Doom and Gloom. Talk of a Recession.

[Q.]

Manufacturing in Oz could be improved if we became more efficient. Our workers are as good as anywhere in the world and better than most. But employers struggle with stupidity like the annual leave loading, relentless sick leave entitlements, exorbitant penalty rates, union intervention in everything from toilet paper types to the size of the tea room and positioning of the dart boards. Greed and corruption at the management level is also a handbrake but this can be tackled and eradicated. Try negotiating with a union (I'm a financial member of a union) and you go nowhere fast.
We are our own worst enemy.

The answer is not cutting pay and leave entitlements. It is the Libs mode of operation though, something we can look forward to I guess.

Labor goofed by propping up the sector with billions of dollars, when they should have been using the money to retrain workers in the manufacturing sector.

[Q.]

Good time to be an Aussie...



http://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/details/economy/measuring-productivity-canada.aspx

[Agile]

Sorry for coming in on this late, but relying on graphs put out by governments and anylists can be taken with a grain of salt. They bear very little to reality in the issues that really count. Unemployment is 6.5%. Really.? I say BS. Add in the hundreds of thousands of people who are " employed" but are only part time.Maybe another tens of thousands who are unemployed but are not registered as unemployed because their spouse is employed so its not worth the hassle. Recession is well and truly on us. Can only hope the rest of the world picks up soon and drags us along for the ride.

[Q.]

Statistics are more reliable that anecdotes. True the criteria for meeting 'employment' is misleading, however, it has been this way for some time and it still provides an accurate picture of trends and comparisons.

[Psyber]

Apart from the dodgy employment figures counting part-timers as employed, we do seem to have numerous snippets in the media suggesting that business is not profitable and we know the interest return on cash investment is poor. Other snippets suggest a renewed interest in bricks and mortar as being the place to return to. This is supported by some house price increases and reportedly increased clearance rates, which will not have filtered through to the official statistics yet.

This is reminiscent of the scene in about 1984-5 when there was a real estate price boom - I sold a house in May 1984 for $158K, which a few weeks earlier, may have struggled to top the $63K I was quoted for it by an agent early the same year. By 1986, interest rates were rising rapidly to curb the inflation ("stagflation" was the term in use) and everything was grinding to a halt. Then in 1987 came the big economic collapse that left us waiting for the J-curve to happen. That was when shares dropped 40%, and property prices collapsed for a while.

The main difference now is that interest rates are lower than they were at the start of that period, which may enhance the flow of capital into property and the price rises.
I'm positioning myself to cover it, and benefit, if it does happen.

[Dog_ger]

Our economy is worse now than when the State Bank went bust under Premier John Bannon..

[Psyber]

Our economy is worse now than when the State Bank went bust under Premier John Bannon..

SA's certainly is, but I'm not sure about the other states and the federal scene.

The other thing that happened in the late 1980s was that tax deductions boomed and I sold a second hand Porsche for 40% more than I'd paid for it 4 years earlier.
That was helped by the fact that the interest on car loans was around 9% or so, when property and business loans were pushing 17%.
(I was clearing assets for cash while I could still get a good price in early 1987, because I saw the drop coming.)

[gossipgirl]

the economy is booming if you are a politician, SA water or an electricity company !!!