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Seen On An ATM In Western Australia
With iron-ore stockpiles at record highs in China amid the escalating cash-for-steel financing debacles, one can only imagine the squeeze that is about to occur on the banks of a nation that is almost entirely economically dependent on said iron-ore mining production... which made us think when we saw this sign "justifying" holding low cash amounts in an Aussie bank ATM...
So no need for a withdrawal halt per se when you simply make it impossible for customers to get their money out...
h/t AS
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Australia normally uses the British English spelling, not the American version.
So "apologise" is correct :-)
Edit: I wonder why someone red-ticked me for stating a fact?
{shrug}
WOW - I've been red-ticked twice now. Keep it up dorks, let's have 20.
Add: Hey...come on...you can do better than that!!! Minus 10 is just a sneeze, let's see some real red ticks ...please ;-)
Bend over smacker,here's a red arrow up your ass.
I wouldn't feel it. The Inland Revenue have been stuffing me for 30 years.
Well, you are certainly sheep-worthy if you let gun toting bitches steal your wealth via taxes and sign up fees for porn sites.
30 years? I've drowned 100 puppies in that time. At least I'm productive... can't say the same about you.
/sarc
I logged in to red-tick you but you already had -20.
How about some sulphur in your tea instead?
Is it better than bromide?
I downarrowed you. You are now at -44.
Maybe you can set a record...for stating a fact.
Who cares about spelling. I use the King's English Spelling at times. I use American English at other times. Then sometimes I will incorrectly spell a word because of a typo. At times I will screw up intentionally when making a point. And at other times I will simply screw up because I did not know.
ZH is not Grammar School after all...although...sometimes we behave like we are on a playground.
Sure, and I avoid spelling corrections at all costs since we all make them at times.
On this occasion, I genuinely thought that Meat Hammer wasn't aware of the Australian spelling usage - because he didn't use any sort of smiley ;-) etc - so I simply pointed it out to him. He now says it was "a joke". Fair enough.
WOW ...58 red ticks. Well done.
And Meat Hammer is now laughing himself to death ;-
Meat: L-oh-fucking-L! Good one!
And you expect proper English from Australians?
Colouuuuuuur me shocked.
At least the Australians still have their guns.
Bee bee guns.
Well, at least the criminals do, anyway. The innocent had to give up their guns ... twice, but the news is still full of reports of people shooting at each other ...
XitSam,
At least the Australians still have their guns.
Dude, you forgot the SARC tag(;
I'm pretty sure Americans only use a "z" to boost potential scabble scores.
and due to exceptionalism.. There is a country who has not converted to metric. pound on that with a 4 and 1/4 inch dick
Countries that don't use the metric system.
I started school in UK with the imperial system. In the years I was there, science changed over to metric.
I hove no problem with either, but......
http://gizmodo.com/5786004/these-are-the-three-countries-who-dont-use-th...
Bloody hell! So USA can stand besided Liberia and Myanmar as the last bastions of the old imperial system. Isn't that a bit backward? Even so, we older Australians still tend to measure some things in feet and inches... I know I'm 6'1" in height but in centimetres I have no bloody idea.
No they didn't the sign is in Australia not the USA.
Sorry, but it's Americans, mostly, that mis-spell English
Where did the 'u' go from colour, odour, vapour..........
The language is called English, not American.
Bro,
Where did the 'u' go from colour, odour, vapour..........
The language is called English, not American.
It's Amelican Ebonics,( besides we don't want to sound like pussies) you should read the way "some" Texicans spell it.
Spelling is an endangered skill, in many parts - mostly those with 'smart' phones.
I can Speak American - Screaming Blue Messiahs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRQ5s_Al8ZM
Duh!! Shows some ignorance there. I guess it's why when I post here I try to do so in US Englsh instead of British/Australian English. The spelling nazis come out in force otherwise.
Wow, who could've known that such a bad joke on my part could've started such a melee? That was a fun read.
Most people don't keep money in banks these days. It is all gone.
Bitcoin gold and silver have replaced banks for the purpose of storing money.
Gold and silver have replaced banks for the purpose of storing money.
Fixed.
Why not go inside a bank and withdraw in person? I never use ATM's.
Hint: your time is more valuable than your money!
