Iron ore soared overnight thanks to Jay Powell. Unsustainable. Steel demand in China remains down year to date, but up for the week year on year. Steel production is far above last year. But this is misleading. My Steel is supposed to, but obviously doesn’t, cover EAF. Steel recycling has collapsed. In raw volume terms
Goldman with the note. As we flagged in a note earlier this year, spending on the NDIS has risen from 0% of GDP a decade ago to almost 2% of GDP currently (~A$50bn), around double initial projections, with the overshoot largely driven by higher take-up rates among children with autism and psychosocial conditions. While the
There are two key migration data sets published by the ABS. These are regularly utilised by analysts, the media, and the government. There is the official quarterly net overseas migration (NOM) data, which is published on a six- to nine-month delay. The latest official data available is for Q4 2024, eight months ago, and the
There was the Henry Tax Review, left gathering dust on the shelf. Now, there is the heavily prescribed Productivity Roundtable, which will do likewise. A cowardly Albo has ruled everything out. The Australian. Anthony Albanese has laid down his conditions for economic reform in an era of growing polarisation, declaring any policy changes need to
Australia is slowly transforming into 1984’s Ministry of Truth. First, we saw the Albanese government backflip and announce that Australians under 16 would be banned from accessing YouTube. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese also wants to make Australia’s draconian media ban global. Albanese announced that he will promote Australia’s world-first social media age ban and encourage
Australian consumers have been trapped in a recession. The March quarter national accounts showed that real per capita household consumption has been negative for seven consecutive quarters on an annual basis, down 2.4% from its peak. As illustrated below by CBA, the Australian consumer is the largest component of the economy. And the sluggish pace
Are we getting somewhere? The Australian. The top Abu Dhabi executive spearheading its $30bn Santos takeover has opened crunch talks with the Australian Workers Union which took aim at Santos’s venture in Gladstone for sucking up third party gas to meet its LNG export contracts. Mohamed Al Aryani, president of international gas at ADNOC’s XRG,
DXY is down, down. AUD is up, but it’s still a grind. Lead boots to the moon! Commods too. Big bear intact. EM launch! Junk vertical! Yields pounded! Stocks roar! So many exclamation marks in one post means it can only be dovish Fed. Jay Powell at the bottom of the Jackson Hole. Putting the
Risk markets loved Fed Chair Powell’s long awaited speech at the central back fest at Jackson Hole with a dovish tilt seemingly suggesting that the Federal Reserve will cut rates in September, but only if inflation remains contained from the Trump regime’s tariffs. The hint gave Wall Street the signal to buy after five straight
Since U.S. President Donald Trump kicked off the current round of trade tensions with China back in April with the ‘Liberation Day’ announcement of widespread tariffs on Chinese-made goods, Beijing has responded by aggressively limiting the exports of vital rare earth minerals not only to the United States but also to the rest of the