ASIC is in full ‘fire control’ mode, as a result of its astonishing failure — begging the question of complicity — in the RBA corruption scandal.
But it seems many just aren’t buying their lines:
Tag Archives: RBA
RBA “A Culture Of Systemic Lying And Greed”
1 OctCross-posted from Macro Business:
It is one of the more weird characteristics of Australian economic commentary that the Reserve Bank of Australia enjoys an untouchable position. Bank economists and economic observers all hold the central bank in very high esteem, to the point where it is borderline criminal to question the monetary authority.
The reason for this is pretty straight forward. The world of employed economists in Australia is very small and you don’t want to be marked as a trouble maker if you intend, as many do, to move between public and private offices over your career.
Which brings me to last night’s Four Corners episode that recounts the allegedly corrupt histories of the RBA subsidiaries, Securency and Note Printing Australia, as well as at the bank itself.
If you missed the program I suggest you set aside 45 minutes to watch it in the near future. It is here. I’ve been aware of most of the allegations for years but to see the entire story told from beginning to end is really something else. It is shocking.
The program describes a culture of systemic lying and greed, of economics without ethics, of total failures of governance, of group think and entitlement throughout the elite levels of the RBA’s subsidiaries and perhaps at the bank as well. I have had my faith in the institution shattered and only a full and open inquiry has any hope of restoring it.
I have no idea if anything will come of the investigation. Probably not. But the stain upon the Reserve Bank of Australia will thus be all the more indelible.
Good.
It is this blogger’s fervent hope that this scandal will prompt many more people to begin to ask questions about the RBA.
Leading, most importantly, to the question of why we permit it to exist at all.
Crooked As A Dog’s Hind Leg
30 SepWhether this particular accusation proves true or not, any additional scrutiny placed on the (many, secretive) actions of the central bank is very, very good news.
From the Australian:
Probe Reserve Bank ‘dirty deals’ with Saddam Hussein, Greens urge
THE Greens are escalating calls for a full judicial inquiry with the powers of a Royal Commission to probe allegations of dirty deals at the Reserve Bank and its subsidiaries.
The Reserve Bank is facing allegations it used a front man to liaise with the brother-in-law of Iraqi dictator Suddam Hussein in a bid to sell plastic banknotes to the country at the height of the United Nations-imposed sanctions.
Deputy Greens leader Adam Bandt today called on the Abbott government to establish an inquiry that has the same powers to investigate the allegations as the probe into the Australian Wheat Board scandal.
“Most Australians would be shocked to know their central bank has been using their money to line up dirty deals with Suddam Hussein,” Mr Bandt said.
“The stench surrounding the Reserve Bank and its subsidiaries is now so strong that only a full independent judicial inquiry will clear the air.”
A joint Fairfax/ABC investigation into the Reserve Bank and its two polymer banknote firms, Note Printing Australia and Securency, has also alleged the Australian Securities and Investment Commission failed to investigate allegations of corruption, and reported claims by whistle-blower and former NPA executive Brian Hood that publicly challenge RBA governor Glenn Stevens’ parliamentary testimony about the scandal.
“The claim that RBA officials misled Parliament is disturbing,” Mr Bandt said.
“When Parliament resumes, the Greens will move to have RBA officials appear before a parliamentary committee to answer these serious allegations.”
Mr Bandt said the failure of the corporate watchdog to investigate claims of sustained wrongdoing at the Reserve Bank was appalling.
“It seems ASIC, our corporate regulator, was asleep at the wheel.”
“ASIC throws the book at a lone global warming activist who sends out a press release, yet turns a blind eye to repeated claims of sustained corporate corruption in the Reserve Bank.”
“Asleep” at the wheel?
Sure.
Try again.
How about, “happily along for the ride”.
UPDATE:
Yep. Crooked as a dog’s hind leg.
From the Australian Financial Review:
A Reserve Bank of Australia subsidiary used a frontman to liaise with Saddam Hussein’s brother-in-law in an illegal effort to supply plastic bank notes to the Iraqi government while it was subject to United Nations sanctions, according to confidential RBA files.
