Trade Deficit Turnaround / RBA Speech

TRADE
Trade was the great saviour that kept us from a technical recession by pushing March quarter growth into positive territory. With the rest of the world remaining in a shaky state and lower commodity prices starting to make their way into results it was always going to be a big call that it could do it again. Yesterday the Bureau of Statistics released figures showing that for the month of April the trade deficit was $91M seasonally adjusted. It was last in deficit in July 2008.

RBA SPEECH
Yesterday Glenn Stevens (Governor) delivered a speech and I thought it was worth sharing two snippets:

"It is likely that activity has remained subdued in the June quarter. The rapid decline in business investment is almost certainly continuing. While consumer spending has held up quite well so far, it may be weaker over the next few months, as the one-off government payments pass and rising unemployment starts to weigh on incomes and willingness to spend.

...... the degree of spare capacity in the economy will tend to be increasing for a while, and inflation will most likely continue to decline for some time. That in turn means, as the statement following this week's Board meeting indicated, that some scope remains to ease monetary policy further, if that were to be helpful to securing a durable upswing."