Mike Hosking

Was the recovery on?

Can we say that?

Do we have the ability, should all things hold and all things work out the way we think they might do, do we have the ability to take what we had, pick up and run again?

But our commodity prices are generally excellent.

The New Zealand dollar is quite soft.

I actually, you know, why couldn't we, to some extent, pick up where we left off?

Well said.

The stats thing you refer to, I've been reading the same things you have.

I don't get it.

So spending's up, materially up.

Those are the numbers we got this week, yet we're miserable.

Explain that.

Yeah, so essentially there's been a ridiculously strong correlation between consumer confidence and petrol prices, and inflation more generally.

But the drop in crude prices is really good news for New Zealand.

If it holds, of course, that's a big if.

There's still a lot that could go wrong.

But I think we talked about it last time, this fascination we have at the moment, and Britain had a number overnight at 2.8 for inflation.

There doesn't seem to be

the inflation that many feared globally or here, does it?

Well, yeah, actually, your timing's interesting, actually, because we've just had the Fed meeting in the US, and that was actually more hawkish than expected.