
13 Jun RECESSION – OR MAY BE NOT; CHEQUES: GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN
RECESSION – OR MAY BE NOT
It’s been a week full of negative headlines about the economy.
We kicked off on Tuesday with the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), announcing yet another increase in the official interest rates – now at 4.1 per cent.
Then we had figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), on economic growth, which came in at 0.2 per cent in the first three months of the year. Economic commentators had expected a 0.3 per cent rise in activity.
So, are we headed for a recession after all?
There may be a clue in what is going on in the US, where analysts have coined a new phrase to describe what appear to be a set of highly contradictory economic indicators – they are calling it the “non-recession recession”. Or as Bloomberg explained, a situation where financial markets feel some pain but the underlying economy remains fairly strong.
CHEQUES: GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN
Say goodbye to cheques.
Treasure Jim Chalmers announced on Wednesday that Aussies will no longer be able to use cheques after 2030 as the Federal Government looks to modernise the payments sector.
Like fax machines, Walkmans and Nokias, cheques were once ubiquitous but no more. The most recent figures show that cheques are currently used for just 0.2 to 0.3 per cent of all transactions.
GLOSSY JOBS
Does your job sound better than it is? If so, you might have a “glossy job”.
Coined by Dr Lisa Cohen, an associate professor of organisational behaviour at McGill University in Montreal, a glossy job refers to work that “on the surface looks really glamorous”, but in reality, is “boring, repetitive — a lot of drudgery”.
Rather controversially, Dr Cohen reckons these glossy jobs are often found in cultural industries such as film, music and theatre. brands. Go figure …
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