Alan Kohler is one of Australia’s most experienced commentators and journalists. Alan is the founder of Eureka Report, Australia’s most successful investment newsletter, and Business Spectator, a 24-hour free business news and commentary website. He also hosts Inside Business, a half-hour Sunday programme on the ABC, is the finance presenter on the ABC News - and producer of the nightly graph (or two).
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Comments on this article
Comments Policy"Do whatever it takes" = hyperinflation just around the corner.
The story is old, and VERY familiar. (A global pick-up on the rocks?, November 15)
Adam Carr says the 'hard' data is great, markets are 'irrational',RBA and FOMC are wusses and should be tightening instead. According to him all the other experts and govt. agencies are wrong,wrong,wrong. (A global pick-up on the rocks?, November 15)
"Central banks might be running out of firepower" (A global pick-up on the rocks?, November 15). I think you will find that they have unlimited firepower. It is just the purchasing power that will suffer. I would have thought that after living through several periods of high inflation you older guys would understand these things.
It has been obvious for some time (A global pick-up on the rocks?, November 15).
The main reason why Wall St increased was the continuation of US Government deficit spending. The proble, is that every time they have a deficit of $1 trillion they add $50 billion to their debt servicing forever. In 2011 their debt servicing was $454.4 billion.
Their mandatory spending plus their debt servicing had a shortfall of $251 billion in 2012 over their total revenue.
I think analysis would show that this exists in Japan, Italy, Spain,, France, Great Britain and probably most of the provinces in China. Considering the amount of money flooding out of China, I suspect that they might have a few problems at the national level also.
To do whatever it takes might just mean taking the medicine getting the national budgets into balance because blind Freddy can see that all this deficit spending by governments is not working.
And getting the budgets into balance will mean reducing expenditure and increasing taxes. Once that happens, consumer confidence just might return.
Never buy until there is blood in the streets. That means mortgagee in possession signs everywhere. No signs, no troubles. (A global pick-up on the rocks?, November 15)
Stephen Koukoulas mistakes cause for effect (A global pick-up on the rocks?, November 15).
The cause is government austerity at a time of private deleveraging/increased saving. (the various net external balances all cancel out on a global sense).
Remember GDP = G + P + E is an identity, not an ideology.
Richard Koo has been making this clear for years.
Only when the private sector is able and amenable to increasing borrowings can we expect government austerity not to cause reductions in real GDP.
We are just seeing the deleveraging of stock markets due to massive stimulus pumped into the markets. Remember, the US market made a new high when unemplyment had been > 8% for 40 months, growth is 2% and the US governemnt has massive debt. Does that sound like a stock market that should be peaking. So oftern it is the reporting season when the markets drop because the expected results didn't materialise. Money makes the world go round and money makes stock markets rise. (A global pick-up on the rocks?, November 15)
Even the thought, of increased government spending, will put upward pressure on interest rates (A global pick-up on the rocks?, November 15)
Higher interest rates, means higher sovereign pressure (upward) on the AUD.
A higher AUD means a reduction of our terms of trade. Downward, movement in export value, ships jobs overseas.
Or, would our learned friends from the RBA, like to challenge that?
When the world is deleveraging, we need an RBA, that is prepared to do "Whatever it takes".
The Dow is mostly run by software to manage micro transactions rather than Business fundamentals. (A global pick-up on the rocks?, November 15)
When the ones and zeros see the fiscal cliff then we could be in trouble.