economy

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Oram on the Brash Report

Written By: - Date published: 10:16 am, December 3rd, 2009 - 12 comments

Always worth listening to, Rod Oram rips the Brash Report on Nine to Noon, not just on the findings but on the quality of the work, that we’re paying half a million dollars for. Here are some of the choice quotes: “At every point it has unbelievably facile analysis and, in fact, substitutes rather generic […]

What works?

Written By: - Date published: 11:29 am, December 2nd, 2009 - 49 comments

As the dust settles on the cynical theatre that was the 2025 Taskforce, one fact is becoming abundantly clear. The political Right haven’t a clue what to do about the economy. Key and English don’t have a clue, or they’d be doing it. Brash and his Taskforce don’t have a clue and they said so: […]

Dubai: Subprime state

Written By: - Date published: 2:18 pm, December 1st, 2009 - 31 comments

Dubai is the subprime folly writ large. In the US, they built ‘exurbs’ in the Californian high desert, two hours each way from LA; rows of McMansions bought by people who couldn’t afford them whose lifestyles were dependent on cheap petrol*. In Dubai, they built skyscrapers in the desert; golf courses, swimming pools, even indoor […]

Where’s Key?

Written By: - Date published: 11:39 am, November 30th, 2009 - 17 comments

Brash’s taskforce releases its report today. Where’s Key? CHOGM ended yesterday but he’s not back until Wednesday. Catching Aussie by 2025 is meant to be his big vision. He can’t get them to wait a couple of days or get back quicker? We know this serious stuff isn’t really Key’s thing. But the fact that […]

Broken English

Written By: - Date published: 11:13 am, November 20th, 2009 - 24 comments

It looked like a duck. It walked like a duck. It quacked like a duck. Turns out it was a duck. The “Plain English” advertisements were effectively party political broadcasts on behalf of the National Party. (Hardly surprising, as they were coauthored by English and his people). Even TVNZ now admits they should never have […]

NZ should follow Norway’s example on oil

Written By: - Date published: 2:00 pm, November 19th, 2009 - 25 comments

National has released its petroleum strategy. It appears they plan to further lower our already low royalties to encourage foreign oil companies to come here, dig up our finite our reserves as fast as they can and make off with huge profits. Just about the dumbest attitude you can have to irreplaceable natural resources like […]

Goff on monetary policy

Written By: - Date published: 8:41 am, November 19th, 2009 - 33 comments

It’s great news that Phil Goff is urging a rethink of the way monetary policy is conducted in New Zealand. For too long interest rates (and hence inflation, unemployment, and house prices) have been the blunt tools of monetary policy. And for too long workers, householders, and exporters have borne the brunt. Labour leader Phil […]

Key’s $155b subsidy to polluters

Written By: - Date published: 1:27 pm, November 16th, 2009 - 38 comments

A month ago, I wrote that National’s moves to gut the Emissions Trading Scheme would increase government debt by $73 billion by 2050. A Treasury report said that National’s ETS changes to subsidise polluters would see government debt 6-8% of GDP higher than it otherwise would be. GDP in 2050 is modelled at $914 billion, so 8% […]

Recession’s causes still not fixed

Written By: - Date published: 9:28 am, November 16th, 2009 - 41 comments

Recessions are meant to be about fixing economic problems that built up during the previous boom – unwinding imbalances in the parlance. Higher unemployment, with all its consequences, business failures, and higher government debt are the price of putting the economy on a more sustainable platform for the future. But it’s not happening. All the […]

What stimulus spending?

Written By: - Date published: 8:17 am, November 13th, 2009 - 7 comments

According to Stuff Bill English is planning to pull back the stimulus spending. The problem is there hasn’t been any significant stimulus spending. So my question is what exactly is the government going to cut back on? Will they cancel the cycleway? Or are they going to take all of the budget lines they crammed […]

Give the snip snap to the zip zap plastic fantastic? Yeah right!

