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Tuesday, 26 October 2021
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With negligible returns on term deposits and cash, investors who qualify as 'wholesale' are turning to a range of bond alternatives where yields are more attractive for taking some extra risk.
Markets are overlooking the obvious risks as traders pass the parcel to the next buyer. Even central bankers believe: “There is something vaguely troubling when the unthinkable becomes routine.”
The high yield debt market is now much larger and riskier than just before the GFC. That doesn’t bode well for when the next downturn happens and investors have several options to de-risk.
We can expect a long bond yield rise of the magnitude we’ve seen in 2016 on average every three years, but that doesn't ease the pain of capital losses in the last six months.
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.