Why the ‘badder’ the news, the ‘gooder’ it is for Wall St
There’s a sort of weird, hyper-nervous optimism on Wall St and it’s all about guessing when the Fed will stop lifting rates, and then switch to cuts.
Terry McCrann
Why it’s time for a wages-rates accord
A recession could be just around the corner, so it’s time for our leaders to take some tough decisions.
Why six missing words spell pain
The RBA should have been emboldened to go harder this time around, to avoid more pain down the track.
Why the RBA has no option but to hike rates
Last week’s national wage decision takes us to the threshold of locking in a wage-price spiral and leaves the Reserve Bank zero choice but to hike rates again.
Albanese looks like Whitlam 2.0
It’s taken 48 years, but we’ve finally got a fully fledged Whitlam government version 2.0.
The RBA must hike and hope
RBA governor Phil Lowe and his board really have no option but to hike rates again next Tuesday and then spend June assessing whether the economy has hit the wall.
Asleep at the wheel: AUSTRAC’s stunning record of failure
Crown Casino was able to breach anti-money laundering laws because regulator AUSTRAC was asleep at the wheel and out to lunch for more than 20 years.
PwC scandal gets messier and murkier
Acting PwC Australia CEO Kristin Stubbins has thrown ‘former’ PwC partner Peter Collins under the proverbial bus – and then reversed back over him.
Why is ‘free’ power so costly?
Australia’s rising electricity prices have exposed ‘free’ wind and solar as a costly illusion.
Will China’s economic lifeline save Australia for a third time?
China has rescued Australian budgets – state and federal – from extreme red ink, twice in barely a decade. Will it do it a third time?
Victoria and WA: Why they’re fiscal hell and heaven
WA is in the black because and only because of the massive royalties from iron ore exports and cheap gas greedily fed into the state economy.
PwC scandal: It’s time to ditch consultants and company tax
Two much bigger, far wider and far more fundamental points have got lost in the understandable furore over the PwC tax scandal.
Jobs still hot so rates must rise
The most extraordinary feature in the latest jobs data is that demand for workers has been so hot and that will lock in another interest rate rise.
Uh-oh! Rising wages could push interest rates higher
Phil Lowe and everyone with a home loan should be alarmed. The latest wages data suggests that the RBA is unlikely to pause interest rates again in June.
RBA’s new grim rates warning
The Reserve Bank board has done a U-turn and is now suggesting productivity could stay weak and interest rates continue to climb and stay higher for longer.
PwC scandal is only starting
The tax scandal at PricewaterhouseCoopers raises a complex range of serious issues, which are not going to even be addressed far less resolved anytime soon – if indeed, anytime ever.
Dr Jim’s ‘lucky country’ boost
The great takeaway from the budget is Australia is arguably the luckiest in the world but we seem intent on destroying that luck.
Why Dr Jim’s budget won’t force up inflation
Treasurer Jim Chalmers is right about his budget not being inflationary – but that doesn’t mean rates won’t go up further.
Watch out for smoke and mirrors of Jim’s magical surplus
Jim Chalmers has unveiled the bottom line black ink that has eluded all treasurers, Labor and Coalition alike, since Costello. So how did he weave his fiscal magic?
Dr Jim’s fiscal round robin
There’s an easy, and obvious way to lower energy prices and it doesn’t require fiscal sleight of hand.
Jim Chalmers: Hey big spender
Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ upcoming Budget will be a big spending affair which will tie us into commitments which last for decades.
Politicians and rates: you could never trust them
Politicians could never be trusted to do what’s right, as opposed to what’s popular, when it comes to interest rates, as Dan Andrews and Chris Minns clearly demonstrate.
Shock RBA rate hike will ripple through 2023
The effects of this unexpected rate hike will reverberate through the economy.
UK shows a disaster waits
The sheer practical day-to-day impossibility of moving to wind and solar as the basis for our electricity grid was captured in one day’s experience in the UK last week.
Why Albanese’s migration review is utterly useless
The Albanese government’s migration report, like so many dozen of its predecessors, adds up to ‘four-fifths of five-eighths of a bucket of spit’. Here’s why.
