Damson

Bloody typical. We had to give up and let our visa expire when it was $1.45/£. Just wasn't meant to be I guess. Seriously thinking of New Zealand again now though so may all work out for the best in the end.

DC10

Who would have thought that a developing economy (such as China) could possibly deviate from straight line upwards growth - is there any precedent for this in the history of economics?!

The last dominos to fall will be the Aussie housing market followed closely by its banks (with their <2% capital-to-debt ratios: the kind that Europe and America beefed up massively 7 years ago). Once that happens we will all be reaching for those little "ma-roan" passport thingees and having a good old laugh at historical newspaper articles saying "Melbourne's population expected to reach [write your own ridiculous growth-goes-on-forever assumption number here] million by 2030"

Swerv-o

Don't be ridiculous. The Australian property market will always be a straight line to infinity. How could it ever be anything else?


S

GarryP

OK, NOW it's time to panic. Joe Hockey says "This is a correction, not a crisis", and we know how much of clue he has ...

'This is a correction, not a crisis,' says Joe Hockey, after share-market rout | Business | The Guardian

Swerv-o

Correction for what? The ASX shed all its gains for the last year in one day. I know that Joe isn't big on growth, but that's just silly...


S

astera

A thought just came to mind that the property market in Australia serves the same purpose as the stock market in the US. It's all about those capital gains and securing good returns for the future with enough equity built-up to enjoy the latter stages in life. So in the US the main investment vehicle is the stock market, whereas over here it's housing.

Even if the housing market doesn't tank, a falling currency will still have an adverse affect on those who don't peg their finances to the AUD. Stable or slightly rising property prices are no consolation to such people if the currency depreciates strongly during this time.

Personally I wouldn't invest in anything at this moment in time as I think there is still lots on downwards pressure on the AUD ahead... All it takes is for the US stock exchange to do a repeat of its acrobatics from 8 yrs ago and the AUD could be heading into the low 50s.

OzTennis

You want the Treasurer to say it's a crisis, let's panic?

Fwiw it is also being called a correction in the UK and the USA. i.e. a correction to the western world relying on double digit growth in China for the last 2 decades for it's own growth and low inflation. The irony is that growth is expected to be in the 6/7% range in China this year and the slow growing western world without this double digit growth panics and yes, stock markets correct. The FTSE-100 lost £74 bill or 4.6% in one day yesterday!

China's 'Black Monday' sends markets reeling across the globe - as it happened | Business | The Guardian

Amazulu

What a load of shite

Yesterday the headlines were screaming $60b wiped off the market

Today the ASX is up 136 - will we get headlines saying that the market made $40b today? Will we f**k

A correction it is

Sometimes the market goes up

Sometimes it goes down

Then it goes up again

Then it goes down

Jack and Jill

What a load of shite

OzTennis

I bet your MBA teachers are purring with delight at that insightful Jack and Jill analysis.

BHP Billiton posted it's worst profits since 2004 on the same day you reckon it was just Jack and Jill going down the hill to fetch a pail of water.

BHP Billiton posts worst profit in 11 years, maintains dividend

You said the 'recovery' wouldn't be reported but it was! Reason for the recovery? Bargain hunters swooping on heavily discounted stocks.

ASX: 'Classic relief rally' as sharemarket bounces back

http://www.smh.com.au/business/marke...24-gj6tk1.html

paulry

As counter intuitive as it may sound, but didn't they go up the hill?

DC10

Wall Street went up the hill last night... then all the way back down (and some)

Aussie shares down almost 50% year-on-year in USD, and most other currencies

Govt running big deficits for years whilst the economy hasn't had a recession for decades and is still (supposedly) growing at 2-3%, with absolutely zero idea or political and public consensus about how to do anything about it. Household debt at record levels. Banks which seem to have never even heard of mutliple-of-income lending (the UK figure was always around 4x income - here so long as you have a 10-20% deposit the assumption is that you must be able to pay back anything).

How will all those debts look if and when growth turns negative?

Hmmm.

Amazulu

You don't need an MBA to realise that so much financial reporting is utter garbage

I was referring to the fact that the press always states losses in the market in monetary vales - today the market lost $30b, $70b, $120b etc - but never the gains (which are always greater than the losses otherwise we wouldn't have a market)

GarryP

Banks have treated our housing market like a Ponzi scheme, and it's about to bust | Lindsay David | Comment is free | The Guardian

Australian banks are a crash waiting to happen. They are massively tied to the Australian housing market, and are overvalued in equity terms. In recent months they have been trying to turn that overvaluation into greater capital reserves - almost as if they expect a problem in that debt mountain.

The question however is if they have enough equity and what happens when China really catches cold. Not only will Australia catch pneumonia as a result, chinese investors will try to sell their investment properties at the same time australians are losing their jobs and can't keep up mortgage repayments.

It will be a bloodbath in valuations as more of those stupid price collapse down to more reasonable numbers. But that will hit the banks hard and there is nothing to say they will survive it. Their stock market valuations will fall massively, and with it the value of many super funds.

DC10

Oh yeah, I'd forgotten about rental yields (like every bank and residential property "investor" in Aus)... shouldn't they be through the roof (instead of 2-3%) given this terrible "supply" problem in the housing market...?

I've even read a couple of stories in the papers here about how this China crash will be good news for property as the Chinese will be looking for "safe" investments, and as we all know Aus property is the safest of all because it only ever goes up (in $AUD, at least). If I have ever read a sillier story then I can't remember it

Amazulu

Hmmm

Markets go up
Markets go down

While our debt and deficit is not good it is nowhere in the same league as your darling, better countries like the UK, US, Canada, Germany etc

Although not ideal, one thing that I have learnt is that most advanced nations can function quite well with high levels of national debt - debt that is way higher than Australia's

Hope this helps with your basic understanding of economics