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."

Monday, March 14, 2011

HSBC's Bloxham reserves the right to change his mind...

As we should all do in line with Keynes's famous aphorism. Blocko has shifted his first hike call from Q2 to Q3, following most other economists. At this stage, Goldman Sachs's Tim Toohey and UBS's Scott Haslem were ahead-of-the-curve (no pun intended) in shifting their calls back to Q4 and Q3, respectively, earlier in the year. I did not agree with those decisions at the time, but a curious combination of subsequent events, including Cyclone Yasi, a major global oil price shock that taxes consumption, extreme political discord in MENA countries (two bob for working out what 'MENA' means), the tragic NZ earthquake, and now the catastrophic Japanese earthquake-cum-tsunami have only added much grist to slow-growth mill. Right now I am guessing that even the RBA does not know when its first hike is. But if I was going to bet, I would wager that all current probabilities will be proven wrong.

at 5:20 PM