Mark Lister

There aren't many winners from a weakening economy, especially if you've got stubborn inflation at the same time, because that can really leave policymakers like the Reserve Bank or the Federal Reserve in a bind.

Now, a central bank typically would start reducing interest rates in response to that slower economic activity, that higher unemployment, those recessionary conditions.

But if it sees inflation pressures on the horizon, sometimes it is forced to do the opposite.

So we need to keep a close eye on firms' price setting behaviour, whether they try and pass on all of the higher costs that they might be seeing.

We need to watch wage demands from workers.

And it's one thing to demand a higher wage, but it's a different thing to get it.

So we're not necessarily in the environment where workers will be able to hold their employers to ransom.

So that's something that is quite different to those periods in the past.

But we still need to watch those sorts of things.

And most importantly, we need to watch how central banks will deal with these conflicting signals.

You're seeing talk out there that the Reserve Bank might increase the OCR as early as July.

Personally, I can't see it, and I don't necessarily think that would be the right move.

I do have a bit of sympathy for the Jared Kerr view from Kiwi Bank at this point, but we still need to keep an eye on all these sorts of things.

The 1970s were a great decade for music.

It was groundbreaking for cinema.

It was iconic for fashion trends.

But let's hope we can leave some of those economic trends well and truly in the past.

Thanks for listening, team.

We'll talk again soon.

On Point with Craig's Investment Partners.