Economic calendar in Asia for Wednesday, 17 April 2024 – New Zealand inflation data

New Zealand inflation data is expected to stay sticky high, above target. And thus the Reserve Bank of New Zealand cash rate is too.

Central banks don’t have a lot of policy tools apart from rates, so that’s what they’ll use (lookin’ at you FOMC). I’ve seen plenty of arguments from chaps on the internet saying that high inflation is caused by things central banks can’t control, like supply chain disruption, high oil prices, and what have you, and that’s what the central bank won’t hike/will cut. What they don’t realise is that central banks fully understand this (they ain’t the sharpest tools in the shed, but they ain’t dummies either), but they do understand that higher rates will sap demand from the economy and that will, at the margin, work to bring inflation down. Yeah, it might take time, but unless they are turkeys (or in Turkey … ya’ll remember that episode?) that’s what they’ll do.

This snapshot from the ForexLive economic data calendar, access it here.

The times in the left-most column are GMT.

The numbers in the right-most column are the ‘prior’ (previous month/quarter as the case may be) result. The number in the column next to that, where there is a number, is the consensus median expected.

This article was written by Eamonn Sheridan at www.forexlive.com.