Empower Blog Economy

RBA Rate Decision – February 2017

At the first board meeting of 2017, the Reserve Governor and the Board met and they've kept interest rates on hold. It's been a while since we last caught up you know. We last met in December so there's been a lot of data that I've wanted to share with you and talk through, and a lot of developments that have been happening in the housing market. ...

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RBA Rate Decision – December 2016

So much to talk about in this December Rates Announcement! Firstly, we'll start with interest rates on hold at 1.50%. The Reserve Governor and the Board met and kept rates on hold. Now, what's fascinating is if we had have waited another day, when our GDP numbers came out in Australia, we could have seen a different result. As you know, there's ...

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RBA Rate Decision – November 2016

On this Melbourne Cup Day, Governor Lowe and his Board met, and they've kept interest rates on hold. It is an interesting time in our economy at the moment because the RBA is wrestling with one big problem and that is the growing amount of household debt. We are starting to see the household debt to GDP ratio increasing, and that is concerning. Wha...

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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 – August 2016

As I anticipated last month, the Reserve Bank has moved on the cash rate by dropping the cash rate lower. We are now in a stage where we are effectively in an uncharted territory with the cash rate as low as what we've got. It's an interesting time. So on balance, what they've looked at is the inflation data. Now, usually what they like to see is i...

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RBA Rate Decision – July 2016

Wow, to be a fly on the wall at the latest RBA Board Meeting. It would be fascinating as the conversation would have move to the political uncertainty that we currently got in federal politics. Really important to understand that this 'circus' that is happening in Canberra and this new structure of our government, the lower house and the upper hous...

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What you need to know about Labor’s Negative Gearing policy?

Hello, Ben Kingsley here, CEO and Founder of Empower Wealth. You're receiving this special email on Negative Gearing because you either are a subscriber or a client in our business. Now tomorrow is Election Day where we get to pick the next Federal Government that is going to lead us for the next three years. But beyond that, it's going to be hopef...

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RBA Rate Decision – June 2016

Today the Reserve Governor and the Board met and they kept interest rates on hold. So the cash rate remained at 1.75% leading into the federal election on July 2. So there’s a couple of things that I want to talk about. Firstly is negative gearing. We know that the Liberal Party is not making any changes to negative gearing but the Labor Party...

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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 3) | Commodities Market

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 when we look at commodities, obviously the largest commodity is actually cash and the next commodity after that is oil and then iron ...

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2016 Property Outlook (Part 1) | Sydney & Regional NSW

Here are the other parts of the 2016 Property Outlook: Part 1: Sydney & Regional NSW Part 2: Melbourne & Regional VIC Part 3: Queensland, Australian Capital Territory and South Australia Part 4: Northern Territory, Western Australia and Tasmania Transcript: Bryce Holdaway: All right folks. It’s that time of the year where we sort o...

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