Thank you for inviting me to speak with you today; it is a pleasure to be here. Today I’m going to talk to you about the ‘stars’ I look at in the New Zealand economy. When looking at the stars, it is not a desperate attempt to adopt astrology to aid my understanding of the economy. Rather, I am looking at the trends in our economy. I will expand on this in a moment. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand has operated a flexible inflation-targeting framework for nearly 30 years.2 Over time, the practice of inflation targeting has become more systematic and transparent. Transparency improves the understanding of our goals and ... (full story)