Written By: - Date published: 9:15 am, November 12th, 2009 - 23 comments

Brian Fallow has a great post over at Granny Herald this morning. “Emitters on bludger’s end of deal” deals with the way that the NACT government has been loading costs onto future voters and taxpayers. On superannuation: By siphoning off and investing around another 1 per cent of GDP while the babyboomers are still in […]

Farrar vs the facts

Written By: - Date published: 1:30 pm, November 9th, 2009 - 36 comments

I’ve never quite understood why David Farrar, who is after all paid to do statistical work, insists on performing transparent statistical tricks on his blog. Yesterday, he did a post with figures on the number of 15-19 year olds with jobs. He argued that it showed removing the youth rate and giving everyone the same […]

Unemployment up, productivity up

Written By: - Date published: 8:51 am, November 9th, 2009 - 9 comments

Like here in New Zealand, unemployment continues to climb in America. And one of the results is soaring productivity. (sources: 1,2) But wait, isn’t higher productivity good? In normal circumstances, yes, when it comes about from capital deepening (ie businesses investing in equipment rather than taking profits) or a more educated workforce. But productivity will […]

Exchange rates, Kiwisaver, breaking promises, & the art of doing nothing

Written By: - Date published: 2:35 pm, October 31st, 2009 - 8 comments

A range of interesting political/economic comment today in the Herald: Fran O’Sullivan joins the left-wing and groups like Federated Farmers in calling on the Key Government to sort out monetary policy. At the moment, the Reserve Bank is tasked solely with controlling inflation with interest rates as its only real tool, while the exchange is […]

CTU Alternative Economic Strategy

Written By: - Date published: 4:00 pm, October 30th, 2009 - 24 comments

If you watched the media coverage of last week’s Council of Trade Unions conference you’ll have walked away thinking it was about John Key telling teachers to take a pay cut and some woman threatening to throw a shoe at him. Entirely missed was the launch of the CTU’s Alternative Economic Strategy. That’s a pity, […]

Treasury provides cover for Nats’ rightwing agenda

Written By: - Date published: 9:07 am, October 30th, 2009 - 19 comments

National’s favourite public servant (who got himself a nice pay rise), John Whitehead, has been offering dire warnings of the future. $2 trillion in debt by 2050! Something must be done! Naturally, the Treasury has an extreme right-wing solution – cut everything: cut health – yeah, a less healthy workforce that’ll be great for the […]

RBNZ chickens out on vital new rules

Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, October 27th, 2009 - 2 comments

What a shame that the Reserve Bank has backed down on new the prudential liquidity rules that require the banks to raise a higher percentage of their money from longer term deposits. The rules were to come in at the start of next year, but the banks complained and in this country business always get its way so […]

The invisible hand gets frisky

Written By: - Date published: 11:18 am, October 21st, 2009 - 3 comments

Time to wake up from the neolib nightmare

Written By: - Date published: 9:20 am, October 8th, 2009 - 18 comments

Back in the 1980s, some people who had read too much Milton Friedman and had drunk too much whiskey at Backbone Club meetings, thought adopting the neoliberal economic model, that had never been proven to work outside textbooks, was the way forward for New Zealand. Slash government, slash taxes (for the rich), slash wages, slash […]

Beyond GDP

Written By: - Date published: 7:45 am, October 7th, 2009 - 31 comments

Back in 1934, when Gross Domestic Product was first being developed in the States, the economist in charge, Simon Kuznets, wrote “…the welfare of a nation [can] scarcely be inferred from a measure of national income…”. Right from the start, the economists were saying GDP was merely a measure of economic activity, not of the wealth […]

Up in smoke

Written By: - Date published: 6:01 am, October 6th, 2009 - 19 comments

When the Tui oil-field was opened last year, the operators (AWE New Zealand, 87.5% foreign-owned, ironically) were given permission to burn off 10 billion cubic feet of natural gas retrieved incidentally to the oil over the life of the oil-field. That’s actually a hell of a lot of gas, about 6% of what New Zealand […]

