The Fake Greens have taken populism and loonyism to new heights with Deputy Leader in the Senate, Nick McKim, calling on the Albanese government to stop the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) from lifting interest rates. “The mechanics of section 11 are that the treasurer can advise … the governor-general that is, to issue an
Newspoll is unchanged at 51-49 to the government today: However, a new Freshwater poll has the LNP up by the same margin. Moreover, the aggregated polling trend is not Albo’s friend: He has butchered the ALP’s leadership in the critical areas of economic management and national security. However, health is the government’s trump card: It’s
Sometimes this job is boring—interpolating data, watching indicators grow like grass, and watering the intellectual desert of the Aussie media. Yawn Then there is the single most onerous task I have had to undertake in thirteen years of writing – analysing the self-serving guff of Dr Jim Chalmers. Alas, I am forced back into the
Earlier this year, former ACCC chairman Allan Fels and transport expert David Cousins released a report warning that Transurban is robbing Sydney motorists and urging the New South Wales government to take control of the state’s toll roads. Transurban controls 11 of New South Wales’s 13 toll roads, each of which was negotiated under a
Albo’s new energy shock appears just about over for this winter, with gas glued to his stupid $12Gj gas price floor: And QMA power prices are about to top out at $155MWh: It’s been a doozy and as prices fall into the off-season, I expect a higher low than last Spring. Big coal is making
The Market Ear ventures inside the AI bubble. AI chose violence The Bespoke AI Basket that’s made up of 50 key AI stocks was down 5.6% over the last two days coming into Friday, which was the biggest 2-day drop since ChatGPT was released in late 2022. Bespoke Where is my ROI, Jensen…? Change in
The number of cafes has grown dramatically across Australia during the last two decades. When I moved to Melbourne’s Ashburton area in 2006, my local High Street strip shop had about four cafes. Over the next 18 years, I observed the number of cafes grow to ludicrous numbers. There are now more than a dozen
Chinese steel demand indicators continue to sink. Auto sales are weakening: Property sales are going nowhere: As prices keep falling: Infrastructure bonds are very weak: Hammering cement demand: Nothing encouraging here for future steel demand. Goldman offers a gloomy outlook: First, the primary linkage between the property market and the real economy is through
Friday night was a dumping ground as almost everything was sold off in reaction to more tech stock action on Wall Street plus continued political volatility with the BSOD IT crisis not helping at all. Wall Street continued to sell off alongside European stocks although the latter got no relief as Euro weakened under a
The falls in Shanghai rebar futures eased on Friday but they are still perilously close to breaking the seven-year support line: A nice chart here from ANZ on Chinese FE inventories: Oodles of steel and port stocks climbing at a rate that suggests 70mt of oversupply in the global seaborne market. When the restocking tops