Aggregated Awareness

This story is a bit old. It is from last Wednesday 23rd Feb 2011. However, it is a very significant piece of news, little reported outside of financial news services, such as The Australian Online Business section, which is a joint venture with the Wall Street Journal.

The bigger picture view from this article, is that the current de facto global reserve currency, the US Dollar, is seeing a secular trend away from it's usage in trade. This trend has been ongoing for a few years now starting at the margin, however, it is now gaining momentum. And as such...

From Bloomberg comes this recently released piece of data regarding gold mining production outputs for 2010.

In first place, with a reported 341 metric tonnes of gold produced, was China. And with the Chinese having imported another 300 metric tonnes in 2010, takes their reported consumption of gold to just below 650 tonnes for 2010. Since they consume all of their production internally in China.

From the Sydney Morning Herald comes this tidbit of news that the Australian Federal Government will be destroying 7.8 million, and donating 3.8 million doses, of the Swine Flu vaccine: Panvax H1N1; that it had acquired last year.

This, out of a total of 21 million doses acquired at a cost to taxpayers of $200 million. The overall loss to taxpayers is $100 million.

Perusing various news outlets can yield surprising results. As an example from today's Ninemsn.com:

"...The TD Securities-Melbourne Institute monthly inflation gauge showed prices grew by a further 0.4 per cent in November, the largest monthly increase since May.

This lifted the annual rate to 3.9 per cent, well beyond the top end of the central bank's two to three per cent inflation target band.

"With inflationary pressures already building, the next move remains up for interest rates," TD Securities head of Asia-Pacific research Annette Beacher said.

Ms Beacher said that while another 25-basis-point increase to a five per cent cash rate in the first three months of next year cannot be ruled out, given the central bank now has room to manoeuvre, this timing could easily slip into April or May without compromising its anti-inflation credentials..."

Source...

Once having read the above passage in red, we proceeded to take a wander over to the RBA's website, to see what that particular institution states inflation to be, and it didn't surprise us to see this:

From Tyler Durden of Zerohedge via Reuters comes great analysis about the close correlation of the AUD currency pairs with JPY, USD & EUR; and world major indices stock market movements, and what portends for them after this morning's drop in the AUD vs. USD, JPY & EUR.

From Christopher Pavese of Broyhill Asset Management via Zerohedge comes this well put together report on the Australian Housing Market, and where it might be heading.

Excerpt: "...The recurring theme in every case is that housing bubbles are almost always justified by “new era” thinking, land shortages, and are considered unique right up until the moment they pop. Most bubbles around the world have at least partially deflated in the wake of the Great Contraction, yet the property market Down Under continues to chug along ignoring the gravitational forces of mean reversion as Aussie consumers continue their American-inspired credit binge.

US housing prices nearly doubled in the decade leading to their ultimate peak as shown in the above chart. Australian real estate kept pace with these gains until US home prices lost nearly a third of their value as US home owners deleveraged their balance sheets. Since then, Australian households have watched their home prices appreciate by at least that much, while they continue to feast at the trough of easy credit..."

From the BBC comes news that Australia's Federal Election has been called for Saturday 21st August by Prime Minister Gillard in a press conference today.