Posts Tagged ‘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, […]
Barbaric
Written By: - Date published: 12:30 pm, April 14th, 2009 - 22 comments
Restaurant Association chairman Mike Egan on how to treat your staff during a recession: “if some of our employees cannot adapt fast enough we will drag them out of the cave and leave them to the sabre-tooth tigers and find staff who can and will adapt”. Most of the people he’s talking about are on […]
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?
Out of touch
Written By: - Date published: 8:57 am, April 7th, 2009 - 32 comments
Vernon Small suggests that a further 60,000 workers may lose their jobs by next year. So it comes as a shock to read that John Key’s response to this latest news is to stick firmly to his: “optimistic and sunny” approach. It’s almost like he’s living in some alternative reality. While Bill is quietly crapping […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
665 jobs lost since Jobs Summit
Written By: - Date published: 8:30 am, March 6th, 2009 - 28 comments
If you believe the Government’s spin, protecting jobs in this recession is their number one priority. They even held a big fancy Jobs Summit to convince us they had it under control. But while that’s all very nice, I’m more interested in concrete actions that keep people in jobs. And right now I’m not seeing […]
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 […]
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 […]
Bottoms up, Bill
Written By: - Date published: 12:03 pm, March 1st, 2009 - 15 comments
It’s said that, once upon a time, Bill Ralston had a social conscience. He still claims to be a leftie at heart. If ever proof were needed that he’s become just another rich, detached elitist it’s this: “Before we all collectively slit our wrists it’s worth pointing out that unless you are a director of […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Granny’s baked some patsies for you, dearie
Written By: - Date published: 10:48 am, February 21st, 2009 - 24 comments
Can you spot the question that wasn’t asked of Key by Armstrong and Young in their six page interview with him in today’s Herald? Is there too much “doom and gloom” talk at the moment, especially by and in the media? There’s a lot of debate among commentators as to whether your stimulus package will […]
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 […]
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 – […]
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 […]
- National’s Erica Stanford allegedly calls Labour’s Jan Tinetti a ‘stupid bitchR...
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- Dame Jacinda Ardern to be given United Nations leadership award
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- NZ will resume live animal exports – to low demand
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- Gang patch ban: ‘Subtle adaptations’ of insignia already being seen
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- Where to find $1.3 trillion for climate finance
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- It’s not too late to halt the death spiral of New Zealand’s public health system
It’s a shambles of our own making, but it’s still one we can turn around, argues health sector expert Dr David Galler. Trust and confidence in the public health system is at an all-time low. Not a day goes by without another story highlighting its alleged failings, eroding what little ...4 days ago
- The gang patch ban is now in force. What’s going to happen?
From today, police can enforce new gang legislation, including a ban on insignia being displayed in public. Here’s what you need to know. Why are we talking about this again? I thought it came in ages ago. The Gangs Act 2024 and Sentencing Amendment Act 2024 did indeed become law ...4 days ago
- National desperately needs to nullify Act’s Treaty bill
The Prime Minister cannot afford to be seen getting bogged down and taken over by Act on the Treaty Principles Bill The post National desperately needs to nullify Act’s Treaty bill appeared first on Newsroom. ...4 days ago
- Daily crossword, Thursday 21 November
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- Urban fringe precincts give city centres a run for their money
Making way for future growth doesn’t have to – and likely won’t – take place in existing city centres, says a company developing significant office space on Auckland’s Southern Corridor.Unlisted commercial property fund manager Oyster Property Group and global investment firm KKR purchased the Central Park office park in Auckland’s ...4 days ago
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