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Oz Blog News Commentary
MacroBusiness Wednesday, August 20, 2025 - 07:00 Source

DXY is warming up. AUD was pounded with risk. CNY is fine. Gold shaky. Metals warning. Mining bear fully intact. EM rolled. Junk is fine. Yields too.   Stocks were hit. There wasn’t much going on to explain the sudden nerves. I put it down to the approach of Jackson Hole. Societe General. The title

The post Australian dollar hammered with risk appeared first on MacroBusiness.

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Your Democracy Wednesday, August 20, 2025 - 03:03 Source

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer advised Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky on how to avoid another confrontation at the White House, NBC News reported on Monday.

Zelensky is in Washington for negotiations with US President Donald Trump and Kiev’s key European backers. His previous visit in February was cut short after a heated exchange with Trump and US Vice President J.D. Vance in the Oval Office.

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MacroBusiness Wednesday, August 20, 2025 - 00:05 Source

The solution to the rental crisis is being played out across Australia’s two most similar nations: Canada and New Zealand. Canada experienced a record rise in rents in response to the largest surge in immigration in the nation’s history. Last year, the Canadian government announced that it would freeze population growth for three years in

The post Want cheaper rents? Cut immigration. appeared first on MacroBusiness.

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Your Democracy Tuesday, August 19, 2025 - 17:17 Source

Advocates of ever-higher Pentagon spending frequently argue that we must throw more money at the department to “support the troops.” But recent budget proposals and a new research paper issued by the Quincy Institute and the Costs of War Project at Brown University suggest otherwise.

 

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MacroBusiness Tuesday, August 19, 2025 - 16:30 Source

Asian share markets are flat or slightly down across the board in another very quiet session as macro news remains dominated by the farcical White House talks between Europe, Ukraine and the Trump regime. The moves to watch this week will be the Jackson Hole conference on Friday with Fed Chair Powell expected to make

The post Macro Afternoon appeared first on MacroBusiness.

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Renew Economy Tuesday, August 19, 2025 - 15:00 Source
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Renew Economy Tuesday, August 19, 2025 - 14:56 Source
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Renew Economy Tuesday, August 19, 2025 - 14:43 Source
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Renew Economy Tuesday, August 19, 2025 - 14:40 Source
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Renew Economy Tuesday, August 19, 2025 - 14:03 Source
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MacroBusiness Tuesday, August 19, 2025 - 14:00 Source

New Zealand’s economy continues to face severe challenges. As illustrated below by Justin Fabo from Antipodean Macro, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand’s GDP growth nowcast is pointing to a 0.2% decline in real GDP in Q2 2025. New Zealand’s labour market is also in dire straits, with unemployment and underutilisation rates soaring to near-decade

The post Recession alarm sounds for Reserve Bank appeared first on MacroBusiness.

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THE BLOT REPORT Tuesday, August 19, 2025 - 13:49 Source

I have been posting stuff on the Blotreport for over eight years now, and I receive an enormous amount of spam, sometimes up to 60 a day, which my wonderful spam filter invariably catches. When I started back in early 2017, a fair proportion of the spam was porn, both gay and straight. That eventually faded away and was replaced, strangely, by several other themes, including a spate of “buy a house in Bali” spam. That was fairly short-lived, and was replaced even more bizarrely by “get a diploma in Moscow, which faded fairly recently, although the occasional one still crops up.

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MacroBusiness Tuesday, August 19, 2025 - 13:30 Source

At the end of 2024, CoreLogic (now Cotality) reported that the national dwelling value to income ratio and the percentage of income required to service a new mortgage were tracking at a record high. Cotality’s July housing report showed that the median dwelling value across Australia’s capital cities was $926,854 at the end of July.

The post Australian house prices hit affordability ceiling appeared first on MacroBusiness.

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MacroBusiness Tuesday, August 19, 2025 - 13:00 Source

The Market Ear on bearish seasonality. Two-faced market Market sentiment surveys and hedge fund positioning data continue to be far from exuberant, but there is of course still an insane amount of buying going on. Let’s have a look at the latest in terms of flow and positioning data out over the weekend, and why

The post Get your hedges appeared first on MacroBusiness.

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MacroBusiness Tuesday, August 19, 2025 - 12:30 Source

RBC with the note. As anticipated, the Anchorage meeting between President Trump and Putin yielded no serious deal specifics but plenty of smiles and positive sound bites signaling diplomatic progress. Ahead of Friday, we noted that the prospects of meaningful sanctions relief stemming from this summit were minimal, due in large part to the fact

The post Ukraine war progress slow appeared first on MacroBusiness.