Over here, the banks charge you fees if you want to deal with a human being to access your own money ( for figures under a grand. You also can't withdraw over 3 grand per day from any one branch). I'm still waiting for "competition in the banking sector" to eliminate such nonsense. Apparently our banks were "de-regulated" and "opened up to competition" around 26 years ago ... but before then we didn't have any bank fees ...
Sorry sport your account is now as dry as a dead dingo's donger.
Bollocks.Maybe on the cheap ATM's in convenience stores.
I worked on the prototype NCR ATM's, more years ago than I want to think about.
Even that first prototype had a self incineration feature to thwart robberies.
I know Chubb kept it when they took over NCR.
Anyone ever hear about a robber actually getting the cash out of a bank ATM
except while its being loaded ?
Up until a few years ago the various dissident IRA groups were stealing whole ATM machines in the border towns of Northern Ireland.
It was quite profitable for them as they would wait until the machines had just been restocked with cash. Then, usually in the early hours, they would take the machine out with a back hoe tractor and load it on a flat bed truck to take it over the border where the PSNI could not follow.
The attacks suddenly stopped as soon as new measures were introduced to destroy the cash but they manage to get a few million out of it. I was surprised they were so slow to take action though.
Not exactly what you asked, but interesting anyway :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0c08EYv4N5A
Thieves aren't interest in the cash in ATMs. What they want is the card numbers and IDs.
A few years ago my firm designed a web based dashboard application for a major US bank that monitors and displays the working status and cash balance of all it's ATM's. An executive can pull up a page and see the status, in green, yellow or red of major regions, then zoom in down to the individual ATM.
The idea was after a major hurricane, they needed to see the status of their network of ATM's and know which were online and which needed cash. This way service crews could be routed efficiently and replenishment crews could be sent to areas that had power and needed cash.
They can also shut them down remotely. No need to wait for them to run dry.
Theft of the entire ATM happens primarily to stand alone, independently run units - not to units attached to a bank.
If a unit is likely to be stolen, it's pretty easy to remove it.
The excuse that their unit may get stolen so they aren't going to stock it is bullshit. The machine itself is worth more than the cash inside it.
The notice is to deter ATM attacks. The recent spate of attacks have involved using gas bottles to blow up the atm and the building along with it.
last one to get their money out is a bloody 'roo!
What's the over/under on the percentage of customers that think, "Hmph, I'll just come back next week after it's sure to be stocked up."?
These are all little tests to see how much pissing and blowback they get from us sheep. Eventually you're balance will be reduced and you will get an IOU from the machine. True Fiat,that
Things in Perth are already bad if you scratch away at the thin surface of boom town. Most families not on mining wages are over leveraged to the tilt for some shitty shoebox house. Bills are ridiculously high and good luck trying to run a profitable business ontop of high rents, outgoings and competatitve wages.
I doubt this atm issue is a precursor to the known upcoming crash and burn, One down the road from me was ripped from a deli window with a tractor in the middle of the night in a nice neighbourhood. People on the other side of the equation are just more desperate now.
Here's a funny article from a local guy who's made a killing on the property market, telling everyone to shutup and be grateful for paying $40 for a pub meal! Reading the comments will give you a good indicator of how the majority of this state feels. http://www.perthnow.com.au/news/western-australia/dale-alcock-says-perth...
After working in Perth, Melbourne and Sydney I returned here becuase it still truly does have the most opportunitues in the country and is a beatuiful place to live but things are going to get messy here when the music stops. Already we have mortgage products for 40-50 years, 2% deposit loans and a bunch of other bank fuckery to help keep the overpriced houses moving out of developers hands easily. Whilst not in the property industry I found myself helping a develper move a whole bunch of different properties late last year and was amazed at how easy it was to move so much stock. On one week we moved a block of 'houses' that were 125sqm with a 12sqm 'backyard' for $600k+ each and had investors fighting over them! I could go on but you get the picture...
yngmny: Sounds like Alberta back in 2006 / 2007. Bidding wars on houses that were condemned because they were former grow-ops, yet the Sheeple lined up ready to bid on them.
