Reserve Bank of Australia decided to continue the increase in benchmark interest rates by 25 basis points to 3.75 percent in the light of short-term inflationary expectations (link). Here (link) is a brief macroeconomic outlook of Australia.

It is indeed an old adage that while goods things are to be preferred over bad things it is possible to get too much of the former. Looking at recent comments from the governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia it is not difficult to imagine how these, albeit old and worn, pearls of wisdom [...]

Nothing good lasts forever, or so at least many would have us believe. I shall neatly leave it aside of whether this is true in a general sense but merely note that it appears that we are moving closer to some form of another of crunch here. And my rationale you ask? Well, let me [...]

I am not an ardent watcher of the Australian economy so I shall leave it neatly to the side of whether this was expected or, Bloomberg so famously puts it, unexpected.
Australia’s central bank unexpectedly raised its benchmark interest rate from a 49-year low and signaled further increases in coming months amid signs the economy is [...]

In his comments in “The Australian” (8 Sept. ’09) on Paul Kelly’s new book, “The March of Patriots”, Kevin Rudd attempts to make a distinction between the economic reforms of the Hawke-Keating Labor governments and those of the Howard conservative government. Rudd describes the Hawke-Keating reforms as “modernising our economy to make it more competitive [...]

Question from a reader:
“No-one seems to be able to give a clear answer due to the sorry state of knowledge about PM’s in Australia but seeing as you work for the Mint, are an accountant, and want to make this site a source of information for Australian gold investing, are you able to make some [...]

Went to the post Budget Westpac breakfast talk by their Chief Economist yesterday. Short summary: worst environment in 70 years; recovery will be patchy and slow (maybe 3 years); but much more is being done this time compared to 1930s; we will get out of it and then business as usual; Australia better placed than [...]

In the Australian federal budget delivered earlier this week, forward estimates of revenue and spending were based on Treasury projections of economic growth rates in excess of 4 percent coming out of the current recession. This projection has attracted attention because the projected growth rates are higher than those experienced in Australia during recent boom [...]

From the latest Leithner Letter:
Given how we came to this pass, where Australia now stands, what the government is doing to us and what may lie before us, it’s difficult to conclude that stocks are cheap and easy to believe that they remain dear. True, the AOI is less overvalued now than it was, but [...]

When Jim asked me whether I was an economic rationalist I thought he was just stirring. The term “economic rationalist” has been used mainly in Australia and doesn’t seem to be used much anywhere these days. I don’t think there were ever many people in Canberra who called themselves economic rationalists. Those of us advocating [...]