Tony Alexander's BNZ Weekly Overview

This week at www.tonyalexander.co.nz we have posted our analysis of the responses given by respondents in our monthly survey three weeks ago regarding ?If there was one thing you would like the government to do right now, what would it be?? Welfare reform and reduced government involvement in the economy rank highly, followed by tax changes in the savings area including a strong call to stop changing KiwiSaver, plus labour market reform and employment/training assistance.

We?ve also added some brief comments of three days spent in Shanghai two weeks ago, and our monthly Real Estate Overview discussing the early stages of the cyclical housing recovery.

The Kiwi dollar this week has risen back close to US 82 cents as worries about Greece have eased slightly and the March quarter current account deficit numbers came in slightly better than expected. We?ve also seen some buying against the Aussie dollar after the Reserve Bank of Australia made less hawkish noises about further increases in their 4.75% cash rate in the near future.

Apart from that the week has not produced much in the way of fresh news about the NZ economy except for worsening net migration numbers as people head off to Australia.

Here is a paper (pdf) we wrote earlier this year looking at the factors which drive migration flows to Australia from New Zealand.

Click here for the full analysis report (pdf)

© Scoop Media