Brad Olsen

Brad, the term stagflation is when there is no growth but inflation keeps rising.

We haven't had that in New Zealand for quite some time, but it's always on the tip of economists' tongues, I think, because who knows, you know, with the recovery not going so well, are we going to go that way with the oil shocks, et cetera?

What's your view on that?

I am.

I'm trying to avoid getting harassed down that end of town, but yes, no, settled here in Wellington and trying to keep well clear of all of the disruptions we seem to be having, trying to miss Omicron 2.

It's probably over two weeks now, or it certainly feels like it.

There's still a lot of tension down there, but it has thinned out a bit more.

It's very much now a pretty rowdy core of protesters emerging, still making everyone feel very, very unsafe, very, very unwelcome in their own city.

Yeah, there is certainly a feeling that the world has been further upended.

We weren't fixed, we weren't necessarily normal yet, but we were looking to establish what the new normal might look like, what the sort of new trading conditions might appear as for the global community.

That has gone out the window in my mind.

We've got armed conflict in Eastern Europe.

We've got the

Armed troops on the ground, missiles being fired through the air, nuclear threats being passed along.

It's about as real as it's ever going to get.

And what it does, in my mind, is just stoke that uncertainty that we've had persisting over the last few years, but exacerbates it.

This is a whole different kettle of fish.

You know, we're now grappling a pandemic alongside war.

So it does very much, I think, unsettle expectations that we're sort of through the worst of it and that we're necessarily rebuilding on a better path.

It's never, in a sense, been more uncertain than it is today.