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Paul Kelly poured his heart into a feature on the weekend which amounted to an obituary for the Australian car industry: A turning point has come in Australian industry policy and the long history of car manufacturing.

The world is an amazing place.

The RBA’s occasional Statement of Monetary Policy is out and is making its way inexorably towards MB.

By Leith van Onselen Possibly the most interesting aspect of yesterday’s labour force release by the ABS was the ongoing contraction in full-time jobs, which declined by 0.3% in the year to October in trend terms, offset by a 3.2% rise in part-time jobs (see next chart).

From the SMH comes a story that shows we really are determined to make our one-trick pony status permanent: Almost a quarter of scientists, researchers and workers at Australia’s premier science institution will lose their jobs under the federal government’s present public service jobs freeze.

From the AFR: Reserve Bank of Australia deputy governor Guy Debelle has said that unintended victims of the US Federal Reserve’s unprecedented monetary policy stimulus have been told to “suck it up sunshine” because a stronger US economy benefits all nations.

By Leith van Onselen As summarised earlier, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) today released labour force data for the month of October, which registered a 0.1% seasonally-adjusted increase in the headline unemployment rate to 5.7%.

By Leith van Onselen Residex has released its house and unit price results for the month of September, which revealed flat growth in national house values over the month, but significant divergence across the various markets (see below table).

The RBA’s cyclical bounce is now kicking hard in construction with the AIG Performance of Construction (PCI) rocketing in October: The national construction industry returned to growth in October 2013 for the first time in overv three years, driven by a higher rate of expansion in new orders and activity.

From the AFR: The Coalition has deferred a promise to adopt Labor’s $733 million tax on bank deposits and, instead, is set to refer the policy to its inquiry into the financial system to be conducted next year.

By Leith van Onselen It hasn’t taken long for Robert Gottliebsen (“Gotti”) to endorse the Coalition Government’s abandonment of the former Labor Government’s planned changes to superannuation, hailing it as a win for older Australians: The Australia superannuation movement has had the most enormous victory.

Business Spectator’s new economics guy, Callam Pickering, is a new bear on the block: What investors and owner-occupiers need right now is a sense of perspective and a little bit of context.

By Leith van Onselen If anyone wants an example of why politics is mostly form over substance, look no further than Joe Hockey’s actions on entitlement spending.

We already know that this Government is struggling to produce a coherent climate change policy but how deep does its skepticism run?

RBA on hold with a neutral bias.

From the AFR: Expectations are high that new leaders will use the “Third Plenum” to kick-start the next phase of reform in the world’s second-biggest economy.

Ok, so I’m going to roll over a little.

There were a number of reasons for the iron ore surge last Friday as Chinese liquidity money market liquidity improved and paper markets jumped.

AFG’s October data is out and records have tumbled: AFG, Australia’s largest mortgage broker, processed over $4 billion in home loans last month – its biggest month ever, and the first time the company’s national 1,900 brokers have collectively broken through the $4 billion mark.

Morgan Stanley has a note out today that nicely captures a number of cross-currents in the economy, housing, and cyclical stock markets sectors: The RBA needs to transition the economy after an unprecedented resources investment boom, with the subsequent “capex cliff’’ likely to strip 1.5% points from GDP in CY14 and CY15.

By Leith van Onselen Monash University’s Centre of Policy Studies and the Allen Consulting Group have released a study that attempts to estimate the economic impact from the car industry shutting down over a two year period from 2017 to 2018.