|
|
此文章由 黑山老妖 原创或转贴，不代表本站立场和观点，版权归 oursteps.com.au 和作者 黑山老妖 所有！转贴必须注明作者、出处和本声明，并保持内容完整
本帖最后由 黑山老妖 于 2014-1-26 01:26 编辑
澳洲的经济增长来源是人口增长。泡沫的问题是全世界的问题。
Dow Jones, down ~1.67%
S&P 500, down ~1.83%
Nasdaq, down ~1.99%
Aust Dollar, ~US87.09c
Flight to safety
Wall Street stocks fell heavily last night and the Aussie dollar got as low as 86.6. It’s currently at 87.1. Volatility indices have also jumped sharply. The S&P 500 is below 1800 for the first time this year and the Dow Jones has lost 1.5 per cent last night and 3.2 per cent for the week.
We’re seeing a flight to safety that could intensify next week. There’s a slight whiff of 1994 and 1997 about what’s happening. In 1994 the Federal Reserve raised interest rates and money flowed back into the US, precipitating what became known as Mexico’s Tequila Crisis. In 1997 there was only a small increase in US rates but there was a run on the Thai baht that precipitated the Asian financial crisis.
Once again emerging countries are under pressure because of tightening US monetary policy. This time the focus is on Argentina, a serial victim of capital outflows. Last week the peso fell 18 per cent and the country’s foreign reserves are falling rapidly. As usual a lot of the problems are its own, including 25 per cent inflation and a whole lot of currency restrictions imposed in 2011, but Argentina is at the front line of a new flood of capital back into the US for safety. And sentiment wasn’t helped by a couple of disappointments this week about the Chinese economy (see below).
Gold is returning to favour, the yen is seeing a lot of buying and money is also flowing into 10-year US and German bonds, despite the low interest rates available on them. It’s coming out of emerging markets – Argentina, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine … as well as the Australian dollar, which has been especially affected by the weaker than expected Chinese data.
The problem for emerging markets, and the Australian dollar, is that they are at the mercy of foreign capital, and that means events far away that have nothing to do with the country concerned can have a huge impact. Those events often involve the Fed in some way because the money is usually American, although Chinese money is starting to become very important as well. And not only has the US Fed started tightening monetary policy with the $10 billion-a-month taper, but also interest rates in China are rising as authorities try to control the expansion in credit there.
And in these situations equities tend to get sold as well, especially if they’ve had a decent run – as Wall Street has had over the past 18 months.
So hold onto your hats folks – this could be a rocky few weeks. But it’s not a time to panic. The fundamentals haven’t changed.
The third boom – people
Since the start of 2008, Australia’s gross domestic product has grown by 14%. America’s GDP has increased by only 6%, Canada’s by 7% and in the UK and Europe, GDP has fallen by 2%. In fact these past six years have been the icing on a remarkable cake: Australia is now in its 23rd year of continuous economic expansion. That’s never happened before in Australian history and I doubt that it’s happened in any other country either.
By the way, in Davos this week Tony Abbott criticised the Labor government for spending so much during the GFC. Well, I think it’s fair to say the main reason Australia escaped that financial crisis without a recession is because of the massive stimulus in China, which produced another kick in commodity prices and kept the mining investment boom going for a few more years. Did we need the fiscal spending the Australian government executed as well? Apparently the Prime Minister thinks not, but I wonder what he’s basing that on.
Anyway, for whatever reason, Australia has had an incredible run – in aggregate. But here’s something nobody talks about: it’s mostly because of the Kiwi diaspora. Over the past six years, Australia’s population growth has fluctuated between 1.5 and 2%. Last year it was 1.8%, which is about triple the growth of most other large countries. US population growth is 0.7%, China’s about 0.5% and likewise Europe and the UK. Japan’s population is actually shrinking.
Most of the growth comes from immigration. Last year the difference between births and deaths was 163,000 while net migration was 244,000, close to an all-time high.
