I was reading the Dilbert blog the other day, and Scott Adams was trying to talk about a Dilbert movie. Before starting to ask the blogging community whether they thought it would be a hit, he linked to this article, and asked why movie producers keep making so many R rated films, when G rated […]
I’ve been thinking about the fact that AirNZ is going to shut down Freedom Air in March 2008. With Freedom Air, Air NZ was able to serve the budget end of the market and the higher quality end by selling a differentiated product. However, the company could have simply offered different services in different compartments […]
This time instead of being lazy I’ve actually been a bit busy, so here are some numbers from the last fortnight. Net annual arrivals fell to 8,730 in August Tourist arrivals rose 5.8%pa in August CA deficit came in at 8.2% of GDP in June Electronic sales rose 9.2%pa in August Core retail sales rose […]
I don’t have time to say much, but I will say that the Fed’s decision to cut rates 50 basis points was silly. They are pretty much telling the market that they will bail them out when the shit hits the fan from taking on overly risky investments. Although this decision may forestall a recession […]
Greg Mankiw noticed that the Fed target is still 5.25%, however the effective rate in August was only 5.02%. This is interesting, in NZ you could not do this as the Bank is willing to release any amount of money for a given interest rate (that is what our OCR target implies), the constraint in […]
The RBNZ left the OCR at 8.25%, a move that was completely expected. They also released a monetary policy statement this month, which is what the markets were keeping an eye out for. The executive summary was pretty neutral, mentioning both global credit market uncertainty and the need to keep rates high to combat inflation. […]