Tony Alexander’s Business Breakfast

TONY ALEXANDER serves up economic insights at a recent business breakfast. Lively, insightful and above all entertaining, economist Tony Alexander’s presentation to the Business Breakfast Forum didn’t disappoint. Chief Economist with BNZ for 25 years, Tony is now an independent economist with a reputation for straight-talking. He has a gift for demystifying economics, making it accessible to the average business owner. And he had some insightful comments to make to the packed audience. Tony’s talk centred on the reasons why the country’s economy has performed better than expected since COVID. He identified four main factors which he said have ‘insulated the economy’: The first is the unexpected spending on consumer durables such as cars, furniture, and home renovations. Tony explained that typically when times get tough, consumers pull back on this kind of spending. However, perhaps due to the weeks spent stuck at home in lockdown or the $10b Kiwis previously would spend annually on holidays overseas, the opposite has occurred. [...]