Welcome to the Capital Note, a newsletter about business, finance, and economics. On the menu today: China’s tech crackdown, Dalio’s dollar doom, Ashworth’s response, and a look at China’s advantages in entrepreneurship. CCP Comes Down on Tech CEOs In October 2020, Jack Ma delivered mild criticisms of China’s financial regulators at a business conference. Within a week, the tech billionaire’s payments company, Ant Financial Group, saw its IPO halted after Ma was summoned to a meeting with financial regulators. Shares of Tencent and Alibaba, the country’s largest tech companies, subsequently plummeted as investors saw the incident as an indication of a broad crackdown by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on tech entrepreneurs. Chinese president Xi Jinping confirmed those suspicions on Monday, stating in a meeting with financial regulators that the government should take a harder line against “platform” companies. “Som
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at 12:05 am on March 17, 2021 | 17 comments
Having swung from beloved Premier to banking lobbyist, it is clear that “Evil” Anna Bligh is the greatest public policy apostate in the Australian political economy (and that’s saying something). Yesterday, at The Australian, it was revealed that Belzebub’s handmaiden has summoned the two treasurers to Hades for a hot policy poker in the freckle:
The CEO’s of the big banks will meet with Josh Frydenberg and Jim Chalmers.
The full council of hell will convene to discuss how households can be squeezed to take on more credit.
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at 12:08 am on March 15, 2021 | 11 comments
On Friday, the Senate Economics Committee released its assessment of the Morrison Government’s planned axing of responsible lending rules, which supported winding back regulations to support greater credit provision across the economy:
The committee notes that a well-functioning credit market is essential for economic growth generally, and for Australia’s recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic specifically. The committee agrees that the current consumer credit protection framework is potentially overly prescriptive and that regulatory duplication between the responsible lending obligations, under the Credit Act, and the prudential standards issued by APRA could be an issue.
With the federal government adamant stimulus needs to be wound back, the Reserve Bank will need to become a lot more creative if it wants to engineer a sustained recovery, writes Ian Verrender.
RBA puts to rest rate rise chatter and washes hands of house price boom
By Maja Garaca Djurdjevic
10 March 2021
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1 minute read
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The Reserve Bank of Australia has put to rest chatter among investors that conditions for a higher cash rate could be met as early as next year and reaffirmed its position that its job does not involve targeting housing prices.
As the RBA announced its rate hold earlier this month, chatter among investors increased, with many predicting that given the property price boom, the bank could be forced to intervene earlier than planned.
Shane Oliver, chief economist at AMP Capital, tipped at the time that a rate hike could occur in the March quarter 2023.