Archive for year: 2009
What is up with the balance of payments?
Ok, so this may seem arbitrary – but I think it gives a good indication of how dodgy statistics can be 😉
So on Thursday the Balance of Payments was released. The BOP must equal zero – that is an identity it has to hold. When people talk about the BOP deficit they are being weird, they often mean a “current account deficit”.
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What is “economics” in the most general sense
In this post I will try to say what economics is – at least, as far as I understand it 😛 . The purpose of this piece is to be part of the set of posts for new readers – so feedback is very appreciated.
France’s novel approach to the wage bargain: ‘boss-napping’
In the face of increasingly uncertain economic times, the latest trend in France is for workers unhappy with their company’s position on labour to boss-nap,. Boss-napping entails workers disappointed with redundancies or payouts taking their bosses hostage as a bargaining tool! Recent kidnappings have involved 3M France’s industrial director and Sony France’s CEO and HR director.
Unfortunately it seems that the tactic is working, with 3M France’s industrial director being released after signing a deal which offered more favourable treatment for the 110 employees who faced losing their jobs. I’m not sure of the validity of such a contract made under duress over there – I doubt it would stand up here – but hey, they do things differently in France.
December 2008 GDP
0.9% fall in December (production account, seasonally adjusted). However, September was revised down as well – so similarish to a 1% fall. Bigger decline than the RBNZ expected, but about in line with the market.
Expenditure account (old C+I+G+X-M) fell by 0.6% – but has fallen a lot further over the past year.
GDP deflator did rise a lot more strongly than I expected.
December 08 quarter GDP out today
So, GDP is out today. The market expects a 1% fall, ANZ has gone as far as 1.2% (I’m talking about a quarterly seasonally adjusted fall – none of this annualised rubbish).
Now, I’m not so sure. Yesterday’s current account deficit came in on the money, but the deficit as a % of GDP was lower than expectations. There are three possibilities:
- The GDP deflator is going to be mighty strong (even with inflation pressures tumbling and the TOT falling),
- December activity is above expectations,
- Previous activity has been revised up (at least within the last year).
Now, it is dodgy trying to get a feeling out the the BOP figures for what GDP is – but with current estimates I could only get a small GDP fall to justify a 8.9% current account deficit. Combined with the hours worked revision today’s decline might be relatively small.