Posts Tagged ‘RBA’

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Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA)- property spruiker?

Monday, October 4th, 2010

In page 12 of the September issue of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA)’s Financial Stability Review, you will find that this chart is presented:

Graph 21-Dwelling Prices

Graph 21-Dwelling Prices

According to Alan Kohler, one of the most prominent financial talking head in Australia, this chart shows that

Australia has not had the biggest rise in house prices in the past 8 years, New Zealand has

So, what’s wrong with this analysis? The answer can be found on the last paragraph of page 18 of How To Foolproof Yourself Against Salesmen & Media Bias.

Is the RBA spruiking property? Well, take a read at this paragraph in this article:

So who are the people most likely to snap up investment properties? Interestingly, it appears that Reserve Bank officials are the keenest investors in rental properties. ?We are not sure whether to be relieved or concerned that of the five central bankers who were brave enough to note their occupation on their tax form, all five had an investment property!?, the report says. ?Of the 200 occupations classified by the Australian Tax Office, the employees at the Reserve Bank topped the list with respect to their investment property exposure.?

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Posted in Property | 4 Comments »

Divergent view of Australian economy between domestic and foreign investors

Sunday, September 5th, 2010

Back in If the Australian economy ?booms? further, how is it setting the stage for a bigger bust later?, we wrote that

? as Australian-based investors, we are looking into increasing our allocations to investments that have greater exposure overseas

Increasingly, foreign investors seem to be concurring with our outlook. For example, as we wrote in What do overseas property investors see that Australian property investors don?t? foreign investors are getting more nervous about Australia?s housing market.

As this article in The Australian reported,

The Weekend Australian spoke to senior traders in New York, London and Hong Kong to gauge the appetite for investing in Australia. The overwhelming response was that global institutional investors are wary, despite the economy having emerged as one of the best performing in the world and avoiding a recession.

In fact, the debt market is predicting a small chance of interest rates cut next year. Currently, financial markets is pricing in a 40% of a rate cut of 0.25% by the first half of 2011. You can be sure that if the RBA ever cut rates, it will be in the context of bad news in the economy. As we wrote in What will happen if RBA cuts to zero?,

If Australia?s interest rates ever reach zero, it will happen in the context of a hard landing or even a depression.

Yet, on the other hand, forecasters in Australia are expecting that rates will continue to rise in 2011. For those of us residing in Australia, it is very clear from observing the mainstream media reports that the mood is pretty optimistic.

Since foreign investors have less of a stake in Australia than domestic investors, they will have the attitude of shooting first and asking questions later when they see trouble. That will translate to volatility in the AUD and stock market. That in itself can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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Posted in Looking Forward | 5 Comments »

Hidden weak foundations covered by high tide of debt

Thursday, June 17th, 2010

Today, we read this interesting article, Nothing can save Spain,

"Greece is not Spain", has been how European politicians have been trying to reassure the markets. Once analysts had a closer look at the Spanish figures they concluded that this was indeed true ? Spain?s troubles are much worse.

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In fact, before the crisis struck the Spanish were seen as Europe?s model citizens. Public debt was low, the economy grew rapidly, and in 2007 the government could still report a healthy budget surplus of 1.9 per cent of GDP. There was no sign of grave economic mismanagement, let alone on a scale comparable to the Greek basket case.

So what turned the Spanish miracle into an economy on the abyss? How can a country be regarded as a role model one day and almost a failed state the next?

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But whereas in Greece the lower interest rates were taken as an opportunity to incur greater public deficits, in Spain it was the private sector which accepted the invitation to go deeper into debt.

One sector in particular benefited from this injection of cheap cash thanks to the euro: real estate. For many years, Spanish house prices only knew one way, and that was up. Between 1998 and 2007, property prices increased by about 10 per cent per year on average.

When the global financial crisis struck, the bubble burst. Since 2008, Spanish house prices have declined 15 per cent and there is no end in sight to the correction. Some real estate experts are predicting further falls of up to 35 per cent.