The economy of hero worship

Written By: - Date published: 11:20 pm, September 24th, 2009 - 30 comments

I wish that I got praise heaped on me at my job for exchanging a bit of small-talk with the popular dude. Don’t want to take away from Key’s achievement. I mean wow, he shook the Obama’s hand and didn’t muck it up. I’m looking forward to the gushing accolades when he manages to crack a […]

John and Bill cost us $7 million in two months

Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, September 23rd, 2009 - 47 comments

You’ll remember that in the Budget National decided to suspend payments to the Cullen Fund, which is designed to help fund the future cost of superannuation. At the time, John Key and Bill English said we were losing money on the Fund and we couldn’t afford to borrow to put money into it. They compared […]

Back into growth

Written By: - Date published: 11:27 am, September 23rd, 2009 - 5 comments

The newly released figures show 0.1% growth in the June quarter. The March figure was also revised up to -0.8% (from -1.0%). Here comes the sun? Not quite. 0.1% is pretty damn weak. It’s below population growth (0.25% per quarter) so, we’re still worse off per person. And we’re a long way below the economic […]

Peak metals

Written By: - Date published: 6:47 am, September 19th, 2009 - 48 comments

We’re probably all now aware of the idea of peak oil. The earth is finite, and we can’t suck an infinite amount of oil out of it. But oil isn’t the only resource which is reaching its peak. Various important metals are running out even faster: Indium, gallium and hafnium are some of the least-known […]

Fed farmers frothing

Written By: - Date published: 11:30 am, September 18th, 2009 - 92 comments

A virulent attack on Greenpeace in a press release by Federated Farmers president, Don Nicholson, convinces me that Greenpeace are hitting the mark. In a hysterical rant, Nicholson as well as accusing Greenpeace of “lying”, accuses Greenpeace of “economic treason”, and even claimed that “Greenpeace is actually anti-farming”. Don Nicholson has to resort to clumsy […]

Corporate welfare

Written By: - Date published: 10:43 am, September 18th, 2009 - 15 comments

I’ve got no problem with the government helping out those who are genuinely in need but forcing the taxpayer fork out $400 million (or is it 1.6b?) to subsidise corporate polluters is a disgrace. http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/2864572/Public-to-pay-tab-for-polluters This is corporate welfare at it’s worst. These businesses are simply bludging off the taxpayer. While you’re doing your bit […]

What next, Soylent Green?

Written By: - Date published: 5:31 am, September 16th, 2009 - 29 comments

The Wall Street financiers crapped out on their sub-prime gambles, inflicting economic devastation on the taxpayers who generously bailed-them out in return. Now, they need a new gamble, a new game in which they bet using other people’s money while skimming off the cream for themselves until it all collapses. The new game? Betting on […]

Just put it away

Written By: - Date published: 2:24 pm, September 13th, 2009 - 32 comments

I know this free condoms idea is just a remit, not Labour Party policy, but it’s exactly the kind of thing that the right has used to drive a wedge between Labour and it’s working-class base. It is a liberal idea that conservatives on the left and right will be repelled by and it creates […]

It ain’t over ’til it’s over

Written By: - Date published: 11:46 am, September 10th, 2009 - 11 comments

The economists think the recession is probably over (for now). If you’re one of the lucky ones, you may very well be thinking ‘well that wasn’t so bad’ but what does the end of the recession mean? All it means is that the economy is has stopped shrinking. Now, say you and me were out climbing a mountain […]

Currency too high, recovery could falter – Fed Farmers

Written By: - Date published: 10:39 am, September 10th, 2009 - 12 comments

“I’d really like to know what Treasury is on for it to be so bullish about the economy, as it must be good stuff.” – Federated Farmers press release, 09, Sep. 2009 The day after Herald and TV headlined a Treasury report announcing a recovery, the right wing business pressure group Federated Farmers has released […]