Two whistle-blowers who became police witnesses in the Reserve Bank-note bribery scandal have also broken their silence about the failure of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission to investigate the directors of two allegedly corrupt RBA companies, Note Printing Australia and Securency.
In 2011, Securency and Note Printing were charged by the federal police with bribery offences related to alleged payments to overseas officials. Court orders prevent recent developments regarding the charges against the companies from being reported.
The companies’ former directors, who were appointed by the Reserve Bank, have never been investigated for allowing corruption-prone business practices to flourish for 10 years.
A whistle-blower and former top NPA executive, Brian Hood, also challenged Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens’s parliamentary testimony about the scandal from 2010 to 2012, which he said “wasn’t the truth”.
Mr Hood claimed the long-standing chairman and ex-RBA deputy governor, Graeme Thompson, and other directors, including former NPA director Mark Bethwaite and former RBA board member Dick Warburton, agreed to conceal from Nepali authorities secret commissions NPA paid to an agent in Nepal for help winning polymer bank-note contracts.
Confidential bank documents reveal that in May 1998, NPA launched a secret project code-named Delta to secure $80 million that Iraqi President Hussein had “already allocated” to buy Australian plastic note technology.
Reserve Bank officials working for NPA said the funds could potentially be accessed by funnelling the money through a Jordanian bank “with the green light of SH [Saddam Hussein]”.
A frontman was used by Reserve Bank officials to cover up NPA’s decision to use a notoriously corrupt middleman, Saddam’s brother-in-law and bodyguard, Arshad Yassin, as a facilitator to sell notes to the Iraqi regime.
A legal expert and Sydney University associate professor, David Chaikin, who reviewed the Project Delta files for Fairfax Media, said they showed a “very strong prima facie” case that RBA officials involved in the Iraq trip breached UN sanction 661, which banned Australians from engaging in any business dealings “which promote or are calculated to promote” the sale or supply of any goods to Iraq.
When Project Delta was launched, the Reserve Bank was responsible for upholding the sanctions. The project was known to top RBA bank-note officials, including Mr Bethwaite.
A Project Delta file faxed to Mr Bethwaite in 1998 states that Arshad Yassin’s involvement in the secret deal was “critical as all decisions on this project will be taken by SH [Saddam Hussein].”
Project Delta was stopped in September 1998, after a senior Australian diplomat, John Hines, from the Department of Foreign Affairs Middle East branch, learned of it and wrote a furious letter to NPA warning that its “informal meeting with Saddam Hussein’s brother-in-law may have already breached Australia’s obligations in international law”. He complained NPA had ignored repeated requests to provide details to the government about its plans in Iraq.
The fact that an RBA representative travelled to Iraq using “an Australian Official Passport . . . only adds to the potential for embarrassment to the government,” Mr Hines wrote.
Project Delta was never made public because Mr Bethwaite and other NPA directors kept it secret in 1998 and, again, in 2009, when the corruption allegations involving NPA and Securency were first aired in the media.
Rather than stopping all high-risk business practices when Project Delta was wound down in 1998, NPA and Securency directors embraced bribery-prone activities, including paying foreign agents huge sums for convincing overseas officials to give contracts to the RBA’s banknote companies.
ASIC and the Australian Federal Police have never investigated the former directors of the two firms for overseeing the high-risk practices.
Under Australian corporate law, directors must act with care and diligence to ensure the firm they oversee does not engage in corruption.
ASIC, which decided in 2012 not to conduct a formal inquiry, has not interviewed a single witness or suspect.
ASIC made the decision after reviewing documents gathered by the Federal Police probe even though the AFP bribery inquiry never investigated directors for alleged corporate offences.
A Fairfax Media-Four Corners investigation has found allegedly corrupt practices spread, with the knowledge of some directors, many years before Mr Hood and a second whistleblower, James Shelton, raised concerns that led to police charging the two Reserve Bank companies with bribery in 2011.
In his first public interview, Mr Hood, a former NPA company secretary, said some former directors allowed highly risky business practices to occur and covered up suspected corruption.
