The author has been described by News Ltd as an "iconoclast", "Svengali", a pollie's "economist muse", and "pungently accurate". Fairfax says he is a "Renaissance man" and "one of Australia’s most respected analysts." Stephen Koukoulas concludes that he is "85% right", and "would make a great Opposition leader." Terry McCrann claims the author thinks "‘nuance’ is a trendy village in the south of France", but can be "scintillating" when he thinks "clearly". The ACTU reckons he’s "an enigma wrapped in a Bloomberg terminal, wrapped in some apparently well-honed abs."

Sunday, June 10, 2012

Goldman: great Chinese economic data for May

From Goldman Sachs:

China’s exports growth rose to 15.3% yoy in May (our forecast: 9.5% yoy, Bloomberg consensus: 7.1% yoy, Reuters consensus: 6.8% yoy), from 4.9% yoy in April. The implied month-on-month; seasonally-adjusted; annualized (mom s.a. ann.) growth rate was 95.1%, up from 1.6% in April. Exports growth by destination rose across the board with ASEAN and the US seeing particularly large rises of 22.7 percentage points (ppt) and 13.0 ppt from their April levels. Exports to the EU rose by 5.8 ppt.

Imports growth rose to 12.7% yoy in May (our forecast: 8.0% yoy, Bloomberg consensus: 5.5% yoy, Reuters consensus: 5.0% yoy), up from 0.3% yoy in April. On a mom s.a. ann. basis, imports growth was 294.9% in May, up from -46.2 % in April.

The trade balance came in at a surplus of US$18.7 bn (our forecast: US$16.3 bn, Bloomberg consensus: US$16.3 bn, Reuters consensus: US$16.2 bn), from the US$18.4 bn surplus in April.