Excellent post and analysis of the current situation in Perth, WA. However, for those that have either not traveled/worked/lived there, nor know too much about the city/state, I will say that there are going to be many, many other canaries in the coal mine ahead of Perth. This is not a domino that will fall first, not even close. It is still the leading economy in the country. Sydney and Melbournce have a much stronger argument for collapsing house prices than Perth does at present. However, there is zero doubt that when the boom unwinds, Perth will experience a unique set of problems given its relatively young age.
Yeah the Australian property market has been due a big crash for some time now... Sorry... Correction. I did have a trade on based on that premise, ooh 18 months ago maybe, but I got crushed and had to drop it. It will "correct" though I won't be betting on the timescale.
Nationally youth unemployment going thru the roof
The new version of the ATM's will be dispensing iron ore, so not all is lost in Australia.
The property bubble in some parts of Australia is so hot it's too dangerous to even contemplate buying.
White hot
re Due to recent attacks on ATMs in W. Australia....
Any idea on the whereabouts of Lloyd Blankfein?
Any idea on the whereabouts of Lloyd Blankfein?
He was spotted doing God's work in the Cayman Islands.
no shrimp on the barbie for you
Surprising that a central bank with its own currency would let access be restricted at ATMs. In the US the Fed would just keep printing paper money and adding zeroes to the end.
It must be too easy for any yahoo with a pickup truck in sparsely populated Australia to simply attach a chain to the ATM and yank it out of the wall. Nothin' a central Bank can do about that.
Yesterday I was @ COSTCO. i was bent over trying to get a 25lb bag of rice into my cart. a typical looking baby boomer couple was close to me. they just had that look about them, very professorish, affluent, liberal, dressed in jogging type clothes & bearded, organic milk & spring mix lettuce in their cart.....
well, the tall man asked if i needed any help with the 25lb bag of rice. i said, "oh, no, i do this all the time. i can handle it." his wife then said, "Are you going to eat all that rice yourself!?" & i said, "no, I'm stockpiling it for DIRE TIMES." the man raised his hands up into the air & said, "ALRIGHT!" & did an about face, turned from me & walked away fast down the aisle, almost as if i was contagious with leprosy.
What am i up against here, people ! NO ONE UNDERSTANDS, THEY ARE ALL STUPID WHILE I'M EDUCATED, WORRIED & ANXIETY-RIDDEN about dire times to come.
lynnybee
You could always eat Bernanke- he just got out of the pressure cooker. You might need a lot of barbeque sauce though...
The grasshopper and the ant story. Keep on stackin.
Grasshoppers only store for one season and count upon spring harvest and warm temps and rain.
No need to prep out to a timeline greater than that.
The professorish dude probably IS a professor or teacher, who depends on taxpayers to put food on the table. These types can't bring themselves to believe that the gravy train may not come whistling 'round the bend for ever. The thought is too devastating for them.
If they are very edgumacated, They will proclaim after being show the fragility of our systems...
"Well, If it gets that bad I'll just put a bullet in myself"
If all those who cannot entertain the possibility of massive "change" take that route we'll be OK, But they won't, so we won't
Just thinking about prepping put you ahead of 99.9%. One months food a great idea. Garden, too. Not being a mindless sheep always good.
But, ever, did prep for more than 12 months ever, history of humanity, ever become useful?
If TSHTF and you cannot live there, you leave.
If crops fail 3 years running, nothing to be done but die.
If the PLANET is so bad that you cannot leave or live, then we die.
If Toba or similar erupts NOTHING YOU DO WILL MATTER.
You will cite possible catastrophe: I want a concrete, real-world example that HAS happened on this planet.
You cannot place and win a bet on the end of the world.
If a catastrophe befalls the environment and the seasons and growing ability of the planet are altered or removed, no amount of prep will save you.
Everyone dies in The Road. Can't plan and win that.
Read about real scenarios. Argentina, FSU, Ukraine now. Having months or years prep does not work. A few weeks to smooth out the transition, yes. More than that, where you are will be so bad you leave.
Damn right. I bargain shop for pasta, easy to keep sealed & dry as-is, usually 900g for $1 is what I gather. It's basic yet lasts for fucking ever and is super cheap. The only thing holding me back from larger mass storage is mass needs force to move & moving may be frequent and/or far. Uncertain times ahead, hence the concentrated purchasing power of gold or silver for each gram rather than purely food. But don't be shy about storing water.
