economy
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Daily show vs CNBC
Written By: - Date published: 3:32 pm, March 12th, 2009 - 17 comments
Last week, Jon Stewart poked fun at the media who cheer-led the housing and stockmarket bubbles and are now blaming the people who took on subprime mortgages for the financial crisis. They bit back with hilarious results. Jon is interviewing Cramer today, it will screen Friday night here on C4.
Brief thoughts on the 9 day fortnight
Written By: - Date published: 6:04 pm, March 11th, 2009 - 53 comments
The 9 day fortnight scheme has finally been announced but I’ve got a few questions: Why do the taxpayer and the worker have to pay but the employer not? What about free training? Surely that would fit with the productivity argument National’s been making? Does anyone realise that those on the average wage would take […]
No free trade deal
Written By: - Date published: 10:39 pm, March 8th, 2009 - 33 comments
The Obama administration has halted free trade talks with New Zealand. On one hand free trade is simply increased freedom of capital and without equivalent freedom of labour lends itself toward increased disparity between rich and poor. On the other hand Douglas and his neo-liberal thugs left us with no protections at all in the […]
Gordon Campbell states the obvious
Written By: - Date published: 2:21 pm, March 8th, 2009 - 26 comments
Gordon Campbell has been having fun pointing the finger at Treasury in “How Treasury put us on the hook to finance companies“. Essentially the treasury and therefore Bill English appear to have been somewhat idiotic. If a firm stopped taking deposits last September, and was heavily exposed in the current economic climate to a major […]
Explaining the recession
Written By: - Date published: 5:06 pm, March 6th, 2009 - 41 comments
The EPMU have released a short film on youtube explaining the recession and their response to it. It features Brian Easton, Gareth Morgan, Pete Conway and EPMU Secretary Andrew Little. It’s sobering viewing.
Worth a thousand words
Written By: - Date published: 5:35 am, March 6th, 2009 - 68 comments
Helps if it’s pointing the right way, too. Great work Adders.
Softening up
Written By: - Date published: 2:22 pm, March 5th, 2009 - 26 comments
A few points on the ACC issue and one on Kiwirail. Nick Smith says that, with assets of $10 and liabilities of $21 billion, if ACC were an insurance company it would have gone under years ago. But it’s not an insurance company. Because its costs can be met by the sovereign revenue raising power […]
The Atlases shrug, ‘I dunno’
Written By: - Date published: 9:28 am, March 4th, 2009 - 14 comments
In the Dom yesterday, Hollow man star Richard Long was full of praise for the Key’s PR team, who managed the Jobs Summit. He was right to praise them, the media lapped it up – ‘cycleway!’, ‘packed lunches, and no cream for the apple pie, how thrifty!’ (since when did you get get cream, or […]
Key writes off Sealord jobs
Written By: - Date published: 10:52 am, March 3rd, 2009 - 50 comments
Despite making sound profits Sealord are laying off 180 workers in Nelson. They claim the move is part of restructuring and that there will be fifty new jobs aboard factory ships that will fully process fish. Remaining workers are also being asked to take a pay cut. I’m not sure I buy that. Even with […]
Funny because it’s true
Written By: - Date published: 2:00 pm, March 2nd, 2009 - 18 comments
This has to be the funniest political cartoon I’ve seen in some time, and it’s true too. The innovation we need has to be government-led. A Green New Deal. Not only to boost the economy by constructing new infrastructure but constructing useful infrastructure. Forget cycleways no-one will use, we need to build a greener infrastructure based on renewable energy, […]
You’ve got to know to understand (and be able to talk about it)
Written By: - Date published: 1:15 pm, March 1st, 2009 - 58 comments
In the greatest economic crisis in a lifetime, we remain the only country in the world whose government has done nothing to try to stimulate the economy. In fact, the net effect of National’s policies is de-stimulatory, taking money out of the economy when it most needs an injection of spending. And I blame the […]
Granny’s little fit
Written By: - Date published: 1:14 pm, February 28th, 2009 - 44 comments
The crazy right-wing antics of today’s Herald would be funny if it wasn’t for the fact it’s the main paper in New Zealand’s largest city. First we’ve got Fran O’Sullivan talking about the need for the government cutting costs (I suspect she wrote the absurd editorial I commented on earlier this week). Essentially it’s more […]
No, you leave YOUR ideology at the door
Written By: - Date published: 2:39 pm, February 27th, 2009 - 49 comments
There’s all this rubbish at the moment about people moving beyond ideology. At the Jobs Summit, attendees were harangued to ‘leave your ideology at the door’. Everything I’m hearing out of the Summit says they haven’t. The business leaders want weaker work rights, lower tax, and subsidies. The few workers’ representatives that were invited want […]
Re: cycle
Written By: - Date published: 12:06 pm, February 27th, 2009 - 36 comments
According to Stuff: “Another idea on the table [at the Jobs Summit] is a $50 million cycleway built the length of the country. It would provide 3700 jobs and would take two years to build. The government is keen on it for its tourist potential.” A summit attendee writes: “Oh dear. Less than four months […]
The cost of doing (next to) nothing
Written By: - Date published: 11:26 am, February 27th, 2009 - 18 comments
Bill English is holding the country’s purse like an old woman on the subway. Far from doing what every other country is doing, injecting an adrenaline shot of spending into the economy to restore confidence by breaking the negative cycle, English is repeating the mistakes he made when he was Finance Minister during the Asian Crisis […]
Views from the Job Summit
Written By: - Date published: 10:00 am, February 27th, 2009 - 30 comments
– “Very clear that this is all about showing a consensus behind Key. That’s the mood among my colleagues. Seen some unionists about, their strategy seems to be to engage, rather than be left out” – “I saw a brown face. Turned out it was the cleaner. I hear Michael Jones is here too. So that’s […]
Herald: “we’ll dig our way out of this hole”
Written By: - Date published: 11:50 am, February 26th, 2009 - 4 comments
The Herald is again demonstrating its economic ignorance with its call for spending cuts in today’s editorial: Something has to give. If National will not postpone tax cuts due in April, it must trim some of the programmes it has inherited. The most costly of them, interest-free student loans, free childcare, KiwiSaver subsidies and the […]
What’s Bill planning?
