Fires destroy jobs, confidence
Job ads crashed by another -6.7 per cent in December to be a shocking -18.8 per cent lower than a year earlier.
Normally the new year begins on a wave of optimism, but not so 2020, when confidence fell to the lowest level since January 2009.
Output gap
All the usual upbeat explanations and angles were put forward, and clearly there's been a deleterious impact from the catastrophic bushfires.
However, this sort of outcome has always been a risk of hoping that inflation would somehow return to target while running the economy so far below its potential.
Previous disasters such as Black Saturday in Victoria and the Queensland floods saw communities rebuild and confidence rebound, though Australia's bushfire season potentially has a way to run yet.
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Aussie stocks jumped +1.3 per cent as markets moved to price in a further rate cut in the first half of 2020.
Indeed, OIS markets are now pricing a cut as soon as next month as more likely than not.
Indeed, OIS markets are now pricing a cut as soon as next month as more likely than not.