One example cited by Mr Hood involved Mr Thompson ordering NPA to wire $400,000 in 2007 to a Malaysian arms dealer who was helping the firm to win bank note contracts and who had already been paid more than $2.5 million.
The money was sent despite Mr Hood’s pleas not to pay the suspected arms dealer because he was suspected of being corrupt.
Mr Hood said that he was “gobsmacked” by Mr Thompson’s conduct because it so clearly exposed the Reserve Bank firm to possible bribery.
Even after this arms dealer was sacked, Mr Thompson and other directors approved further payments to him in return for his lobbying of Malaysian officials.
In 2011, Malaysian authorities charged the arms dealer with using NPA funds to allegedly pay bribes.
Mr Hood said: “The inaction by ASIC has been astounding. The parent organisation [the Reserve Bank] and the boards of directors have all got their responsibilities. Clearly there has been failings . . . and they should be investigated,” said Mr Hood, who was the NPA’s company secretary between 2004 and 2008.
Mr Shelton, who was a sales manager at Securency in 2007 and 2008, said: “The board is responsible for corporate governance and is ultimately responsible for the company. They [directors] would have known there were very large deals being done in very corrupt places. They put in an anti-corruption program that was fundamentally flawed by any assessment.”
ASIC has defended its refusal to conduct a formal probe or interview a single witness or suspect, saying that it decided not to do so after assessing a large number of documents gathered by the Federal Police.
Mr Hood attacked Mr Stevens for testifying before Parliament that the first the RBA knew of corruption allegations involving Securency was when they were aired in 2009.
Mr Hood said that he told the RBA in writing and in a verbal briefing in 2007 that Securency and NPA were exposed to alleged corruption.
The Reserve Bank owns all of Note Printing Australia. It sold its half share in Securency this year. The RBA, Mr Thompson, Mr Bethwaite and Mr Warburton declined to answer questions.
Shameless, Disgraceful, Bombastic Liar
6 Aug
This is what Australian politics has been reduced to.
Shameless, disgraceful, bombastic lies.
From shameless, disgraceful, bombastic liars.
Assistant Treasurer David Bradbury was interviewed on DMG Radio today, by journalist Glenn Daniel.
Daniel challenged Bradbury on his shameless, disgraceful, bombastic lies regarding Joe Hockey’s observation on what lowering of interest rates really means for the current state of the economy.
An observation that even Fairfax newspapers’ “PolitiFact” FactChecker says is correct:
Mr Hockey is right. The Reserve Bank is cutting rates “not because the economy is doing well, it’s because the economy is deteriorating”. That’s always why it cuts rates.
Listen to the interview here — and try to keep all hurlable objects out of arms’ reach as you do so.
This is the ASSISTANT TREASURER of the nation you are listening to.
The Chart That Proves RBA House Price Policy Is Doomed
14 MayThe RBA’s surprise decision to cut the official interest rate earlier this month has re-energised the housing-debt-spruiker community, who have begun forecasting house price rises of 8 – 12% per annum on the back of more interest rate cuts to come (they presume):
Stephen Koukoulas – economist and ALP apologist
Close examination of just one chart — one drawn directly from RBA statistics — is enough to debunk those who still cling to the belief that the RBA’s cutting interest rates must inevitably result in rising house prices:
Click to enlarge
This chart shows the all-important annual growth rate in credit for “Owner-occupied” and “Investor” housing, for the period July 1992 to March 2013. As we saw in January’s very popular “The Easy Way To Know Where House Prices Will Go”, anyone can visit the RBA’s website and use their monthly updated Chart Pack to see the true reason why house prices rose so strongly for over twenty years. It was all about the annual growth rate in “credit” for Housing, which is presently five (5) times lower than the peak seen in February 2004.
In that January article, we used the RBA’s own data to discover that the twenty year boom in house prices was largely due to a stunning annual growth rate in so-called “Investor” housing credit…
Clearly then, house prices in Australia were not driven up over the past 15-20 years by “demand” from “population growth”, from people who needed somewhere to live (Owner-occupiers). On the contrary, by far the strongest rates of growth have – during the bubble phase – been driven by so-called “investors”.
