Empower Blog Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA)

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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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 – March 2016

Today, the reserve government and the board meet and they have kept interest rate on hold for another month. Now it has been an interesting month, past month, we saw the labor party come out with negative gearing policy changes. What's interesting about this negative gearing policy change is the way they've decided to treat new and existing propert...

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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 – February 2016

Today the Governor and the Reserve Board met and they've kept interest rates on hold for the first meeting of 2016. Now that keeps the cash rate at 2% and we haven't seen the change in the cash rate since May last year. Now the big news of the turn of the calendar year was actually the share market and the jitters that we saw run through those mar...

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RBA Rate Decision – December 2015

Yes, it is the first of December and I still have the remnants of my mustache from Movember. Trust me, it will be gone by tonight. Just a busy morning. Anyway, I'm not here to talk about my mustache and Movember but thank you to those who donated. It is very kind of you. Let's talk about the RBA. As widely anticipated, and it is pretty much unanimo...

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