Tarric Brooker aka Avid Commentator 🇦🇺

Economics writer and analyst

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[Tarric Brooker aka Avid Commentator 🇦🇺 @AvidCommentator]

Labor's primary vote has collapsed to be down over 47% in an electorate (and its predecessors) it has held since their inception almost 40 years ago. https://t.co/nnMHB08mYl

[Tarric Brooker aka Avid Commentator 🇦🇺 @AvidCommentator]

@d_asher Depends on to what degree one is talking about.

Say they fell 60% and then there was a surge of loan defaults to say U.S GFC levels.

At that stage the banking system is toast.

[Tarric Brooker aka Avid Commentator 🇦🇺 @AvidCommentator]

While its absolutely true that government can play a major role in fighting inflation, its also worth noting that the market is the ultimate arbiter of bond yields.

If bank funding costs rise due to inflationary pressures or a broader global repricing in the cost of money, this has to get passed on to loan holders for banks to maintain their margins.

On a longer term time horizon, it has to get passed on to loan holders for the banking system not to implode.

[Tarric Brooker aka Avid Commentator 🇦🇺 @AvidCommentator]

There is this idea that wages can just keep rising and "catch up" with housing prices.

On paper, yes.

In reality, not really.

We live in a massively interconnected world, that is advancing technologically by the day.

And the more expensive labour in Australia gets, the more likely it becomes that jobs are lost to AI or offshoring.

We are seeing this playing out at the moment and the rise of taxpayer funded employment has masked the severity of the adjustment so far.

Australia lost much of its high tech manufacturing years ago and today, a car manufacturing plant in China making the exact same cars is far more efficient, particularly dollar for dollar than those in Europe.

But it was thought that the so called "knowledge economy" and white collar jobs were safe, but now they are the most exposed.

Yet we have a system that drives people to demand much higher wages to keep up with house prices that detached from household earnings years ago.

So in an attempt to acquire something as simple as shelter, particularly shelter that reflects one's level of income relative to the median, Australia is increasingly pricing itself out of the global marketplace.

Ultimately, the resilience seen so far is not going to last forever and people can forget about wages catching up with housing costs without it crushing competitiveness in the process.

[Tarric Brooker aka Avid Commentator 🇦🇺 @AvidCommentator]

You are most welcome mate, I appreciate the support.

Smart does not necessarily mean informed in my experience.

There is also a great deal of politics that goes on behind the scenes that most people never see or hear about.

Its too often a mess of vested interests, economic and political coalescing into decisions that are not in the long term interests of the country.

[Tarric Brooker aka Avid Commentator 🇦🇺 @AvidCommentator]

The leaked Mass Effect 5 trailer looks absolutely amazing and a great angle on the post Mass Effect 3 galaxy.

I really hope EA sells the IP to someone who will do it justice (CD Project Red etc), not just have it sit there gathering dust following Bioware's closure.

[Tarric Brooker aka Avid Commentator 🇦🇺 @AvidCommentator]

@simon_ree Thanks mate, I really appreciate the support.

Its the nature of the beast these days and just something I have come to accept as part of the trade off of being active on here.

Overall the good far outweighs the bad.

[Tarric Brooker aka Avid Commentator 🇦🇺 @AvidCommentator]

On a very bad day, I get well over a dozen abusive comments and even some DM's.

And that is to say nothing of the wackos who have tried to take things even further.

I am just a random bloke with a decently large following who maintains a high degree of civility, even when attacked on the regular.

Yet me being civil and engaging in earnest debate doesnt stop people who regularly claim they are peaceful, just want to fight evil or something along those narrative lines from being absolute bastards.

Now I'm a big boy who believes in free speech, so I let the overwhelming majority of it slide without argument or blocking.

But it just goes to show how often people who claim they want civility or to turn down the temperature are absolutely full of crap and will gladly attack people based entirely on ideology.

Even when there is little basis for that attack aside from an earnestly held disagreement.

[Tarric Brooker aka Avid Commentator 🇦🇺 @AvidCommentator]

Its wild mate.

If it was young people or those struggling to pay their mortgage, I would understand.

But more often than not its some angry Boomer or Gen X' flipping out that pointing out things are harder today than it was for them means whatever hardships they experienced is invalidated, even though I never made that claim.

Or that I'm evil because I want lower housing prices and that property investors make the world go around.

Wacko property focused folks are actually the number one source of truly unhinged people on my history list, with several finding my personal social media accounts somehow and taking the abusive and at times threatening stalkerish type approach.

[Tarric Brooker aka Avid Commentator 🇦🇺 @AvidCommentator]

Absolutely mate.

The problem is most of the people who truly want it to burn it down to the ground dont have their criticism grounded in those issues.

Thats part of why addressing the issues as you suggest is so important.

So when the extermists do make their push, they are isolated and alone, not surrounded by other people who are deeply angry and just want change.

