1. Treasurer Chalmers is talking up the possibility of killing the tax cuts.

The AFR says “Treasurer Jim Chalmers will escalate his push to pare back the stage three tax cuts in the October 25 budget by revealing on Friday the immediate cost blowouts facing the government in the five biggest areas of expenditure.” Big spending areas such as NDS, which was forecasted to cost $60 billion a year by 2030, is growing at 12% per annum for the next four years, so cuts elsewhere are needed. Tax cuts favouring higher income Australians could face the chop.

2. NAB says house price fall will speed up next year

Home prices are tipped by the bank’s economics team to fall by 20% peak-to-trough with the bulk of the fall to happen next year. They think the cash rate, which is now 2.6% following this week’s 0.25% rise, will stop at 3.1% but the full impact of the past and future rises will show up next year.
(In an interview I did with an REA economist on last night’s TV show had the price fall at a lot less than 20%! Check it out here: ….

3. What’s ‘appened’ to Appen?

This disappointing artificial intelligence business again disappointed the market and the stock price fell 11.74% to $2.94. And that’s a five-year low! But why? Well, its big customers — the likes of Facebook, Amazon and so on — have not increased their spending on getting to know us better to influence us through all the sneaky ways online businesses use to make money. Chief executive Mark Brayan declined an interview request from the AFR but said on an analyst call that these projects tended to be smaller and did not offset the losses. This guy has to be dead CEO walking!

4. Rental crisis as vacancy rate plummets

The SMH reports that the national rental vacancy rate holds steady at 0.9% for the third month in a row but that’s a national figure. The situation is worse in some capital cities. In Brisbane it’s 0.6%, Perth 0.4%, Adelaide 0.3% and Hobart 0.5%. And all this is feeding into higher rents.
So what needs to be done? “A Productivity Commission report says $16 billion a year in government housing assistance could be better targeted, while nearly $3 billion spent helping first home buyers works against improving affordability. It also called for an increase to Commonwealth Rent Assistance and improvements to new housing supply and social housing.” (SMH)

5. ASX futures down today!

ASX futures down 49 points or 0.7% to 6771 near 6am AEDT with the AUD -1.3% at US64.05¢

Dow -1.0% S&P 500 -0.7% Nasdaq -0.4%

Gold -0.2% at $US1713.02 an ounce

Iron ore +0.1% to $US95.80 a tonne