Globalisation

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The Promises of Lange, Moore, Bolger, and the WTO

Written By: - Date published: 9:15 am, August 4th, 2024 - 26 comments

In 2024 we ought to ask if the economic reforms of the 1980s and 1990s has delivered on what was promised. 

Really Small States in Really Big Conflicts

Written By: - Date published: 8:01 am, May 9th, 2023 - 16 comments

In case we just missed it, New Zealand really has picked a side. Prime Minister Hipkins will head to the NATO summit in Lithuania together with Australia, Japan and South Korean leaders. Also Vladimir Zelinskyy is intending to go as well.

In praise of Michael Hudson

Written By: - Date published: 3:32 pm, November 3rd, 2022 - 39 comments

82-year old polymath Michael Hudson is my favourite economist. He currently lectures in China to million-strong audiences. His latest book is The Destiny of Civilisation: Finance Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism or Socialism. His latest article is well worth a read.

The politics of high inflation – can governments do anything?

Written By: - Date published: 10:46 am, May 19th, 2022 - 13 comments

It is clear that we will continue to face these economic challenges with tools that are ill-equipped to face the problems. Only a truly international response can create an economy that delivers for all.

Blinken and Blind-Sided?

Written By: - Date published: 2:54 pm, January 16th, 2022 - 17 comments

Russian peacekeepers are already leaving Kazakhstan having nipped the ‘colour revolution’ in the bud. Blinken clearly didn’t have a clue when he said Russians never leave the house. Russian intelligence was superb. Now we wait for Russia’s response to US likely refusal to pull back from its borders. One thing I’d bet on – no invasion of Ukraine.

“Beyond Jacinda” – Colin James and Cr Tamatha Paul

Written By: - Date published: 1:45 pm, December 3rd, 2020 - 20 comments

Colin James and Councillor Tamatha Paul will discuss Colin’s paper “Beyond Jacinda” on Monday 7 December at 5:30pm at Baptist Church, 46-48 Boulcott Street Wellington. It will also be shown on Zoom and available on YouTube. Registration links below. All Welcome.

How Trump Has Changed New Zealand’s future

Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, September 2nd, 2020 - 28 comments

Post Trump how is the world order looking?

Unthinkable Things

Written By: - Date published: 8:41 am, July 22nd, 2020 - 29 comments

With the government clearly watching the unravelling of Australia’s Covid-19 response and putting in place $14 billion in preparation for a second infection wave, we are clearly now in a history-in-making territory of the highest instability outside a world war.

Tourism: Death and Revival

Written By: - Date published: 11:30 am, July 19th, 2020 - 26 comments

New Zealand’s tourism economy has essentially collapsed, and it is part of a global tourism industry collapse that is so big that it may be permanently smaller. But does it have to be?

Things that will live

Written By: - Date published: 10:58 am, June 19th, 2020 - 14 comments

Despite downbeat economic predictions and an imminent global recession, the New Zealand recovery offers opportunities for entrepreneurial success that exceed anything we’ve seen for decades.

The plan for Monday

Written By: - Date published: 9:43 am, April 18th, 2020 - 30 comments

Even if New Zealand gets out of the immediate Covid-19 infection better than most other countries, the result is still a wrecked world and a slow recovery. What we face is something like an Australian firefighter with a hose and a tanker facing an onrushing wall of flame: they successfully dampen down a defined circle […]

Beyond mere rescue

Written By: - Date published: 8:49 am, April 6th, 2020 - 78 comments

It’s time to plan the re-launch the very idea of New Zealand.

It’s the end of main stream media as we know it …

Written By: - Date published: 8:57 am, April 3rd, 2020 - 63 comments

The Covid-19 lock down has and will tip media companies already struggling to survive into closure.

Fonterra, again

Written By: - Date published: 9:15 am, September 29th, 2019 - 24 comments

Why New Zealand – and its government – need to engage much harder about Fonterra.

Macron speech – The end of Western hegemony

Written By: - Date published: 2:09 am, September 19th, 2019 - 21 comments

France President Macron’s remarkable and wide-ranging speech to French ambassadors after France hosted the recent G7 conference in Biarritz is well worth a read. He lays it all out – so much better than Trump’s tweets or BoJo’s bluster.

