Goldman describes Australia’s lost decade | Macrobusiness

Posted by Houses and Holes. Reproduced with kind permission from Macrobusiness.

Goldman’s Tim Toohey has quantified the unwinding commodity super-cycle for ‘Straya’:

Lower commodity prices risk $0.5trn in forgone earnings
The outlook for revenues from Australian LNG and bulk commodities shipments – which account for almost half of total export earnings – has deteriorated significantly. To be clear, overall revenues are still forecast to increase substantially over the coming years – underpinned by a broadly unchanged strong outlook for physical shipments (particularly for LNG). However, in a nominal sense, the outlook is far less positive than before. This owes to a structurally weaker price environment, with GS downgrades of 18% to 25% to key long term price forecasts for LNG and bulk commodities suggesting that cumulative earnings over the years to 2025 are on track to be ~$0.5trn lower than previously forecast.

1

3

… and will erode Australia’s trade/fiscal positions
The deterioration in the earnings environment naturally has direct implications for Australia’s international trade and fiscal positions. On the former, a return to surplus by CY18 no longer looks feasible, and we now expect a deficit of ~$15bn. On the latter, relative to the 2014 Commonwealth Budget, we estimate that weaker commodity prices will cause a ~$40bn shortfall in tax revenues over the next four years. Given our expectation that Australia’s LNG sector will deliver no additional PRRT revenues over the coming decade, and the ~$18bn downgrade to commodity-related tax in the December MYEFO, we therefore see a risk of further material revenue downgrades at May’s 2015 Budget.

5

Resulting in changed GDP, RBA cash rate and FX forecasts
Although the commodity export changes mainly manifest through the nominal economy, there are significant impacts back through to the real economy. Lower export earnings result in lower profits, lower tax receipts, lower investment and lower employment. We continue to expect just 2.0% GDP growth in 2015 but have lowered our 2016 to 2018 real GDP forecasts by an average of 50ppts in each calendar year. As a consequence, we have moved forward the timing of the next RBA rate cut to May 2015, where we see the cash rate remaining at 2.0% until Q416, where we expect a 25bp hike. We now expect just 75bps of hikes in 2017 to 3.0% and rates on hold  in 2018. Despite the recent move in the A$ towards our 75c 12 month target, the reassessment of the medium term forecast outlook argues for a new lower target 12 month target of 72c.

OK, that’s quite a piece of work and congratulations to Tim Toohey for getting so far ahead of pack. I have just two points to add.

The LNG forecasts look good but as gloomy as his iron ore outlook is, it is not gloomy enough. $40 is a more reasonable price projection for 2016-18 and we’ll only climb out of that very slowly. That makes the dollar and interest rate forecasts far too bullish and hawkish.

Second, even after these downgrades, Mr Toohey still has growth of 3.25% GDP penned in for 2016 and 3.5% for 2017. We’ll have strong net exports and is about it. With the capex unwind running right through both years, housing construction to stop adding to growth by next year, the car industry wind-down at the same time, political strife destroying the public infrastructure pipeline, the terms of trade crashing throughout and households battered half to death by all of it, those targets are of the stretch variety, to say the least.

The analysis is exceptional, The conclusions, sadly, overly optimistic.

5 Replies to “Goldman describes Australia’s lost decade | Macrobusiness”

  1. Aloha! I have to agree Colin! These mainstream bank analysts who come out of a formal Ivy League education in economics, finance and politics seem to always be boxed in by the limits of that education and the inherent corruption the system breeds. I would say that there is a 0% chance these guys ever get long term projections correct. If they did then they wouldn’t need to work for a bank. He even bases his analysis, by his own comment, on GS downgrades, his employer.

    Add in that his employer, GS, is heavily involved in futures trading and coincidentally has its own commodities index, the GSCI. How convenient is all that? I guess nobody ever heard of “anti-trust”! Standard Oil did a long time ago, but all that did was make the Rockefellers even richer when the break-up came down.

    It has gotten corrupt enough to use GS analysts as contrary indicators and make actionable trades based on said prognostications. For instance how can a “real economy” exist when over 50% of the youth are unemployed like many EU countries. Without that future European consumption in high gear how will China survive … keep following the dominoes! It seems as if the last domino is WW4 …

  2. It is impossible to predict the future. I do see the above analysis as a little negative though. In the present moment we have a competitive dollar, becoming more competitive as it falls, a very low chance of rising interest rates, a buoyant housing market and a rising stock market. Therefore why is there always this talk of doom and gloom? I have been a professional investor now for nearly 20 years and most analysts are depressive and negative by nature, I am not overly optimistic, but attempt to be realistic. I do not see the future as that bad.

    Peter Castle

  3. Most of the time, I have seen if you trade against these forecasts, you’ll do well, they write the things they want you to believe for their advantage, or they’re just follow their theories learned at school. There are very few wise one’s.

Comments are closed.