Abbott Shanghai's Hockey on Banks + China Rejects Markets

In The AFR I interrogate Abbott's frankly bizarre decision to not price the currently free taxpayer insurance of over $750 billion of bank deposits, as formally recommended by APRA, the RBA, Treasury and ASIC. I also reflect on the extraordinarily turbulent month of August in which Chinese equities suffered 43% peak-to-trough losses and Australian shares ended the month down 8.1%. For the Chinese Communist Party this has truly been an existential battle for control of its economy against the capricious intrusion of capitalism as represented by (temporarily) free markets. Yes, blame those "foreign forces" attacking the "soft under-belly of the market". On my reckoning the Aussie equities' losses were worse than over 98% of all months since 1985 and were therefore tantamount to a two standard deviation shock. Great for stress-testing your portfolio but bad news for the many "hybrid" investors who wore another 1.6% hair-cut in August. Read my full AFR column for free by clicking twice here (VIEW LINK)