上个月，澳大利亚四大银行中有三家突然提高抵押贷款利率，将悉尼投资房业主，31岁的艾莎（Aisha）从房产致富梦中唤醒。
一名行人走过一个悉尼抵押贷款的广告牌。
“我开始考虑卖房了，”艾莎表示，一度炙手可热的房地产市场冷却后，她担心自己无力支付房贷利息，而且房地产价格会进一步下滑。作为一名医院管理人员单身母亲艾莎，在最近失去工作后，通过取消私人医疗保险，停止订阅视频，转到更便宜的手机合同等消费降级来削减开支。
和许多澳大利亚人一样，艾莎在目睹房价飙升多年后，终于下定决心在房地产市场上出手。澳大利亚这个“幸运的国家”拥有举世无双的27年经济持续增长，尤其是最近十年，中国对澳大利亚自然资源的需求在很大程度上推动澳大利亚的经济增长。但是，最近看来，幸运的澳大利亚的好运气将要用尽了。
正在衰退的房地产行业繁荣不再，一个不稳定的政府在能源和税收问题上争吵不休，最近，莫里森成为澳洲11年内第七任总理。现在，美中贸易战可能会损害澳大利亚最大的商品出口国，澳元兑美元汇率接近十年来的低位。
根据瑞银（UBS）的数据，澳大利亚三分之一的出口到了中国 - 相当于澳洲经济的6.5％ - 澳大利亚因此被国际社会视为煤矿中的金丝雀。
澳大利亚国立大学东亚经济研究局局长Shiro Armstrong表示，中美互加关税是“巨大的冲击”，必将“改变中澳贸易的结构，并改变整个地区的贸易。”
然而，被逼到墙角的中国政府表示将开闸刺激经济，以保护中国经济，这给了澳大利亚带来了一线希望：澳大利亚多年来的经验是，中国的经济刺激计划会转化为大型基础设施项目，进而对澳洲铁矿石产生更多需求。
可以肯定的是，澳大利亚经济的标题数字看起来仍然很健康。截至6月份，澳大利亚国内生产总值增长3.4％，是自2012年矿业繁荣高峰以来的最高增速，在七国集团发达经济体中名列第一。
但是，有理由认为澳大利亚的经济实际情况比看似光鲜的数据要弱。
受高移民的影响，人均GDP同比下降1.8％，低于美国和欧盟。连续五年上涨，房价飙升50％的房地产市场也风光不再。过去五年，投资者占房屋贷款批准额的一半左右。
像艾莎这样房产投资者的反应 - 抑制消费并可能亏本出售房产 - 正是经济学家所担心的状况。随着房产拍卖吸引到的人越来越少，卖房也可能成为难题。
房地产经纪人Andrew Anastassiou承认，“由于金融机构正在紧缩房贷，卖房现在一直很困难。”
他的专业领域是曾经月月涨、年年涨的悉尼房产市场，虽然今年房价下跌了7％，但他对澳大利亚的乐观还没有耗尽。 “我并不是太发愁，毕竟每个人都需要能遮风挡雨的栖身之处。”
房价的降温一部分是监管机构刻意促成的，由于担心出现泡沫而实施更严格的贷款控制措施，成功抑制了房地产投资。根据一份备受关注的指数的的更新数据显示，截至7月份的一年，新的投资房贷数量下降超过15％，结果导致近六年来澳大利亚全国房价首次全年下跌。
分析师警告说，更危险的是“财富效应”逐渐的消退 - 当财产所有权的光环不再熠熠生辉，促使艾莎这样的业主遏制支出。西太平洋银行 - 墨尔本研究所编制的关键消费者信心指数，上月下跌3％，跌至10个月以来的最低水平。
惠誉解决方案观察到，最近所有这些现象“对澳洲的银行来说都不是好兆头”。澳大利亚的银行是全球盈利最多的银行，占澳大利亚经济的9％。但银行也依赖住房轻而易举的实现信贷增长，房屋抵押贷款占银行贷款总额的60％。
贸易战让前景更为黯淡。9月20日，经济合作与发展组织（经合组织）警告说，与贸易战有关的焦虑已经“影响了全球增长”，预计今年和明年的增长率最多达到3.7％。
但中国的刺激措施对澳大利亚来说永远是意外收获。澳大利亚毕马威首席经济学家Brendan Rynne表示，这笔资金流入建筑业并“从澳大利亚吸收原材料用于直接基础设施建设”。中国的刺激计划也将刺激消费，产生对澳洲农产品和其他澳洲主要出口产品的需求。
美国总统特朗普上个月将关税扩大到价值2500亿美元的中国产品，中国增加进口关税进行了反击 - 总计金额不到美国的一半 - 李克强总理在天津世界经济论坛上表示，中国政府将继续推行“大规模措施”改革经济。
李克强承诺会稳定基础设施投资，支持消费并降低其他关税，以应对“在全球经济和贸易背景下的一系列困难”。
市场对李克强总理的话的解读是中国政府打算敞开公共财政支出。在经历几个星期的下跌之后，澳元兑美元和避险货币日元开始强力反弹。中国房地产和基建板块的股票 - 澳大利亚铁矿石和炼焦煤的大买家 - 价格大幅上涨。澳洲矿业公司必和必拓（BHP Billiton）和力拓（Rio Tinto）也跟涨，两大矿业公司铁矿石业务集中在西澳的皮尔巴拉地区。
看到中国政府在7月推出一轮货币和财政措施后，一些公司觉得可以信赖中国刺激经济增长的意愿。 必和必拓首席执行官安德鲁麦肯齐8月份告诉分析师：“我们预计中国政府将采取一系列措施来刺激中国的国内需求”，“中国政府将使出所有常规措施 - 货币，财政，信贷。
“（贸易战）对我们公司的收入的影响实际上远远低于人们的想象”。
