Yesterday’s retail sales were unequivocally strong with a print of 1.1%. This flies in the face of what we are hearing regarding arrears levels from the big banks, from retailers themselves, and the rise to an 11.5% savings rate in the national accounts. Hence, there was a lively discussion yesterday at MB about whether there could have been a lot of “flood related” buying in Queensland and Victoria that contributed a large swathe of this month’s unexpected strength.
Now everyone don your Adam Carr filter because we are clearly doing some data mining and talking the book here, or at least my view on the economy, but with this next chart we have some evidence for the the flood-related boom thesis. From the National Accounts, the following chart is insurance payouts in the March quarter:
Nuff said.