House prices in New Zealand have fallen 6.8% on a year earlier according toe QVNZ (for November). Given that inflation was running at somewhere around 4% during this time this implies that the real value of houses has fallen by around 11%. Now, prior to the recent crisis, households based decisions on the (wrong) assumption […]
Two releases today have made it obvious that the New Zealand current account deficit will decline over the coming quarters. The first was Japan’s reported current account surplus – it is down 66% on a year ago. With a range of structural factors also likely to drive down Japans CA surplus over time (here) and […]
Too big to fail has to be one of the “catch phrases” of 2008. Catch phrases often deserve some fan art – however, over 2008 I didn’t see any. The Minneapolis Fed obviously felt that fan art was necessary – which lead to this banner (ht CPW): Excellent. The related post is here. In it, […]
The NZIER December QSBO is out. Ohhh dear … Let’s just say that the domestic economy appears to have cooled rapidly in the December quarter – and businesses are running scared of the March quarter. It does appear that there is more than a structural correction going on now – confidence, and as a result […]
This blog tries to remain relatively apoliticial. I do not intend to break this by illustrating as opinion on the Israel-Palestine conflict, it is a difficult issue which I could do no justice. However, I do like to try to understand the world around me, so a relatively generalised model that describes these types of […]
Over in the good old US the Congressional Budget Office has released their forecasts (ht Paul Krugman). It is an ugly sight, as would be expected, with growth falling miles below its “potential” level and a large negative output gap opening up. As Paul Krugman points out, this type of large output gap would provide […]