One piece of information managed to shake me out of my flu induced daze for long enough to write a post – Australian GDP had a surprising fall over the December quarter, falling 0.5% (seasonally adjusted) on September. Appears that inventory accumulation was knocked down sharply – that is very interesting. Usually during a recession […]
I’m sick today – and since economics and sickness don’t really roll together I can’t say much. However, it looks like Econlog has been busy with authors discussing the paradox of thrift. Robert Murphy is against it, Bryan Caplan is against a policy solution, and Arnold Kling disagrees with both of them. How I feel […]
The Reserve Bank of Australia has left their rates unchanged at 3.25% (statement here). We suggested that this was a possibility earlier in the day – and it is the closest thing to a correct rate call that I’ve have made for the last 18 months 😛 Relatively robust domestic demand, combined with commodity prices […]
In all this negative news there is one plus that keeps on going: Australian commodity prices: Source(RBA) In Australian dollar terms export prices are virtually unchanged. I prefer looking at world prices though, as it gives you some idea of relative prices without having to look at the terms of trade (a sketchy idea). In […]
From a report on NZIER’s latest forecasts: The main factors reducing economic activity were falls in private consumption, investment and net exports, NZIER said. I am going to assume that NZIER didn’t actually say that – and that it instead came straight from NZPA. When everything is falling (except government spending it seems), saying that […]
A recent article on Stuff pointed out that there has been a number of police raids of cannabis plantations over the past few months. The justification for this is that cannabis is an illegal drug – and it has been made illegal because people believe that this is socially optimal. Same time people trust CBD […]