Empower Blog Australian Dollar

RBA Rate Decision – December 2017

At the December board meeting today, the Governor and the Board has kept the cash rate on hold at 1.5%. This is the sixteenth consecutive month we've seen the cash rate remain on hold at 1.5%. Now, the big news has been around the announcement of a Royal Commission into the banking sector to try and bring a bit more transparency into what's happ...

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RBA Rate Decision – October 2016

Today the new Governor, Dr. Phillip Lowe and the Board met and they've kept interest rates on hold. Now this was widely anticipated by most economists. There were, however, a couple of economists who were looking to see a rate cut. I think that had a lot to do with our stubbornly high Australian Dollar with the Fed Reserve in the US not moving on i...

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RBA Rate Decision – September 2016

The Reserve Board met today, and they've kept interest rates on hold. That's after dropping the cash rate by 25 basis points last month. Now they are looking for a lead in terms of where they go next, and most people are predicting that it is going to go down. In fact, before this announcement, 38 economists were surveyed, and they all anticipated ...

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RBA Rate Decision – May 2016

On this budget Tuesday, the Reserve Governor and the Board met and they’ve dropped interest rates. Now this is the first interest rate drop since May of last year. So it’s been 12 months but they've decided to pull the trigger on the cash rate and lower in that cash rate. Now what’s interesting about this is, if we actually go back two wee...

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RBA Rate Decision – April 2016

As widely anticipated the reserve governor and the board met and they've kept interest rates on hold for another month. Now what are we looking at around interest rates and monetary and fiscal policy? Well there's a lot of things that we're looking at. Firstly, we're coming into an election period and what that means is the reserve bank may actu...

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2016 Global Economy & Equity Outlook (Part 4) | Australian Economy

Here are the other parts of the 2016 Global Economy & Equity Outlook: Part 1: United States Economy Part 2: Asian and European Economy Part 3: Commodities Market Part 4: Australian Economy Ben Kingsley: So now let’s come into Australia. Where do you see – again we started pretty sluggishly, terrible sort of start. The first days of t...

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RBA Rate Decision – August 2015

Today the Governor and the Reserve Board met and kept interest rates on hold for another month. Now, they are continuing to stay at record low levels where the cash rate remains at 2%. Now for a first in this commentary series that you may have seen or may not have seen before, I'm going to actually cut to some audio of Glenn Stevens presenting a...

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RBA Rate Decision – July 2015

Today the Governor and the Board met and kept the cash rate at 2%. We saw changes in February and also in May of this year and now again, the Governor and the Board is basically just waiting to see what happens. The biggest news story at the moment is obviously the Greece story and they have default on their loan. In last weekend they have...

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RBA Rate Decision – May 2015

Today the Reserve Governor and the Board met and they've dropped interest rate once again to 2%. So following the February rate cut, they've followed it up with a May rate cut. Now the reason behind that is simply the spare capacity that we are still seeing in the economy. They've made a judgement call, even before we see the May 2015 budget ...

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RBA Rate Decision – February 2015 – Why did they drop 25 basis points?

So why did the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) moved on interest rates this month when most commentators including myself actually thought it would stay at the 2.5% cash rate. The 25 basis points reduction to 2.25%- what's behind that? Well, the story is around our currency and we really need to get our currency lower. I think you'll find the RB...

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2015 Mortgage & Interest Rate Predictions Outlook

The current RBA cash rate is 2.50% and the loan offerings are certainly very attractive, but how long will this condition last? Is this the best time to fix your loan? Check out our 2015 Mortgage and Interest Rate Predictions with Simon and Ben to learn more.     Transcript: Ben: Hello. Ben Kingsley here, CEO and Founder of Em...

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RBA Rate Decision – December 2014

Today the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) Board meets and kept interest rates on hold at 2.5%. The cash rate is now been at 2.5% since August 2013 and the Reserve Bank board won't actually meet until next February so we're going to see this low monetary policy position for the extended period. Inside the minutes of the last meeting, it was also ver...

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RBA Rate Decision – October 2014

Hello, the Reserve Board met today and kept interest rates on hold. Well anticipated that they were going to remain on hold and it's certainly a view that they are going to stay lower for longer. That's being about installing confidence into the market place for business to start doing more lending. In the last 4 weeks, there have been some big thi...

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