From the monthly archives:

November 2008

BHP set for next tilt

November 27, 2008

IT IS back to basics for BHP Billiton.
The miner’s year-long hostile tilt at Rio Tinto came to an official close yesterday when the UK Takeover Panel and European Commission allowed it to drop the $US66 billion ($102 billion) bid rather than wait for the competition regulator to block it in mid-January.
At BHP’s annual meeting in [...]

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Shares from a very long term perspective

November 27, 2008

This note looks at the outlook for shares from a very long term perspective. The key points are as follows:
- While the short term outlook for shares is uncertain they are great value for long term investors.
- The 50% plus slump in shares from last year’s highs has taken them well below their long term [...]

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Why Rudd and Rees are rewriting history

November 23, 2008

Have you noticed that, though Kevin Rudd & Associates are too delicate to utter that dirty word “deficit”, they’re all too ready to use another D-word, Depression – as in “worst crisis since the Great Depression”?
So he’s going to take us through a slump big enough to be compared to the 1930s and do it [...]

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How deep the recession?

November 20, 2008

This note looks at the global economic slump that is now unfolding. The key points are as follows:
- Global recession is now a given. Australia is also headed for at least a mild recession.
- The key issue is the depth and duration of the slump. At the moment leading indicators for global and Australian growth [...]

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House Prices and Debt – Australia's Achilles Heel

November 17, 2008

This note looks at the outlook for house prices given the deterioration in the economic outlook over the last six months.
The key points are as follows:
- How house prices behave over the year ahead will likely be a key determinant of how well Australia weathers the global financial crisis and recession now embracing the rest [...]

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Treasury accused of manipulating forecasts

November 10, 2008

Opposition frontbencher Andrew Robb says the Treasury’s latest economic figures have got “the smell of manipulation” about them because they differ from the Reserve Bank’s.
The Reserve Bank yesterday released figures which show it expects growth to slow to 1.5 per cent, compared to Treasury’s prediction of 2 per cent.
Mr Robb says it is “odd” that [...]

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Dramatic rate cut may signal more financial heartache

November 4, 2008

The Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) latest dramatic official interest rate cut has signalled to many that the Australian economy is in worse shape than first thought.
The cut of 0.75 of a percentage point follows a full percentage point cut last month.
The action has many people worried, although Treasurer Wayne Swan is citing international factors, [...]

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$40b hole in Budget revenue: Swan

November 4, 2008

Treasurer Wayne Swan says a massive drop in expected revenue has caused the Government to slash its forecast Budget surplus from over $21 billion to around $5b.
Unemployment figures have also been revised up, with the jobless rate expected to hit 5 per cent by the middle of next year, while growth is expected to slow [...]

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