AU Dollar $$

[FlashDrive]

AU Dollar is coping a hiding...

[Marke]

Its predicted to be in the mid to low 60s next year.

[FlashDrive]

:sad:

[DarkArts]

That will help to re-build our export industries, though, won't it?

[FlashDrive]

It should ...!!

[ZeroID]

Ours is no better, I've put a hold on any purchases from afar.

[AndrewJ]

Which ones???
Most have already been wiped out.
Andrew

[RickS]

https://tradingeconomics.com/australia/balance-of-trade

[Wavytone]

We only have three - coal, iron ore and lithium ore... and they employ roughly 4000 people in WA. The rest simply don't count.
And as for Atlassian, only two individuals profit from that.

For everyone else this is a dis-benefit.

[AndrewJ]

Gday Rick
Most of what we sell now is raw material ( minerals ) / agricultural produce and we now get less for the same amount sold due to the currency conversion rates.

We are simply selling the same amount of our souls for less
Sure we are making money, but we are going backwards,
and we are now totally at the mercy of those who buy

our ( normally unprocessed ) goods.




Andrew

[Kunama]

Good time to buy Australian :thumbsup:
I don't feel so bad about being broke now.... :sadeyes:

[The Mekon]

I' m not sure you have this right - commodities are usually priced in $US, SDRs or maybe Euros. So if we sell them we get the same amount (world market price), but this converts to more $AU. More $AU in the economy is a good thing.

[Wavytone]

Not really. It only goes into the pockets of the shareholders - mostly foreign companies. Assuming a net operating profit of maybe 10%, company tax at 30% means Australia nets a measly 3%. That is all.

The notion that we benefit by flogging the natural wealth of this country is a fallacy, frankly.

[Kunama]

The shareholders then spend it, thus putting it into the economy thus employing Aussies and the ATO's share is used by the Govt to fund things like hospitals, infrastructure etc once again employing Aussies....

[RickS]

That's correct. The weaker AUD means our exporters receive more. I'm quite sure of that since I'm on the receiving end of royalties for the use of intellectual property in the USA. It also means that all the software and hardware engineers in our office are less expensive compared to their equivalents in the USA and we can increase our hiring and stop worrying that somebody will decide to move everything to San Jose. The downside is that those expensive NB filters I just ordered are going to cost me a bit more...

Cheers,
Rick.

[AndrewJ]

Yep, but a lot of the shareholders are now overseas investors,
so their economy benefits, not ours.
Its not a simple equation, but we are currently on the losing end.
Forget the simplistic govt trade deficit waffle,
look at the total country deficit ( ie govt + private )
We are borrowing money at an alarming rate to build housing for people who we have no reasonable employment prospects.
Its a ponzi scheme that will come unstuck very soon.


Andrew

[Wavytone]

Using money we don't have - these are funded either by borrowed money or by selling 50 year concessions to a foreign consortium. Take a closer look at all the infrastructure in NSW ... its built, owned and OPERATED AND MAINTAINED by shelf companies owned by foreign companies, ie all the money goes offshore. These are dressed up as "build own, operate" contracts where once the asset is worn out and due for replacement its handed back to the government, ie what we are left with is a piece of junk that has to be scrapped and redone.

Something the public do not know i that on average ⅔ of the value lies in owning and operating these things. Constructing them amounts to less than ⅓ of the project value.

Ultimately 97% of the money leaves our shores. Only 3% comes back into our economy via the ATO.

One of the worst examples is where Public Private Partnerships (PPP's) were tried (the darlings of governments the early 2000's keen to avoid shelling out hard dollars to fund infrastructure). Most of these were financed using large local corporate investors like super funds - mums & dads savings - yet most collapsed taking the shareholders money down the gurgler. Subsequently the assets were sold off at firesale prices - but not to mums & dads - these were picked up for a song buy - you guessed it - multinationals, who are now making nice profits.

[clive milne]

A couple of excellent posts there Nick,

fwiw) You may find the following FOI request interesting/amusing.

https://www.righttoknow.org.au/request/is_the_commonwealth_of_australia
I draw your attention to the response:



Errrm.... seriously?

[The Mekon]

Nick, your post is very misleading. It ignores the 90% cost of production that stays in Australia. I agree that if a foreign company makes 10% profit, then you might be right to say Australia makes a measly 3%. But the risk taker has only made 7%.

A little bit of something is always better than all of nothing.

[JA]

We may soon see a $US 0.69 Australian Dollar. It was 0.701 yesterday..... Yikes.

Best
JA

[clive milne]

http://www.chevrontax.info/reports-1/2016/11/17/comparison-of-australia-and-qatar-lng-exports-and-revenues

I think the only way to get this country back in the black would be to privatise all our remaining public service institutions and give the corporations bigger tax breaks to encourage greater foreign ownership.

Hmmm.... I wonder how much we could get for my grandma?

[AndrewJ]

Gday John

And so are the overseas tax schemes.
For simple products, i agree, the lower dollar means we get more for our product, but when you look at the big money spinners for Oz
ie LNG, iron ore etc,

( from what i have read so far ) a lower dollar here means increased tax writeoffs and hence less income.
( I dont know how it works :-) )
I see Clive just posted re the LNG stuffup, as i was also just browsing this topic again to see how a lower dollar affected the royalties.
I now wish i hadnt :-(
http://theconversation.com/senate-inquiry-told-zero-tax-or-royalties-paid-on-australias-biggest-new-gas-projects-77479

Andrew

[RB]

I'll be issuing a permanent ban from now on for deliberate breach of TOS.
You've been warned many times in the past.

RB