Entries by Matt Nolan

Property finance Ltd goes bust

So that makes it six finance companies in 15 months. What does this mean for the NZ credit market? NZ banks should not be significantly effected. Banks are in relatively good shape, and all the recent trouble in secondary, non-bank financial institutes, is likely to increase demand for low yielding, low risk bank products. However, […]

Economic scissors: Trial and error

Supply and demand, the economic scissors. This beautiful diagram explains a significant amount about how economists think: Now from what I understand, when the two curves cross we have equilibrium. This sets a price where demand and supply are equal. When the price is higher we have a surplus of goods, here some of the […]

More immigration?

So, our labour market is looking extremely tight. According to the department of labour all nine of the main occupation classes are currently suffering from labour shortages, and these shortages are likely to continue into the medium term. So the country needs more workers, and it takes time to breed them, so why don’t we […]

The week in numbers

Tourist arrivals were strong, up 3.6% on July last year. Net migration for the year to July was weak at 8,966. The merchandise trade balance continued to deteriorate, with a deficit of $6.3bn for the year to July.

Holy Cow

Have you seen the latest estimate for Fonterra milk payouts, $6.40! I know that Holy Cow was a terrible pun to make, but that’s a huge payout. Supposedly Fonterra was able to hedge sales at $US0.71 during the time when our dollar was at $US0.80. When that good bit of management is combined with the […]