Corbin Goodman
Post 1
Part 1: The Age: “Consumer spending slowly improving”
Part 2: Bloomberg “Australia’s September Consumer Confidence Falls for First Time in 3 Months”
Part 3:
The first link from The Age looks at Australian’s economy and how, for the first time in nine months, consumer confidence showed positive growth. A calculation system (The Business Sales Indicator BSI) which measures debit and credit card transactions, showed an increase by 0.1 percent in August. The first such increase since November 2009. However, the article also notes that annual growth saw its furthest decrease since the BSI began being measured six years ago. The second article from Bloomberg examines the volatility of consumer confidence in a fluctuating economy. The author notes that consumer confidence will show lower figures in September for the first time since June. Relative to the U.S. and Europe however, Australian is experiencing more growth especially in terms of employment where “job growth pushed the unemployment rate down to 5.1 percent, almost half the level of the U.S.” I find these articles interesting because they both note that Australia’s economy is in a state of flux but their titles contradict each other. While the first article reflects August figures, the second one is based on results from September. Both pieces give the impression that “consumers and businesses are still very conservative, preferring to save rather than spend” and yet data that forecasts declining unemployment gives reason to be optimistic for Australia’s economy.
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