When Tony Abbott became Australia’s prime minister in September 2013, the chain of events that would prematurely end his tenure may already have been in motion: just a few months later China would order its out of control shadow banking system to put on hold its debt issuance machinery, which as we reported a year ago, ground to a complete stop around November 2014 (which also was the explanation for the dramatic slowdown in the US economy over the winter as the collapse in China’s Total Social Financing growth sent a deflationary ripple effect around the globe), which – as we warned at the time – would have dire consequences on all of China’s “feeder” economies, namely Brazil and Australia.
But while we have been tracking the implosion of Brazil’s economy since December, long before the rest of the world noticed the calamitous collapse of what was once Latin America’s most vibrant economy, it was a very recent event in Australia – not the country’s parallel economic slowdown also due to China’s hard landing: that was painfully clear long in advance – that took many by surprise. Namely, the resignation of Tony Abbott almost exactly two years after becoming Prime Minister.