澳大利亚第三大铁矿石公司Fortescue的首席执行官伊丽莎白盖恩斯依然看涨市场。她告诉“日经亚洲评论”，对中国市场的增长前景，中国经济的长期基本面，中国政府通过投资基础设施和刺激国内消费维持稳定经济增长的能力，她充满信心。
无独有偶，北京一家上市的中国基础设施公司的高管也表示很有希望，尽管他的说法更为谨慎。 “今年下半年，有可能会在中国看到越来越多的基础设施项目，”这位高管表示，“但要弄清增长的规模还为时尚早。”
十年前，在全球金融危机期间，北京4万亿元人民币（5860亿美元）的经济刺激计划将铁矿石提升至令人咂舌的每吨180美元的水平。澳大利亚是为数不多的有足够产能满足中国需求的国家，也是没有经济衰退，安然度过危机的屈指可数的国家之一。
即便是现在，澳大利亚的收入对原材料价格非常敏感，铁矿石每吨增加10美元，国家预算就会增加55亿澳元。
正当澳大利亚的矿业在2014年开始走下坡路之际，澳洲房地产热潮推动了信贷增长，支撑了建筑和支出。在2016年，来自中国政府的又一轮刺激措施拉升大宗商品价格，商品价格进入上升通道，大幅增加了澳洲矿业公司的利润和政府收入。
一次次依靠中国拯救的弊端在于缺乏压力的澳洲政府一再推迟了急需的结构性改革。
8月，澳大利亚执政党遭遇由能源政策的争执引发的政变。公众对国内天然气短缺的强烈抗议，加剧了政局的紧张局面，问题的根源就在于澳大利亚大部分天然气供应给亚洲国家。
许多澳洲民众看来，澳大利亚近三十年的轻松惬意增长，给了无能的政府挥霍的资本。
澳大利亚智库洛伊研究所（Lowy Institute）国际经济项目主任罗兰•拉贾（Roland Rajah）表示：“我认为摆脱对中国经济的依赖并不容易。” “归根到底......澳大利亚不过是生产和销售中国想要的东西。”
拉贾强调，中国在应对贸易战和避免进一步增加财政杠杆之间面临着两难取舍。 “中国更多刺激性的政策可能在短期内对澳洲经济有所助益，但中国经济进一步增加风险也会影响澳大利亚的长期利益。”
澳大利亚银行面临越来越大的压力 - 抵押贷款放缓，由于澳元贬值导致海外融资成本上升，以及澳洲政府对包括高风险房屋贷款在内的金融业不当行为进行调查 - 其他风险也黑云压城。民众收入停滞不前，澳洲家庭债务已经世界最高，是GDP的120％。澳洲利亚的基础设施和供应不足的住房市场无法满足数量激增的移民的需求。
然而，最大的问题是：在最后一个大型采矿项目上线后，除了自然资源之外，还有什么能够推动澳大利亚经济增长？
澳大利亚央行在其贸易战数学模型模拟后得出的结论是，中国的刺激计划“可以抵消”对澳大利亚商品需求减少的影响，但会以“加剧中国经济长期结构性问题和中国金融风险增加”为代价。
拉贾也提出了类似的警告。 “我认为毫无疑问，这些年来澳洲的好日子已经形成了澳洲人强烈的固步自封的自满情绪，”“这对任何形式的改革都是真正的障碍。”
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8 Oct 2018 Bangkok Post
Australia counts on China
After 27-year run of growth, economy Down Under is weaker than it seems, but stimulus from Beijing could help. By Fumi Matsumoto in Tokyo and Sarah Hilton in Sydney
“I don’t think it is so easy to get away from our dependence on China’s economy. Ultimately … we produce and sell what China wants to buy.” ROLAND RAJAH Lowy Institute
Aisha, the 31-year-old owner of a Sydney investment property, had a wake-up call when three of Australia’s four major banks abruptly raised mortgage rates last month.
A pedestrian walks past an advertising billboard promoting mortgage loans in Sydney.
“Thoughts turn to selling,” she said, fearing unpayable interest and a further slide in property prices, as the country’s once red-hot housing market cools. A single mother who recently lost her job as a hospital administrator, Aisha has cut expenses by cancelling her private health insurance, stopping subscriptions and switching to a cheaper mobile phone contract.
