economy

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Playing catch up?

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 12:39 pm, August 23rd, 2009 - 18 comments

In the 1980s and early 1990s, during the Right’s neoliberal economic revolution, New Zealand’s economic output per person stalled – growing just 0.01% per year between 1984 and 1992 – and fell behind Australia’s economy, which grew 1.84% per person a year over the same period. Between 1999 and 2008, the New Zealand’s GDP per capita actually […]

Well done National

Written By: Guest post - Date published: 9:13 am, August 21st, 2009 - 16 comments

The polls are still fine but National are looking a wee bit crispy round the edges right now. Nice Mr Key has a lot on his plate (hat tip).. Check out the rap sheet: – a recent humbling by election loss – a minister sacked (for reasons that we are not allowed to know) – […]

It’s Labour’s fault it didn’t rain!

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 12:00 pm, August 14th, 2009 - 33 comments

One of Bill English’s favourite lines is that New Zealand entered recession ahead of the rest of the world ‘due to Labour’s mismanagement of the economy’ and that’s why his government is unable to get off its arse now. Pity that Agriculture Minister David Carter had to go and spoil the lie for him: “Agriculture […]

Electrical storm

Written By: Zetetic - Date published: 2:27 pm, August 13th, 2009 - 40 comments

Breaking up the old Electricity Corporation into a bunch of artificially competing companies has been a 15-year failure. They’ve poured heaps of money into competing with each other (despite mostly being owned by the same people, us), they’ve under invested, and prices have gone up fast. What’s National’s solution to this failed National experiment (which […]

Double bubble trouble

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 12:56 pm, August 13th, 2009 - 19 comments

It’s a rare day that I agree with Bill English but he’s right about the danger of another housing boom. The last bubble has not deflated yet we are already seeing prices start to grow again. There are now projections of 24% growth housing prices over the next three years, in a period when GDP […]

Double dipping

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 8:59 am, August 11th, 2009 - 20 comments

No, not another post about Bludger Bill, this one’s about that thing that he and Key are meant to be taking care of. What’s it called again? No, not the cycle-way. No, not solving disputes over wills. Um, bear with me, it’ll come back to me. Oh, right, it’s the economy. That thing? But everything’s […]

Unemployment hits 6%

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 11:12 am, August 6th, 2009 - 22 comments

Stats NZ has just released the unemployment figures for the June Quarter. Unemployment has hit 6%. That’s 138,000 people out of work. We’re going to need more than a cycleway to get ourselves out of this one.

Less work, less pay for Kiwis

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 5:00 am, August 6th, 2009 - 5 comments

Today the Household Labour Force Survey, which includes the official measure of unemployment, will be out. The headline number is expected to be around 5.6%, up from record lows below 4% just nine months ago. The HLFS has a few limitations though. It only measures the percentage of people who are ‘in the work-force’ (ie in work […]

Sshhh! You’ll make the economy cry

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 9:00 am, August 5th, 2009 - 29 comments

John Key says we shouldn’t be talking about the number of people going on to the dole. He reckons that mentioning the fact that thousands of people are losing there jobs will cause people to lose confidence and hurt the economy. Isn’t the real problem for the economy that thousands of people are losing their jobs, […]

Good potential, will it deliver?

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 6:04 pm, August 2nd, 2009 - 31 comments

17,000 youth jobs. That’s what Key has promised with a $152 million programme (some of this is existing money). Like Colin Espiner says “ambitious plan”. We’ll see if he manages to deliver. The record so far has been big promises and bigger failure to deliver – the money hasn’t been spent and the jobs haven’t […]

Get ready for more over-promise, under-deliver

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 4:39 pm, August 1st, 2009 - 15 comments

Tomorrow John Key will be announcing policies on youth unemployment. Looks like rehashing of the already announced Youth Guarantee and probably something more. Whatever Key comes up with it will be tinkering around the edges. The Nats aren’t willing to spend any money and they don’t have any big ideas. If the cycleway, the tax-cuts, […]

Wee gripes: spreading ignorance

Written By: Zetetic - Date published: 10:37 am, July 31st, 2009 - 13 comments

Tracy Watkins: “productivity as a country – the amount of goods and services each worker produces and the value they add” God. Here’s a correct definition: “productivity – the amount of output per hour of work” The difference? Use Watkins’ definition and it seems if you work longer you’ll be increasing productivity. That might increase […]

Recovery nightmare

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 9:25 am, July 29th, 2009 - 27 comments

‘A nightmare’ scenario. That’s how ANZ chief economist Cameron Bagrie speaking on Morning Report described the outlook for the economy as the recession comes to an end. Wait isn’t growth good? Well, not all growth is created equal. The problem is where our growth prospects are coming from. It’s the housing market once again. Interest […]

Spin cycle

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:00 am, July 28th, 2009 - 16 comments

Normally, $9 million in government spending is such a puny amount it’s not worth covering but as Key has nailed his crediblity to the success of his cycleways, let’s crunch some numbers. These seven tracks will supposedly cost $9 million to build and create 280 jobs (only 140 in the near future). Other details, including […]

Nice try, Roger

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 9:00 am, July 28th, 2009 - 14 comments

Sir Roger Douglas has a go at my post that looks at the GDP per person gap between Australia and New Zealand and concludes that, since it doubled during the neoliberal revolution of the late 80s/early 90s, implementing more neoliberal policies is unlikely to close that gap. His first complaint is that my numbers and his […]

Productive editorial

Written By: Guest post - Date published: 11:40 am, July 27th, 2009 - 29 comments

Interesting editorial on National’s new Productivity Taskforce in Saturday’s Herald. Australia’s Productivity Commission (independent, highly successful, and enjoying cross-party support) could have served as a good model, but: That possibility was ditched with the appointment of Dr Brash, whose excellent credentials as a former Reserve Bank Governor are compromised by his political partisanship. This will […]

