Giving people who don’t pay a lot in taxes even more money is even more popular. So in that sense, the arrival of thousands of dollars in government cash to various Aussie households will ‘work’ in the sense that it distracts people from the ongoing disaster that is the world financial crisis. “Look honey! Free bread. Let’s go to the circus!” Please note that shuffling a bit of cash around will not lessen a national debt-to-GDP ratio of around 140%. Nor does it do much to create long-term jobs…
February 4th, 2009 | Dan Denning | 18 comments | ContinuedAll Posts Tagged With: "household"
Australian House Prices Are Severely and Seriously Unaffordable
Let’s consider a new study on global housing affordability by Performance Urban Planning. The report concluded that Australia has the most unaffordable housing of all the nations surveyed. Not only that, but according to the report, Australia doesn’t even have a single urban area in which housing is merely “moderately unaffordable”…
January 27th, 2009 | Dan Denning | 183 comments | Continued
The Swift and Violent Rise of Oil
If you want to know why oil prices could double this year, or how $52 trillion in total global debt will utterly suffocate central bank attempts to resuscitate bank lending, or Ben Bernanke’s secret plan to turn trillions of dollars worth of toxic assets into shareholder equity, read on! Two topics in one day! Why are oil prices lying? How much air is left in the credit bubble?…
January 20th, 2009 | Dan Denning | 10 comments | Continued
Hoarders and Destroyers
Just when you thought it was all baked into the cake…whammo! Another pie to the face. Get ready for more pies. In fact, you could take your pick of pies this morning. The most painful pie was yesterday’s 4.3% decline on the All Ords. It was the worst day of the year for Australian stocks. Unemployment called in at 4.5% and said it would be ticking higher this year too. Given last night’s news stream from East and West, it does not look like a happy Friday…
January 16th, 2009 | Dan Denning | 4 comments | Continued
Lower Bond Yields by Any Means Necessary
The benefits of merely mentioning the strategy started showing up right away. Yields were down and prices were up as traders loaded into U.S. bonds. All aboard the Fed’s Bond Yield Express! Destination Zero! You can see below that the current yield curve is more of an on-ramp. And the only reason it looks moderately curvy is the scale on the y-axis. Read on…
December 17th, 2008 | Dan Denning | 0 comments | Continued
Aussie Housing Market Actually Leads the U.S. by Three Years
There as an interesting contrast of positions on the state of the Australian housing market over the last few days. First, RBA Deputy Governor Ric Battellino gave a speech in Sydney earlier this week in which he gave three reasons why the Australian housing market is different than the U.S. market. Don’t worry about a crash here, he seemed to be saying. Battellino says the Aussie housing market…
October 31st, 2008 | Dan Denning | 17 comments | Continued
More Subprime Thinking
The subprime economy and the problems it brought us are the result of subprime thinking…
July 28th, 2008 | Bill Bonner | 1 comment | Continued