Commentary
A survey by JP Morgan reveals that Australia’s business leaders are “cautiously optimistic about the economy,” while almost half expect a recession in 2023. It also points out that energy prices “continue to weigh on Australian businesses.”
Similarly, the Reserve Bank of Australia indicated in November 2022, that the “prospects of a significant slowing in the global economy have intensified … fuelled by persistently high inflation and rising policy rates, the energy crisis in Europe, and the various headwinds affecting China’s recovery.”
These ambivalent predictions are reminiscent of Charles Dickens’s “A Tale of Two Cities” (set in London and Paris). The book’s opening sentence could not better describe Australia’s economic outlook:…