“Whilst times have been tough here in Australia, I don’t believe we’ve seen the worst of it yet,” he said.

“There’s certainly a lot of leading indicators that say we are not seeing the bottom get worse, what my point is, is that we are likely to chug along the bottom for a little while yet, and I won’t believe that it’s officially over until we start to see unemployment rates go down not go up.”
…
However he says Coca-Cola Amatil’s recent surge in sales of premium beer and baked beans give a strong indication that times are getting tougher for the man and woman on the street.

“Our premium beer sales are up over 50 per cent this year, yet our SPC baked beans are up about the same amount, just growing extraordinarily,” he said.

“Why? Meal replacement, cheap meal replacement and doing very well.”

It seems, if you sell to the top and bottom ends of the income scale, and you are a giant company that dominates most of your markets, you cannot lose, good times or bad.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/06/25/2608704.htm

I’m not sure how premium beer and baked beans go together

Nice headline, but further down…

“Exports were down 40.9 per cent in May from a year earlier, having recovered somewhat from a record year-on-year fall of 49.5 per cent in February. Imports sank 42.4 per cent last month on lower prices of crude oil and raw materials.”

http://www.news.com.au/business/story/0,27753,25683686-31037,00.html

baron rothchild,

an interesting character,

made a killing on napoleans misfortune.

when everybody else thought the iron duke was toast and napolean had won at waterloo, his network of spies told him otherwise, and in the ensuing panic he bought up big.

hence the term ” the best time to buy is when there is blood in the streets ”

anecdotes aside, i have to agree with ken,

dont think we will be seeing the imf on our doorstep anytime soon. we have seen large devaluations in our currency before, and we will see it again once this equities rally is over.

Whatever way you slice it, China is having serious troubles. What we in Australia should obviously be keeping our eye on is China’s imports. I don’t see those being anywhere near sufficient to create the decoupling from the GFC already cooked into the fairy tale Govt Budget forcasts. That being the case, Australia is on course for a fully blown current account crisis in the next 2-3 years.

Devaluation ala Argentina is not a desirable solution. The cost of living here would skyrocket as I don’t see wages keeping up at all with projected price increases brought on by a severe currency devaluation.

http://www.china.org.cn/business/2009-06/23/content_17995620.htm

“The government may relax rules on inward foreign direct investment (FDI) to prevent it from sliding further, sources from the Ministry of Commerce said on June 22.
“We have drawn up a plan to relax some restrictions on foreign investment, particularly in the real-estate sector,” an official from the Ministry of Commerce, who did not want to be named, confirmed to China Daily.”
‘”The ministry’s proposal is important to maintain growth in investment, one of the three drivers of economic growth, in the second half of the year,” said Li Jianfeng, macro-economic and trade analyst with Shanghai Securities.’

How good is that? I really think they’re smart… to have a free lunch on stupid investors.

They may be doing the right thing that is getting rid of the Treasuries and stockpiling commodities. A bubble is inevitable. Can you imagine their government doing that in the context of the Rio Tinto purchase failure?

The fact they have their own First HOGers investing happily into the bubble doesn’t surprise me.

Don’t worry the Central Committee is firmly in control and they really don’t care about the fate of the middle class as long as the overall stability during this tough period is preserved. If the middle class is unhappy when the bubble bursts they can be re-educated.

Sometimes I think that at least some banksters, tycoons and corporate lawyers in Western counties deserve to be re-educated as well.

GSM

A quote from that blog…..

“That is one thing I noticed immediately about China: there is a constant barrage everywhere you turn—-TV, advertisements, magazines, newspapers, billboards, etc.—-that essentially suggests that everything is wonderful and getting more wonderful all the time, and everybody is just happy, happy, happy, and China is getting better and better and stronger and stronger. I was really struck by this. It was like living in a never-ending infomercial”

Sound familiar people?! Australia the lucky country avoids the GFC…..yippy!

Excellent article at ZH on the saviour of Australia- China. Not for the faint hearted who have placed bets that China will decouple with us in tow. Some great links in this article too- “The Wedge” in Cali is awesome.

There are noticeably less tip truck and dog trailer combinations (carrying dirt of some sort). I look out for these as I find that they tend to throw rocks, and I do not like stone chips.

Interestingly the time taken to get home in the afternoon has not improved by as much.

Fear the Dark Side of China’s Lending Surge
06-19 14:24 Caijing

“Banks loans designed to spark economic recovery have been channeled into asset speculation, doing more harm than good.”

Another view on the Chinese “miracle”.