Albanese joins throng critical of Israel, US as ceasefire teeters
News in brief
The fragility of the Middle East ceasefire has put global markets under pressure although perhaps slightly surprisingly, the local ASX held on to its gain yesterday. It was down for most of the day though in late afternoon rose and by the close was up a quarter of a per cent to 8973 points.
It is a very big weekend for the property market after the clearance rate for houses last Easter weekend came in around 50 per cent – back down to COVID levels. Auctions are back to more normal levels this weekend and analysts are wondering whether there will be any improvement.
The federal government is now treating fuel supply as a national security issue. Energy Minister Chris Bowen yesterday said the government has struck arrangements with the nation’s biggest fuel suppliers to help secure extra petrol and diesel cargoes.
Bendigo and Adelaide Bank is preparing to cut staff after agreeing to two major technology deals, as the world of AI hits banking and its workers.
How accurate are Google’s AI responses to search questions? According to new research, they're accurate about 90 per cent of the time, though that number comes with caveats.
Fear-o-meter
Morning Brew newsletter on the US’s upper middle class.
The ranks of Americans that can add guac to their burrito bowl guilt-free have swelled. The upper middle class has become the largest income group in the US, according to a recent analysis by the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, highlighted by the Wall Street Journal.
The report contends that the lower rungs of the middle class shrank because more Americans got richer.
In 2024, 31% of American families were upper middle class, compared with just 10% in 1979.
The think tank’s report defined the upper middle class as a family of three earning $133k to $400k in 2024 dollars—five to 15 times the federal poverty line.
Meanwhile, the share of American households living in or near poverty declined from almost 30% in 1979 to below 19% in 2024.
The Wall Street Journal notes that upper middle class folks are often white-collar professionals in dual-income households, who have benefitted from women’s advances in the workforce and rising wages in fields like software engineering. Many are boomers raking in sizable pension payments made possible by stock market gains.
This group’s shopping habits are behind the rise of bougie goods and services, like first-class plane tickets, which have been a major driver of US economic growth.
But…economic inequality has also grown, with families in higher tax brackets seeing greater income growth while the poorest 5% seeing their earnings decline.
Fear & Greed Q+A today
On ARN Media's battle with Kyle & Jackie O over the radio duo's $200 million contract - including what it means for legacy media more broadly, and for the company itself:
“What’s been fascinating, I think, over the last few days is just how much the market seems to have lost confidence in ARN Media. I mean, at one point, the market capitalisation was sort of hovering around that $50 million mark — which is a really, really big fall — and it’s basically halved in the last month or so since the show ended. Now, part of that is just uncertainty. The market is trying to work out where all of this lands and what the outcome looks like.
But, you know, the business itself was still profitable last year — EBITDA was around $45 million — and they do have banking relationships and capacity there. So I think there probably has been a bit of an overreaction. But when you get that sort of move in the share price, it can feel a bit like a stampede.”
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has joined the growing number of world leaders calling on the Middle East ceasefire to include Lebanon. After confirming Australia’s fuel supplies are assured into mid-May, the PM declared he wanted to see peace in the region, and that included Israel ending its military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Meanwhile President Donald Trump said US forces will remain in place in the region until Iran fully complies with the ceasefire agreement. If they don’t, the US response will be “bigger and better and stronger than anyone has seen before”. Already there are reports of the ceasefire being breached, and it isn’t clear what Iran has agreed to. The all-important Strait of Hormuz has not re-opened, according to Iran, though there have been some shipping movements.
Greed-o-meter
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Artemis II is set to splash down on Earth tomorrow, with a successful mission paving the way to a crewed lunar landing in 2028. Only the US has ever put people on the moon, though four other countries (Russia, China, Japan and India) have had robotic 'soft' landings on the lunar surface - and there's been plenty of fly-bys.