Written By: - Date published: 9:20 am, February 26th, 2009 - 10 comments
Yesterday, Finance Minister Bill English made a big deal over the loss the New Zealand Superannuation Fund incurred last year. When you don’t need the money for twenty years, the current value of your asset is irrelevant. When there’s a boom on the paper value of what you have will skyrocket, when there’s a bust […]
Brian Easton’s DL talk now online
Written By: - Date published: 1:27 pm, February 25th, 2009 - 33 comments
For those of you who missed Brian Easton’s recent talk on the recession at Drinking Liberally Wgtn (or just couldn’t hear over the rain) the papers are now up online. It’s fascinating reading, if a little frightening. Part I on the world economy is here, and Part II on the New Zealand economy is here. […]
Don’t kill the Cullen Fund
Written By: - Date published: 9:45 am, February 24th, 2009 - 46 comments
Michael Littlewood has made a career of advocating superannuation privatisation and is part of an international organisation called Pension Reforms dedicated to the privatisation of superannuation. Yesterday, he was given a platform in the Herald and on the news (one or three, can’t remember), to argue the New Zealand Superannuation Fund (known as the Cullen […]
Being stupid on the economy
Written By: - Date published: 10:02 am, February 23rd, 2009 - 20 comments
Brian Fallow has some extraordinarily good analysis of the economic situation in his piece today. Here’s some important passages (and my, unfortunately, extensive comments): “We are really talking about two recessions back to back,” AXA Global Investors chief economist Bevan Graham said. “Last year it was a domestic one, that we needed to have. There […]
Sleight of hand
Written By: - Date published: 5:55 am, February 18th, 2009 - 29 comments
We’ve been saying for some time that the $9 billion of fiscal stimulus that the Government claims it is putting into the economy in reaction to the global recession is no such thing. In fact, the Government is spending within the ordinary increase in spending allotted by the Budget back in May. And it is […]
Fueling the PR machine ain’t cheap
Written By: - Date published: 2:53 pm, February 17th, 2009 - 13 comments
Just like petrol prices, the cost of fueling National’s PR machine is on the rise. Tracy Watkins reports that “National has employed 18 press secretaries on salaries of $100,000 or more. Seven are employed in the $10,000 band below $100,000”. In the past Winston dubbed the National Party PR machine “The ministry of National affairs”. No […]
That’s strange
Written By: - Date published: 2:49 pm, February 17th, 2009 - 13 comments
An hour ago No Right Turn posted a piece citing what was apparently a Ministry of Social Development press release, which he says was “confirmation that the government is planning to slash 500 to 1000 people from the Ministry of Social Development”. He gives a link to scoop for the presser. But Scoop has since taken it down […]
“We are all socialists now”
Written By: - Date published: 12:09 pm, February 17th, 2009 - 21 comments
“We are all socialists now”, or so says the cover of the latest Newsweek. And to be fair, you’ve got to start wondering when the United States is in the process of nationalising the means of exchange and a Tory Prime Minister of New Zealand is looking at effectively buying out a chunk of one […]
Why do dummies lead our national debates?
Written By: - Date published: 3:38 pm, February 16th, 2009 - 31 comments
Why does the Business Roundtable employ an economic illiterate to represent them to the public and argue their corner on macroeconomics? Here’s some of what Roger Kerr has to say in his op-ed in Granny Herald today: “What seems to be overlooked is that the huge rises in core Crown spending in recent years – […]
You’ve got to know to ask the questions that matter
Written By: - Date published: 2:51 pm, February 16th, 2009 - 41 comments
When I heard Shell is looking at selling its service stations in NZ and its shares in Fulton Hogan, my initial thought was that the Government should look at buying – to keep profits in NZ, to help ensure competition in the market as Kiwibank has for banking, and so there is a publicly-owned network […]
Faking it
Written By: - Date published: 10:36 am, February 15th, 2009 - 24 comments
It’s a bit late but I thought I’d draw people’s attention to the work Pundit’s Tim Watkin has been doing on the government’s stimulus package. Or more rather the work he’s been doing on the government’s re-releasing of already approved spending under the guise of a stimulus package. Because the interesting truth is they’re faking […]
Do they know its credit crunch time?
Written By: - Date published: 8:22 am, February 15th, 2009 - 11 comments
Great video for the real victims of this recession, the ‘smartest men in the room’ who cocked everything up, the money-men. Bleed the World/ Let them know it’s credit crunch time
Wake up, Bill
Written By: - Date published: 9:44 am, February 13th, 2009 - 32 comments
Bill English is living in a dream, and he may create a nightmare for the rest of us. Last week, he said the recession would be over in 6-12 months. He hasn’t bothered to announce any significant new spending in response to the recession – all the supposedly new spending he has announced so far […]
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