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."

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Kieran Davies of RBS first to pick spike in UE rate...

Today the unemployment rate surprised on the upside. I wrote the following yesterday:

Kieren Davies at RBS, who is highly regarded in the market for his fundamental analysis, has flagged that revisions to the population assumptions used by the ABS could result in lower-than-expected employment growth, and possibly an upward revision to the unemployment rate. Kieren comments:

"Recent employment growth should be revised down because it has been artificially boosted by the Bureau growing the survey’s population estimates at a more rapid rate this year in an effort to minimise its underestimation of the actual population...

The unemployment rate should broadly unaffected, although there is some chance it might be raised by 0.1pp. This is because the age groups underestimated in the survey have a slightly higher chance of being out of work than the rest of the population."
at 1:02 PM