When someone's water reservoir pipes froze they had NO WATER and we all OUGHT TO KNOW you can go far, far less time without water than food. You can starve for 30 days and be sorry but if you're 30 days without water you've already been dead for 23 days.
Hell, it may not even be an ice storm, tsunami, drought or uprisings, it could just be you're fucking broke and lost your job but lo & behold: you have food. Lots of it. There's a lot less worry about being poor & jobless when you've got food for a year. You may not live fancy but you sure as hell won't die starving just yet.
Been there, done that, had the food supply, regret nothing. Re-stocking the supplies now they've been used up for the most part & I am working again.
You upset the carefully planned world view of that spring mix haiku motherfucker.
Lamb ponders, asks sheep:
"Where does this chicken come from?"
Why, the store of course!
Priceless. I would have loved to see that.
Sometimes it is fun to spook people. Have fun with it. Next time mention zombies or something. lol.
I keep my money in Banco de Snapchat.... I swear it was just there
I converted my dollars into shitcoins, but my fucking hard-drive crashed.
Now what??
Use a different machine/hard drive. You did write down your keys, didn't you?
we have a Brinks truck at the local casino 3 am most nights. If I have a hankering for cash it wont be one ATM and a back hoe. It will require PB and a pantload of cash. Having said that I still work these days so thievery isn't currently in the playbook. The one attempt on an armored vehicle many years ago ended in one perp dead and another injured and arrested. That is simply poor planning or poor shooting. Good day to all. Sold ATM machines for a bit in 1999 when they first became available for small business as freestanding units. Good day to all.
Australia is a perfect living metaphor for humanity.They post many warning signs about the hazard of Crocs at swimming holes up north,but the cool water just looks too inviting,and so every year or so a tourist gets taken.
As for WA,the biggest property bubble (PYRAMID SCHEME) the world has ever seen,and you will hear the THUDDING OF BANKERS CORPSES HITTING THE FOOTPATH AROUND THE GLOBE when it busts.
Also,people will have to leave WA because very little agriculture: no topsoil,no water.Ag is dependent upon rainfall,which can be iffy in Oz.
And: If you want to start a revolution in Australia,try running out of beer for several hours.
Re "very little agriculture", in particular, the little we had left :
And what happened to all them fruit trees along the, correct me if I'm wrong, Murray River? (Not WA). And how were the market gardeners in WA displaced to make way for more property development?
Same on the western outskirts of Sydney,sad really when you look at the hideous residential developements real energy sinks
Some good points, but the current real estate bubbles in rampant in China and much of SE Asia right now make Perth look like small beer. In China apartment prices have gone up tenfold or more since 2000. In Malaysia condo prices have doubled in the past few years, with wages a lot less than Oz. Speculation is rampant with "investors" buying condos off the plan with as little as 1% deposit hoping to flip upon completion and make ten times their money. The Penang skyline is crazy now, high rises stretching as far as the eye can see. A mini HK. Asia is heading for a God Almighty bust real estate-wise.
Lots of those croc infested rivers in northern Oz are actually an uninviting murky brown. Of course some do swim in them... usually after sinking a slab or two of VB...
..... well at least we can't buy Fosters here these days, at least in my part of Australia.
He who panics first, panics best.
So much for unwinding the carry trade.
3 ATMs damaged with no cash lost. http://www.mandurahmail.com.au/story/1495194/atms-damaged-in-failed-raid...
Its true though, there has been many 'smash and grabs' as they call it here in Perth. Crime is becoming rampant in these parts.
I have nothing.
Physical ATM attacks in Australia really are rampant: http://www.perthnow.com.au/news/western-australia/the-attacks-bring-the-...
We all know Bendigo Bank has been on the ropes since 2008. I'm surprised they've made it to this point. But then again, no banks have gone under in Oz yet.
Don't you think that banks have their cash insured against theft? What does it matter to them that the ATM gets stolen? Is Bendigo having trouble paying its insurance premiums?
What's the point in an ATM with no cash in it? Is Bendigo under that much pressure that they have to stop fully stocking their ATMs? Theft is a cost of business for banks. THEY ARE BANKS! Their job is to deal with this. Why can't Bendigo handle that cost of business?
