Wayne Swan the punter's friend

Malcolm Turnbull is a sceptic but Jonathan Xiong is not. While the Opposition Leader last night was preaching doom and gloom for a debt laden Australian future, the vice president and senior portfolio manager at Mellon Capital Management Corp. in San Francisco was placing bets that the Wayne Swan budget will work. Mellon Capital, one of the world's biggest and most adventurous financial gamblers, thinks the Australian dollar will rally the fastest among the world’s most-traded currencies as economies revive. “This is a true economic recovery play,” Mr Xiong, who oversees $18 billion for the firm which describes itself as the originators of value-based tactical asset allocation, told Bloomberg. “The Australian dollar is our favorite position relative to the Group of 10 currencies.” Australia’s currency is now the fund manager’s biggest long position against the greenback, Xiong said.