With COVID-19 causing concerns, the RBNZ announced to cut the official cash rate to 0.25% on 16 March. Given this the OCR is at a low level now- leading to open consideration of other potential “unconventional tools” such as Large Scale Asset Purchases (LSAP) or more commonly termed as Quantitative Easing. With this now taking […]
With the pandemic news moving quickly Matty convinced me to spend more time on Twitter to keep up with the news (my account is here if you want to follow). I saw some interesting links regarding the economics of COVID-19 which I would like to share and comment on – and I decided to run […]
There is a lot of talk about a 50bp cut by the RBNZ in a couple of weeks due to COVID-19. But what does this mean, and why are we cutting interest rates to battle a bad flu? In this post I am going to discuss the case for interest rate cuts during a natural […]
Yesterday in New Zealand (and today, the 8th of March, around much of the world) it is International Womens Day. I was brought up in the Soviet Union, and so this is a day that was always seen as very important – in fact it is a national holiday. International Womens Day was established at […]
It is a pity that the World Bank’s Chief Economist Penny Goldberg has resigned after being in a role for only 15 months. Her resignation appears linked to the scandal around the financial aid leakage to private accounts in financial havens. The brief story is that when the World Bank provides financial aid to aid […]
The coronavirus (COVID-19) that is spreading through China is a tragedy, and I’d like to send my best wishes to those that are sick and my love to those who have passed on. However, as yesterday’s quote noted – sometimes we need to temper our warm hearts with cold heads in order to understand social […]