The Victorian government’s financial troubles are widely documented. In 2023-24, the state had the nation’s highest per capita net debt and the lowest credit rating (AA). The trend growth in Victoria’s debt is equally alarming. The two leading international rating agencies, S&P and Moody’s, warned that if debt levels are not managed, Victoria’s credit rating
RBA reform has failed. The only reason it was initiated was the central bank’s total failure to forecast the sun coming up for a decade. As I have argued many times, the primary reason for the failure is the self-inflicted fatwa against mentioning immigration. This is central to the perpetuation of the intrinsically corrupt immigration-led
The spectacularly biased Peta Credlin wrote and a great piece about Labor energy failures yesterday. Quite apart from all the other problems that the Albanese government has created or exacerbated – the record migration-driven pressures on housing costs and supply, wage suppression and infrastructure overload; the productivity-crushing advances to union power; the green veto on
Three months ago, I questioned why the population numbers contained in the Q3 ABS national accounts differed so widely from the official Q2 population figures released one week later by the ABS: That is, the Q3 national accounts implied 656,000 population growth for 2023–24, versus 552,000 growth in the official quarterly population data. That represented
The Market Ear with an amusing set-up for equities. The humans have turned bearish. The robots want to buy! Massive MOVE Bond volatility has sold off aggressively over the past sessions. Source: Refinitiv SPX and bond volatility We have not seen such a big move lower in bond volatility and SPX not catching bids, at
I have repeatedly labelled the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA) a terrible deal for Australia that massively favours the US and disadvantages Australia. The Crawford School of Public Policy at the ANU conducted a study of the Australia-US FTA, and found that a decade after signing, the agreement has diverted more trade than it
The jaws are getting stupid as steel prices are in free fall. This gap is destroying steel mill profitability. They are not overstocked with ore but they’ll need to run even tighter inventories soon to cut the price of inputs. The news flow is awful. The European Union will tighten steel import quotas to reduce
DXY is maybe going to bounce. AUD got an RBA wake up call from jobs. Lead boots continue to stroll to Mar-A-Lago. Oil CTAs threatening. Sell copper before Goldman does. Big miners caput. EM meh. Junk serene is bad news for stocks. Yields eased though. As did stocks. RBA futures have nearly added three cuts
Last night saw the Bank of England and Swiss Central Bank meetings, the latter cutting while the former is looking to ease soon as concerns over the Trump Trade War continue to mount across the financial complex. Wall Street pulled back slightly while European stocks had a broader selloff albeit still near their recent highs.
Thursday’s labour market release from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) was superficially good, with the headline unemployment rate remaining at a low 4.1% in February (4.05% in unrounded terms). This meant that Australia’s headline unemployment rate remained slightly below the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) projections. That was where the good news ended, however,