The FOMC announced it will begin reducing the size of the Fed’s balance sheet in June 2022. How will such reduction work, and how long will it continue?
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The Reserve Bank is pushing up interest rates to take money out of our hands.
The first increase in the current round will add about A$65 a month to the cost of paying off a $500,000 mortgage.
The second will add a bit more. If, as the bank’s forecasts assume, there are another four such increases this year, that’s a further $275 a month, and so on.
The point, in the words of the Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe, is to “slow the economy, to get things back onto an even keel”.
In a helpful video, the Governor explains that rate rises take money out of mortgagee’s hands directly, make it harder to borrow, make people “feel less happy”, and hit the prices of houses and other assets so people “don’t feel as confident and they don’t spend as much”.
APO Director, Brigid van Wanrooy, explains why she is relieved that the Australian Public Service has not gained traction as an issue for voters and what we can do instead to promote transparent and accountable public policy and services.
As always, if you enjoy this work, please consider helping me keep it sustainable by joining my weekly newsletter, Sparky’s List!
Brexit has devoured its unionist children, helping to deliver the sense of an ending for Northern Ireland as we know it
In 2021, a hundred years after the creation of Northern Ireland, Boris Johnson tweeted: “Let me underline that, now & in the future, Northern Ireland’s place in the UK will be protected and strengthened.” Since the word “not” has to be inserted automatically into every positive statement Johnson makes, unionists ought to have taken this as fair warning: Year 101 of Northern Ireland’s existence would be its equivalent of George Orwell’s Room 101, where you are confronted by your own worst nightmares.
The BBC has today announced Ncuti Gatwa is the new Doctor set to take charge of the TARDIS.
Star of stage and screen, Ncuti is best known for his critically acclaimed performance in Sex Education as the iconic Eric Effiong, for which he was awarded Best Actor Award at the Scottish BAFTA’s in 2020 as well as numerous nominations including Best Male Performance in a comedy programme at this year’s BAFTA’s.
Speaking of his new role, Ncuti said:
The BBC has today announced Ncuti Gatwa is the new Doctor set to take charge of the TARDIS.
At the main intersection in Bexley North, traffic snarls by, lurching towards or away from the M5 on-ramp on the far side of the Wolli Creek valley. On one side of the intersection are shops, built in the 1930s, when the East Hills railway station opened and the suburb with its rows of red-brick houses […]
There is the war, and then there is the war about the war. Vladimir Putin’s assault on Ukraine is being fought in fields and cities, in the air and at sea. It is also, however, being contested through language. Is it a war or a “special military operation”? Is it an unprovoked invasion or a […]
The post Our Hypocrisy on War Crimes appeared first on The New York Review of Books.
My new cartoon for the Los Angeles Times.
I recently taught an eight-module Homelessness 101 workshop, and have since made all material available free of charge here: https://nickfalvo.ca/courses/
What skills do people with economics degrees have? They may develop quantitative, communication and big-picture skills, and the skills are often transferrable.
One of the stranger things about the Reserve Bank’s announcement of why it’s lifting interest rates by 0.25 percentage points is that it suggests inflation will come down by itself.
“A further rise in inflation is expected in the near term,” the RBA says, “but as supply-side disruptions are resolved, inflation is expected to decline back towards the target range of 2-3%.
So why raise rates now, for the first time in more than a decade? The bank says it is about "withdrawing some of the extraordinary monetary support that was put in place to help the Australian economy during the pandemic”, which is fair enough.
But our latest burst of inflation is weird, and resistant to rate hikes. If the Reserve Bank isn’t careful, too many more rate hikes like this might help bring on a recession.
Regretfully, due to circumstances beyond our control, the Day Event scheduled for Sunday the 8th of May has been postponed until Sunday the 29th of May. Continue reading
As always, if you enjoy this work, please consider helping me keep it sustainable by joining my weekly newsletter, Sparky’s List!
I have seen some confusions recently on twitter regarding university finances. Here are four recommendations: Avoid using sector aggregate figures to make your argumentsThe sector is very uneven both in terms of size of institutions and in financial performance, make sure you are familiar with your institution and how it fits into the sector. Avoid […]
A short article for History UK on recent changes to student loan repayment terms and what happens as inflation continues to erode the value of the undergraduate tuition fee.
This food timeline started as a way to explore the revolution in Australian food that has occurred during the baby-boomers’ lifetime, but has since expanded to include more about the previous decades (and century) as well. Also included are overseas events and trends that had an impact here. The entries are brief, but there are lots of links if you want more information.
