Polson Higgs
April 2009 News Archive
Hands up who recalls the Austrian equity boom? (That's Austrian, not Australian.) Yes, the hills were alive with the sound of strong returns early this decade. Want to take any bets about which will be the next country to boom?
An historical table of the world's best performing developed markets measured by equity returns shows the land of Mozart and Mahler topped the chart for three consdecutive years from 2002-2004. What's more, it was at number two on the list in 2001 and number three in 2005.
By 2008, however, Austria had slid to last on the table, while Japan, which had been the bottom performing developed equity market in the prior two years, had hurdled to number one.
1 April Tax Cuts - What They Really Mean (1st April, 2009)
Today being 1 April will see many employees pick up extra cash in their take home pay packets as a result of the National Government’s tax cuts which take effect today. This is the second round of tax cuts in the last 12 months, the first introduced by the Labour Government effective 1 October 2009, and the most recent reductions by the National Government.
While on an individual basis, the tax reductions are not in themselves significant, across the whole of New Zealand, they will place additional cash into the take home pays of employees.
Last updated: 23rd April, 2009 | 3:26 pm
