Written By:
Steve Pierson - Date published:
11:52 am, February 12th, 2009 - 3 comments
Categories: drinking liberally -
Tags: brian easton
Just got an email through from the team at DL Wellington confirming that tonight’s event with Brian Easton is on despite the rain and will be under cover so you won’t get wet.
Brian Easton is one of our leading left-wing economists and his talk will look at what can be done as NZ enters what is likely to be its sharpest downswing since the Great Depression.
For more background on Brian, check out his website containing his extensive archives at www.eastonbh.ac.nz
Kick off is from 5:30pm and Brian will speak from 6pm – stick around afterwards for a drink and a chat.
Should be a good evening, see youse there.
The server will be getting hardware changes this evening starting at 10pm NZDT.
The site will be off line for some hours.
Please someone do a transcript or some such reportage
Despite continuing downpour a crowd of 40-50 people squeezed into the SW corner of the Garden Bar to hear Brian Easton speak about the development of the global financial crisis and its likely impact on Aotearoa/NZ.
He noted that US “toxic” assets are now roughly US$5trillion, and that NZ banks raise one third off their finance offshore in US$, about US$90Billion. On top of that there is around US$30 Billion of new debt. In short, there is a US$120Billion borrowing requirement. There may be problems renewing that debt in a climate of rapid global debt deflation.
In closing he focused on the likely growth of unemployment in NZ.
He will be posting a paper on which the presentation was based on his web site
in a weeks time.
http://www.eastonbh.ac.nz/
I missed the Christchurch “Drinking Liberally” and would love to check out the next one.