From the Institutional Economist blog we’ve just seen an article on peak oil. I agree with the author that markets will facilitate any movement from using oil to using a substitute. As yes, the market will help to develop further exploration for oil fields – which will provide more oil. But I feel two points […]
Am I the only person left that believes in this rule of thumb? From a Herald article on the IMF: Policy makers will need to employ judgment to look at what is driving asset price movements and discretion to avoid costly policy mistakes Now to be fair, they also suggest that maybe central banks should […]
Ht Big Picture To be fair, economics is a wide ranging social science and we can’t criticise some parts of the discipline on the basis of poor forecasts. Furthermore, even in the realm of economic forecasting, the goal is to paint out risks given limited data and an imperfect knowledge of the complex world around […]
So, the recession is over – not what I expected. I had an ipredicit contract saying that GDP would be positive, but then I covered my position yesterday. That will teach me 😉 Update: Looks like it was the cold winter that pulled us out of recession – the increase in electricity generation more than […]
GDP is out later today, and there are calls from some that growth turned positive again in June. While a mild bounce-back from the sharp March 09 fall is conceivable in of itself I’m not sure if I buy it. Partial indicators have still been poor and the NZIER QSBO was still incredibly weak for […]
So the Reserve Bank left the cash rate unchanged at 2.5%. Three quick points: Their forecasts are stronger than in June, They talked alot about structural imbalances (something I heard about a couple of months ago), They actually framed their decision in terms of inflation again, like the Aussies have been. “Annual CPI inflation is […]