Blogotariat

After bouncing following February’s 0.25% interest rate cut from the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), momentum in Australia’s housing market has stalled. The Easter long weekend recorded the softest final auction clearance rate since January, with only 57.6% of auctions selling across the combined capital cities. This weekend’s results softened further, recording a preliminary clearance

DXY is up some more. EUR down. AUD looks like it’s sitting on resistance turned support. Led boots stuck fast. Gold and oil pulling back. Metals flaming out. Miners too. EM yawn. Junk has nearly priced out recession. Bad idea! Yields down. Stocks up. The base case is a reversal of risk before long and

The post Australian dollar pain to turn agony for investors appeared first on MacroBusiness.

Peter Dutton’s long-awaited military spending plan was supposed to be the Coalition’s chance to shift the election debate onto the former defence minister’s favoured terrain.

Instead, Dutton ran into yet more questions about his preparation for the election contest as he revealed the plan in a hot defence manufacturing factory in Perth on Wednesday, raising further questions over what his own MPs privately describe as a thin and rushed policy agenda.

The recent visit to South Africa by Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky is a diplomatic show for NATO, which has been a destabilizing force around the world, Thato Senabe, leader of the local chapter of the Anti-Fascist International Organization, has said.

Donald Trump selling 2028 election merch despite term limitThe US Constitution limits presidents to two four-year stints in office. Donald Trump has said he still intends to run for a third term and has started selling the hats and t-shirts that say it.

Karl Sexton with AFP, AP

Rates of early voting have been increasing for a long time, but reached a record high level of 2022, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. I most recently summarised these statistics at a federal level in this blog post.

For this blog post I’m going to summarise the statistics on how many people are voting early as of the end of the short 3-day week between the Easter and Anzac Day long weekends. The short answer: early voting seems to be holding steady at the record high levels seen in 2022.

He was a young American from Chicago, via South Vietnam. He was lean and clean and crew cut, and he was telling us about his experiences up there. Conditions were really rugged, he said. Charlie was unpredictable and vicious.

Addo asked him, “Who's Charlie?”

“VC,” he said.

"Oh well, I s'pose you have to be unpredictable and vicious to get a VC."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vp7DR3bktLk

Col. Douglas Macgregor: Walking Away from the Ukraine War & Restoring Strategic Clarity

Third and final giant transformer arrives for installation at first stage of state-backed big battery that will deliver up to 1.6 gigawatt-hours of storage into the grid.

Local Reading: Eddie Obeid to keep $30 million made from corrupt coal licence deal – ABC Mental health experts concerned about Coalition plan to scrap workers’ right to disconnect – The Guardian Over five decades, here’s how voters have shifted away from the major parties – ABC When ‘equal’ does not mean ‘the same’: Liberals

The post Anzac Day links and media appearances appeared first on MacroBusiness.

Israeli strikes included the bombing of a school-turned-shelter, which killed 13, and the bombing of a children's hospital

Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Wednesday that Israeli attacks killed at least 38 Palestinians and wounded 105 over the previous 24-hour period as US-backed Israeli strikes pound targets across the Strip.