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."

Thursday, December 23, 2010

More concerns about UK inflation...

Continuing concerns about price stability in the UK. This is a sober reminder to the RBA, which only got out of the inflation words care of the GFC. From the FT's Money Supply blog:

"The key sentence [from the BoE's MPC] is this:

“Most of those members considered that the accumulation of news over recent months had probably shifted the balance of risks to inflation in the medium term upwards.”

Why the greater concern on inflation? It is because the MPC has been so consistently surprised by its strength, a worry that inflation might hit 4 per cent in the spring, and some evidence that spare capacity is not pulling inflation lower as quickly as the Bank expects.

The persistent overshooting of inflation from the 2 per cent target is clear in charts"

at 7:04 AM