What China crisis?

Written By: - Date published: 12:58 pm, February 18th, 2019 - 52 comments

Claims that New Zealand is at a crisis point in terms of its relationship with China appear to be somewhat overegged.

Trump’s brilliant strategy to dismantle US dollar hegemony

Written By: - Date published: 5:05 pm, February 3rd, 2019 - 56 comments

Polymath economist Professor Michael Hudson’s latest article is a geopolitical panoramic masterpiece, sparked by outrage at a series of concurrent events on January 31 which he predicts means that 2019 will be the “year of global fracture.” Definitely worth a read.      

14 Million Yemenis and a Diplomatic Nightmare

Written By: - Date published: 8:32 am, November 16th, 2018 - 19 comments

In Yemen right now, children are living in the worst humanitarian crisis we have seen in the last 100 years.

Fonterra’s loss

Written By: - Date published: 9:35 am, September 13th, 2018 - 67 comments

Fonterra has just reported an after tax loss of $196 million for the 2018 year. It’s never had an annual loss in its history.

What is the RCEP?

Written By: - Date published: 3:55 pm, August 15th, 2018 - 14 comments

It’s time we paid attention to RCEP, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.

Guest post: The end of Neoliberalism – What went wrong?

Written By: - Date published: 8:30 am, August 7th, 2018 - 172 comments

The Left predicted the death of neoliberalism after the global financial crisis of 2008.  But since then inequality has increased and new right nationalism is on the ascendancy.  How should the left respond?

South Africa, Zimbabwe, New Zealand

Written By: - Date published: 8:30 am, August 4th, 2018 - 31 comments

In 1962, John F Kennedy said “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”  Is peaceful revolution possible in South Africa, Zimbabwe or New Zealand?

Julian Assange; Journey’s End?

Written By: - Date published: 10:14 am, July 22nd, 2018 - 165 comments

Is Julian Assange about to be arrested? Equador looks set to evict the accused rapist and capitalist tool from its London embassy.

Trump meets Putin

Written By: - Date published: 9:03 am, July 16th, 2018 - 116 comments

Some things that President Trump won’t do as when meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki.

The trade war

Written By: - Date published: 1:56 pm, July 9th, 2018 - 27 comments

The speed of the growing trade war between the United States and China will hit New Zealand. Our long term diplomatic arc, such that it is, was to follow a modernist impulse set after World War Two: that economic growth and democracy matched deep human impulses for freedom and prosperity together. China has never assented […]

Far right Canadian activist wants to come to New Zealand to insult local communities

Written By: - Date published: 12:08 pm, July 6th, 2018 - 292 comments

Far right journalist Lauren Southern wants to come to New Zealand to give a speech which will no doubt insult various communities. Should we let her in?

New World Disorder.

Written By: - Date published: 11:49 am, June 12th, 2018 - 45 comments

Liberalism was meant to be the New World Order and even (so the briefly celebrated  Fukiyama reckoned anyway) an End to History. Big stuff then. But it seems the placid and complacent consensus is fraying round the edges.

Is Karl Marx dead?

Written By: - Date published: 11:38 am, May 8th, 2018 - 60 comments

2018 marks several anniversaries of Karl Marx whose significance for the critique of capitalist society is hard to diminish. But what now for his beliefs?

New Zealand Is all right, at the end

Written By: - Date published: 8:30 am, April 28th, 2018 - 27 comments

Democracy’s permanence is not inevitable.  Its imagining is not beyond imagining.  And New Zealand is one of the shrinking number of democracies who really have it.

Is capitalism obsolete?

Written By: - Date published: 8:10 am, April 23rd, 2018 - 303 comments

Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has given a speech where he has stated that capitalism is coming to an end because it is making itself obsolete.

Is this a new cold war?

Written By: - Date published: 4:10 pm, April 11th, 2018 - 17 comments

It’s really easy to get cranky right now and believe the world is retreating into to a sad Cold War binary in which Russia and its allies are always in high tension with the United States and its allies. A new Cold War.

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