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."

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

US ISM surprises on the upside

Good news from the US. UBS reports:

*US: The nonmanufacturing ISM index held up much better than expected in August, rising to 53.3 (cons: 51.0, UBSe: 50.5) from 52.7 in July. Within the composite index, there were gains in two of the four components: new orders (52.8 from 51.7) and supplier deliveries (53.0 from 50.5). In the other direction, employment (51.6 from 52.5) and business activity (55.6 from 56.1) slipped but remained well into positive territory. Moreover, the employment ISMs still are signalling better employment than the recent payroll data—they look consistent with 125k or so per month in payroll growth—above the Jul - Aug average (43k).

*US: Our proprietary all-economy ISM index—a weighted average of the manufacturing and non-manufacturing ISMs—rose to 52.9 from 52.4 in July. We believe this is consistent with around 1¾% annualized real GDP growth in the current quarter (versus our recently downward revised 1½% forecast).
at 7:48 AM