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Saturday, 23 October 2021
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The impact of the pandemic on Australia's debt and deficit has forced the government into borrowing on a scale unimaginable at the start of 2020. What are the implications, and what is even more important?
Fixed income opportunities beyond term deposits and hybrids remain scarce for retail investors, but active bond funds can access other securities where value is still available. Here are examples.
Australian bond rates are now lower than during recessions and depressions of the past, but it's not driven by local fundamentals. The world of interest rates is in a place it's never been before in history.
Contrary to historical norms, Australian sovereign bond yields are trading below those in the US. What are the implications for hedging and returns from bonds and will the differential be sustained?
Investors buying a composite bond index fund may expect it to include a wide diversity of issuers, but the Australian index is dominated by the large government borrowers.
The RBA Governor says rising house prices are due to "the design of our taxation and social security systems". The OECD says "the prolonged boom in house prices has inflated the wealth of many pensioners without impacting their pension eligibility." What's your view?
We tend to forget that house prices often fall. Direct lending controls are more effective than rate rises because macroprudential limits affect the volume of money for housing leaving business rates untouched.
The survey drew a fantastic 2,000 responses with over 1,000 comments and polar opposite views on what is good policy. Do most people believe the home should be in the age pension asset test, and what do they say?
Any policy decision needs to recognise who is affected by a change. It pays to check the data on who pays taxes, who owns assets and who earns the income to ensure an equitable and efficient outcome.
With articles on the pensions assets test read about 40,000 times, 3,500 survey responses and thousands of comments, there was a lot of great reader participation. A few comments added extra insights.
It is hard to think of any area of widespread public concern where the same policies have been pursued for so long, in the face of such incontrovertible evidence that they have failed to achieve their objectives.