Weekly Reports | Sep 23 2011
By Greg Peel
We're at that point at which one assumes “something” must happen to stop the rot but as to what that “something” might be is unclear. Officials from the IMF and World bank are meeting in Washington over the weekend, as are the G20 finance ministers, but not because markets have tanked these past couple of sessions. Such meetings rarely result in anything other than motherhood statements, and if there is to be global coordination as there was in 2008 such a policy will be discussed outside of what is really just a photo-op. But we can hope.
No doubt the ministers will turn to the hero of the hour and ask, “Oh Great One, should we quickly put pink bats in all the houses in Europe?” although that might elicit a blush from Mr Swan.
The Fed had its go this week and clearly underwhelmed markets, despite doing exactly what everyone had expected. Geithner was invited to Europe last week to offer advice, one assumes, and was made to feel about as welcome as a f*rt in a spacesuit. Greece's next bail-out payment has been postponed and we're still a ways from completing the votes required to enact the EFSF with more than one country postponing that vote. As Europe crumbles, so does the world.
Over to you Europe.
Economic data releases have been lost in the wash this week amidst the mayhem given they really don't mean an awful lot at present. Nevertheless, next week the US will see releases for new home sales, the Case-Shiller house price index, consumer confidence, the Richmond Fed manufacturing index, durable goods, pending home sales, personal income and spending and the Chicago PMI.
Thursday will bring the second revision of the US June quarter GDP estimate and the Treasury will auction two, five and seven year notes over the week as Ben Bernanke does his Chubby Checker impersonation.
It's a quiet week data-wise in Australia next week but in Europe we'll see Germany's influential IFO survey, albeit not before an estimate of the eurozone's composite PMI (manufacturing, services, construction) is released tonight.
On the Australian stock front, next week sees the trickle before the flood of corporate Annual General Meetings which are going to require some pretty strong cups of tea to calm the retirees down, one assumes.
For a more comprehensive preview of next week's events, please refer to "The Monday Report", published each Monday morning. For all economic data release dates, ex-div dates and times and other relevant information, please refer to the FNArena Calendar.
