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, July 23, 2012

More August rate cut calls dropping like flies--now 10 in total

Based on the latest Bloomberg survey on Friday, another 3x economic forecasters have dropped their calls for an interest rate cut in August in the past few days. This brings the total to at least 10 economic forecasters that have shifted from predicting a cut in August to no change in the RBA's cash rate (see my post on this last week).

The most high-profile change of view has been Bill Evans at Westpac, who had also called a cut in July (ie, Westpac was previously forecasting back-to-back cuts in July and August and thus a 3.0% cash rate). Today Bill thinks the RBA's cash rate will be 50bps higher than their earlier June forecast (ie, unchanged at 3.5%), and that we will not see another cut until the final quarter of 2012. The two other firms to discard their August cut call were St George Bank and Moody's...

 Nevertheless, there are quite a few hold-outs. AMP, 4Cast, CBA, Credit Suisse, HSBC, JP Morgan, Stephen Koukoulas (Market Economics), TD Securities and UBS are still all clinging to a cut. It will be interesting to see if the inflation data force further view changes.


at 11:02 AM