Sunday reading: Life in sub-prime America

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 1:29 pm, July 26th, 2009 - 7 comments

Exiled Online, a US site, has excellent coverage of the recession and the sub-prime crisis from a ground-level view. Yasha Levine moved to Victorville an ‘exurb’ of LA (100 miles from LA centre) to experience the crisis first-hand. His reports are a must read – well written, well researched, hard hitting (hope you’re not too […]

Back to the future: electricity privatisation

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 2:12 pm, July 25th, 2009 - 89 comments

Bill English says he doesn’t much care whether monopolies or businesses with monopolistic power are owned by private companies or the Government does. He doesn’t care whether power companies are publicly or privately owned because he thinks he can make the electricity sector competitive. He’s dreaming like he was in the 1990s. Monopolies are a fact of life […]

More facts on the table

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 12:00 pm, July 24th, 2009 - 42 comments

Now, yesterday a couple of righties didn’t want to believe the evidence in front of their eyes that the GDP per person gap between Australia and New Zealand doubled during the neoliberal economic revolution. They got upset at my conclusion that repeating those same policies (which is what Don Brash’s 2025 Taskforce will inevitably recommend) […]

The house built on sand

Written By: Zetetic - Date published: 11:00 am, July 24th, 2009 - 29 comments

Pick up the paper. The stories are ‘consumer confidence recovering’, ‘house prices stablising’ etc. These are taken as indications that the recession is close to over. Probably right. Weak growth in December. But that weak growth will be built on the same foundations that crumbled here and abroad sending us into recession in the first […]

Those who don’t learn from history…

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 4:19 am, July 23rd, 2009 - 67 comments

Supposedly, we need Don Brash and a gang of his right-wing cohorts to tell us how to close the wealth gap with Australia. Brash and his merry gang are the same old faces from the neoliberal revolution of the late 80s and early 90s. Back then, they ruthlessly applied neoliberal economic theory to our economy […]

Good jab, now land some punches

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 5:04 am, July 21st, 2009 - 88 comments

It was excellent to see Phil Goff laying down the gauntlet to Key yesterday. He announced Labour’s policy to temporarily relax partner means testing for the dole and promised a recession response package. On the same day, Key’s big achievement was noting the Hillary family had settled their dispute with Auckland museum. Goff is saying […]

The Salesman

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 2:20 pm, July 20th, 2009 - 12 comments

One of the stories from John Key’s days as a currency trader is that he was always more of a salesman than an analyst. He wasn’t good at picking markets and investments; he was good at getting people to trust him with their money. He got New Zealanders to put their trust in him too […]

Time for a real debate on the economy

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 9:45 am, July 20th, 2009 - 62 comments

I wish Finlay MacDonald wrote more about politics and less about cats and kids and stuff because he’s well worth reading when he’s on a serious topic.. and a weekly column in the Sunday Star-Times is a hell of a thing to waste. His piece yesterday eviscerates Key’s vacuous economic speech from last week. He […]

Wee gripe: “lagging indicator”

Written By: Zetetic - Date published: 1:48 pm, July 18th, 2009 - 51 comments

John Key, sunny grin in place, says the recession’s all but over. Admits that unemployment will continue to climb (barring a miricle like, say, his government getting off its arse) until mid-2010. But he’s ‘relaxed’ about that. Says unemployment is just a “lagging indicator”. Easy to say when you’re on $393,000 a year and have […]

None so blind

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 12:01 pm, July 17th, 2009 - 19 comments

I read Reserve Bank Governor Alan Bollard’s speech on Tuesday with great interest. It’s an informative, if very mainstream review of the recession thus far and the outlook. He points out “The international financial crisis actually played little role in the early part of New Zealand’s economic recession. Rather, it was drought, falling house prices […]

Credit outlook cut but it’s not a credit rating downgrade

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 3:00 am, July 17th, 2009 - 49 comments

So, Fitch, the third of the big three sovereign credit ratings agencies, has moved the Government’s rating from a stable outlook to a negative outlook. Does this mean that John Key will be admitting that he has delivered a credit downgrade, like he was boasting of an upgrade when S&P (another of the big 3) moved us […]

Key grins blankly, shrugs shoulders

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 11:00 am, July 15th, 2009 - 42 comments

I was going to do a fisking of Key’s ‘major speech‘ today. But there’s nothing to fisk, no substance, no ideas, no vision. There’s just endless recycling of the same old Crosby-Textor lines and waffle. In fact, there’s one section that is just a bunch of rehashed lines – one after the other. You get […]

Leak: Key’s next big plan revealed

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 4:10 am, July 15th, 2009 - 19 comments

Today Key is giving a major speech on the economy. He told Oliver Driver on Sunrise yesterday that it would be “pretty high level”, and he wasn’t joking. The Sir Peter Blake Awesome Stratosphere Rollercoaster will rise from Queen’s Wharf, circle the Sky tower, rise to a height of 1500m, and do a twisting loop before plunging […]

We can haz vision?

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 3:30 pm, July 14th, 2009 - 31 comments

According to NZPA John Key is going to deliver a big speech tomorrow in which he will “detail the problems and solutions for New Zealand’s economy”. I’m not holding my breath. As I said two weeks ago when he indicated he would announce a plan to stop job losses (he still hasn’t, perhaps this will […]

Oil’s well that ends well?

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:52 am, July 7th, 2009 - 46 comments

Now days everybody wanna talk, like they got something to say, but nothing comes out when they move their lips, just a bunch of gibberish, and all of you act like you forgot about oil. Yup, just when you thought it was safe to go back into the dealer’s lot, oil is back and in […]