Because he desperately needs to chill, via the AFR: It is a demand that Scott Morrison is bound to hear again when he turns up for his state dinner at the White House in Washington next week. In fact that is why he’s been offered this rare honour. It has nothing to do with his
Via The Guardian: A new snapshot of Australia’s clean energy sector warns new investment committed in the first half of 2019 has fallen back to 2016 levels, when Tony Abbott invited an investment strike when he tried to abolish the renewable energy target. While the Morrison government has been trumpeting record recent investment in renewable energy
No ScoMo miracle here. Via Westpac: The consumer mood has lapsed back into slight negative territory again with continued pressure on family finances and concerns about the near term outlook weighing on sentiment. The September survey included additional questions on the tax offset payments the Federal government began making with tax refunds from July 1.
CoreLogic’s research analyst, Cameron Kusher, has released data showing that the average number of years that Australians hold onto their properties has ballooned to an all-time high: The latest data to May 2019 shows that home owners are holding onto their property for much longer than they were 10 to 15 years ago. The average
Via The Age: International students have been banned from contesting student elections at one of Victoria’s most prestigious universities, in a move to stop a group of Chinese students seizing control of the student union. …Leaders of Monash University’s Caulfield campus student body last week passed a new rule that students wishing to run at
SQM Research’s managing director, Louis Christopher, has released another report measuring the over/undervaluation of Brisbane’s, Adelaide’s and Perth’s housing markets against GDP, which shows that Perth’s is the only major market that is currently undervalued: Brisbane On our measurement, Brisbane is offering close to fair value. This comes after an extended period whereby there has
The bond bloodbath we’ve seen in the past week continued last night: The curve has steepened materially: And spreads to the US have narrowed: The question is: is it a turn or counter trend rally? It makes sense that yields rise as iron ore rebounds, house prices rebound and there’s hope abroad for Brexit and
Via the ABC: Liberal backbencher Gladys Liu is being urged to address Parliament about multiple claims of her association with China’s foreign influence operations. “The parliament needs to look at this very, very carefully to make sure there are no foreign influences taking place,” Centre Alliance senator Rex Patrick told AM. The ABC revealed yesterday
By Chris Becker Another mixed night on equity markets at least with currency markets stabilising going into tomorrow nights ECB meeting, with bonds selling off on the possibility of a cooling trade war with China. A possible hot war with Iran is likely to be averted as National Security Advisor John Bolton got the tweet
So says the NAB business survey: 2011 called. It wants its economy back. Houses bashed as holes boom. 2020 will reverse it again as the terms of trade fall away. Whether the east can recover will depend upon the extent of the global shock.
Charts for September 10, 2019: Spot up. Paper up more. Others stalled. Yawn.
DXY was up last night despite a bouncing EUR but easing CNY: The Australian dollar flamed out versus DMs: And EMs: Gold is retracing as yields climb: Oil fell: Metals were mixed: Miners up: EM stocks stalled: As did junk: As all bonds got flogged: Stocks did not like it: MB’s four horseman of the
Earlier this week, I posted an article showing, among other things, that Australian households have experienced a seven year recession in real per capita household disposable income (HDI), which has fallen by 0.5% over the past seven years: And that Australia’s real per capita HDI growth was the lowest among OECD nations over the five
In 2003 I arrived at the Australian Treasury to begin my career as an economist. Upon arriving at Treasury, I was introduced to the “three P’s” framework by then Treasury Secretary, Dr Ken Henry. According to this framework, we were told that Australia must: 1) boost productivity; 2) raise workforce participation; and 3) increase the
Last month, Salvatore Babones – adjunct scholar at the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) and an associate professor at the University of Sydney – released arguably the most definitive assessment of Australia’s international student industry ever conducted. In this study, Babones argued strongly that Australia’s universities have far too high a concentration of international students,
The Australian’s Adam Creighton penned a thought-provoking article yesterday, whereby he described Australia’s “wide-scale immigration from poorer countries” both “low-skilled” and “lazy” policy: Why worry about how to “engage” with Asia when we were becoming an Asian country?… By 2023, the Chinese-born population of Australia — which grew by half to 650,000 across the five