Where are most of them coming from? New Zealand. About 12% of all Kiwis on the planet are living and working in Australia. Last year about 25,000 arrived (net), on top of 20,000 Chinese and 20,000 Indians (the next two largest group of migrants).
Last year GDP grew by 2.3%; without the extra people it would have grown just 0.5% – one of the weakest economic growth rates in the world. Over the past six years economic growth would have been almost flat without the big population growth in the early years to support the mining investment boom. According to calculations by Kieran Davies of Barclays Bank, over the past 12 months consumer spending would have been zero: the entire increasing in consumption last year was due to the increase in numbers.
Does this matter? Maybe not. Companies aren't too worried why sales are increasing – whether it’s because each individual is spending more or because there are more individuals spending the same – as long as sales do increase. And the fact that so many people want to come here and that Australians are confident enough to have a lot of children is great. You certainly wouldn’t want a shrinking population like Japan’s!
But the strong population growth is papering over some fundamental issues. Consumer spending is much weaker than it seems and this comes at a time of two big challenges: the end of the mining boom and a period of fiscal austerity. The reason the two challenges are happening at once is that they are related.
In Davos this week, Tony Abbott wasn’t making some kind of technical economic assessment of the fiscal response to the GFC. He was softening us up for spending cuts and tax increases this year.
It wasn’t just the spending in 2008-09 that has caused the huge structural deficit that the Abbott government has inherited. Fact is that both the Howard government the Rudd government treated the mining boom like an ATM and happily handed out the cash to win votes. As the mining boom ends those chickens come home to roost.
Actually it was two booms that produced those 23 years of uninterrupted expansion: the housing and credit boom of the 1990s and early 2000s, followed by a smooth - luckily - transition to the China-fuelled resources boom, starting around 2004. That boom peaked last year and as an indication of that the exchange rate has been falling since April, since when it has depreciated 17%.
There’s now a lot of discussion about what’s going to take over from the resources boom, not that it’s falling off a cliff but it has clearly peaked, especially with China’s economy slowing as they try to deal with their own double challenge: credit bubble and market-based reform.
So what’s the third boom? Not consumption and definitely not manufacturing unless the dollars falls below 80. Maybe housing, given booming house prices, and the fact that building approvals have increased 22% over the past year. But the house price boom is really confined to Sydney only and approvals have not yet translated into construction, which is up only 1.7% year on year.
No, I reckon the third boom is people – population growth. It is the reason our economic growth was among the fastest in the world last year and is underpinning everything else – consumption and dwelling construction. If the exchange rate keeps falling because of the US QE taper, that’s even better because manufacturing and agricultural exports would join the party.
So immigration must be kept up. In that context, let’s talk about asylum seekers. I’ve always hated the carry-on about boat arrivals because there are hardly any of them and I feel desperately sorry for wretches who hand over their life savings to Indonesian smugglers who put them into leaky boats to Christmas Island.
But I think it’s also true that this carry-on is a smokescreen for the immigration boom that’s been going on for a decade. Successive governments make a big hoohah about Stopping The Boats, while quietly ushering in 250,000 people a year on planes. If the xenophobes among us weren’t distracted by Stopping The Boats, they might pay more attention to the tens of thousands of migrants coming from the same places – and we need them!!
Anyway, that’s just a theory: can’t prove it.
The likelihood that Australia’s third boom is population growth also makes me favour Tony Abbott’s paid parental leave idea – against my better judgement, given the general need to cut back welfare, especially the middle class variety. In addition to immigration, couples need to keep having children. Six months’ pay at the same salary, which has been quarantined from the welfare review, could end up being an important economic policy. |
评分
-
查看全部评分
|
煮夫手记十五 为了小将们的食欲：荷叶小饼+迷你肉包+微型花卷 (2011-3-19) amon54 
楼主:jeffxia
发表于 2014-1-25 13:33
都是大师呀！受教呢
