton had a chequered career as a monetary mandarin and investor. As Master of the Royal Mint, he helped reform England’s currency, the pound sterling, clamped down on counterfeiting and, in 1717, accidentally moved Britain to its first ever gold standard. His record as an investor,
A nice Westpac update that is dead straight about falling house prices the growing damage to the economy.
I’ll just leave this one here given the end of the world probably rates a mention, Via The Guardian: The world’s leading climate scientists have warned there is only a dozen years for global warming to be kept to a maximum of 1.5C, beyond which even half a degree will significantly worsen the risks of
Nice observation from an MB reader today: I take a particular interest in the current turmoil around the ABC and SBS, partially because I see precisely the same debate around public service unfolding in two of my previous home countries – the UK (BBC) and Sweden (SVT). The conversations are very similar, with regards to
Let’s recall the huge Bloomberg story on Friday about Chinese spy chips that went unreported in the kowtowing Australian press: In 2015, Amazon.com Inc. began quietly evaluating a startup called Elemental Technologies, a potential acquisition to help with a major expansion of its streaming video service, known today as Amazon Prime Video. Based in Portland,
Via the ABC comes Opposition finance spokesman Jim Chalmers: “The housing market is softening in some of the major markets, but we don’t make this policy for one market or another or one set of market conditions or another. You make housing policy as a federal government over the medium to long term. One of
The Australian energy crisis is the circus that just keeps on giving, via The Age: “It’s an inevitability that Australia will import gas, there needs to be at least one gas import terminal in Australia, if not potentially two,” Macquarie Bank analyst Andrew Hodge told Fairfax Media. …However, he said the terminals were unlikely to
From Foreign Policy comes Salvatore Babones an American sociologist at the University of Sydney and the author of The New Authoritarianism: Trump, Populism, and the Tyranny of Experts: Since the global financial crisis of 2008 to 2009, the U.S. economy has chalked up nine years of solid growth. That’s 36 consecutive quarters of GDP moving in the right
By Leith van Onselen Last weekend, CoreLogic released its preliminary auction clearance rates, which revealed the following results: Today, CoreLogic has released its final auction results, which reported a large 5.4% decline in Sydney’s auction clearance rate to just 43.8%: According to CoreLogic: There were 608 homes taken to auction in Sydney last week returning
Via PIMCO: Australian housing prices have fallen for 15 consecutive months. The nationwide all-dwelling price index was down 2.0% year-on-year in August, with Sydney prices down 5.6%. This was Australia’s first nationwide housing price decline in six years. To be sure, prices remain 40% higher than levels in 2012, when abundant credit supply and strong
From the Herald Sun comes a nice list of financial crimes. Charging dead people: In April the commission revealed the sordid details in which planners from Commonwealth Bank subsidiary Count Financial profited for years from dead customers’ fees. In the worst case revealed, a planner knew a client had died in January 2004, but was
By Leith van Onselen The Australian Population Research Institute (APRI) has released a new research report questioning “Why do we have a ‘Big Australia’?”. Below is the Executive Summary: In part, this report was prompted by a case study of Australia’s 2011 Sustainable Population Strategy. After an impressive process and attractive product, the notable effect was
By Leith van Onselen Latrobe Financial has shamelessly plagiarised MB (see here and here) and twisted our arguments to spruik mass immigration and a ‘Big Australia’. Check out their drivel below: We need immigration to ameliorate the effects of an ageing population A common argument from proponents of high immigration is that it is required
At the AFR comes the good news that your central bank is hard at work preventing meaningful reform to fraudulent bank lending: Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has confirmed he is closely liaising with the Reserve Bank of Australia and Treasury about ensuring the economy avoids a credit squeeze, amid market concerns the royal commission’s damning findings
Yesterday we had Kevin Rudd blathering nonsense about media. It’s been a near constant stream of invective from Malcolm Turnbull. Today we get Paul Keating crap on Turnbull, via Domainfax: “His capitulation to conservatives on the republic says all that needs to be said about Malcolm’s wider ambitions for the country,” the former Labor prime minister told
Via The Australian: Australia’s housing downturn could spill into the broader economy and spark a negative wealth effect as the price weakness spreads to cheaper properties, Morgan Stanley analysts warned. Dwelling prices have now been falling for a year, but the declines are getting broader which has negative implications for the length and economic impact
The corrupt Reserve Bank of Australia has today left the cash rate unchanged. Here’s the statement: At its meeting today, the Board decided to leave the cash rate unchanged at 1.50 per cent. The global economic expansion is continuing. A number of advanced economies are growing at an above-trend rate and unemployment rates are low. Growth in
APRA and ASIC may be the one’s left carrying the bag for Australian bank’s housing bubble excesses but they had good company in the RBA and Treasury. Following the GFC the RBA openly declared that Australian household debt was a clear and present danger to the economy yet when its mooted thirty year mining boom
The answer is “no”. There will be no explicit depositors bail-in. In would be political suicide. That said, there are any number of ways that deposits can be devalued: printing money, special taxes etc. And that is the path that Australia will take.
By Leith van Onselen With the interim report into the banking royal commission released on Friday, Labor has called for an extension beyond the next election to ensure that more victims are heard and that the next federal government has the opportunity to implement the recommendations. From 9News: The opposition is concerned not enough victims
Peter Hartcher wrote an excellent piece on the weekend: “The practitioners of the politics of resentment recognise one another,” writes [Francis] Fukuyama in his new book on identity politics, helpfully titled Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment, to be published in Australia by Profile Books. “You didn’t have this white identity
