Australia, being one of the world’s biggest commodity producers, finds itself at the very beginning of the global supply chain for infrastructure investment and many manufactured products. It makes sense then, that magnitude and directional changes in the pace of global investment and consumption would...
Australia has thoroughly enjoyed the boom in its mining sector that started around the time China entered the WTO in 2001. The additional demand for raw materials from China and other EMs induced higher prices and the predictable supply side response of more capacity (i.e....
Major Chinese stock indices have been in a bear market for six years now and currently find themselves testing the lower bound of what may or may not prove to be a base. We’ll be watching carefully to see if the lows set in 2012...
Despite the fact that Chinese private sector debt is growing at nearly twice the rate of overall GDP growth, as we highlighted here, Chinese economic data continues to miss expectations to an extent not seen since 2008-2009 (first chart below)....
The Chinese nominal GDP growth rate has fallen by about 66% since the peak in 2007, from 22.9% to 7.8% in Q1 2014. Meanwhile, total loan growth has basically remained flat aside from the surge in 2009. The logical deduction is that it’s taking ever...
With yet another month of data indicating falling real wages in Japan and amid further currency depreciation in China, we got to thinking that maybe these two countries are in a race to win the most exemplar financial repressor award for 2014....
China watchers and global investors have been speculating at the prospect of some sort of Chinese stimulus package. With GDP coming in above estimates (7.4% vs 7.3%) and some officials talking down the idea of a new stimulus, we think the odds are low for...
Yesterday we posted that Chinese Corporate Balance Sheets Are the Most Levered They Have Ever Been as we showed that the leverage kept piling up in 2013 even as profit margins fell the lowest level as far back as our records go....
One of the most interesting annual activities we undertake is a top down examination of Chinese corporate balance sheets. Why is it interesting? Because every year we are surprised by their almost systematic deterioration, and 2013 was no exception....
If you’re like us and had been noticing that basically every Chinese economic data release this year has missed expectations then you won’t be surprised (pardon the pun) to see the below chart....
Chinese economic data continues to come in on the weak side as today brought disappointing retail sales and industrial production figures. These data represent January and February cumulative totals so they should not be affected significantly by the timing of the Chinese New Year holiday....
With the monthly slue of manufacturing PMI data now in we thought it interesting that Australia posted a nice rebound while China showed a further deterioration (Chart 1). Granted, the Australian data series is much more volatile than the Chinese series, but the two indices...
The unemployment rate in Australia increased again last month to 6% signaling a further slowdown in Chinese GDP growth. The logic here is that as China moves away from an investment led growth model (that requires a large amount of natural resources) its level of...
Labor market data out of Australia today showed another rise in the unemployment rate to 5.85%, the highest level since June 2009....
The Markit Flash PMI was released today for China, showing that manufacturing expanded at a slower in November than in October. Every component except one was down compared to the previous month. This data point is in line with the weakness we’ve seen in the...
