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Gold/Mining/Energy : Big Dog's Boom Boom Room -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Biomaven who wrote (186943)	12/6/2014 11:37:29 AM
From: elmatador	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 206094

Brutal drop: Germany, Italy, Spain and France

To: Biomaven who wrote (186943)	12/6/2014 4:11:45 PM
From: Elroy Jetson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 206094

As the Australian Dollar more than doubled in value, imports were on offer to Australians at a rare half-price sale - and Australians loaded up the boat with everything they had always wanted. They knew it was a once in a lifetime opportunity. When you traveled in Europe over the past ten years a large percentage of tourists are Australian, which had never been the case before. Realize that's a 24 hour flight through an Asian lay-over like Hong Kong (Honkers) or new lay-overs in the Middle East like Dubai, as it's not cost efficient to carry that much fuel. Europe is not an economy vacation for an Australian by any means. (Although some Qantas planes are fitted with the extra tanks needed for a non-stop to Europe, it was discovered that wind patterns, caused by the Earth's rotation, created headwinds which didn't always permit a complete flight from Australia to Europe on the amount of fuel needed for the reverse.) Australia ran a huge trade deficit in goods a services while the value of their currency was very high. Their balance of trade has become neutral as the Australian Dollar falls from clearly over-valued levels. You could be misled if you look instead at measures of "total balance of payments". It shows Australia has been run a consistent trade deficit since 1975. So what does this consist of? This is entirely the result of Australian businesses borrowing abroad as the domestic bond and shares market doesn't have the depth of liquidity available in foreign markets. Businesses in Australia source a far higher percentage of their capital as debt than equity than do American and European businesses. In America we don't often think of Singapore as banking centre, but a very large percentage of capital for Australian companies is acquired through Singapore. New Zealand is even more extreme, with no locally owned banks - most banks are subsidiaries of Australian banks, with a small presence of banks from other nations Looking at the chart below, it becomes obvious how successful Australia's gamble on "Our Asian Future" has been. Decades ago the Australian government decided their trade future lay with Asia, rather than England and America. To create networks with Asian nations, Australia greatly expanded the quotas for Asian immigrants, particularly those with business skill. You can see this in a small way in that every small Australian town now has a Chinese, Thai and Indian restaurant virtually all of which was founded and operated by recent immigrants.