After 14 years writing a weekly column which has gone to a number of regional newspapers I have decided to concentrate my efforts on the Thursday night Weekly Overview and close this particular outlet down. So many thanks to regular readers and you can keep up to date with my latest analysis and sometimes random […]

Sorry for the delay in posting this week’s Overview. There were problems with the site. This week I take a look at some things I’ve learnt over the past few years which you might find interesting.

Last week we learnt that rather than holding steady at 6.8% New Zealand’s unemployment rate jumped to 7.3% courtesy largely of a 9,000 drop in employment during the September quarter. Does this result mean that our economy is back in recession?

Last Sunday the Australian government released the long-awaited white paper ‘Australia In The Asian Century” The paper examines the way in which fairly soon Australia will be on the doorstep of what for the rest of the life of this planet will be the economic centre – Asia. In particular it looks at how by […]

Troy Flavel says hello – or at least he will later this week when like me he makes it back to New Zealand. He’s coming back for some media ahead of his Fight For Life bout with Willie Mason in December. I’m just trying to get home. Both of his caught a British Airways flight […]

I’m writing this week’s column shortly after giving a presentation at a KEA-organised function on the short term prospects for New Zealand’s economy to a group of almost 50 Kiwis and other interested people in the Ambassador’s Residence at the NZ Embassy in Paris. Questions form the audience showed strong interest in the issue of […]

I am over in London again on my six monthly visit to get a feel for how things are and whether we can reasonably start feeling that the European debt crisis is reaching an end. It most definitely is not and this week we are likely to see various agencies revise downward their forecasts for […]

The Reserve Bank undertook its regular six weekly review of the official cash rate last week and surprised no-one when they decided to leave it unchanged at the record low of 2.5%. It was also not too surprising that they pushed out the timing for when they think they will be raising it to the […]

The Kiwi dollar has risen to near US 81 cents in the past few days in spite of some weaker than expected data on the state of our manufacturing and building sectors which suggest our economy might have shrunk slightly during the June quarter. If the soon to be released National Accounts do show we […]

Every six weeks the Reserve Bank reviews its official cash rate and decides to either raise it, lower it, or more often than not leave it unchanged. The prime driver behind their decision is whether they feel the outlook for inflation has changed. If it hasn’t then they’ll probably do nothing – or else they […]