The recent labour market data illustrated that employment was falling – but interestingly average wages rose 5.3% on a year earlier. Does this mean things are stronger than expected? [I would note that this number didn’t surprise any of the economists I have talked to today – it is just possible that some people may […]
Over at the Big Picture blog there has been talk about how bad GDP would have been if we take away the positive contribution of imports. Fundamentally, imports fell and this “increased GDP”. As a result, some people there have been looking at GDP excluding imports. Now, this doesn’t actually make sense as a measure […]
When reading about that hunk Hugh Jackman and his new movie Wolverine I read this story in Stuff. In that story he mentioned the following comment from his wife: He said: “She gets very annoyed. She says, ‘A husband’s job is to be fat and flabby and make me look fabulous.’ She said I wasn’t […]
The RBNZ cut the official cash rate by 50 basis points to 2.5%. This wasn’t to surprising. However, the statement was a hell of a lot more dovish than I expected, especially: We expect to keep the OCR at or below the current level through until the latter part of 2010. So the RBNZ is […]
I quite like the approach to “reducing beer consumption” suggested here: tell people what type of food it is equivalent to scoffing down. By doing this, we increase the information avaliable to the individual when they decide to drink. As many people seem to be interested in a “healthy diet” or “keeping weight down” telling […]
Bank economists are saying that we should aim to keep “long-term” rates low – through the RBNZ committing to a future path of the OCR for the next 3-5 years at a low rate. At first brush we could be cynical and say this appears to be in their interest – the OCR does determine […]