Suddenly, the weak foundations of Spain?s economy are exposed, especially its over-reliance on debt coupled with low productivity.

Consequently, the pristine clean Spanish public debt turned into deficit as unemployment rate soared to 20% and bad debts plagued the banking system.

Note that we highlighted the word ?suddenly? in the final paragraph.

The key to remember is that the economy looked rosy until something suddenly gave way. The high tide of debt kept the weak foundations hidden under the water. Finally, when the debt tide receded, the weak foundations were exposed. With the weak foundations in full view, the financial market reacted in horror accordingly.

Spain?s situation reminds us very much of Australia. As the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) governor hinted in a speech last week,

Markets can happily tolerate something for an extended period without much reaction, then suddenly react very strongly as some trigger brings the issue into clearer focus.

Again, we highlighted the word "suddenly.? As we wrote in Serious vulnerability in the Australian banking system, there is a serious weak underbelly in the Australian economy. All we need is a trigger for all eyes to be on its weak foundation (see Will there be an AUD currency crisis?).

However, many pundits in the mainstream media are still putting on Turkey Thinking (see our book, How To Foolproof Yourself Against Salesmen & Media Bias for more information on Turkey Thinking).

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Posted in Looking Forward, Market Observations | 4 Comments »

Growing structural unemployment in Australia

Thursday, June 10th, 2010

Today, the Australian stock market and the Aussie dollar performed relatively well. Alan Kohler, the financial news commentator in ABC News gave the reason why- China and Germany?s industrial production, Australia?s job ?boom? and so on. Incidentally, this is an example of narrative fallacy and lazy induction as described in our book, How To Foolproof Yourself Against Salesmen & Media Bias. Anyway, we will leave you to follow up on the issue of media bias.

But first, we will look at this news article,

Australian employment jumped a strong 26,900 in May to extend a remarkable run of jobs gains that suggests wage pressure could build earlier than thought and require yet further action on interest rates.

That article was published just before 5 pm. Coincidentally, in the streets of Sydney, another news article reported,

Thousands of protesters marched through the streets of Sydney’s CBD today, waving colourful banners and chanting demands for equal pay for women.

This is the sort of things that the RBA fears and give them a reason to raise interest rates. However, though the falling aggregate unemployment rate looks good, it masks a hidden problem. The problem is of the same nature as we described in Overproduction or mis-configuration of production?,

This is the key insight from the Austrian School of economic thought. Over-production or over-investment is not the problem. Rather, the trouble lies in the mis-configuration of production and mal-investments

In the same way, it is not the aggregate level of unemployment that tells the whole story. Rather, if unemployment is to be a threat to the Australian economy, it will be its configuration that is the cause. Recently, we saw this article, Recovery doesn’t extend to long-term jobless,

LONG-TERM unemployment continues to rise sharply and has increased for 18 straight months, despite the better performance of the economy and the overall improvement in th1e labour market.

A Herald analysis shows that Centrelink payments to people without a job for more than a year have risen by 27 per cent, or nearly 72,000, to 334,244 people in the year to April.

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While the economic stimulus package has been credited with saving Australia from a deep recession, there remain pockets of deep disadvantage.

This mis-configuration between surplus supply of unemployable labour and shortage of employed labour is what economists call ?structural unemployment.? Also, according to the ABS, the youth unemployment rate in Australia is 3 times the national average. This is another large pool of structural unemployment.

As that article continued,

A senior analyst at the University of Sydney’s Workplace Research Centre, Mike Rafferty, said it appeared that as the economy had improved it was people moving jobs or within jobs that had benefited.

”The people who are benefiting first are perhaps those that already have jobs and are able to move into better jobs or perhaps from part-time to full-time work,” he said. ”It’s not the same picture for the people not in the labour market.”

