At The Hive we don't want to talk up chances of a recession, but we do want to talk up chances of a cut in the OCR as this will help keep growth in the economy occurring. To achieve this one needs evidence that inflationary pressures on the economy are easing.
Two more pieces of evidence of reduced inflationary pressure have appeared -
First we have a fall in retail expenditure on electronic cards in April - people are tightening their belts, just what Bollard wants to see.
Second we have the National Bank regional trends survey which suggests that the economy may have contracted 0.6% in the first quarter. We read this in the Dom Post but can't find a link on Stuff. It doesn't matter however as it is covered in full by the IHT under the headline National Bank of New Zealand: Recession looms as economic growth contracts, demand softens.
