economy
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Oh no, not Sweden!
Written By: - Date published: 8:44 am, April 24th, 2009 - 12 comments
If you’ve been watching your Fox News, you know that the US is turning socialist. It’s going to be Sweden any day apparently. The Daily Show went to Sweden to get a taste of the fate that awaits Americans. The tunes they play while visiting Robyn’s apartment… They’re great songs but do they suddenly […]
National has blown it
Written By: - Date published: 2:22 pm, April 23rd, 2009 - 37 comments
National cannot be blamed for the current financial crisis and recession of course. But they can be blamed for their short sighted and inadequate response. Stuck in old ways of thinking (cut spending, cut jobs, sell stuff) they have done nothing to stimulate the economy. All their talk of extra spending turned out to be […]
There’s optimistic and there’s just wrong
Written By: - Date published: 1:11 pm, April 23rd, 2009 - 14 comments
John Key has a habit of speaking much more bluntly to foreign media than he does to us. In his interview with the Financial Times published this week he stated unequivocally that there will be no stimulus package for New Zealand. He hadn’t told us. It was this, though, that caught my attention: “he is betting […]
High quality government spending
Written By: - Date published: 8:29 am, April 21st, 2009 - 4 comments
I suppose the Herald means for us to recoil in horror at the headline “$325,000 bill to save 57 jobs” but I’m fine with it. Look at the alternative – 57 families taking a major hit to their incomes, with all the consequences for health, education, crime, and family stability that we know unemployment brings. Think […]
Leaping into inaction
Written By: - Date published: 12:32 pm, April 20th, 2009 - 12 comments
Cycling is a great way to travel, so it’s great that the government is going to back more cycleways around the country to make the experience safer and more enjoyable for cycle tourists. But the new plan will only see a national network completed in “10-20” years time. That’s not going to help the recession […]
Elizabeth Warren on the bailouts
Written By: - Date published: 7:51 am, April 19th, 2009 - 14 comments
The best news source in America, the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, interviews the woman responsible for making sure their bailout money is being spent well. Illuminating and a little scary. In the second part she puts this whole financial crisis in a historic and principled context. The crowd goes wild – they’ve never had the […]
More pain ahead
Written By: - Date published: 2:50 pm, April 17th, 2009 - 38 comments
The current financial crisis originated in America with a wave of defaults in “sub prime” mortgages. The excellent presentation found here covers a lot of data in a lot of detail (step through the slides), and shows why there is more pain ahead in the American mortgage and housing markets. The companies making crazy loans […]
What plan? Government incoherent
Written By: - Date published: 12:30 pm, April 17th, 2009 - 39 comments
Peeking through the OECD policy brief there were some interesting issues when looking at the short-term economic issues over the next few years. As usual Granny Herald in their usual editorial policy of supporting NACT has it wrong. On their front page article they said… The economy is in for a long and deep recession, […]
NZ’s debt in perspective
Written By: - Date published: 3:00 pm, April 15th, 2009 - 8 comments
Remember when John Key used to say “New Zealand has a growth problem, not a debt problem”? He doesn’t say that anymore, which is a pity because we do have a growth problem, not a debt problem, but the Government is acting like we’ve got a debt problem that needs to be tackled first. Yes, […]
The next oil spike(s)
Written By: - Date published: 4:01 pm, April 13th, 2009 - 13 comments
Remember the oil spike? Over the course of the last 4-5 years, oil kept on breaking records, culminating in a massive spike to reach $150 last June. Why did that happen? Some people want to dismiss it as just a speculative bubble but they forget that speculators come to a market that has a fundamental […]
Weak
Written By: - Date published: 9:27 am, April 12th, 2009 - 18 comments
We’ve all been subjected to mainstream journalists gushing over Key’s ‘strong leadership’ but now it’s being put to the test and we’re seeing weakness, not strength. Look at how he has dealt with Richard Worth compared to how Clark dealt with ministers. When Helen Clark was Prime Minister, especially in her early days, she had […]
Too Big to Fail
Written By: - Date published: 8:04 pm, April 10th, 2009 - 28 comments
Nassim Nicholas Taleb is one of those rare thinkers who has the priceless ability to express complex ideas in ways that are immediately accessible and concrete. I’m going to shamelessly quote and derive from a very recent article he’s written in the Financial Times. It’s so good I’m going to take each one of the […]
Yes, if Bill will let me
Written By: - Date published: 10:50 am, April 7th, 2009 - 6 comments
A wag emails us: So Key is keen on offering mortgage holidays like in Aussie. Any bets on how long before English overrules him?
Who’s zooming who?
