Empower Blog Economic conditions

RBA Rate Decision – September 2015

Hello Ben Kingsley here. Thanks for watching this RBA video announcement. As you can obviously pick up, I'm not in the office as I usually am at the moment. I'm currently on a family holiday up in tropical North Queensland. What an interesting time to take a holiday. In fact the last time, as I was saying it to my wife, that I took a holiday lik...

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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 – June 2015

Hello, today the Governor and the Reserve Board met and they've kept interest rates on hold. Now this was widely anticipated. The facts are, at 2% cash rate, it is at historically low level and if we were to actually move rates further down which we do have capacity to do if you look at the minutes for May 2015 Cash Rate. They are saying that we...

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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 – April 2015

Today the Reserve Governor and the Board met and they've kept interest rates on hold for the April 2015 board meeting. That has kept the cash rate at 2.25%. Now, why had they kept the rate on hold? Well the reasons come down to a few things. To begin with, they've probably seen some early signs on the economy starting to pick up. Those early ...

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RBA Rate Decision – March 2015

Today the Reserve Bank of Australia decides to keep rates on hold after dropping rates by 25 basis points last month. Now looking at the Board Meeting minutes from last month, it was a bit of a flip of the coin whether they were going to drop rates in February or potentially wait until March. Ultimately, we all know the outcome of that. They d...

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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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RBA Rate decision – June 2013

Although Shane Oliver (AMP Capital), a high profile economist, had predicted another rate cut this month, the RBA decided to leave the cash rate on hold for now at its board meeting today. Bill Evans, another high profile economist (Westpac) was also in the cut camp until only last week, when some positive data and the declining dollar swayed hi...

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RBA Rate decision – May 2013

The decision for the RBA to reduce interest rates this month, took most economist and cash rate commentators including myself a little bit by surprise.  Sure the recent economic data highlighted our economy was losing its mo-joe, but again there were signs for me around greater buying activity and strong employment that lead me to thinking there m...

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RBA Rate decision – April 2013

The Reserve Bank of Australia has left interest rates on hold as widely expected at its board meeting today.  It continues to sit on the fence to consider further economic data following its series of cuts last year, plus the developing story of the new Euro crisis – Cyprus.  Then there’s China, which I come to later.... On the domestic ho...

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RBA Rates Decision – February 2013

The RBA left interest rates on hold today, which was expected by most economists and commentators, although the inflation data was lower than consensus opening the window for a possible cut.  However the strong employment position would have outweighed the need for a cut right now.  So the cash rate remains at 3.00% This easing cycle has seen ...

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RBA Rates Decision – March 2012

The cash rate has been left on hold this month as the RBA believes it has adequately priced the access of money in the economy to ensure the long term growth of the economy. Meanwhile many economists argue the cash rate is too high to stimulate the economic growth, as soft market conditions in the two largest states of NSW and Victoria, have been o...

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