The federal election campaign has seen both sides promise to use the federal budget to deliver another house price boom. Labor has undertaken to establish a state-sponsored subprime mortgage scheme by allowing all first-time home buyers to purchase a home with only a 5% down payment, with the government (taxpayers) guaranteeing 15% of the borrowers’
Saul Kavonic, head of energy research at MST Marquee, is about as as conflicted as any analyst in Australian commentary. The teals and Greens are sheltered from the realities of our regions and industries that drive our economy. Under a minority government, their ideologically-driven energy agenda risks taking us further away from engineering realities. They
Australia has some of the most generous post-study work rights for overseas students, as shown in the table below. These generous post-study work rights are especially sought by “students” from South Asia, who prioritise post-study work rights and prospects for permanent residency over most other considerations. Last week, higher education expert Andrew Norton released research
The ABC this week published an article explaining how the Australian Greens have rebranded into the “party of renters”. The ABC noted that Greens leader Adam Bandt has been appearing at press conferences wearing a T-shirt saying “FIGHTING FOR RENTERS” and the party’s top priority this election is fighting for renters rights. “We’ve got people
Proponents of mass immigration claim that it improves living standards by increasing productivity and ameliorating the aging of the population. For example, modelling by McDonald and Temple in 2010 claimed that an annual migration intake between 160,000 and 220,000 is best for Australia and would increase GDP per capita by 12% more in 2053 versus
Short squeeze on deck. The Market Ear. Nasty McElligott sums it up well. This is the scenario nobody (few) wanted: “…positioning and leverage exposure de-risked, Macro-Bearish and underweighted the “Mag8” U.S. Equities in general vs R.O.W. …but now suddenly, it’s MegaCap Tech Secular Growth which is awkwardly then leading to the Upside , in a
CoreLogic’s snapshot of housing affordability across Australia showed that the percentage of gross annual household income required to service the median rent hit a record high of 32.9% at the end of December 2024: In a similar vein, PropTrack’s latest rental affordability report showed that Australian households at the end of 2024 could afford to rent
DXY is looking for a short squeeze. AUD is holding so far. Lead boots are Ok. Oil is a favour to all. Metals say no to growth. Big miners = big bear. EM yawn. Junk says no to growth. Warning! The curve flattened. Stocks partying on VIX compression. Which is driving the DXY bid. Oversold!
The Trump regime continues to goose the stock market with non-existent reports of trade deals with “hundreds of countries” while the economic reality continues to set in as the latest initial jobless claims spiked while the ISM manufacturing survey went into contraction territory. Trump may need to up his Macca’s order as well as the
The narrative that renewables are cheaper than baseload power is a myth. Building an intermittent renewable electricity system will be incredibly expensive and inevitably increase power bills. The global empirical evidence is clear: the higher the share of renewables in an energy system, the higher the electricity cost: The reasons should be obvious. Renewables have low