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MacroBusiness Tuesday, August 19, 2025 - 12:00 Source

DXY is refusing to go away. AUD is looking shaky. CNY stable. Gold and oil becalmed. Metals are troubled. Mining bear is back. EM stocks are filling the upside breakout. Junk fine. Yields firming a little. Stocks stuck. Morgan Stanley has a take I agree with. The good news was tariff price pressures were muted

The post Fed hawks to savage Australian dollar appeared first on MacroBusiness.

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MacroBusiness Tuesday, August 19, 2025 - 11:30 Source

South Australia is held up as the nation’s renewable energy leader with the highest penetration of wind and solar generation in the nation. South Australia shut down its last coal-fired power plant in 2016 and now generates more than 70% of its electricity from renewable sources, mainly wind and solar. However, the shutting down of

The post South Australia a prelude to nation’s energy future appeared first on MacroBusiness.

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Renew Economy Tuesday, August 19, 2025 - 11:18 Source
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MacroBusiness Tuesday, August 19, 2025 - 11:16 Source

Wetspac with the note. Westpac Consumer Sentiment Index up 5.7% to 98.5 in August. • RBA’s third rate cut for the year provides a clear boost. • Long period of pessimism finally coming to an end. • Consumers less anxious about finances, cautiously positive on economy. • Sentiment lift broad-based, not just confined to those

The post Rate cut sends house price hopes berserk appeared first on MacroBusiness.

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Renew Economy Tuesday, August 19, 2025 - 11:15 Source
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MacroBusiness Tuesday, August 19, 2025 - 11:00 Source

Amidst the release of the Reserve Bank’s August Statement on Monetary Policy and the Albanese government’s upcoming roundtable summit, the issue of productivity growth has become a source of great debate and some controversy. On Twitter (also known as X), Nationals Senator Matt Canavan posted a chart from the Australian Financial Review showing productivity growth

The post The great productivity debate appeared first on MacroBusiness.

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Your Democracy Tuesday, August 19, 2025 - 10:52 Source

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky hailed Monday’s negotiations with US President Donald Trump as the best meeting they have ever had.

Zelensky met with Trump at the White House, alongside several leaders from Western Europe. The summit came three days after Trump held his first face-to-face meeting since 2019 with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska.

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Renew Economy Tuesday, August 19, 2025 - 10:46 Source
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MacroBusiness Tuesday, August 19, 2025 - 10:30 Source

The ferrous complex has flamed out as we approach the Beijing warmongering season. Channel checks by Goldman are OK. Orderbook trend- The forward orderbooks of most steel mills were mostly flat MoM in Aug, in line with seasonality. High-frequency weekly data suggests current steel demand down by 2.8% yoy for construction steel and up 5.1%

The post Iron ore fades into Beijing warmongering appeared first on MacroBusiness.

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MacroBusiness Tuesday, August 19, 2025 - 10:00 Source

At the end of 2024, Australian rental affordability was tracking a record low, according to Cotality (formerly Corelogic), with the median household required to spend 31% of their income on renting the median home. Cotality’s latest quarterly rental also reported that national median rents have risen by 43% over the last five years, causing the average

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MacroBusiness Tuesday, August 19, 2025 - 09:30 Source

Will Idiot Albo and Chicken Chalmers do something? AFR. BlueScope chief executive Mark Vassella has warned that large parts of Australia’s manufacturing sector could be forced to shut because of high gas prices, which also threaten the steelmaker’s plans to revive the loss-making Whyalla plant. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Future Made in Australia strategy to

The post Bluescope punches gas cartel in the face appeared first on MacroBusiness.

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MacroBusiness Tuesday, August 19, 2025 - 09:00 Source

Last night was all about geopolitics with an absence of economic releases for markets to pivot on, the result being a staid session on Wall Street and across the Atlantic as European stocks pulled back slightly. Markets are waiting for the Jackson Hole conference later in the week with the USD pushing slightly higher overnight

The post Macro Morning appeared first on MacroBusiness.

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MacroBusiness Tuesday, August 19, 2025 - 08:00 Source

Nearly a decade ago, in 2016, then Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) Chairman, Rod Sims, delivered a speech on the growing concentration of Australian industry. New research undertaken by Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) economists has concluded that increased market concentration in some sectors of the economy has weighed on productivity. The RBA economists found

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Renew Economy Tuesday, August 19, 2025 - 06:02 Source
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Your Democracy Tuesday, August 19, 2025 - 05:55 Source

Following his meeting with Ukraine’s Zelensky, US President Donald Trump declared that there are decent odds of finally ending the Ukrainian conflict.

He added that:

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Zelensky want to resolve the Ukrainian conflict

European leaders also want peace in the region

Zelensky did not give a clear answer whether he is ready for territorial concessions

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