… and that is where a closer examination of that one chart above demonstrates that the RBA’s house price policy — trying to pump up the housing bubble again, now that their recently preferred “make room for the mining boom” policy has proven to be seriously short-sighted — is doomed to failure.
Why?
Because using interest rates to influence demand for housing “credit” — especially with “Investors” — has lost its effectiveness. And we can see this clearly, simply by zooming in on the above chart to look at the period November 2007 through to March 2013…
Click to enlarge
… and then adding in the actual interest rate rises, and cuts, and rises, and cuts during this period immediately before and since the GFC:
Take careful note of the change in the growth rate of housing “credit” for “Investors”, as compared to “Owner-occupiers”, as interest rates moved.
As you can see, the three (3) interest rate increases in late 2007 through early 2008 tipped both “Investor” and “Owner-occupied” housing credit growth over the cliff. By October 2008, when the RBA began taking a chainsaw to interest rates, housing credit growth was practically in free fall, plummeting from 12% per annum (Total) to 6.3% per annum, before the total 4.25% in “emergency” interest rate cuts halted the decline.
Interestingly, you can see that both the rate of fall and the total decline in housing credit growth was greater for Investors than for Owner-occupiers. As we saw in our January article, this is also what happened in the brief early 2000’s recession:
The rate of growth in “credit” for housing “Investors” was, until early 2004, far in excess of that for “Owner-occupiers”, with the notable exception of the early 2000′s global recession that only briefly affected Australia. At that time, “credit” growth for “Investor” housing plummeted to the same level as the “Owner-occupier” rate, before recovering spectacularly to reach a whopping 30.7% annual growth in Feb 2004.
What prompted the recovery? John Howard’s introduction of the First Home Owners Grant in 2000, and in particular, his doubling it in early 2001. With a rush of newly-enslaved borrowers bidding up house prices, “investors” too rushed back into the welcoming arms of the bankers, as ever only too eager to lend “credit” at interest to willing borrowers against the “security” of “their” house.
We see a similar, though far smaller effect largely repeated in the post-GFC period. The Rudd Government further doubled the First Home Owners Grant. A modest influx of new “First Home Owner” buyers rushing out with their government-debt-financed mortgage deposit to bid for a house, drew the “investors” back into the market as well. By July 2010 the “Investor” housing credit annual growth rate once again overtook that of “Owner-occupied” housing.
But not for long.
As you can see from the chart, the annual growth rate in credit for “Investor” housing had already peaked in August 2010, and had begun to fall, 2-3 months before the RBA’s final 0.25% interest rate increase in November 2010.
“Owner-occupied” housing credit growth, by contrast, had peaked back in October 2009 — the very same month in which the RBA first began to raise interest rates again, from their GFC “emergency low”. The First Home Owners Grant helped keep “Owner-occupied” housing credit growth relatively steady through to March 2010, when it resumed its long, steady post-2004 and pre-GFC decline. It has only now begun to flatline, in the first quarter of 2013.
The important observation to make about this chart, is that since the GFC “peak fear” in late 2008 and early 2009, things have changed. The world has gone past a point of no return, and the old “rules” of monetary and economic policy do not necessarily apply anymore.
While RBA interest rate increases still have the effect of reducing annual growth rates in housing credit, cutting interest rates no longer appears to have much effect in boosting housing credit growth back up again. Since November 2011, the RBA has cut interest rates seven (7) times — the most recent (May) not shown on this chart — to what are now lower than “emergency lows”, without causing an overall increase in the housing credit annual growth rate. Indeed, the RBA’s own Housing Credit growth chart in its Chart Pack confirms this:
The RBA now has the official interest rate at 2.75%. They have cut a full 1.5% since November 2011, without managing to “stimulate” a “recovery” in the growth rate of house prices housing debt.