Since the official unemployment is based on a sample of surveys whereas Centrelink payments is based on the actual number of people seeking welfare, we can argue that the latter presents a more accurate picture of the unemployment situation in Australia.

A rising structural unemployment will increase the drag in the economy as government welfare payment will have to be increased. If this growing trend is not arrested, then this growing pocket of disadvantage will increase, resulting in social problems down the track. Unfortunately, these structural unemployed do not make it to the aggregate figures.

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Posted in Advertising/Affiliates, Economics/Finance | 2 Comments »

Black Swans lurking around Australia’s banking system

Sunday, March 28th, 2010

We must confess, we are getting more and more nervous about the potential for a Black Swan hitting the Australian economy. Particularly, we are looking at a vulnerability in the banking system. Here are some facts about Australian banks:

  1. As at December 2009, around 75% of the Australian mortgage market is held by the Big 4 banks. 50% are held by Commonwealth and Westpac while 25% are held by ANZ and NAB. (source: CoreData’s Australian Mortgage Report Q1 2010)
  2. 60% of Commonwealth’s lending books are residential mortgages.
  3. 50% of Westpac’s lending books are residential mortgages.

Now, here’s an interesting news report from almost two years ago:

The Reserve Bank of Australia has a dark worry about our banks: they get 90 per cent of their cash from each other. If one bank gets into trouble, the Australian financial system could be snap-frozen overnight.

The question is: how true is this today? Since we are not banking analysts here, we are guessing that the situation in 2008 is not much different today. If Commonwealth Bank’s balance sheet is representative of the banking system, then judging from the fact that only around 1% of its total assets are government bonds, it seems that this is still true today. If we have any more information about this peculiar nature of the Australian banking system, we will inform you.

GoldMoney. The best way to buy gold & silverAssuming that this is true, then think of the implication: All it takes to paralyse Australia’s banking system is for some mortgage debts to go bad. Why? That’s because by nature, banks are highly leveraged. As we explained in Effect of write-down on bank balance sheet, bad debts will have more than proportionate effect on the equity of banks. For example, take a look at Commonwealth Bank (CBA) 2009 Annual Report– you can see that its leverage ratio is almost 20 times (total assets of $620.4 billion against $31.4 billion of equity). Among the the $620.4 billion of assets, $473.7 billion are loan assets. That means, if around 6.6% of CBA’s loans go bad (any loans, not just mortgages), 100% of its shareholder equity will be wiped out. In reality, long before that happens, alarm bells will be ringing in APRA (the banking regulator).

At the current state of affairs, the health of Australian banks’ mortgage loan books is very dependent on Australia’s unemployment rate. Once the unemployment goes up to a certain level, a tipping point will be reached whereby mortgages will start to default. When enough mortgages default, any of the Big 4 can become insolvent. With that, the solvency of the banking system will be threatened.? As we wrote in RBA committing logical errors regarding Australian household finance,

As unemployment rises, it will eventually reach a critical mass of prime debts turning sub-prime. Once this critical mass is reached, the deterioration in the Australian economy will accelerate (see what?s happening in the US and UK today).

Of course, economists, politicians, media will harp about how ‘safe’ the banks’ mortgage debts are. A quick read on the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA)’s latest Financial Stability Review will give you a feel that they are not worried about the solvency of mortgage debts.

But that is beside the point.

The issue is not how ‘safe’ or ‘risky’ mortgage debts are- on paper, they are ‘safe.’ The issue is this: Why on earth is Australia concentrating the risks to its banking system? Every financial adviser will counsel you on the importance of diversification. Yet, when it comes to the Australia’s banking system, the opposite is happening.

The greater the concentration of risks, the less the margin for error is. If you live life with less and less margin for error, that’s when accidents are waiting to happen. That is where Black Swans lurks (see Failure to understand Black Swan leads to fallacious thinking).

We are getting more and more nervous.

