Miscellaneous

Cross-posted from Mark the Ballot.

Given the relatively light weekend news flow, Asian equities have seen limited interest from traders, with US futures highlighting this with an unchanged read from Fridays close.The USD is modestly offered, despite US treasuries opening a touch higher and testing Friday’s high of 2.86%.

It’s the “boom” that just won’t die.

From The Australian today: The latest Newspoll survey, conducted exclusively for The Australian on the weekend, finds Mr Abbott in his best position ever against Mr Rudd.

From the Guardian: Tony Abbott’s “sex appeal” candidate, Fiona Scott, is poised for a landslide victory in the litmus-test western Sydney seat of Lindsay with a stunning 60% of the primary vote, according to a Guardian Lonergan poll.

By Leith van Onselen The internet and modern technology are wonderful. They allow fast dissemination of information, break down barriers to business and social interaction (this site is a perfect example), and can enhance overall productivity and living standards by lowering costs and raising output.

The press is reporting that Kevin Rudd has said he will cut corporate taxes in the Northern Territory by a third and expand the Ord River Irrigation Scheme to open up 14,000 hectares of land for agriculture.

Cross-posted from The Conversation.

Following yesterday’s PEFO, Joe Hockey has announced that: The federal Coalition will go to the September 7 election refusing to say when it will return the budget to surplus, claiming the key numbers in Treasury’s final pre-election budget update are too volatile to trust.

Yesterday I made a conservative estimate of Tony Abbott’s budget black hole at just shy of $40 billion over three years, driven largely by the Libs’ aggressive tax cut agenda.

Cross-posted from The Conversation It looks like the GST will feature prominently in yet another election.

The ANU conducts a quarterly opinion poll that today shows what I’ve been trying to tell our election candidates for the past twelve months: Jobs up, climate change down in public eye.

After out-playing England at Old Trafford and beginning this test well, am I feeling any more chipper about our Ashes campaign?

Tony Abbott has made the sensible choice to backflip on his refusal to cost his policies using Treasury figures: Tony Abbott says his budget bottom line will be “crystal clear” before voters head to the polls, and will rely on Treasury figures as a costings base.

For those that missed links this morning, David Pilling of FT last night composed a darkly amusing take on Australia’s current political choice.

By Leith van Onselen From the AFR comes some interesting prognosticating from Standard & Poors’ (S&P) analyst, Craig Michaels, on the risks posed from a sharper than expected slowdown of the Chinese economy.

Interesting night overnight with more Taper talk in the US, a less dovish than expected Bank of England Governor Mark Carney and a much stronger yen than anyone could really imagine given the challenges of the Japanese economy.