Like many Australians, Aisha tried her hand in the real estate market after watching house prices surge for years. The “lucky country” has been blessed with a record 27 years of continuous economic growth, largely fuelled in the past decade by Chinese demand for its natural resources. But, lately, it looks like its lucky streak is over.
The real estate boom is fading. An unstable government has squabbled over energy and taxes, recently making Scott Morrison the seventh prime minister in 11 years. Now, the US-China trade war threatens to damage Australia’s biggest commodity customer, pushing the Australian dollar close to a decade low against its US counterpart.
With a third of its exports headed for China — equivalent to 6.5% of the economy, according to UBS — Australia is viewed as one of the canaries in the coal mine.
Escalating tariffs are a “big shock” that will surely “change the structure of [Australia’s] trade with China, and … change trade throughout the region,” said Shiro Armstrong, director of the East Asian Bureau of Economic Research at Australian National University.
Yet, with its back against the wall, Beijing has signalled that it will open the stimulus spigot to protect its economy. For Australia, this offers a glimmer of hope: years of experience have taught the country that Chinese stimulus translates into big infrastructure projects, creating more demand for its iron ore.
To be sure, Australia’s headline numbers still look healthy. Gross domestic product grew 3.4% for the year through June, the fastest pace since the height of the mining boom in 2012 and better than any Group of Seven economy.
That said, there are reasons to think the economy is weaker than it looks.
Bolstered by high immigration, the per capita figure fades to 1.8% year-on-year — lower than both the US and European Union. And gone is the buoyant property market seen over the past five years, when house prices soared by 50% and investors made up roughly half of home loan approvals.
