Bloomberg reports:
- Australia’s misery index — the sum of unemployment and inflation rates — is at 9.0, the highest since 2008
OK. So the ‘misery index’ is an algo … a simple sum of the unemployment and inflation rates. Evidence that some algos are overly simplified? Or maybe that ‘misery’ is a little over the top as a description for whats happening in Oz?
Anyways …
The article goes on:
“The hurdle to cut further is high,” said Su-Lin Ong, head of Australian economic and fixed-income strategy at Royal Bank of Canada in Sydney. “The RBA is likely to remain reluctant in the absence of an external driver, and the case to cut from an already historical low will need to be compelling.”
“There is insufficient domestic demand growth to stabilize wage growth or the unemployment rate and together with fiscal policy changes this would feed through to weaker household income growth,” Tim Toohey, Melbourne-based chief Australia economist for Goldman Sachs Group Inc., who forecasts a rate cut next month, said after the Aug. 13 wages data.
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I posted earlier on Deutche Bank’s view on the Australian economy, they are more sanguine (as am I).
