Spending crashes as rate hikes bite
ANZ reported that shopping, travel, and dining expenditure in Australia have all dropped off a cliff.
Spending in the economy has passed the tipping point now, with grocery spend stalling and all other sectors falling deeply into negative territory.
Source: ANZ
This mirrors what a number of retailers have been protesting of late, that consumers are shutting their wallets at an alarming rate of knots.
It also suggests that growth in the economy for the June quarter could be flat or even negative as domestic demand slows (although monster population growth makes a shrinking economy mathematically a tough hurdle).
Overnight, US initial jobless claims were reported to have jumped to 262,000, suggesting that the labor market Stateside has also finally cracked.
Tighter policy is evidently biting.
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Australia's 3-year bond yield spiked by more than 10 basis points on yesterday's surprisingly strong jobs data, but later meandered all the way back down to where it'd started at 3.95 per cent.