There are many more knowledgeable observers than I who have argued that 2% is as low as the Australian official interest rate can go; that 2% is effectively ZIRP (Zero Interest Rate Policy) for us. The reason given sounds plausible enough; the Australian economy is essentially financed by borrowing “capital” from abroad, so with the rest of the West operating on ZIRP, we need a +2% interest rate difference in order to have any hope of continuing to attract foreign “capital”.
If the RBA is indeed “lower bound” by the 2% level, then the above chart makes one thing pretty clear.
At the present 2.75% cash rate, even another 0.75% in possible interest rate cuts is unlikely to “stimulate” much if any additional growth in Housing credit.
And with annual housing credit growth now running five (5) times lower than the February 2004 peak, and barely two-thirds the level when interest rates hit the 3% “emergency low” in April 2009, the RBA’s policy of trying to re-stimulate the housing bubble to support the economy after the mining boom … is doomed.
Simply, the RBA is pushing on a string:
This is the crux of the “pushing on a string” metaphor – that money cannot be pushed from the central bank to borrowers if they do not wish to borrow.
Don’t Buy Now.
“You CAN Influence The Price Of The Dollar, If You Actually Want To” – Barnaby
7 May
Bookmark this post, dear reader. This is historic.
Once again, Barnaby Joyce is the first major party politician (to my knowledge) to speak truth to power concerning a(nother) vital economic parameter.
In late 2009 and early 2010 – before new Opposition Leader Tony Abbott wilted like a week-old lettuce leaf and sacked him – then Opposition Finance spokesman Barnaby warned of the dangers of Australia’s rising Federal and State government debt trajectories. Only in recent weeks, some three years later, leading economists have begun to acknowledge that Barnaby was right.
Today, 7 May 2013, appearing on radio 2GB, he is the first major party politician to state that the government can bring down the exchange rate value of the Australian dollar, and tell the plain truth about why they (the ALP, Treasury, and RBA) have not done so:
The dollar, if you actually want to, you can actually affect it. It’s not written on tablets of stone and presented from Mount Sinai. You can influence the price of the dollar down if there is real motivation and desire to do so. One of the reasons they don’t do it is because they want to be economically pure. The way we’re going at the moment we’re going to be pure in debt, economically dead, so let’s make sure we keep our industry going.
Just so.
Over the past few years, our great economic leaders – the World’s Greatest Treasurer Wayne Swan, and the Million Dollar Man, RBA Governor Glenn Stevens – have deliberately chosen a policy of not joining the global currency wars. Of deliberately allowing the AUD to rise and rise versus other currencies, and to remain at unprecedented elevated levels. Why? In order to “make room for the mining boom”.
In other words, because of the inflationary impact of the mining (investment) boom, they have chosen to let a far-too-high AUD deflate the rest of the economy … to “make room for the mining boom”.
(Yes, the same mining boom that is now ending; the one that they so confidently believed would give Australia a period of “unprecedented prosperity”, a China-funded “golden age” lasting “to 2050”, according to former Treasury Secretary Ken Henry).
They have pursued an economic policy of allowing the rest of the Australian economy to be hollowed out, white-ant style, so that their precious little (bogus) economic performance figures for “inflation” (ie, the CPI) would not get too far beyond their arbitrary boundaries of preference.
While the rest of the country (except mining and related industries) has watched countless businesses, and whole industry sectors such as manufacturing, slowly getting squeezed towards, and in a record number of cases, into bankruptcy, our ivory-towered boffins have sat back applauding themselves for their ideological purity, self-congratulating for their not acting to influence the AUD exchange rate.
Despite the fact that practically every other nation in the world who can, is.
As usual, it takes the little ol’ bush accountant to bell the cat.
Barnaby for PM.
He’s the only one with both brains, and b***s.
Swan Siphons RBA In Failed Attempt To Reach Surplus
23 Feb
And here you were believing our politicians and media parrots, when they say that the Reserve Bank of Australia is “independent”.
From The Age (via MacroBusiness):
TREASURER Wayne Swan defied objections from the Reserve Bank governor and siphoned half the central bank’s profits into the Budget bottom line to fulfil his political commitment to achieve a surplus.
