Posts Tagged ‘economic growth’

GDP figures expose business confidence survey nonsense

Written By: - Date published: 1:29 pm, September 20th, 2018 - 99 comments

ANZ Bank’s Outlook business confidence survey has been forecasting gloom and doom for the economy ever since the surprise election result turfed out the National Party. Today’s GDP data showed the economy has actually been pumping along faster than the Reserve Bank believes is good for it.

Uncertainty doesn’t bother “the market” at all

Written By: - Date published: 7:02 am, October 3rd, 2017 - 57 comments

There is no “strong and stable” government to “lead” us. Maximum uncertainty! No end in sight! According to received wisdom (and all those people in a self-interested rush to ordain the born-to-rule-party) the market should be panicking! In fact…

National – Delivering no pay rises for NZ

Written By: - Date published: 8:29 am, August 17th, 2017 - 15 comments

Expect plenty of Nat boasting on “the economy” in the election campaign. They’ll be desperate to hide the inconvenient fact that ordinary workers are going backwards.

Dire warnings of the bleeding obvious

Written By: - Date published: 7:57 am, December 1st, 2016 - 14 comments

Warnings from the government and the Reserve Bank that first home buyers are taking on too much debt. Prices are too high, wages are too low, interest rates are rising. These warnings are effectively telling the average first home buyer to give up.

This is not the growth you’re looking for

Written By: - Date published: 12:43 pm, February 16th, 2016 - 70 comments

There are different views on The Standard about growth and whether we really need it. But here’s one bit of growth that really seems pointless to me: that achieved only by increasing the number of people. Because if we’re only increasing GDP by increasing the number of people, as we are currently, we’re loading up the environment and we’re not even individually getting any richer for it.  Thanks National.

Masters of Finance? 2

Written By: - Date published: 1:39 pm, May 20th, 2015 - 95 comments

MastersOfFinance2

Boots Theory: Numbers are meaningless when families are living in cars

Written By: - Date published: 10:59 am, October 5th, 2014 - 137 comments

There’s something obscene about the way the economic story gets framed: the figures on a page, the points on an index, the number of dollars someone can swap for a number of different-coloured dollars, when people are suffering.

The only way National know to grow the economy

Written By: - Date published: 5:15 pm, September 10th, 2014 - 19 comments

On Firstline this morning, John Key tried to compare National’s and Labour’s policies by saying “You can’t grow the economy when you restrict labour laws.” It’s nonsense, and it’s scary.

The server will be getting hardware changes this evening starting at 10pm NZDT.
The site will be off line for some hours.