Well,just a thought is this JUST BENDIGO?, or if not, then Aussies have an issue.Also, nothing say's "Don't bother coming INTO the bank, to remove your cash".
It would be interesting to see whether Bendigo Bank has waived its 'excess over the counter fee', to compensate for the lack of cash in ATM's. These fees were introduced years ago to force people to use ATM's, so the bank could cut staff.
Yeah! Spoken like a fellow vulcan.
If your smart. just take it OUT ...While you can ......
in america when we need some spare cash we just back up the 4Wd, throw a logging chain around the base of the machine, and drive off. after you drag the item home, or maybe your girlfriends house, it should be softened up enough that it will payoff without the inconvenience of putting a gun in some poor old ladies ribs and demanding her pin number. its pretty much a victimless crime, and when they perfect the self driving car it should be just about the perfect solution, robots stealing from robots. (maybe i saw this on Futurama, not sure)
Damn dingos came for the babies and nobody said anything, now they come for the ATMs...
Not true
We only want the babies
The portlier, the better
I stand corrected. You have been framed. This is a travesty.
Not true
We only want the babies
The portlier, the better
This is a not a story worthy of being pinned to the top of Zerohedge. I don't even think it is worth being on Zerohedge at all.
<---- It's a "control" article, to help you judge the relevance of other articles.
<---- It's the exception to the rule
Australia is riding a wicked housing/credit bubble on the back of Chinese spending. They are proverbial canary in the coal mine here.
This is like watching for cracks in a dam. Most might be nothing... but eventually we are going see the real deal. Worth watching.
Bendigo is a bit-player in the banking system of Australia. Then this sign is in Western Australia (WA), one of the less populated and remote states with a lot of rural branches where things can sometimes get a little rowdy. The locals like to drink. Of course, you can simply go into a branch and withdraw what you need, during business hours. I live here. This is a total nothingburger. There are much more important stories going on in the world right now, believe me.
I don't disagree with the China/Oz relationship you point out. If China crashes bigtime, Oz will be badly affected, and WA in particular as this is a mining/resources driven economy. I would watch the price of iron ore instead. If that crashes, watch out.
Bwahahaha. Brought to you by the bankers. I will feed them all to the dogs.
In Malaysia foreign criminals from places like Poland and Argentina have been hiding out in shopping malls until they close at night then using blowtorches to cut open ATMs and steal the cash. An ATM there can hold $80,000 equivalent. Meanwhile Malaysian and Indonesian nogoodniks simply attach a chain from the back of a pickup to an ATM and try to rip the whole machine out of the front of a bank. Sneakier types put a skimmer and fake front over the screen of an ATM and steal people's card numbers and PINs.
The Malaysian cops have been catching quite a few of these crims lately. Malaysia is a crime magnet. Then there's the Filipino scam artists...
My Thai Bank ATM card was skimmed when I used it only once in Cebu, Philippines last year. One week later, my entire account was cleaned out and it was traced to transactions taking place in Malaysia.
GEELONG
-If you're wondering how Geelong is going to trigger a global financial crisis, you haven't been reading about Australia's secret subprime scandal. In short, the loss of jobs in Geelong is beginning to get serious. The government is in crisis talks. The worsening situation poses a serious risk to house prices in the area.
--If house prices take a hit in Geelong, that could prove to be the canary in the coalmine for the rest of Australia. It has the potential to trigger pretty much the same subprime crisis here in Australia as in the US by making people realise what's brewing for the rest of the country. Remember, subprime and the housing bubble broke out in a select few states in the US before going national, and then global. These crises always break out on the fringes and then go mainstream.
--So how could Melbourne's satellite city trigger a major financial crisis? And is there really a sub-prime style crisis hidden away in Australia's housing industry? Yes, and it's not just overpriced homes that are the issue. Australia has many billions of dollars in sub-prime loans. It's just that they're masquerading as prime ones in an even cleverer way than the Americans managed to pull off.
--The Americans securitised the mortgages and turned them into AAA rated CDOs. Here in Australia, mortgage brokers simply changed people's loan applications to get them past lending standards. They added some income here, and some assets there, until their client got the loan. The result is that nobody knows a prime loan from a subprime loan.
