OurFinanceBlogs.com - Australian Finance Blogging Community

The Bull Market in Inflation

Posted by Debbie on Dec 18th, 2008

Who has heard the expression “dropping your pants”?
Everyone. Thought so.
Well, that’s what the Federal Reserve has done this morning. It has taken the momentous decision to drop the Fed Funds Target Rate to a maximum of 0.25%. Almost everyone expected them to do that, so that part of it wasn’t a surprise.
The big surprise was [...]

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Demand for money, inflation/deflation & its implication

Posted by cij on Dec 3rd, 2008

Two years ago, we first covered the root cause of inflation in Cause of inflation: Shanghai bubble case study:
The mainstream economists’ definition of inflation is rise in the general level of prices. However, according to the Austrian School of economic thought, the definition of inflation is the increase in the supply of money, in which [...]

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ANZ Bank Writes Off $1.9 Billion

Posted by Debbie on Oct 24th, 2008

There’s a phrase going around at the moment. Something about a pig wearing lipstick. The gist of it - quite cruelly - is that pigs are still ugly even if a Revlon “Super Lustrous” lipstick is applied to the kisser.
We think we can safely say that the ANZ Bank [ASX: ANZ] profit results this morning [...]

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Is this the beginning of the loss of confidence in fiat money?

Posted by cij on Sep 23rd, 2008

Events from the past week are tumultuous. It started from the nationalisation of Freddie and Fannie (we were mulling about the implication of nationalisation 2 months ago in How do we all pay for the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac?). Then came the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and takeover of Merrill Lynch. Then we have the nationalisation of AIG. Gold prices surged by more than US$100 in two days (it had declined since), which was the most rapid surge in 26 years.

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Consumers Expect Inflation Rate to Fall

Posted by Debbie on Sep 14th, 2008

At the same time the Melbourne Institute released its survey of consumer inflation expectations. It shows that consumers are feeling quite positive about the direction of inflation. The survey tells us consumers believe inflation will fall in September to 4.4%. We will wait to see how accurate this survey is. In the same survey 9.8% [...]

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Why are Australian banks not willing to lower mortgage rates?

Posted by cij on Aug 17th, 2008

Australian banks have been under pressure from many fronts to lower their mortgage rates in response to a possible interest rate cuts from the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA). The government and opposition parties are demanding that the banks should do the ‘right’ thing by easing the strain of the working majority. The RBA added to the pressure by declaring that it sees no reason why mortgage rates should not lowered in response to monetary easing. The media poured fuel into the fire by accusing the banks of greed.

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