Global Macro / Markets / Investing: The Marshall Islands launches a sovereign crypto coin – Forex Brokerz A Deep Dive into the Dismal Success Rates of ITOs – Medium How to Make Health Care Unaffordable and Inaccessible – Fee 99.99% Currency Devaluations Highlight Need for Bitcoin – BeInCrypto The trade war hasn’t hit its peak
While the usual safe havens are weaker, Asian share markets are still quite mixed with Chinese markets and their satellites falling back, while the Japanese bourses seemed decoupled and continue higher. Gold has come off again, falling nearly $10 USD to be well below $1500USD per ounce, while the upcoming OPEC meeting is setting oil
Via Damien Boey at Credit Suisse: The NAB business confidence survey for August was quite soft. Business confidence fell to +1 from +4, while firms’ assessment of business conditions also fell to +1 from +3. Compositionally, firms reported softer growth in trading activity, weakness in new orders, and contraction in profits. Interestingly, hiring intentions rose
Via Domain: Labor senator Kimberley Kitching and Victorian Liberal MP Kevin Andrews intend to establish the Parliamentary Friends of Democratic Hong Kong group, calling for the protection of democracy in Hong Kong and promoting a peaceful end to the violence. …Centre Alliance senator Rex Patrick on Monday criticised both the government and federal Labor’s refusal
With Australia’s population ballooning on the back of mass immigration, and projected to add around 360,000 people a year until 2066: Australians are potentially facing the deepest water restrictions in the nation’s history: Parts of Australia could face the toughest water restrictions they have ever seen as the nation’s crippling drought shows no sign of
RBA Governor, Phil Lowe, has once again blamed Australia’s mass immigration policy for inflating housing values and making homes unaffordable: So what does the governor worry about? He worries about opportunity and about inequality… And he worries that high house prices can entrench inequality from one generation to the next… Hold on. Aren’t you to
The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has questioned the investment strategy of as many as 20,000 self-managed super funds (SMSFs). It states that they appear to have over 90% of their monies in one asset or one asset class, very often the property occupied by the beneficiaries of the SMSF, and that this could see them
The Morrison Government continues to face mounting pressure to raise Newstart benefits for Australia’s unemployed. Yesterday, Monash researchers released a study showing that many Newstart recipients are suffering from poor health and often too sick to work or study: “It’s hard to work when you’re sick. We found large disparities between the health of people
Via ANZ: Households’ perception of current financial conditions fell 4.8% last week, more than reversing a cumulative 1.7% gain over the previous two weeks. Meanwhile, sentiment towards future financial conditions rose 2.1%, its third straight weekly increase. Encouragingly, households’ assessment of current economic conditions bounced 2.1%, entirely reversing the prior week’s fall. Consumers were less optimistic
Via Westpac: • The Australian Chamber–Westpac Survey of Industrial trends, Australia’s longest running business survey dating from 1966, provides a timely update on manufacturing and insights into economy-wide trends. • The Westpac–AusChamber Actual Composite index fell sharply to 52.9 in September from 61.5 in June. The further loss in momentum continues the weakening trend seen
Via ABC: The corporate regulator is appealing a landmark Federal Court ruling in favour of Westpac that validated the bank’s automated home loan approval process for hundreds of thousands of mortgages. Last month, Justice Nye Perram of the Federal Court found in the bank’s favour in a case brought by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC)
Not much inflation to worry about in China today, unless you’re a pig, with the CPI at 2.8%. But check out pork as disease sweeps It is driving some pretty impressive month on month gains but will pass: Industry is plunging into deflation as overcapacity returns, down -0.8%: And the ferrous bust is yet to
Australia’s mining industry (as opposed to mining-related construction) has never been a large Australian employer. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), the mining industry directly employed only 1.9% of Australians as at May 2019, despite roughly doubling its share since the early-2000s: Mining’s employment share could fall in the future as the industry
Via NAB comes the business survey: Not much to crow about there. Employment still OK but not strong. Components: The leading indicators of forward orders and capex are still poor. Only banks and miners happy. Rates cuts still ahead. Full report.