--As long as house prices rise, that isn't a problem. People just sell out if they get into trouble. But if house prices fall in Geelong, the problem could be exposed as it was in California and Nevada. People will realise that the marginal property buyer cannot afford what they are buying. And once property investors realise that much of the demand for housing around Australia comes from people who would never get loans without document fraud, they will panic.
--Worse still, the courts have decided the banks should bear the losses when borrowers are victims of manipulated loan applications. People are walking away with a home and no mortgage as the courts and ombudsmen services wipe the slate clean. So if the law were applied to all mortgages, the Australian banking industry could face billions in write downs. Using one estimate from the consumer watchdog that exposed all this, it could be around $200 billion in mortgages affected. That's easily enough to cause a major banking crisis.
Re;
Worse still, the courts have decided the banks should bear the losses when borrowers are victims of manipulated loan applications.
Worse still?
Who else is responsible? The collective?
Hi from Adelaide ... nothing much else to add, except that there's a "Detroit factor" unfolding as GM Holden pulls out locally, plus Ford and Toyota interstate.
What a bright move for successive Australian governments to remove import tariffs, gut manufacturing and turn Australia into an open-cut mining 'economy'.
An attack is now defined as "Any withdraw above $20".
From the homeland of Ned Kelly (not to be confused with the country that gave us Mick Jagger playing Ned Kelly and singing Wild Rover a capella!)
ex-bendigo customer here, although our band's account still uses these guys.
Staff are rude. transactions take 3 days to clear still. charged $2 per transaction past the 10 free transactions a month (this is internet banking, but going intothe branch in person is free - this is totally ass-backwards).
with up to 10 people in out band inc the manager, we can only pay out once a month which is most disconcerting to the poorer people in the band that dont have a non-musician type day job to live off.
Paging Mr. Keen...
"Gold isn't backed by anything".
PS. Good thing that young woman is good looking.
In America we attack our ATMs with F350s and tow chains.
The assorted clown cars, Peugeots, Minis, and hybrid-bicycles found in the various, sad, defeated nations around the world couldn't pull a clump of tiger lilies out of the ground, let alone an ATM.
Some general points of interest about Australia and fellow Aussies can correct me if I'm wrong. Anyhow ...
At various times, on the internet, I've seen Americans wondering why a country the sze of mainland USA is so "under-populated" with about 23million as compared with about 300 million people, but the fact is that we are over-populated in terms of the "European" life-style we generally expect, which would have been impossible without cheap oil and all that that has enabled, including fertilizing impoverished soils.
The greatest limiting factor - even with pumps to exploit acquifers - is water, because we comprize the driest Continent, except for Antarctica (too cold to rain) and the Murray is the only significant river, wich is little more than a creek compared with the Mississippi, for instance. Virtually all Australian fruit and vegetables are grown in the Riverlands and the Murray is badly compromized as a result + Adelaide gets most of its water from the Murray about 150km away.
In short: Think twice before heading for Australia, the European-style presence here is (always really has been) precarious + we have the same or potentially worse economic/financial problems as nearly everywhere else.
Last nano second spike. Did the OZ market close down today, or not?
Today | 1 month | 6 months | 1 year | 3 years | 5 years
Use with caution ...Bendigo could be harmful to your wealth .....
Let me just put it this way, if your putting your money in a bank called "Bendingo", you deserve to lose your deposits lol.... what kind of crap name is that? no effort . . .
Bendigo, not Bendingo. Named after a rural town that used to be all the rage about 150 years ago.
Australia is part of the CROWN. New Zeland etc are too. More ignorant victims to be rudely awakened. The Zionists will say thank you very much (suckers!!)
Australians are amongst the most clueless people in the world when it comes to understanding just how much of a dive they're all about to take.
"Mining pulled us through the GFC last time, so no worries mate, she'll be right". -- typical bogan comment
Oh...no...she...won't.
Australia presents as possibly the most impressive example in history of Dutch Disease caused by incompetent governance. Oz politicians were unable to grow a pair of balls to follow the obviously correct lead of Norway (how it dealt with its own Dutch Curse). When a token attempt was made, the mining sector launched a media propaganda campaign against the government and all the dumb shit sheeple fell for it.
