Blogotariat

Oz Blog News Commentary

Articles from MacroBusiness

Is the household income shock over?

June 6, 2025 - 08:00 -- Admin

Australians experienced the developed world’s largest decline in real per capita household disposable income, which fell by more than 8% between mid-2022 and mid-2024. Wednesday’s national accounts release from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) revealed that the income recession is over, with real per capita household disposable income jumping by 1.8% in the year

Macro Afternoon

June 5, 2025 - 16:30 -- Admin

Stock markets were quite mixed in the Asian session today without a solid lead from Wall Street as concerns over rare earth metal supply held back Japanese equities while currency markets are awaiting tonight’s ECB meeting. Most of the undollar’s remain in a strong position vs the almost dethroned King Dollar with the Aussie about

History repeats with “liar loan” mortgage scandal

June 5, 2025 - 13:30 -- Admin

Westpac was caught up in a responsible lending scandal in 2018, where it admitted to breaching responsible lending laws by approving over 10,000 home loans that should not have been automatically approved. The bank used an automated loan assessment system that relied on the Household Expenditure Measure (HEM)—a benchmark for living expenses—rather than evaluating customers’

Mixed signals on Australia’s population growth

June 5, 2025 - 13:00 -- Admin

The Australian Bureau of Statistics’ (ABS) population data has become a lottery. The population estimates in the Q3 2024 and Q4 2024 national accounts releases (here and here) differed wildly from the official quarterly population statistics released a few weeks later. The Q1 2025 national accounts, released on Wednesday, implied that Australia’s population growth accelerated

Gold charges for new high

June 5, 2025 - 12:30 -- Admin

The Market Ear on one winner as US growth fades. Breaking out Gold extending the move above the short term trend line. So far the bounce on the 50 day and the longer term trend line have been pretty much perfect. A close here, or higher, and we will start talking about all time highs.

Australian politicians love the net zero distraction

June 5, 2025 - 12:00 -- Admin

By Stephen Saunders  Here’s Mr Albanese, pretending to re-fly the Coalition’s east-coast gas reservation, outing his 40-year emissions-rich “surprise” for Woodside NW Shelf gas, while smirking “it’s net zero, not zero”.  At Election 2025, Peter Dutton kicked the own-goal of nuclear-net-zero. Reappointed Albanese Labor climate-Svengali Chris Bowen still spruiks 43% emissions reduction towards net zero.

More and more rate cuts coming

June 5, 2025 - 11:30 -- Admin

Poor old McGoo, does it again it. From Goldman: Overall, the late-2024 pick-up in Australian economic momentum looks to have faltered in 1Q2025, raising downside risks to the RBA’s (recently downgraded) forecast consumer recovery. Looking ahead, a substantial RBA easing cycle will be required to spur a sustainable growth into private demand in our view,

There are better ways to curb superannuation concessions

June 5, 2025 - 11:00 -- Admin

Earlier this week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese suggested that Labor would negotiate with the Coalition on superannuation reforms, raising the prospect that it would abandon its proposal to tax unrealised capital gains. However, Treasurer Jim Chalmers on Wednesday slammed the door on that notion, stating that Labor would strike a deal with the Greens that

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