Written By:
- Date published:
12:03 pm, December 23rd, 2025 - 11 comments
Categories: China, climate change, Deep stuff, election 2026, energy, Environment, International, nicola willis, science, Ukraine, uncategorized -
Tags:
1. In 2026 New Zealand will agree with Ruth Richardson …
… that this is the worst Minister of Finance we’ve had in 50 years. Government income has declined even faster than forecast because they refuse to admit how much impact public spending has in a small country. There’s no surplus, public debt is far worse than they inherited, and public cost pressures are going through the roof. Willis keeps her job because no one wants it.
2. There will be no AI-induced sharemarket collapse in 2026 …
… because a number of the big US tech stocks with high AI exposure are actually making money already and have already survived the DotCom bubble and the 2008 GFC and come out strong. And the Chinese government will continue to effectively underwrite their own AI industry. That’s good for all our Kiwisaver accounts.
3. Labour will get just above 40% of the seats in the November 2026 election but won’t go into power with NZFirst.
Labour gets 6 of the 7 Maori seats and over 38% of the vote. Not because NZFirst is too big a rat to swallow for Labour: the taste of power tends to expand the throat. But neither NZFirst nor the Greens will alone be strong enough to form a binary coalition with Labour. And National recover just enough on the strength of a very slightly improved late 2026 economy.
4. New Zealand major food manufacturers are finally forced by supermarket chains to pressure our farmers to improve environmental standards.
Tesco, Aldi, Waitrose and Carrefour are already well down this road, but it’s Edeka and Rewe that really pile the pressure on us from Europe. And Europe is still where we get the best prices. And our dairy farmers still won’t care because in 2026 they are wallowing in the ginormous once-in-a-lifetime Fonterra cash payout.
5. In 2026, Europe in particular Poland forms a full Berlin-1948 embargo around Kaliningrad enclave …
If Hungary’s Victor Orban is defeated in April it’s a fully NATO-backed move. If not, it’s Poland and Estonia with tacit approval from the rest of Europe. It’s a bargaining chip for Ukraine, and it helps.
6. Oil in 2026 goes down to US$62 a barrel and stays
Which is too expensive for economic shale recovery and many of the new deepwater fields off Brazil. It may be too late for decreasing climate instability, but talking life beyond oil becomes more normal.
7. New Zealand’s 2026 economic dynamism and growth is driven by the South Island
From employment to poverty, inward business investment to real estate prices, town centre revitalisation to manufacturing, the North Island on the whole continues to struggle through 2026 and the South Island finally has a full-throated flourish. The North Island drags.
8. Australian defence links with south east Asian countries become strong enough to properly hedge against the disloyalty and instability of the United States …
… and we rapidly follow suit with them. The US notices.
9. New Zealand forgets to prepare for its bicentenary in 14 years time
… mostly because no one has the courage or brains to form a single written constitution that incorporates the Treaty of Waitangi and Clause 6 of the Australian constitution enabling a broader Australasian Federation. At least Sesqui 1990 did something.
10. China forms a trade blockade against Taiwan and the US lets them do it …
… and as a result about the same happens to Taiwan as happened to Hong Kong.
Here's one from me: Trump will not last through to the mid-terms.
Either he'll die or be so incapacitated he'll be removed from office. That might mean that Steven Miller and/or Russ Vought, backed by Musk and other billionaires, with ICE as enforcers, stages a coup!!
I think if the 200th passes by without people realizing it would be a good thing. Judging by the cluster%$#@ that the 2019 Cook Sesqui was in Tairawhiti. As well as obvious tensions around celebrating/commemorating Cook on the ground there was the ugliest factional fighiting over which group & vested interests could get hold of the magical 'funding'…. it was all awful/boring/manufactured.
"If Hungary’s Victor Orban is defeated in April it’s a fully NATO-backed move. If not, it’s Poland and Estonia with tacit approval from the rest of Europe. It’s a bargaining chip for Ukraine, and it helps."
A spectacular achievement given that Estonia has no border with Kaliningrad do you perhaps mean Lithuania?
Blockade on Kalinigrad
The Sulweki Gap.
My prediction is that the government is patting itself on the back for tweaking interest rates to tighten then loosen the economy so it can blame the tightening on the left and the loosening on themselves, not realizing the potential for global events that could overwhelm the interest rate manipulations.
Like TV said, Trump might not see out the term. J D Vance as POTUS? That would make America sneeze and NZ catch a cold, right on election campaign time.
What will stuff up the government patting itself on the back for tweaking interest rates will be the 2026 increased austerity budget. Reducing public spending even further, as our Monster of Finance is planning, will kill off any private sector 'revival".
Craig Renney outlines just how bad it may get with the 2026 austerity budget!
'Survive through 25' will become 'We're in a fix in 26!'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgNRB-1WDLE
Just over 4 minutes long.
So many retailers having their post Christmas sales before Christmas.
NOT the sign of an economy in recovery.
Pretty common in recent years to have the Boxing Day sales start online some time on Christmas Eve.
Point 4 is worrying. If even a small percentage of dairy farmers don’t care what happens to the environment as long as they get a fat payment, the entire nation is stuffed.
Now Fontera has sold the retail brands that pressure to be environmentally responsible is external, rather than Fontera management, and the more outward looking shareholders, trying to win the voting battle against the knuckle draggers around environmental responsibility.
Fontera and its farmer shareholders will have to do what the market wants or see their once cherished brands made from someone else's milk. At which point Fontera might become a much smaller and lonelier company bleeding farmer suppliers to processors that can place their milk on the shelves.
The brand sale could turn out to be the catalyst for the dairy industry to put pressure on the less responsible operators and get them to change, or it could precipitate a two tier industry. It'll depend on whether the knuckle draggers can find enough market at a price to be more profitable than the alternatives.