The level of financial concentration and risk in Australia is epic, I think few people appreciate just how explosive the situation really is. Some key points:
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-
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The whole country is just mining and real estate: an accident waiting to happen.
The China down-turn is very real. I got the heads up over two years ago from some Oz mining friends who said that all the speculative plays were being mothballed, vehicle contracts were not being rolled and capex was being slashed. Indeed it was, with a monster capex cliff about to hit the oz economy in 2014/15, lopping off up to 2% of GDP in the process.
So what the hell is going to fill the gap?
More house flipping? Not a chance. The retarded government has a mandatory superannuation scheme, intended to relieve pressure on the pension system (actually just a scam to give banksters captive money to "manage"), but the law permits retirees to withdraw the entire amount as a lump sum when they retire, blow it, then fall back on the pension anyway. So what the hell was the point?
A lot of boomers are using their lump sums to blow it on real estate, paying off any remaining debt, or buying a better McMansion because the primary residence is not included in the asset test for pension worthiness. Pensioners in fully owned $5,000,000 homes are now a reality thanks to policy stupidity. Then just spin up a little reverse morgage to handomely "top up" the pension, blow the kids' inheritance and live it up baby. *facepalm*. Standard Oz boomer behavior.
So as the demographic cliff hits home with boomers retiring en masse, a last gasp house price boom is kicking into gear, sucking in additional morons reflexively and being exacerbated by wealthy Chinese looking for somewhere "safe" to park assets away from the prying eyes and hands of the Chinese system. Both of these inflating pressures are about to wane as the boomer wave moves past 65 years and Chinese defaults start eating into assets. So there's a looming real estate contraction to accompany the mining capex cliff. The very two sectors that basically ARE the Australian economy. Oh my...
So is manufacturing going to step in to fill the gap? Hell no! Oz manufacturing has been steadily killed by the financialization of the Oz economy. (Read Leigh Harkness and Steve Keen to understand how excessive loan creation leads to a blowout in the current account deficit and inflation of local asset prices, thereby killing local manufacturers). Oz manufacturing, as a % of GDP is now amongst the lowest in the OECD.
A non-stop run of neoliberal governance over the decades (both parties are the same really), have ensured that any domestic assets of any value are foreign owned, financialisation has killed the real economy and the mining boom, a once-in-100-years event that is now coming to a close, was allowed to sail on by with minimal attempts to put something away for the future.
The whole country is a short.
I don't know who the hell gave you a down arrow, but obviously someone totally ignrant.
Probably one of the citi analysts who put out the long aud/jpy note.
I see you're an Adelaide man. I lived there for a couple of years back in the 90's up near Parafield. Good education about the real Australia beforethe mining boom came along and screwed things up. The neighbors may have been welfare bludgers, but I'd trust them far ahead of the professional pricks I live next to now.
I'm in Elizabeth Vale, so same area as you, and I've been in SA about 15 years - before then WA after migrating from the UK 1971, so coming up for 43 years in Australia and I never regretted coming here, especially after a trip back to the UK in 1981 and again in 1991.
WA has always been boom-bust mining, but I can say beyond doubt that the whole country went on a slippery slope during the 80s when neo-liberism/economic rationalism kicked off
Sure did, and so did the rest of the world. Chart after chart of data that I look at, I can draw a solid line at 1980 (when the neolibs first took over the world) and see a clear difference before and after. The slide in Australia has been sad to see but I think you'd agree that the Brits copped it even harder.
The Brits were always screwed because of the Banksters in The City but it seemed like Oz managed to avoid the worst of it until the mining boom came along and pushed a bunch of people into a whole load of money, turning them into neoliberal "wankers".
Sure-fire method to corrupt a country:
http://www.voxeu.org/article/money-makes-people-right-wing-and-inegalita...
Adjusting for technological progress, I think that the best time to be alive was 1950 - 1980, the 70's being the peak (just a couple of oil shocks in 73 & 79 to mess things up). Free university, cheap healthcare, an affordable mortgage on one income, family units still intact, higher quality goods and services (given tech), etc. It's been mostly downhill since then.
Technological advancement can only go so far to make up for the social decay supported by neoliberalism's endorsement of selfishness, corruption, fraud and wealth inequality.
Fuck, I'm depressing myself. Barossa red calls.
We are definitely on the same page.