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Posted in Looking Forward, Market Observations | 13 Comments »

Putting the politicians on notice

Sunday, October 18th, 2009

Over the weekend, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) governor, Glenn Stevens, surprised the financial markets with his unusually hawkish stand on interest rates. In response, as this news article reported,

Financial markets responded by pricing in the most rapid series of interest rate rises Australia has seen for 15 years. Markets now predict that the Reserve board will raise rates at seven consecutive meetings, lifting its cash rate from 3 per cent 10 days ago to 4.75 per cent by May and 5 per cent by July.

As we wrote back in July (see How are central bankers going to deal with asset bubbles?), under the influence of William White of the Bank for International Settlements (which is dubbed as the central bankers’ central bank), there’s a sea-change in central bankers’ thinking. Glenn Steven’s aggressiveness is the result of such a sea-change. Our long-time readers should not be caught by surprise at this, unlike the financial markets.

Economists like Professor Steve Keen reckons that if the RBA really carry through its threat that way, it will be a big mistake. The problem with monetary policy is that it is an extremely blunt instrument. Though rising interest rates can put a brake onto the growth of dangerous debt-fuelled asset bubbles, it will also constrict other sectors of the productive economy as well. The risk is that the productive sectors of the economy may be crippled, bringing down the rest of the economy along with it, and as a result, burst the existing asset bubbles in a spectacular way.

Therefore, what is needed is a very precise tool that can target asset bubbles specifically while leaving the rest of the economy alone. Unfortunately, the RBA do not have the power to to enact such a precise policy tool- they can only change the interest rates lever. On the other hand, the arm of the government that are controlled by politicians has the power to formulate such a tool. Very unfortunately, we have politicians who are unwilling to attack asset price bubbles (and worse still, inflate the bubble even more), due in part to control of vested interests and fear of losing elections.

The outcome is that we will have politicians (both at the State and Federal level) and the central bank engaging in policies that are uncoordinated and mutually incompatible. Unless that change, there’s a significant risk of loss of control of the economy by the government. Should this happen, the most convenient scapegoat will be Glenn Stevens as he will be accused as the man who bust up the Australian economy. But for us, we will point the finger at the Rudd government because they understood what the root cause of the GFC (see the essay written by Kevin Rudd here) but instead, not only did nothing to deal with Australia’s towering debt levels, but also introduced policies that increase the risk of a home-grown credit crisis in Australia (the most notorious is the FHOG). The State governments are not any better either.

The politicians must be put on notice.

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Posted in Economics/Finance, Looking Forward | 14 Comments »

Government taking tougher line on debt and bubbles

Tuesday, July 28th, 2009

To be a successful investor, one must be be aware of the sea-changes that are happening in the economy and financial markets. One of the sea-changes is in the line of central bank thinking. As we wrote in How are central bankers going to deal with asset bubbles?, central bankers are now more ready to deal with asset price bubbles than before. Previously, central bankers were targeting price inflation rate with their monetary policy while they stood idly by to let house prices form a bubble. As Glenn Stevens, governor of the RBA said today as reported in this mainstream news article,

Not only would it confirm that there are serious supply-side impediments to producing one of the things that previous generations of Australians have taken for granted, namely affordable shelter, it would also pose elevated risks of problems of over-leverage and asset price deflation down the track.

Please note that we are not endorsing the economic literacy level of that news article. Rather, we are quoting Glenn Stevens to show you what is going on inside his mind. The RBA is also hinting repeatedly that the next move in interest rates is up. Basically, the RBA is telling Australians this: you better wake up from your old ways and get serious about repaying your debts because the party is over.

This line of thinking is in sharp contrast to China’s central bankers, who are allowing a debt bubble to grow (see Is China setting itself up for a credit bust?) and spill over into asset prices (e.g. property and stocks).

The next sea-change is the change in the line of thinking from our dear Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd. He wrote in his essay published a few days ago,

The roots of the crisis lie in the preceding decade of excess. In it the world enjoyed an extraordinary boom… However, as we later learnt, the global boom was built in large part on a three-layered house of cards.

