Data Diary

The release of the latest current account data by the ABS (here) was met within universal approval.  It’s not hard to see why – a bumper trade surplus has Australia within sight of the other side of the ledger: Here we have the current account deficit pulling back under $5bn for the first time in [...]

RBA financial aggregates for July were released yesterday (here) – in brief: Housing credit increased by 0.5 per cent over July. Over the year to July, housing credit rose by 8.1 per cent. Other personal credit was flat over July. Over the year to July, other personal credit increased by 3.2 per cent. Business credit [...]

Australian building approvals data for July released by the ABS yesterday (here). ABS Building Approvals show that the total number of dwellings approved rose in July 2010 following falls in the previous three months in seasonally adjusted terms.  According to the ABS, New South Wales (9.7%), Victoria (12.1%), South Australia (8.3%) and Tasmania (4.4%) recorded [...]

Suffering from bandwidth constraints hence the brevity of posts – but still let’s introduce a couple of charts on Australian labour force, for example headline unemployment: Now given the mix of employment growth over the last decade (construction, services and retail with mining contributing strongly recently), the auspices suggest that the best of the unemployment [...]

Latest OECD Composite Leading Indicators are out (here) – with the June data slipping into the red indicating according to the OECD “a possible peak in expansion”. ‘Possible peak’?  Looks pretty much like it is a near certainty.  With Europe yet to feel the effects of the communal belt tightening and the US struggling to [...]

Reading the speech by Fed Board member Kevin Warsh (here) at face value – seems like at least his preference is not to head down this route again… Still, if federal fiscal policy is approaching its political or economic limits, some believe that the Federal Reserve should do more, including expansion of its balance sheet. [...]

Race memory is a persistent beast.  It permeates our language, our food and apparently our central banks.  As an Australian, I’m all too familiar with the laconic pragmatism of our Reserve Bank.  The US seems to oscillate between a puritan ethos and the robber baron methodology.  While the ECB is a relatively new kid on [...]

New Motor Vehicle Sales for May released today by the ABS (here). Sales of new vehicles have proven resilient having now recovered to their long term growth rate.  Notably, the month of May was up 18% on the same month last year.  For the last 12 months we have now officially passed back through the [...]

The RBA updated its household finances data today (see table B-21 here). We’ll return to the theme later – for the moment let’s just note that while we might have expected interest to disposable income to have risen with the increases in official interest rates, debt to disposable income was also up.

Australian lending finance for April release by the ABS today (here).  Overall trend is still down lead by contraction in consumer finance: This is consistent with recent months building approvals (here) and housing finance data (here).  The residential market has peaked and with it Australia’s credit expansion. On a more positive note, commercial lending looks [...]