The Guardian’s Peter Mares penned a spurious article claiming that building smaller homes would boost Australia’s productivity. Walking past a building site in Sydney recently, I was struck by the pitch for the new homes under construction. “Outrageously spacious”, proclaimed a hoarding spruiking apartments with “2 living areas, 2 dining areas, 3 car parks, 4
Another positive day for stock markets here in Asia as risk switches back to on following the big rebound on Wall Street from Friday night although local stocks struggled to make headway. The USD is trying to fight back as it remains weak against Euro and Pound Sterling although is pushing higher against Yen this
Deutsche with the note. How much further can the selloff go? Viewing the selloff through the lens of equity positioning, from the post-election peak in December near the top of its long-run historical band (0.77, 92nd percentile), positioning has been cut sharply, but only to modestly underweight levels (z score -0.36, 26th percentile). Discretionary positioning has fallen
As we know, energy ministers have kicked a decision on whether or not to take up Victoria’s insane proposal to publically underwrite LNG imports until July. To give you some idea of how crazy this idea is, I have made the following chart which compares an average East Coast gas price with LNG imports according
The greatest parliamentary liar of our times, Treasurer Jim “chicken” Chalmers, is lying again, this time about the Trump boogieman. Jim Chalmers will use new OECD and Treasury forecasts to amplify major risks to Australia’s economic recovery ahead of next week’s budget, with the Paris-based organisation warning that global inflation will stay higher for longer
I have spent years outlining the problems of free trade agreements (FTAs), which I learned while working as the Australian Treasury’s trade analyst and informally participating in discussions for the Australian-US FTA (AUSFTA). The first pitfall is that Australia’s FTAs were mostly negotiated in secret from the public, but opened to corporations and industry groups
The Australian Greens have urged the federal government to pass several flagship measures before the federal election in order to “Dutton-proof” them. Greens Leader Adam Bandt wrote to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Friday, offering to support three signature reforms if they are introduced in parliament before the May election. This includes Labor’s plan to
The Market Ear asks the question. US consumer: What’s happening? This is a GS basket of stocks called “middle income discretionary consumer basket”. Consumer discretionary was the worst performing sector of all sectors last week leading to calls for recession and doom. Betting against the US consumer is generally not a good long-term strategy, but
Over the weekend, veteran budget watcher Chris Richardson published a stinging critique of Australia’s “third world” tax system, which punishes workers and collects too little tax from efficient sources. “Australia may be a first-world nation, but we increasingly have a third-rate tax system”, Richardson wrote. “It last got a spit and polish a quarter of
The Chinese depression rolls on. Here’s the data wrap from Goldman. January-February activity data generally came in stronger than market expectations, although the magnitude of beat was modest. Industrial production (IP) growth moderated to 5.9% yoy in January-February from 6.2% yoy in December, faring much better than export growth which fell meaningfully in January-February. Fixed