Written By: - Date published: 11:32 am, April 5th, 2009 - 27 comments
The Herald reports: Last week John Key used poor United States sales of the new BMW 7-series – 10 were sold in February, compared with more than 1500 in the same 2008 month – as an example of how much other countries were hurting in the economic crisis. But New Zealand… sales of the top-of-the-line […]
G20 protests
Written By: - Date published: 1:43 pm, April 2nd, 2009 - 65 comments
Tens of thousands of people protested yesterday April 1st in London at the G20 summit. The protest is made up of a multitude of different groups and has no clear overall spokesperson or agenda, other than to draw attention to the obvious failures of unregulated capitalism and the increasingly obscene taxpayer funded banking bailouts and […]
Criticising car corporation charity
Written By: - Date published: 11:35 am, April 2nd, 2009 - 19 comments
Here’s why Fickle Cycle is rapidly becoming the best New Zealand blog focussed on international issues: I wasn’t impressed with December’s car industry bail-outs in the US and I’m not any happier with the latest round. I have a fundamental issue with giving money to these corporations whose primary interest is collecting profit. The US […]
Mayday Mayday, Worth’s bought it and I’m losing altitude – Groser out
Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, April 1st, 2009 - 36 comments
Richard Worth, OBE, is now in very serious trouble having been snared in what looks like untruths about using his Ministerial portfolio to further the interests of a company he had a private commercial interest in. It’s pretty blatant and really Key won’t be able to get away with keeping him on for much longer. […]
Fun with labour productivity
Written By: - Date published: 12:23 pm, March 28th, 2009 - 14 comments
We often hear that labour productivity is not growing fast enough and some argue it should be a focus of government economic policy. Yesterday, for example, Bill English was trying to blame the recession on the average growth in productivity under Labour. However, economists like Brian Easton point out that labour productivity growth is heavily […]
Take responsibility or take the blame
Written By: - Date published: 11:50 am, March 27th, 2009 - 11 comments
As Minister of Works responding to a disaster in his portfolio, Bob Semple famously said ‘I am responsible but not to blame’. That has become one of our political mores. If they are not personally at fault, ministers shouldn’t have to take the blame when things go wrong but they are responsible for dealing with the […]
Blindly cutting away
Written By: - Date published: 2:08 pm, March 26th, 2009 - 23 comments
One of the most cavalier and foolish actions of the National led government during its first 100 day blitz of legislation (in itself described by many as an assault on democracy) was the cancellation of the R&D tax credit. The business community warned well in advance that cutting the credit was a very bad idea, […]
Gulp
Written By: - Date published: 11:39 am, March 26th, 2009 - 35 comments
The Key/English odd couple continue to give us a sweet and sour mix of messages – one with rosy promises that the recession will be over any day and the other issuing dark threats that we can’t have a stimulus package only public service cuts. In the real world there is a real economic disaster going […]
Sinking shipping is stupid
Written By: - Date published: 10:18 am, March 26th, 2009 - 10 comments
Toad’s post on coastal shipping deserves re-posting: Coastal shipping is the most energy efficient means of moving freight. A ship consumes 75 – 80 percent less fuel than a truck per tonne hauled. It’s just got to be the way to go. The United States finally seems to be seeing this. A Bill before the […]
Give the people what they want
Written By: - Date published: 8:46 am, March 26th, 2009 - 39 comments
Stephen Joyce keeps saying the reason he has slashed investment in public transport to build more roads is that he is giving the people what they want. He says most people get to work in a car, so people must want cars. What wonderful logic. Imagine if we hadn’t introduced public health-care or public education because, […]
Vampire economics
Written By: - Date published: 3:47 pm, March 21st, 2009 - 49 comments
Earlier this week the Prime Minister announced $2.5 million for tourism advertising in Australia. New Zealand is not alone in trying to increase tourism as a solution to the recession. Australia is trying to get tourists from here and other countries with wall-to-wall TV advertising on the back of that great flop of a movie […]
Four wheels good, two wheels bad
Written By: - Date published: 10:08 am, March 20th, 2009 - 34 comments
The Government is taking nearly half a billion dollars out of public transport, cycling, walking, road maintance, and traffic policing to pay for more state highways. Transport Minister Steven Joyce’s reasoning for this – ‘86% of people go to work by car’. Doesn’t he get that people have to go by car because there aren’t […]
Fox in the henhouse
Written By: - Date published: 5:06 pm, March 19th, 2009 - 19 comments
The National Business Review has an interesting article online that suggests Simon Power’s recommendation of Dr Mark Berry to take over from Paula Rebstock as chair of the Commerce Commission is a sign the government is planning a radical deregulation of the competition landscape. The piece even goes as far as to describe Dr Berry […]
National’s cargo cult mentality
Written By: - Date published: 11:49 am, March 18th, 2009 - 32 comments
Over the weekend I pointed out that National’s plans to review the Overseas Investment Act would lead to even more foreign control of New Zealand and, ultimately, even more of our national wealth sucked offshore to pay the dividends of overseas shareholders. Murray Horton from the Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa weighs in today, […]
Ambitious for New Zealand
Written By: - Date published: 10:37 am, March 18th, 2009 - 21 comments
John Key in the NBR*: There is more chance in this decade than the last one of New Zealand moving up the OECD league table because other countries are moving backwards. So, it’s OK if we’re getting poorer because other countries are getting poorer even faster. Not so ambitious for New Zealand after all I […]
A fairer 9 day fortnight
Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, March 15th, 2009 - 5 comments
National’s 9-day fortnight will save only 2-3% of the jobs that are expected to be lost in the recession. It’s a trifling investment of only $20 million. It makes no effort to get workers into training. But the deep, dark secret is it is geared to the gain of business, not working people. Here’s the […]
Cutting through the spin on ACC
Written By: - Date published: 6:30 am, March 13th, 2009 - 37 comments
We’ve heard a lot of panicky comments in the last few weeks about a ‘cost blowout’ at ACC. We’re told there is $22 billion in liabilities with $12 billion unfunded. That sounds bad, but what does it actually mean and what’s really happened? ACC used to be a ‘pay-as-you-go’ scheme. No money was put aside […]
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