First, in many Western countries the boom was created on a pile of debt held by consumers, corporations and some governments. As the global financier George Soros put it: ?For 25 years [the West] has been consuming more than we have been producing … living beyond our means.”

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Second, these debts were racked up on the back of sky-rocketing asset prices. In several countries, stock prices and house values soared far above their true long-term worth, creating paper wealth that millions of households used as collateral for their growing debts.

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This crisis has shown we have reached the limits of a purely debt-fuelled global growth strategy. Not only will the neo-liberal model of the past not provide growth for the future, its after-effects will make recovery more difficult. Mountains of global public and private debt, global imbalances, and a weakened global financial system will drag on global growth for a long time. As the renowned financial columnist Martin Wolf has written: “Those who expect a swift return to the business-as-usual of 2006 are fantasists. A slow and difficult recovery, dominated by de-leveraging and deflationary risks, is the most likely prospect.“

This had been what we were arguing for a few years already (see Aussie household debt not as bad as it seems? on January 2008 and The Bubble Economy in October 2006). Kevin Rudd has finally understood the root cause of the GFC- spendthrift ways financed by rising debt using bubbly asset prices as collaterals. Now, he acknowledges that de-leveraging (repayment of debts) will be the fashion for a long time, in contrast to the past few decades of increasing debts. For many Generation Xs and Ys, the change from profligate to more frugal ways will be alien to them.

Unfortunately, as the mainstream always do, both the RBA and government is one-step behind.

The global economy is like a heart-attack patient on a life-support system. He faced a near-death experience in the second half of last year. Today, his condition has stabilised. But it will be a long time before he will fully recover and be fit enough to run again as in 2007. What the government is doing today is to inject more steroids (targeted stimulus spending financed by public debt) in the hope to see the patient running as soon as possible. The result is a walking zombie on life-support system (massive liquidity injections via ‘printing’ money).

As we wrote in Marc Faber vs Steve Keen in inflation/deflation debate- Part 2: Marc Faber?s view, the government is in danger of painting itself into a corner with no exit strategy (even though they’re talking a lot about it). If the exit strategy fails, we know the result is very high inflation (maybe even hyper-inflation).

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Posted in Looking Forward, Market Observations | No Comments »

RBA committing logical errors regarding Australian household finance

Tuesday, March 31st, 2009

Ric Battellino, the deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) gave a speech today. Regarding Australia’s household finance, he said,

We continue to believe that the market here will hold up better than overseas. There are a number of reasons why this is likely to be so, but perhaps the most important is that we did not have the same deterioration in lending standards that occurred elsewhere. By and large, the great bulk of Australians who took out housing loans have been able to afford the repayments. Notwithstanding some rise over the past year, the 90?day arrears rate on housing loans is only 0.5 per cent, which is broadly in line with its long?run average and well below that in countries such as the US and UK.

As he said that, we imagine he was thinking somewhere along the line like this:

  1. US sub-prime loans resulted in bad debts
  2. Bad debts busted the US economy
  3. A busted US economy led to higher unemployment
  4. Higher unemployment led to more bad debts
  5. And so on…
  6. Because Australia has very little sub-prime debt
  7. Therefore Australia’s economy is not likely to be as busted as the US

If this is what he’s thinking, we think Ric Battellino has made a very grave error in logic. He’s mixing up cause and effect.

No doubt, in the US, it’s sub-prime (which by the way is yesterday’s story) that triggered the bust in the US economy in 2007. But for Australia, it’s the deterioration of  the global economy that will trigger the bust of the Australian economy. The effects of a bust will be rising unemployment, followed by bad debts, then debt deflation and then finally falling asset prices. In other words, the triggers are different, but the effects will be the same because Australia has the same debt disease as the US and UK.

