The author has been described by News Ltd as an "iconoclast", "Svengali", a pollie's "economist muse", and "pungently accurate". Fairfax says he is a "Renaissance man" and "one of Australia’s most respected analysts." Stephen Koukoulas concludes that he is "85% right", and "would make a great Opposition leader." Terry McCrann claims the author thinks "‘nuance’ is a trendy village in the south of France", but can be "scintillating" when he thinks "clearly". The ACTU reckons he’s "an enigma wrapped in a Bloomberg terminal, wrapped in some apparently well-honed abs."

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Interesting bit of history from Westpac's Bill Evans

Interesting comment yesterday from Bill Evans about how the RBA regretted not moving rates up in the presence of weak CPI data a few years back (I have always thought that it is pretty silly to think the RBA would tie the setting of future rates exclusively to current CPI data, absent recognising that there are likely strong serial dependencies in inflation outcomes):

"This likely decision to move before the September quarter CPI makes a lot of sense from the Bank's perspective. We know that the Bank regretted linking rate hike decisions to the CPI in the 2006/2007 period. A sequence of lower than expected quarterly CPIs delayed the necessary tightening by nine months. That partly laid the foundation for underlying inflation reaching 4.8% in 2008. A surprisingly low Q3 CPI might sway the Board from the tightening which it clearly believes is now necessary."
at 7:41 AM