Federal treasury boss, Ken Henry, has surprisingly entered the current mining debate by insisting it was not that sector which kept our economy out of the recent GFC, but good national economic management. But his recent revelation did concede that our Asian raw materials markets proved extremely strong, especially China, which should see the Federal budget return to surplus by 2011.

To the surprise of many, economic analyst Ernst & Young has stated their research is showing current volatility in financial markets will not deter merger and acquisition activity planned in the next 6 months. And amazingly they say that almost one in two Australian companies plan to make an acquisition amid what is in reality improving confidence in capital and credit markets.

Global credit ratings agency, Moody’s Investor Service, says the outlook for Australia’s building societies is stable and improvements are inevitable due to their sound deposit base and a solid economic outlook for the future. The most interesting statistic they issued was that customer deposits have climbed 68 percent of total funding in the past year.