Shareswatch Australia

We are almost through a third of 2011 and the mood across global markets appears to be decidedly downbeat.  The bullish voices of late 2010 have now faded and even the Reserve Bank of Australia and Federal Treasurer are sounding cautious. But don’t be fooled by the talk that recent events have caused the global economy to face headwinds because the reality is that 2011 was always going to be a tough year.

In the 1960’s the Japanese rightwing had a problem. The leftwing was arguing strongly that Japan’s postwar economy badly needed access to the markets and raw materials of China, North Korea and the Soviet Union if it was to survive (in prewar years it had depended heavily on China and the Korean peninsula for both).

Despite how convincing market experts appear on television or how cleverly they put pen to paper, the truth is that nobody knows for sure how the global economy will perform next year. For every positive sign or trend there is a worrying one, and despite the Dow Jones having some strong days recently the fact is the U.S. economy is still in bad shape.

A lot of attention has been focused on consumer prices recently as economists try to determine if deflation or inflation is going to be the next challenge for the OECD economies to deal with. On the surface it would seem that due to falling asset prices, unemployment and the decline in personal wealth that this would push many of these economies into a significant period of deflation. But is that really likely to happen?

It has been hard to write much about the Japanese economy of late simply because the economic data appeared to change every day. But over the last few weeks things do seem to have stabilised and both the government and the private sector in Japan generally agree that the economy probably hit the bottom earlier this year.

Now that the world seems to have avoided falling into an economic heap, various pundits have switched their attention to life after the global financial crisis. Of course if you spend most of your life saying the world economy is doomed then there has to be a crisis after this current crisis and one scenario being talked about is where many developed nations will enter a period of deflation.

The debate about where Australian home prices are heading appears to be getting more intense these days. Commentators who have been predicting home prices will crash have seized on falls seen so far as proof they are right, whereas those who believe prices will not crash pounce on the same data and says it supports their view. Confusing isn’t it?

Depending on your point of view the world’s stock markets are either having a temporary rally before they continue their downward slide or we are witnessing the start of a slow global economic recovery. But rather than make any assumptions or speculate on the future let’s look at what the news from markets around the world might be telling us.

After enduring over a year of falling stock prices we are finally seeing some tentative signs that the stock market is coming back to life. The lows of March 2009 now seem almost a distant memory and as the world’s markets continue to rally more bullish commentators come out of the closet and a few bearish ones crawl into one. But does the current stock market rally have legs?

Well it seems the inflation genie is back in the bottle and that the bottle is back in the cupboard. Therefore our wise leaders in Canberra have in less than 12 months gone from fighting inflation, to trying to stimulate growth and save the Australian economy from recession. Of course none of the economic problems Australia faces today have anything to do with government blunders, it is all China’s fault.

As readers of this blog will know, I am not a great fan of the actions of the RBA (Reserve Bank of Australia) or the current government when it comes to dealing with the events of this year. First of all we had the RBA raise rates too far (as I mentioned earlier this year) and then we had Rudd and Swan talking down the economy, then talking it up and now they are talking it down sort of, while about to pump money into it to stop growth from slowing.