DXY is fading away. AUD is rising. CNY helping. Commodities took a breather. EM yawn. Junk better. As yields eased. Driving stocks. The Japanese shock appears contained in a currency sense. Japanese public debt is around $14tr, so you can imagine that any meaningful move in interest rates, especially a rapid one, is going to
Ballooning state debt, soaring taxes, a stagnating economy, and rising crime have made me highly critical of the Victorian economy. One area where the state government has performed well is housing affordability. As illustrated below, Melbourne dwelling values have risen by only 23% since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020. This compares
Ballooning state debt, soaring taxes, a stagnating economy, and rising crime have made me highly critical of the Victorian economy. One area where the state government has performed well is housing affordability. As illustrated below, Melbourne dwelling values have risen by only 23% since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020. This compares
A little bit of volatility across some risk markets here in Asia but generally equities finished where they started with the weak overnight lead from Wall Street as traders anticipate the upcoming rate cut at the Fed’s December meeting. The Australian dollar is still holding above the 65 cent level against USD as we get
One of the negative outcomes from the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA), which took effect in 2005, was that it increased patent and copyright terms, raising the price of drugs and copyrighted products. Thomas Faunce from the Australian National University (ANU) assessed that AUSFTA “undermined Australia’s PBS” by “allowing the US to alter the
IEEFA wants Albo to waste another $1bn on green iron. As Australia pours $1 billion into its Green Iron Investment Fund, it can learn important lessons from the US and EU, where several low-emissions steel projects backed by capital grants were subsequently cancelled or delayed. Projects with a “gas first, green hydrogen later” approach struggled,
China printed a bit of inflation in October, but it was pretty obviously seasonal. There is bugger all momentum in prices. The PPI was worse, though it also fell over the line in the month. Anti-involution has dented deflation but it is temporary. Bloomberg has some great charts on the great deflation. Rise of
It is time to shutter the ABC. Flag burning should be criminalised, immigration should be capped based on housing supply, and the ABC and SBS should be sold and replaced by a taxpayer-funded broadcaster only for regional and outback Australia, according to resolutions to be debated at the Liberal National Party’s state council this weekend.
Last week, I reported an AFR analysis of 16 financial reports from federal agencies, which revealed that 14 had unbudgeted increases in staff expenses totaling $841 million. Budget watcher Chris Richardson warned that the wage blowout could threaten the federal budget’s March forecast of a $42 billion deficit for this financial year, as could the billions
With the election of Zohran Mamdani to the office of Mayor of New York, an event thought practically impossible just a few decades ago has come to pass: the most populous city in the United States and the centre of the financial world has an avowed socialist as its mayor. His victory speech possessed themes