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A hat-tip to Deano for directing me to the following story about growing mortgage stress amongst first home buyers in Australia. Unlike the rest of the world Australia did not undergo a sizeable correction in home prices as a result of the misguided policies of the government to lure first time home buyers with [...] January came in with whimper with all major indices falling across the board. The DJI did the best falling -3.5% whilst the Shanghai Composite fell -8.8%. If you want to take the glass is half full view, 2010 was the best January for the S&P500 in the last 3 years. January 2008 saw [...] Always worth a listen is James Chanos of Kynikos Associates. Jim talks thoughtfully on the growing bubble in China. [...] Australian Employment increased 35,200 in December. Full-time employment increased by 7,300 whilst part-time employment increased 27,900. Unemployment decreased 10,600 whilst the unemployment rate decreased to 5.5%. It is looking more likely that the unemployment rate has peaked in this cycle, quite a Houdini effort giving the state of the global economy just [...] the number of loans for owner occupied housing fell a seasonally adjusted -5.6% in November on the heels of the halving of the first home buyers boost was halved from $7,000 to $3,500 at the end of October. No doubt more falls are in the pipeline as the remaining $3,500 was removed in [...] Great Discussion by Steve Keen US non-farm payrolls fell a seasonally adjusted -85,000 in December whilst prior months revisions cancelled each other out. October was revised from -111k to -127k whilst November was revised from -11k to +4k. November would represent the first month in 22 that non-farm payrolls rose, although given the standard error on that estimate [...] As the chart above clearly illustrates, 2009 was a much better year for global equity markets than 2008. That’s not to say that all went swimmingly as the S&P500 hit new lows in March, the US economy continued to contract for the first 6 months, more jobs were lost than in any other [...] |
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