Australia

"With respect to financial market infrastructures, the Federal Reserve is working with a broad range of private-sector participants, including dealers, clearing banks and tri-party repo investors to dramatically reduce the structural instability of the tri-party repo system." - Oh, so it is structurally unstable. All this, and many more remarks of the "I say X, but really mean Y" variety in the attached speech.

The earlier announcement of a 25 bps rate hike by the RBA was not a big surprise. What was, however, was the knee-jerk reaction by both the USD and the JPY, and specifically the relative sizes of said jerk. As both currencies are funding currencies to AUD longs, the relative reactions provide a good, if crude, way to quantify the relative concentration of shorts in any givencurrencies (USD and JPY). Then again, it may merely indicate that tonight's USD-trading night shift at Goldman had much more Red Bull than the OZ one. In either way, both the initial knee jerk reaction as well as the subsequent follow through, indicate a roughly 50-100% greater concentration of dollar than yen-based shorts: in other words: the carry ratio funded in USD and JPY is between 2:1 and 3:2.

A just issued update publication by ABARE on Australian Commodities (June 2009), in the section summarizing projected 2009-2010 economic activity, ABARE provides a -0.5% estimate for economic decline.