Aisha’s reaction — restraining consumption and potentially selling at a loss — is exactly what economists fear. Selling might even be a challenge, as home auctions draw thinner crowds.
“It has been difficult, as financial institutions are tightening their belts in terms of lending,” acknowledged real estate agent Andrew Anastassiou.
His territory is the once-booming Sydney market, where house prices have dropped 7% on the year, though he has not completely shed his Australian optimism. “I am not overly concerned, as everyone needs a roof over their head.”
The cooling of housing prices is partly by design. Tighter lending controls, imposed by regulators worried about a bubble, have successfully dampened property investment. New investor loans dropped over 15% on the year in July, on the heels of the first nationwide annual price fall in almost six years, according to the May update of a closely watched index.
More dangerously, analysts warn of a fading “wealth effect”, when the dimming halo of property ownership prompts people like Aisha to curb spending. The key consumer confidence gauge, compiled by Westpac Bank-Melbourne Institute, dropped 3% last month to its weakest level in 10 months.
All of this “does not bode well” for the country’s banks, Fitch Solutions observed recently. Australian banks are among the most profitable globally, and responsible for 9% of the country’s economy. But they have also relied on housing for easy credit growth, with mortgages accounting for 60% of their loan books.
Over this looms the trade war. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) warned on Sept 20 that trade war-related anxiety is already “weighing on global growth”, capping projections at 3.7% growth this year and next.
But Chinese stimulus is always a windfall for Australia. The money flows into construction and “draws in primary resources from Australia to directly deliver the infrastructure itself ”, said Brendan Rynne, chief economist for KPMG Australia. The stimulus also stokes consumption, generating demand for other key exports including agricultural goods.
As US President Donald Trump expanded tariffs to US$250 billion last month and China fired back with its own — totalling less than half of those from the US — Premier Li Keqiang told the World Economic Forum in Tianjin that the government would build on its “massive measures” to reform the economy.
Li vowed to stabilise infrastructure investment, support consumption and reduce other tariffs to cope with “a host of difficulties … in the global economic and trade context”.
The markets took Li’s words as confirmation of China’s readiness to dip into the public purse. The Australian dollar rallied against its US counterpart and the safe-haven yen, after tumbling for weeks. Chinese property and infrastructure stocks — heavy consumers of Australian iron ore and coking coal — jumped. So did miners BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto, whose massive iron ore operations are centred in Australia’s Pilbara region.
After watching Beijing push a round of monetary and fiscal measures in July, some companies are counting on China’s willingness to jump-start growth. “We anticipate that a number of things will be done to stimulate [Chinese] domestic demand,” BHP chief executive Andrew Mackenzie told analysts in August. “All the usual measures — monetary, fiscal, credit.
“The effect on our earnings is actually much less than people think,” he added.
Elizabeth Gaines, the CEO of Fortescue — Australia’s third-largest iron ore miner — is bullish. She told the Nikkei Asian Review she is confident “in the growth prospects and long-term fundamentals of the Chinese market, and in the Chinese government’s capacity to maintain stable economic growth through investment in infrastructure and domestic consumption”.
An executive of a listed Chinese infrastructure company in Beijing was also hopeful, if more guarded. “It is possible that we will see more and more infrastructure projects in China during the second half of this year,” the executive said, “but it is too early to know how big that increase would be.”
A decade ago, during the global financial crisis, Beijing’s 4 trillion yuan (US$586 billion) stimulus package drove up iron ore to eye-watering levels of over $180 per tonne. Australia, one of the few suppliers able to meet demand, was also one of the few countries to weather the crisis without a recession.
Even now, the country’s revenues are so sensitive to the material that a price movement of $10 per tonne influences the national budget by A$5.5 billion (US$3.9 billion).
