Big cut – bigger than the market expected, bigger than I expected. The deteriorating outlook for world economic activity appears to have been the primary factor driving this reduction in the official cash rate. Now lets keep an eye on the dollar and on mortgage rates …
In all seriousness I’m sick to death of this damned argument over what the accounting identity Savings=Investment means (I am sure you are too – but I get to write the blog posts and I need to vent. My apologies). I never, for the life of me, expected such a substantial dispute to develop between […]
There is a complete consensus that the Reserve Bank will cut the official cash rate. However, the size of the cut is still uncertain. Mearly a fortnight ago, safe money was on a 50bp cut with a large number of commentators suggesting 75bp. To be honest, after coming out of December MPS it felt like […]
Homepaddock reports that Fonterra has cut its forecast payout for the coming season to $5.10 – well down on the $7.90 paid last season. This is a significant decline in returns, however even though prices could go lower it is unlikely they will this season. As a result this leaves us two other factors to […]
The Dom post has two articles on the potential shortage of property in New Zealand, one on builders capacity (the labour force of traders) and another on the response of rents to the undersupply. Now we have talked about this before. Structural factors have prevented developers and builders from getting funding (go credit rationing) which […]
Over at Think Markets Mario Rizzo follows the advice of Paul Krugman and discusses what Keynes has actually said about infrastructure spending (ht Greg Mankiw): Organized public works, at home and abroad, may be the right cure for a chronic tendency to a deficiency of effective demand. But they are not capable of sufficiently rapid […]