The Reserve Bank governor, Glenn Stevens, told a parliamentary inquiry that he wrote to Mr Swan, asking him to direct all of the bank’s $1 billion 2011-12 profit to its critically short reserve fund, needed to absorb changes in the value of the bank’s foreign currency holdings. Normally worth around $6 billion, the fund had dwindled to $2 billion.
”It’s a key part of our capital. It has been depleted considerably by the effects of the rising exchange rate,” Mr Stevens told the inquiry. ”I believe the prudent course is to rebuild it as quickly as we can but I am not subject to the other pressures that the government is.”
Mr Swan denied the request, and insisted on taking half the profit as a dividend to help achieve his promise of a budget surplus this financial year.
That promise has since been dumped, leading to the opposition mounting a sustained attack on the government’s fiscal credibility.
”In the end it was his prerogative,” Mr Stevens said. ”He made a judgment, and I had to accept that judgment.”
Another day, another epic fail by our World’s Greatest Treasurer.
One Chart Debunks Wayne’s Lies On Interest Rates
20 Feb
Click to enlarge
Treasurer Wayne Swan has never tired of telling the Australian people that interest rate cuts are a sign of the government’s good economic management:
Dec 4, 2012 – Treasurer Wayne Swan says the central bank’s decision to cut the cash interest rate follows the federal government’s prudent management…
“Today’s rate cut from the Reserve Bank is the early Christmas present that hard-working Aussies deserve,” Mr Swan told reporters in Canberra.
“We’ve now had the equivalent of seven rate cuts over the past year and of course that’s been made possible by the government’s economic management, strong budget management and of course, contained inflation.”
I could include many more examples. Except there would be no point. If you have heard Swan making these self-congratulatory noises once, you have heard it many times.
The truth, of course, is completely different.
When interest rates are cut, it is not a sign of good economic management.
It is a warning sign that things are going to poo:
Dec 4, 2012 – The Reserve Bank has cut the cash rate to its lowest level since the global financial crisis, following a raft of weak economic data that showed pessimism in the jobs market, a slowdown in mining activity and lower-than-expected retail sales.
The RBA cut the cash rate by 25 basis points, or 0.25 percentage points, to 3 per cent, which is the lowest the rate has been since the central bank started setting rates in 1990.
It matches the setting in April 2009 at the peak of the GFC, when the global financial system was in meltdown and the RBA was trying to prevent Australia slipping into recession.
That’s right. It is the important fact that Wayne and the rest of the Labor Party are conveniently forgetting to mention. The present official interest rate is deemed by the RBA to be an “emergency low”.
Take another look at the chart above.
See that little bump up, brief plateau, then fall in interest rates following the big GFC cliff dive?
Technical chart analysts call that a “dead cat bounce”.
Now, lest any reader think to accuse your humble blogger of partisan bias against Wayne and the ALP, let us not forget the LP’s history of lying on this topic.
Many will recall John Howard’s claim that “interest rates will always be lower under a Coalition government than under a Labor government”.
Think about this.
If that were true – and the chart above proves it is not – then what Howard was really saying is that “the economy will always be weaker under a Coalition government than under a Labor government”.
The usury rate formula is very simple to understand.
When the economy is strong, the vested usurers raise usury rates, to increase their profits.
When the economy is weak, they reduce usury rates, to “support the economy”. That is, to prevent their Ponzi scheme from imploding.
When interest rates are falling, it is not a great time to take out a loan. Despite what the vested usurers and their many mouthpieces in the media and real estate sales industry tell you.
It is arguably the worst time to take out a loan.
It is a warning sign that the economy is weak. That unemployment is likely to rise. That your job may be at risk in coming months.
And that the vested usurers are on the back foot, trying to prop up their Ponzi scheme.
DON’T BORROW NOW!!
The Easy Way To Know Where House Prices Will Go
19 JanWant to know whether Australian house prices will rise or fall?
The RBA has the answer.