Just as Australia’s mining industry began to falter in 2014, the property boom arrived to fuel credit growth and prop up construction and spending. Then, in 2016, renewed stimulus from Beijing pulled commodity prices into another upturn, boosting miners’ profits and government income.
The trouble with relying on China to come to the rescue is that it allows Canberra to put off much-needed structural reforms.
In August, Australia’s ruling party suffered a leadership coup, partly triggered by a spat over energy policy. The tension was heightened by a public outcry over a domestic shortage of gas, rooted in the shortsighted contracting out of much of Australia’s supply to Asian buyers.
For many, it showed the dysfunction Australia could afford after almost three decades of comfortable growth.
“I don’t think it is so easy to get away from our dependence on China’s economy,” said Roland Rajah, director of the International Economy Programme at the Lowy Institute, an Australian think tank. “Ultimately … we produce and sell what China wants to buy.”
Rajah stressed that China faces a balancing act between countering the trade war and avoiding a further buildup of financial leverage. “For Australia, more stimulatory policy might be beneficial in the short run, but our interests wouldn’t be served by a further buildup of risk in China’s economy.”
Aside from growing pressure on Australia’s banks — the mortgage slowdown, rising offshore funding costs due to the falling Australian dollar, and a government probe into misconduct including risky home lending — other risks are gathering. Incomes are stagnant and their household debt is already among the highest in the world at 120% of GDP. The country’s infrastructure and undersupplied housing market will have to withstand surging immigration.
And then there is the biggest question of all: as its last big mining projects come online, what can power the Australian economy besides natural resources?
The Reserve Bank of Australia, in its trade war modelling, said Chinese stimulus “could provide an offset” to reduced demand for Australia’s commodities but would come “at the cost of exacerbating longer-term structural problems and contributing to financial risk”.
Rajah offered a similar warning. “I think there is no question there is a strong degree of complacency built up over the years,” he said, “and this is a real blockage to reform of any kind.”
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所以还是不要对中国有过多的指手画脚的动作和言语。
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在美国的贸易打压下，中国自己的经济发展也难保，澳洲还能依靠谁？
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大天朝地大物博，人民勤奋努力，近平同志克强总理大权在握，全国一盘棋。
天朝人口众多
依靠内需就能渡过难关。
澳洲人口稀少，需要借助于对外贸易。
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中国对美的巨大贸易顺差， 转手就成了， 澳，日，韩， 台的逆差， 贸易战必然影响这几个地方
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强制新移民去偏远地区的政策要黄
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天国稍微开一点门，土鳖国立刻升天
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美国一直坑小弟，澳洲就是贸易战的受害者。要想渡过危机，就闭上嘴巴不要给卖自己的老大站台，好好和中国做生意。
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最近几年国内会继续基建，今天新闻报道要建设川藏铁路了。
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估计澳洲这一百年其实都是靠着中国活下来的。
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既然知道澳中关系的厉害，那就踏踏实实的促进和稳步发展澳中合作友好往来和合作关系。当个山姆的小跟班，有神马益处？对经济发展有好处吗？
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大家都站起来拉
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政治正确是病，赚钱才是硬道理
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论坛上那几个见到中国就蹦得最高的跳脚大汉怎么还没出现
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然而
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好在澳洲反对中美贸易战的官员越来越多了。
舆论风向也随著新总理的上台而转了过来。
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看了就来火，弄个鱼死网破，你他妈中美好好活不行吗？弄得物价上涨，生意难做。
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中国有习主席，好日子没边
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fmg？你妹的自己的股票跌成臭狗屎了还好意思出来吹
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也是铁路，还有淘金
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还要靠金正恩同志您的一旁配合
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如果靠中国是因为可以让房价上涨，那还是别靠中国了，中国的经济大部分就是靠着房地产割韭菜带动的，这种虚假的经济上涨于民生何益？
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基本你的贴，可以不用回。
仅此一条，表示尊敬。
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澳洲就是鸡犬升天的鸡犬，不知为啥总对自己有迷之自信。
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