Perth commentator Tim Treadgold is one of the state's highest-profile business journalists. He brings decades of experience to Business News, offering readers sharp and insightful analysis of current events and breaking news.
Rio Tinto’s strong profit reported earlier today will please investors in one of state’s biggest employers, though the big miner’s fresh round of job shedding is a warning shot across the bows of the Western Australian economy, with more warning shots likely to be fired over the next 12 days.
Australia’s latest political crisis, the potential dumping next week of the prime minister, Tony Abbott, is masking a far greater threat to the country – a fresh outbreak of the GFC caused by the dramatic build-up of private and public debt.
Cost wins out above all other considerations in the search for efficiency, which is why a strengthening US dollar could pose challenges for Caterpillar.
Fortescue Metals Group surprised investors earlier today with a better-than-expected December quarter production report, but that should not stop speculation that it could be a key player in Western Australia’s deal of the decade.
As is the case with most wars, there’s never agreement on who fired the first shot; not that it really matters in a hot war or the currency front, which is rapidly engulfing the world and should soon involve action by Australia.
It might seem unimportant to know exactly why copper has been added to the list of sick commodities, but if it is more than a fright over excess supply and slack demand then we could be on the verge of a rerun of the GFC.
In theory, and it is a theory backed by some high-powered research, shares in Australian oil and gas companies such as Woodside Petroleum and Santos have much further to fall, a fact which prompts a question: why haven’t they already fallen further?
Apart from a few brilliant authors and composers, not much good has ever come out of Russia; and unless there is a sharp improvement in the outlook for that country it could drag the rest of the world, including Australia, into a crisis to rival that of 2008.
Small iron ore miners operating in a $70/t environment are struggling, but in a different way so are the majors battling to satisfy investor expectations.
Until a few weeks ago, Australia’s 20,000 investment advisers and their associates in stock broking firms and banks probably thought they had jobs for life; but that was before the Commonwealth Bank advisers’ scandal and the latest threat – internet-powered advice.
London may seem like an odd place to be picking over the entrails of the world’s resources industries, but the title of the Mines and Money conference says it all, really.
It is probably foolish to suggest that some of Australia’s richest people are making a mistake by investing in the latest banking fad – peer-to-peer lending.
The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries may not be dead, but it is on life support – a status that contains a mixed message for Western Australia, as part of the state’s economy will benefit from potentially lower fuel prices while another part will likely be damaged.
It’s not easy to feel sympathy for Perth’s super-rich as they watch their fortunes shrink, but the problems of Gina Rinehart, Andrew Forrest, Kerry Stokes, Angela Bennett and Stan Perron are a powerful pointer to the problems facing everyone in Western Australia.