Just go to their website, and click on “Chart Pack” under “Key Information” –
Then click on “5. Credit and Money” –
… where you will see this chart –
This chart tells us the growth rate in the amount of “credit” and “money” in the economy.
As you can see, the growth rate in “credit” has plummeted to less than 5% per annum. In the period where Australian house prices rose the most in history, the annual growth rate in “credit” was three to four times higher than the present rate. Without strong growth in new “credit” issued to borrowers, house prices can not rise much. If at all.
Indeed, unless there are enough new buyers – armed with enough newly-issued “credit” – out and about and actively purchasing houses, then house prices must eventually fall.
For over twenty years, housing in Australia has been a banker-profit-driven “bubble mania” scheme, you see. To drive up prices, the #1 and absolutely essential ingredient is more and ever more new “credit” – debt – with which bright-eyed and dull-brained buyers – debt slaves – can outbid each other to buy a house.
The RBA has another chart that shows this. It will help you to see more clearly exactly why Australian house prices rose so much … until the GFC struck.
In the main menu of the Chart Pack, select “3. Household Sector” –
Then select “Household Finances” –
… where you will see this chart –
As you can see, Household Debt (ie, “credit” offered by banks) as a percentage of disposable income rose dramatically for nearly twenty years.
Until the GFC.
It turned down sharply as Australians wisely responded by tightening their belts, and paying down their debts. Then began to climb again – but only a little – thanks to the Rudd government offering “free money” in the form of a doubling of the First Home Owners Grant. This handout of what amounted to a free home loan deposit kept the bubble from collapsing. It encouraged thousands of new buyers – mostly young people with little or no savings – to go to their bank and borrow hundreds of thousands in “credit” to go and bid up the prices of houses again.
Unfortunately for them – and the bankers – this could only last for as long as the government was willing, and able, to find more “new home buyers” – new debt slaves – to dangle “free” money in front of. As you can see from the chart, the level of Household Debt to disposable income has now bounced off the ceiling for a second time.
And so, as most Australians know, house prices in most areas of Australia have basically gone nowhere in the past year or two. Some rises here. Some falls there. But overall, house prices have simply mirrored the Household Debt level … falling as debt levels fell, and rising (briefly) to bounce off the underside of that invisible private debt ceiling, thanks to that brief inflow of new “credit” that was borrowed by the government, and then handed out to First Home Buyers as deposits enabling them to apply for new mortgage “credit” from banks. And yes, the RBA has another chart that confirms this –
Now, it might interest you to know exactly when Australia’s private debt-fuelled, bankster-enriching house price bubble scheme actually hit the ceiling.
No, it was not when the GFC struck; when many Australian households began to wake up, and realise that paying down their debts might just be a good idea.
Our housing bubble actually hit the ceiling first in early-to-mid 2004. That is when the all-important rate of growth in housing “credit” topped out, and began to fall.
Unfortunately, the RBA does not make it easy for you to see this critical economic parameter. The Chart Pack only gives you “Credit” growth in aggregate – that includes other forms of borrowing like business loans and credit card “credit”. They even give you a chart for the number of “housing loan approvals”. But they do not give you a chart specifically for that all-important rate of growth in housing credit. You have to dig into their statistics, and construct the chart yourself (click to enlarge) –
Click to enlarge
As you can see, the rate of growth in “credit” for both “Owner-occupier” and “Investor” housing peaked in Feb-Mar 2004, and has been falling ever since.
It is particularly interesting to consider the magenta line showing “Investor” housing “credit”. The rate of growth in “credit” for housing “Investors” was, until early 2004, far in excess of that for “Owner-occupiers”, with the notable exception of the early 2000’s global recession that only briefly affected Australia. At that time, “credit” growth for “Investor” housing plummeted to the same level as the “Owner-occupier” rate, before recovering spectacularly to reach a whopping 30.7% annual growth in Feb 2004.
What prompted the recovery? John Howard’s introduction of the First Home Owners Grant in 2000, and in particular, his doubling it in early 2001. With a rush of newly-enslaved borrowers bidding up house prices, “investors” too rushed back into the welcoming arms of the bankers, as ever only too eager to lend “credit” at interest to willing borrowers against the “security” of “their” house.
