My sessions at the Levy Summer School 2022
My two sessions at the Levy Summer School begin early on Friday morning (Australian time). The details follow.
My blog is on holiday today …
Today is a public holiday in Australia to celebrate our dated our social outlook is – yes, it’s the Queens Birthday. Our head of state – a legacy of our colonial past which we have not yet been able to jettison. The vast majority of Australians want to live in a Republic with our own chosen head of state but it seems we are waiting for the old lady in Britain to leave the stage before we will commit to that preference. I don’t usually recognise this holiday but since last Friday I have been struck down with a bad flu and so I decided to suspend writing until later in the week. I have some interesting things coming up though.
RBA aims to cut policy stimulation by adding to it
It’s Wednesday, and we have some analysis and news and then my music segment for the week. Yesterday, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) stunned the nation by pushing up interest rates by 0.5 points, claiming it was the responsible thing to do given that inflation was higher than expected. They then outlined all the factors driving inflation – none of which are going to be responsive to interest rate rises. Further, when one dissects the way in which interest rate rises work through distributional effects and effects on business costs, it is not clear that increasing rates will not just add to the stimulation rather than reduce it as the RBA claims. Next, we Fact Check the Fact Checkers and after all of that we have some Tupelo Blues, to restore some sense of decorum.
Back to school for me …
For the foreseeable future I am spending the time I would normally use to write a blog post each Tuesday, studying the Japanese language. I will be taking up a position to work in Kyoto from October this year for some time and so I have to improve my language skills. So – 日本語を勉強している学校に戻ってきました.