The big share punt on two key pivots
Traders are watching the US Fed’s next interest rate move with an eagle eye.
Why 50 points now means less pain later
Domestic issues are starting to play a bigger part in the inflation calculation, but the RBA still needs to be decisive.
Hot inflation paints the RBA into a corner
Looking at the numbers, the RBA should go back to a 50-point rate rise but as inflation came under its November forecast, it’s likely the governor won’t go that hard.
JB and Myer: retailers set up for future wins
Myer is roaring back to life, and there’s much to learn from the strategy of its boss and that of fellow traveller JB Hi-Fi.
David Hains: the quiet billionaire checks out
David Hains was a billionaire of the old school – eschewing the limelight and fads for a more fundamental view of the world.
‘Latest’ jobs data is already hopelessly out of date
The ‘latest’ jobs data released by the ABS is five or six weeks old and tells us about a time that has already disappeared into the dustbin of history.
Gas mess will get worse and wider
The federal government’s Soviet-style attempt to control both the price and supply of gas will have seriously damaging impacts way beyond the immediate pain imposed on consumers and businesses.
Albanese’s gas mess just the first of many
With a trainee treasurer and a PM who hasn’t a clue about the most basic interest rate in the economy, it’s no surprise that the government’s scheme to cap gas prices is such a mess.
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Seven days in February will shake markets
How investors react to interest rate decisions and inflation data in the first week of February will determine market dynamics for the rest of the year.
Whoops! Experts way off with their economic forecasts
Beware of experts and their way-off predictions. Australia’s property prices have not been devastated in 2022 and the sharemarket is down just under four per cent.
Rudd and Wong: The earth is moving
PM Anthony Albanese has put the ‘old team’ back together with Penny Wong in Beijing and Kevin Rudd heading for Washington.
Lowe faces February rate hike uncertainty
Right now RBA governor Philip Lowe will be hoping that his choice at the next board meeting in February is between either no change or a 25 basis point rate hike. But it could be higher.
Future Fund flags rocky road ahead for investors
The boss of the Future Fund has given investors a glimpse into the future and the road ahead could be a rocky, rough and potentially painful one.
Are we now up for February ‘surprises’?
Now we start the long wait until the next interest rate move, after the Fed gently hit the brakes.
The Fed could deliver a golden 2023
The dramatic drop in US inflation has changed the playing field. So what will Fed chair Jerome Powell do?
Forget the $275, worry about the lights
The government’s promise of a power price cut for households is a fantasy.
Coal, gas plan merges stupidity and lunacy
The Albanese-Bowen-Chalmers plan to cap the prices of coal and gas – and hopefully, very hopefully, your electricity bill – is short-term stupidity wrapped up within long-term lunacy.
Whitlam-flavoured coal plan won’t work
Despite trainee treasurer Jim Chalmers’ slavish adoration of Paul Keating, the Albanese government is shaping up far more like a replay of Whitlam than of Hawke-Keating.
GDP signals that the RBA ain’t done yet
The good news in the GDP figures was also the bad news. That is to say, bad news for borrowers.
Lowe makes February pivotal for rates
RBA Governor Philip Lowe has moved too little, too late. Now we play the waiting game to see what happens next.
SEC exposes lunacy of the windmills of Dan’s mind
The reborn State Electricity Commission has even less financial metrics than the NBN. There probably isn’t even a drinks coaster.
Fed head pivots but China and Russia still key
Sharemarket investors have welcomed a rate hike pivot by the US central bank but what happens in China and Russia-Ukraine are the real keys to how Australia exits 2023.
Austrac reveals its own monumental failure over casinos
Every failure Austrac has ‘identified’ in Star is an even more damning failure by the financial crimes regulator.
What failure? The RBA has had 30 years of success
If you look back over the past 30 years of the ‘modern’ RBA’ it has served the country very well and would require a damn good alternative to replace it.
RBA’s rate promise gifted borrowers billions of dollars
Thousands of Australian home-loan and business borrowers were gifted as much as $50bn thanks to the RBA’s ‘not before ‘24’ rate hike promise.
Original URL: https://www.ntnews.com.au/business/terry-mccrann/page/5