Or houses. How many people do you know who (used to) boast about their “investment property portfolio”?
From early 2004, the well began to run dry. The rate of growth in “credit” for “Investor” housing began to fall steeply. It fell well below the “Owner-occupier” rate, which was also declining. This overall decline in the growth rate for housing credit has continued ever since.
However, thanks to the “stimulus” provided by Kevin Rudd’s further doubling of the First Home Owner’s Grant in 2009 – again, using borrowed money – aided and abetted by the RBA slashing interest rates in response to the GFC, both “Owner-occupier” and “Investor” credit growth bounced briefly. Indeed, “Investor” credit actually overtook “Owner-occupier” credit again for a very short time in 2010, before both continued falling together.
Clearly then, house prices in Australia were not driven up over the past 15-20 years by “demand” from “population growth”, from people who needed somewhere to live (Owner-occupiers). On the contrary, by far the strongest rates of growth have – during the bubble phase – been driven by so-called “investors”.
Speculators, in other words. People who have come to believe that borrowing money to “invest” in property is a guaranteed path to riches, because house prices “always go up”. Meaning, they believe that if they can only buy now, they can sell later for an easy profit.
Sadly, it is not just “investors” who have come to believe this. Most Australian owner-occupiers have come to believe the same thing. It is the very definition of a “bubble mania”, when most people have come to believe they can profit from buying and later selling an “asset”.
Who benefits most from a “bubble mania”? Who has the most powerful vested interest in ensuring that the bubble does not burst … that is, not until they are positioned to profit from the “downside” as well?
The banks. The same World’s Most Immoral Institution that has been given the power to create “money” – digital book-keeping entries – and lend it to others in the form of “credit”, at interest.
And so, dear reader, I suggest that you bookmark this post. In the weeks and months ahead, the powerful banking and property (sales) industry will undoubtedly ramp up the propaganda – and the pressure on government and the RBA to “do more” to support “home buyers”.
Meaning, do more to prop up the Ponzi scheme that keeps them all in caviar, Bollinger, and the latest Aston Martin.
You will hear all kinds of oh so plausible-sounding reasons and statistics, presented by “experts”, encouraging you to believe that house prices will soon go up, and that now is a good time to buy (meaning, to “borrow”).
Whenever this coming bombardment of propaganda causes you to wonder if what they are all saying might just be true; when the charts and statistics and testimonials from credible-sounding people causes you to start feeling “con-fident” about Australian housing, come back and read this post again. Or visit the RBA’s website, and click on the Chart Pack to see the Credit and Broad Money Growth chart.
Because the simple truth is this.
Unless the government can find a new source – a BIG source – of new people willing to borrow enough “credit” to keep bidding up house prices, there is only one way for them to go.
Unless the government can find a way to reverse the trend of that last Housing Credit chart, then in time, there is only one way that house prices can go.
And “up” it is not.
Finally, although I am loathe to ever suggest that anyone heed what the RBA Governor says, here is one exception.
In July last year, Glenn Stevens warned that –
“It is a very dangerous idea to think that dwelling prices cannot fall,” RBA governor Glenn Stevens said in a speech today. “They can, and they have.”
Indeed.
To quote Mr David Collyer of Prosper Australia …
Don’t Buy Now!
UPDATE:
Correction – how careless of me! The RBA does indeed provide a chart in their chart pack that shows the growth rate in “credit” for housing. Simply select “5. Credit and Money“, then choose “Credit Growth by Sector” –
As you can see, the annual growth rate for Housing “credit” is in a long and steady decline. It is presently less than a quarter of the rate of lending that the bankers achieved at the peak.
So, The Easy Way To Know Where House Prices Will Go, is to visit the RBA’s Chart Pack and look at that particular chart. If it hasn’t started shooting back up again, to the kind of pre-2004 levels that financed the near twenty-year “boom” period, then you know where house prices will go.
Barnaby Is Right 
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