It was a pleasure to record a podcast with Andy Thompson last week. In a wide-ranging discussion we focused on inflation and the potential implications for interest rates within New Zealand.
The Reserve Bank decides on Wednesday what it wants to do to interest rates. This means that economists are beginning to dust their crystal balls, brush off the tarot cards, and meet up to argue over craft beers in back alleys as to what the Bank will do.
Inflation has spiked to its highest annual level in over a decade, after recording its biggest quarterly lift in almost 35 years. Of most concern to me is the economic fallout which higher mortgage rates are having on households’ discretionary budgets.
Businesses are playing fairer with each other. Xero’s time to be paid indicator shows that the average small business now waits 23.6 days for an invoice to be paid, down from 26.7 days in June a year ago.
The banking space will see further rapid changes this week in response to developments internationally. We are now in full-blown financial, as well as public health and economic crisis mode.
Trump's travel ban on Europeans entering the US caught airlines, policymakers and travellers off guard. Coronavirus now poses a crisis-trifecta: Public health, economic and a financial crisis.
Private sector debt in New Zealand stood at $456bn in March 2019, the equivalent of almost $92,000 for each of our 4,957,400 men, women and children. This article explores the key contributors to this debt, as well as basic rules of thumb to put this debt in context.
Business confidence has fallen to its lowest level in a decade. The irony is that the Reserve Bank’s August OCR cut, which was much bigger than market expectations, has spooked businesses rather than boosted them as had been intended.
The Reserve Bank’s target interest rate, the Official Cash Rate (OCR) has been slashed to a record low of 1.00%. Against a backdrop of a burgeoning international trade war, Reserve Bank Governor Adrian Orr is worried about being left behind in an international race-to-the-bottom to devalue currencies and support exporters.
Wage pressures have mounted, at a time when the economy has shown signs of slowing. To counteract the risk of a slowdown becoming entrenched, the RBNZ is likely to cut the OCR again at its next review in August.
This Top 10 explores ways of getting into financial health and avoiding debt-traps from spending increases to your […]
At the risk of sounding like a bore, this post deals with the housing market. But instead of […]