I have avoided discussing Nationals benefit policy so far. I just haven’t seen any need given that I like to stay relatively apolitical – and also given that it does not imply much of a change from the status quo (do you guys know how difficult it is to renew your benefit anyway nowadays!). For […]
Source (NBNZ) Damn, I wish I had picked up this graph yesterday – as the 24 July was when the RBNZ cut the OCR, which made the TWI fall by about 100 basis points. So since then, our exchange rate has slide a further 200 basis points. For people that prefer thinking of it in […]
Now that Quotable Value is telling us the New Zealand house prices are finally falling (down 2.2% on a year earlier in July), the reality has sunk in that this might be a long adjustment. However, the downturn in the US housing market has been happening a lot longer, and shows no sign of abating. […]
In the Financial Times, Martin Feldstein wrote about the difference between the EU and US monetary setting regimes – specifically he wanted to answer why the EU was lifting rates, while the US had been cutting. (ht Greg Mankiw). Ultimately, he puts this difference down to a number of factors:
Philosophy et certa links to an interesting paper by Richard Sharvy titled “Who’s to say what’s right or wrong? People who have PHDs in philosophy, that’s who”. At some level this makes sense – philosophers (can) specialise in the study of ethics and morality, and as a result of this training they will have a […]
There seems to be a lot of discussion surrounding economists position on the political spectrum. My answer to this would be that economists are not a political group or a club so economists themselves will be spread over the political spectrum. However, I have to admit that the process used when discussing economic issues does […]