The central bank would be insane to hike this week, and I don’t believe that it will. The energy shock that is overrunning Australia is going to shut down the economy in record time. My sense is that a panic shutdown is already underway as Australians realise the Iran war will cut fuel supplies by
When all is said and done, the RBA can do 3 things this Tuesday It can lift rates It can leave rates alone It can drop them The last is the easiest to dismiss. In February, the RBA told us, rightly, that inflation was running hotter than they liked and that a rate hike
This month’s consumer sentiment survey by Westpac and the Melbourne Institute suggested that homebuyers have gone cold on Sydney property. As illustrated below by Justin Fabo from Antipodean Macro, homebuyer sentiment has fallen sharply in Sydney, as has dwelling value growth: Recent auction data is also gloomy. Last week’s final auction clearance rate for Sydney was
By Stephen Saunders Leaving Anthony Albanese as a world outlier, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has stymied Canada’s population growth to ease the housing pain. Sigh, his Australian visit was all framed around “middle powers” vs Trump. Australia endures historic highs in mass migration and historic lows in housing affordability. But the elite narrative is
International reading: US to release 172 million barrels of oil from strategic petroleum reserve – Reuters Iran says it’s ready for a long war that would ‘destroy’ global economy – Lemonde Saudi oil giant warns of ‘catastrophic consequences’ from Iran war as three commercial ships are ‘attacked’ in Strait of Hormuz and Tehran tries to
The story for February was the surging Australian dollar running into incredible profit growth forecasts. Profit forecasts got stronger throughout the month, helping share prices higher, but for Australian investors, the rising AUD offset all of those gains. The key question in March is whether the profit growth (15%+ forecast for each of the next two years)
The Centre for Population’s latest Population Statement forecast that Australia’s capital cities will swell by 10,850,000 people over the next 41 years. Melbourne (9.1 million) and Sydney (8.5 million) are projected to become megacities by the mid-2060s, while Brisbane is tipped to grow by around 1.8 million to 4.6 million, and Perth by 1.7 million
Rising energy costs drive fertiliser prices up because modern fertiliser production is fundamentally an energy-intensive industrial process. The link is direct, mechanical, and unavoidable: energy is both a feedstock and a fuel. For nitrogen fertilisers (i.e., urea, ammonium nitrate, and ammonia), natural gas is the single biggest input cost, used as a feedstock in the
Joe Walker interviewed former immigration department bureaucrat-turned-influencer Abul Rizvi last year. During the interview, Rizvi openly acknowledged that slowing population ageing accounted for approximately “80%” of the motivation behind the 2001 changes that significantly increased Australia’s intake of migrants, particularly international students. WALKER: And so back in the late 90s, early 2000s, when you were
There is no hubris like BHP hubris. When you put yourself in front of an angry dictator you’ve been gouging for twenty years, eventually you’ll get yours. China has widened a ban on BHP iron ore for the second time in two weeks, escalating a months-long contract dispute with the world’s third-largest supplier of the