[Tarric Brooker aka Avid Commentator 🇦🇺 @AvidCommentator]

"If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide."

- Abraham Lincoln on the future and ultimate fate of the United States

[New York Post @nypost]

Woke French student mocked owners who lost stores in riots - then her jet-set life was revealed: 'Your little shops, that's cute' https://t.co/4vR8tqsqbO

[Tarric Brooker aka Avid Commentator 🇦🇺 @AvidCommentator]

Thanks mate 👍

Its honestly been a wild ride the last 4.5 years.

Before that, my biggest critics were property investors, random Boomers and some far right types I pissed off when I did some work for the SMH years ago (some proper wackos on this one).

Abuse was around, as always, but far less frequent.

I'd tear into Morrison over X or Y, but only a handful of LNP supporters ever cared enough to flip their s***.

I actually made some good friends with one time LNP supporters during this period, people I'm still mates with to this day.

But since Albo started making a mess, s*** has got real.

I've gone about the same issues I always have, that I once even got praise from the PM himself on, but now because Labor is in power its not the same anymore.

And with the rise of One Nation, I have been regularly winning the daily double of abuse from both sides of the spectrum.

Some just see what they want to see and flip out.

[Tarric Brooker aka Avid Commentator 🇦🇺 @AvidCommentator]

It depends on who I have annoyed at the time.

For example, sometimes Ill have a housing article (particularly around relative affordability over time and property investors) go viral, getting 100s of 1000s of views.

Many people will read just the headline, get angry and decide to follow the link on my https://t.co/650ZahY2Lx profile to my Twitter to completely flip their s***.

Other days I manage to piss off people from all sides, winning the abuse trifecta from people supporting all the now major parties.

Or I'll make comment on the Middle East (something I actually know about lot about) and I'll have a bunch of yanks or Trump supporters flipping out in my feed.

[Tarric Brooker aka Avid Commentator 🇦🇺 @AvidCommentator]

@Bryce_B Because there is no other credible way to achieve genuine housing affordability without huge price drops on anything approaching a reasonable timeline.

[Tarric Brooker aka Avid Commentator 🇦🇺 @AvidCommentator]

Fantastic, two more years of this please.

[Tarric Brooker aka Avid Commentator 🇦🇺 @AvidCommentator]

@tritto499321 Thanks for the support mate, I really appreciate it.

I'm not going anywhere and if anything I'm going bigger from here platform wise.

[Tarric Brooker aka Avid Commentator 🇦🇺 @AvidCommentator]

@eevblog Two more years of this would see prices down about 40% from peak.

No need to be too greedy.

[Tarric Brooker aka Avid Commentator 🇦🇺 @AvidCommentator]

When we hit 2019 levels of negative equity, then there will be a modicum of justification of concern over this as a broader issue.

Another ~15% in price falls to go then....

More on this in detail coming to https://t.co/RWkWUauv3a in the weeks ahead.

[Tarric Brooker aka Avid Commentator 🇦🇺 @AvidCommentator]

The problem was housing prices rising to such insane heights, not the fact that they are now unwinding from a situation where a capital city median at $1.227m was normal.

Like Japan the original sin was prices and debt getting out of control, not the inevitable bust.

[Scott Phillips @TMFScottP]

The first sentence will get all of the attention.

Just remember to put it in context with the second-last sentence.

$1.227m!

[Tarric Brooker aka Avid Commentator 🇦🇺 @AvidCommentator]

@qa__rocks Pretty much mate.

I don't think we would get very far, there would swiftly be ideological disagreements over things like the purpose of immigration or whether housing prices should be high.

[Tarric Brooker aka Avid Commentator 🇦🇺 @AvidCommentator]

Amidst the current highly charged political environment, it would be fair to state that both sides of politics have claimed crap economic outcomes are tip top during their respective times in office.

The problem for the Albanese government?

The failure is cumulative.

People are feeling the failures and mistakes that kicked off as early as the Howard government and have got worse and worse over time.

Which should serve as a warning for Albanese' successor, whoever that may be.

Either get the country back on a more positive path to improvement, or own not only your own failures, but all those who came before you.

[Tarric Brooker aka Avid Commentator 🇦🇺 @AvidCommentator]

The rental market is going to see the lowest number of new students coming in, in well over a decade on these numbers.

Some positive news on the horizon for renters, the opposite for those hoping for a continuing worsening supply/demand imbalance to support housing prices.

[Antipodean Macro @AntipodeanMacro]

Student visa grant numbers in Australia getting slaughtered, particularly those to offshore applicants.

[Tarric Brooker aka Avid Commentator 🇦🇺 @AvidCommentator]

@kevinbonham Well said mate.

He should have just manned up from the start and owned it for what it was.

And the news cycle would have been on to something else by tomorrow.