Cameron Kusher from PropTrack posted the below chart on Twitter (X) showing the relationship between the official cash rate and annual dwelling approvals: According to Kusher, “the last time the cash rate was higher than it is today (Nov 2011), there were 158,268 dwelling approvals over the year. Over the year to Apr 2024, there
The Liberal Party has a terrible history of energy market bumbling, not to mention climate change denial and policy wreckage: It destroyed Labor’s carbon price, shifting the cost of transition from polluters to households. Tony Abbott’s Direct Action did nothing. SocMo’s “gas-led recovery” might have had promise but it was only amied at the Narrabri
Life is cheap in the Third World and the Allan Victorian government is onto it: Doctors warn elective surgery lists will balloon due to budget cuts as hospitals are forced to scale back operations to meet financial demands from the cash-strapped Victorian government. …The Australian Medical Association said hospitals across Victoria had advised staff of
The AI bubble case from The Market Ear. The AI decade ahead Leopold Aschenbrenner — formerly part of OpenAI’s Superalignment team, now founder of an investment firm focused on AGI — has posted a massive, provocative essay putting a long lens on AI’s future. 1. “Trust the trendlines … The trendlines are intense, and they
The ABS has released the May CPI inflation indicator, which is certain to put the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) on edge. The CPI indicator jumped to 4.0% in the 12 months to May 2024, up from 3.6% in April: The result was significantly above the 3.8% expected by economists. The measure excluding volatiles and
Goldman with the charts. There is a slight improvement in tier 1&2 property sales but they comprise only 25% of the market: Inventories simply can’t get any worse: Completions are going off the cliff. It should get worse into 2025: It’s still fugly out there.
Last year, Home Affairs Minister Claire O’Neil lamented the temporariness of Australia’s migration system, arguing that it was holding the nation back. “Today, really for the first time in our modern history, our uncapped, unplanned temporary program is the centrepiece and driver of our migration system. This simple fact is the source of huge problems”,
Shanghai rebar continues to sink. It is in the support area that has held it up for seven years. It is dragging global scrap (blue line) down with it, slowly: And iron ore: Dalian iron ore is trying to rebound but doesn’t look well: Scuttlebutt is weak: Hopes of more economic stimulus in China resurfaced
The latest Westpac Melbourne-Institute Survey shows a massive disconnect between Australians’ perceptions of home values and their buying habits. As illustrated in the following chart, the “time to buy a dwelling” index is hovering close to a record low: Nevertheless, the “house price expectations” index is the highest since May 2021 and close to a
The AEMO is out with its biennial roadmap of the energy transition and it is ugly: The possibility that replacement generation is not available when coal power stations retire is real and growing, and a risk that must be avoided. The sooner firmed renewables are connected, the more secure the energy transition will be. That