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Showing 201 - 210 of 2991 results for Benjamin Ong

Chief economist update: The second oil price discounting wave

BENJAMIN ONG  |  WEDNESDAY, 9 SEP 2020
Don't look now but it appears that it's not just COVID-19 seeing a second wave. Saudi Arabia is also taking a second bite on oil price discounting. Bloomberg reports that, Saudi Arabia's state producer, Saudi Aramco, has cut its key Arab ...

Chief economist update: Is Dan still the man?

BENJAMIN ONG  |  TUESDAY, 8 SEP 2020
Victorian premier Dan Andrews is copping it left, right and centre - citizens, businesses, medical experts, politicians - after dangling and later extending (by another two weeks) the planned September 13 end of lockdown. Already, fresh modelling by ...

Chief economist update: V in US recovery at risk

BENJAMIN ONG  |  MONDAY, 7 SEP 2020
The US labour market continues to get betterer and betterer. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that total non-farm payrolls rose by 1.37 million in August - in line with market expectations and marked the fourth straight month of increase ...

Chief economist update: Australia on top despite recession

BENJAMIN ONG  |  FRIDAY, 4 SEP 2020
While we, Australians all, continue to shudder at the economy's first recession in 29-years, our nation - to use Old Blue Eyes' song - remains "Top of the list, King of the hill, A number one..." It may not be Einstein's "relativity theory" ...

Chief economist update: Australia succumbs to pandemic-induced recession

BENJAMIN ONG  |  THURSDAY, 3 SEP 2020
It was good - so good - while it lasted. But as the saying goes, "nothing lasts forever". It had been more than a generation since Australia experienced "the recession we had to have" back in 1990/91. The Australian economy withstood the US savings ...

Chief economist update: RBA increases and extends TFF

BENJAMIN ONG  |  WEDNESDAY, 2 SEP 2020
The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) kept domestic interest rates unchanged - the targets for the official cash rate at 0.25% and the yield on 3-year Australian Government bonds at 25 basis points - at its September meeting, as expected. What came as ...

Chief economist update: AUD on the up and up

BENJAMIN ONG  |  TUESDAY, 1 SEP 2020
Financial markets view the A$ as a risk currency - it's sold off in times of heightened uncertainty - and has a high growth beta - only bought in times of global prosperity. So Virginia, how do we explain the rise and rise of the Australian dollar ...

Chief economist update: COVID-19 cuts capex

BENJAMIN ONG  |  MONDAY, 31 AUG 2020
Australian private new capital expenditure (capex) usually commands attention before and during its release for it provides an indication of domestic firms' optimism towards future growth as well as, itself, being a driving component of that growth. ...

Chief economist update: Fed heads for the mountain

BENJAMIN ONG  |  FRIDAY, 28 AUG 2020
"If the mountain will not come to Muhammad, then Muhammad must go to the mountain." True to its legend, the Jackson Hole symposium - online as it may be this year due to the pandemic - produced another significant shift in US monetary policy. On August ...

Chief economist update: Japan economy tanks depsite looser restrictions

BENJAMIN ONG  |  THURSDAY, 27 AUG 2020
If a technical recession is defined as two successive quarters of negative growth, what do you call a period where the economy contracts for three straight quarters... and counting? Japan may have imposed less stringent coronavirus containment measures ...