Institutional Economics column 26/07/2008

An excellent current affairs column by Dr Stephen Kirchner of Institutional Economics (*).

For all my bleating, the inflation problem in Australia is considerably worse than it is here, just look at this:

Excluding the transport group from the CPI, the component most directly affected by higher oil prices, still yields an inflation rate of 1.2 per cent over the quarter and 4.1 per cent over the year

Damn. For people interested in the data the CPI stuff is here, and the all important labour market stuff is here (note that unemployment fell in Aussie!).

Next weeks labour market data will be all important for us here in New Zealand – I’m still picking that the economy will pick up from about September, just soon enough to prevent non-tradable inflation from easing sufficiently. If September quarter GDP rises by less than 0.5% (with an equivalent fall in June), I might have to take that back – but we won’t get those numbers till December 🙂