Given Australia’s high household debt (see Aussie household debt not as bad as it seems?), prime debt can easily turn sub-prime when unemployment rises. As unemployment rises (which all mainstream economists in the government and private sector are forecasting), it will eventually reach a critical mass of prime debts turning sub-prime. Once this critical mass is reached, the deterioration in the Australian economy will accelerate (see what’s happening in the US and UK today). This is the point we made in March 2007 at Can Australia?s deflating property bubble deflate even further?,

In Australia?s case, with her towering levels of debt, any external shock can easily tip her over to a recession, which can lead to further asset (e.g. real estates and stocks) deflation.

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By now, it should be clear that whatever the external shock is not the issue?the point is that Australia is highly vulnerable.

To make matters worse, the First Home Owners’ Grant (FHOG), while giving housing sector a temporary boost, are increasing the proportion of potential sub-prime loans in the financial system.

The fact that those at the helm of the RBA are committing such logical errors does not engender our confidence.

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Posted in Economics/Finance, Looking Forward, Property | 8 Comments »

If you save, government will wage economic war on you

Tuesday, February 17th, 2009

In this economic climate of uncertainty, governments all over the world have to be seen to be doing something. The problem is, by doing ‘something,’ they are actually making the problem worse (see Are government interventions the first steps towards corruption & inefficiencies? and Supplying never-ending drugs till stagflation). In particular, they fear debt deflation because it is the more immediate threat. It is this fear that led Helicopter Ben (i.e. Ben Bernanke) to subscribe to the Zimbabwean school of economic thought (see Bernankeism and hyper-inflation) in the Keynesian belief that forcing people to spend and consume is the way to go. If printing money are the answers to the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), then Zimbabwe will be the richest and most prosperous nation in the world. Indeed, judging by the number of billionaires, in that country, it must be so! When you see Zimbabwe’s central banker praising the central banks of US and UK (see Zimbabwe?s central banker in praise of Fed), you know something is very wrong with the monetary policy of the Federal Reserve.

As we said before in “Government?s contradictory messages,”

Without the liquidation of mal-investments and restoration of the structural imbalances that is brought about by deflation, applying bigger and bigger stimulus packages will only function in similar ways to drugs- more and more for less and less effect. The reason why Keynesian reflationary pump-priming worked during the Great Depression was that it was applied after the cleansing effects of the deflation had done its work. But today, in reaction to the financial crisis, governments all over the world are doing so before the purge of fire. As a result, the much-needed economic correction that the economy had to have will not happen.

Thus, whether you are currently in debt or not, if you intend to save money, the government will be very keen to discourage you from doing so by undermining and debasing the currency in which your savings are based on. As we said in “When real interest rates is below zero, why save money in bank?”

 … if we disregard the doctored statistics of the official figures, real interest rates are negative!

That is why governments all over the world are sending so many mixed messages to the effect that an average person do not know whether he/she is meant to spend or to save (see Government?s contradictory messages). A very simple way to resolve this paradox (sarcastically) is to think of it this way: save while everyone else is committing financial suicide by spending willy nilly.

What if you are a saver who simply does not wish to spend, invest, borrow or speculate? If you believe that the government will fight this war against debt deflation by marching our credit-based economy towards a Zimbabwean-style economy (see Recipe for hyperinflation), you will be forced to make very difficult choices. For such a saver, the best case scenario for your savings will be severe price deflation in an environment of zero-interest rates in a properly functioning banking system (while still employed/business earning positive cash-flow). But if you are pessimistic about this best-case scenario happening, then you will be forced to ‘speculate.’

As the government and RBA try to erode your savings by taxing them and pushing down interest rates to below price inflation (even perhaps to zero), what can you do? Good question.

Let’s take a look at the US. Currently, short-term US Treasury bonds are yielding almost nothing. At one point, their yield even became negative! In that case, what will be the difference between a nothing-yielding government bond and gold? As we said before in “Is gold an investment?“, gold is

a boring, inert metal that does not have much pragmatic use and does not pay dividends, income or interests, it is completely unfit for ?investment.?

That probably explains why we are seeing, at least for now, US Treasury bonds and gold moving upwards together. Traditionally, they move in opposite directions. Today, this inverse relationship seems to have decoupled.

Therefore, the risk/reward profile has come to the point that savers who have spare cash may want to consider transforming part of their savings from cash to gold.

P.S. Use the government’s free stimulus cash to buy gold. 😉

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Posted in Gold, Looking Forward | 40 Comments »

What will happen if RBA cuts to zero?

Tuesday, February 10th, 2009

In the United States, the Federal Reserve had set the interest rates to almost zero. In the United Kingdom, interest rates have reached 1%. Japan had cut her interest back to almost zero again. Canada’s interest rates have reached 1%. In Europe, it’s 2%. All over the world, central bankers are busily firing their interest rates guns to fight this global recession. Already, Japan and the United States had already ran out of ammunition.

As for Australia, the goods news is that our Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) still has some ammunition remaining after cutting its rates to a low of 3.25%. The bad news is that Australia is about to enter recession, possibly a very severe one (see Realisation of hard landing ahead for Australia). So, what if Australia’s RBA runs out of ammunition too?

If Australia’s interest rates ever reach zero (as Professor Steve Keen believes it will by 2010), it will happen in the context of a hard landing or even a depression. It will be a time of debt deflation, which as we said in Aussie household debt not as bad as it seems?,

A severe downturn to the Australian economy may or may not be statistically likely, but given the level of unprecedented leverage, you can be sure the impact will not be small. Be sure to understand the concept of Black Swans (see Failure to understand Black Swan leads to fallacious thinking).

Chances are, such economic malaise will drag on for many years, similar in length to Japan’s lost decade. For investors, this will be a very trying time. The key thing for investors and savers to watch out for is the Aussie dollar. As we explained before in Can falling interest rates and rising mortgage rate come together?,

A large fraction of Australia?s borrowed money is sourced from overseas through the ?shadow? banking system. In other words, there are not enough domestic deposits to fund all the needed credit (e.g. home loans) in this country.

As a result, there is a great potential for a complication that we described in Another complication in RBA?s interest rate cut,

Today, we will talk about another issue that can complicate matters for the RBA- the pullout of foreign capital.

When debt deflation takes hold of Australia, the RBA can easily run out of ammunition. In the absence of government intervention, credit will be extremely scarce in Australia. Our guess is that in such a scenario, foreign capital will flee out of Australia, leading to another fall in the Aussie dollar. The only mitigation against our dollar in such a scenario will be to the extent that the Australian government opens up our mining and resource assets to predatory foreign sovereign wealth fund (read: China).

Everything else being equal (we will talk about the not-being-equal scenario further down), a falling dollar will be, as we described in Falling currency and inflation,

Now, we will look at the context of Australia, which is another import-dependent country. A rapid depreciation of the Aussie dollar will result in rising price inflation for the same reasons stated above.

Now, imagine the food that you eat everyday. Most of them are produced in Australia. A falling Aussie dollar implies that foreigners will have greater purchasing power for Australian-made food. Assuming that the market is still free, that means that Australians will have to compete with foreigners for our own food. Also, since Australia is hardly self-sufficient in manufactured goods, a falling Aussie dollar will imply falling purchasing power for the many imported things that we enjoy today.

What if we combine debt deflation with falling Aussie dollar? In that case, there will be massive aggregate demand destruction in the economy. Basically, this means a very drastic drop in the standards of living for many.

We shudder to think of the implication of this. We wonder whether there can be a scenario whereby there is a combination of (1) crashing asset prices (due to debt deflation) and (2) rising inflation for price inelastic consumer staples (due to the depreciating Aussie dollar)? If such an mishap eventuates, even savers have to worry about the return of their savings!

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Posted in Currencies, Looking Forward | 6 Comments »

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