Written By: - Date published: 5:04 am, July 21st, 2009 - 88 comments
It was excellent to see Phil Goff laying down the gauntlet to Key yesterday. He announced Labour’s policy to temporarily relax partner means testing for the dole and promised a recession response package. On the same day, Key’s big achievement was noting the Hillary family had settled their dispute with Auckland museum. Goff is saying […]
Written By: - Date published: 2:20 pm, July 20th, 2009 - 12 comments
One of the stories from John Key’s days as a currency trader is that he was always more of a salesman than an analyst. He wasn’t good at picking markets and investments; he was good at getting people to trust him with their money. He got New Zealanders to put their trust in him too […]
Written By: - Date published: 9:45 am, July 20th, 2009 - 62 comments
I wish Finlay MacDonald wrote more about politics and less about cats and kids and stuff because he’s well worth reading when he’s on a serious topic.. and a weekly column in the Sunday Star-Times is a hell of a thing to waste. His piece yesterday eviscerates Key’s vacuous economic speech from last week. He […]
Written By: - Date published: 1:48 pm, July 18th, 2009 - 51 comments
John Key, sunny grin in place, says the recession’s all but over. Admits that unemployment will continue to climb (barring a miricle like, say, his government getting off its arse) until mid-2010. But he’s ‘relaxed’ about that. Says unemployment is just a “lagging indicator”. Easy to say when you’re on $393,000 a year and have […]
Written By: - Date published: 12:01 pm, July 17th, 2009 - 19 comments
I read Reserve Bank Governor Alan Bollard’s speech on Tuesday with great interest. It’s an informative, if very mainstream review of the recession thus far and the outlook. He points out “The international financial crisis actually played little role in the early part of New Zealand’s economic recession. Rather, it was drought, falling house prices […]
Written By: - Date published: 3:00 am, July 17th, 2009 - 49 comments
So, Fitch, the third of the big three sovereign credit ratings agencies, has moved the Government’s rating from a stable outlook to a negative outlook. Does this mean that John Key will be admitting that he has delivered a credit downgrade, like he was boasting of an upgrade when S&P (another of the big 3) moved us […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, July 15th, 2009 - 42 comments
I was going to do a fisking of Key’s ‘major speech‘ today. But there’s nothing to fisk, no substance, no ideas, no vision. There’s just endless recycling of the same old Crosby-Textor lines and waffle. In fact, there’s one section that is just a bunch of rehashed lines – one after the other. You get […]
Written By: - Date published: 4:10 am, July 15th, 2009 - 19 comments
Today Key is giving a major speech on the economy. He told Oliver Driver on Sunrise yesterday that it would be “pretty high level”, and he wasn’t joking. The Sir Peter Blake Awesome Stratosphere Rollercoaster will rise from Queen’s Wharf, circle the Sky tower, rise to a height of 1500m, and do a twisting loop before plunging […]
Written By: - Date published: 3:30 pm, July 14th, 2009 - 31 comments
According to NZPA John Key is going to deliver a big speech tomorrow in which he will “detail the problems and solutions for New Zealand’s economy”. I’m not holding my breath. As I said two weeks ago when he indicated he would announce a plan to stop job losses (he still hasn’t, perhaps this will […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:52 am, July 7th, 2009 - 46 comments
Now days everybody wanna talk, like they got something to say, but nothing comes out when they move their lips, just a bunch of gibberish, and all of you act like you forgot about oil. Yup, just when you thought it was safe to go back into the dealer’s lot, oil is back and in […]
Written By: - Date published: 9:11 am, July 7th, 2009 - 28 comments
It seems to me that National has fundamentally misunderstood what the foreshore and seabed debate is about. Key’s statements yesterday suggest it is about a mere symbolical recognition of an iwi’s traditional ties to sections of foreshore and seabed. It’s not. He seems to think it’s about beaches. It’s not. He seems to equate mana […]
Written By: - Date published: 5:21 am, July 7th, 2009 - 15 comments
There’s a lot of empty, over-optimistic talk around at the moment about ‘green-shoots’ in the economy. Supposedly, these are little early signs of recovery which mean that soon everything will be back to normal and we can go back to getting rich selling each other houses with money we borrowed from the Japanese. Things will get […]
Written By: - Date published: 7:55 am, July 2nd, 2009 - 39 comments
Stuff reports that McDonald’s is getting up to $16,000 of taxpayer money per person it recruits from the benefit. I doubt this per-person maximum is reached that often but it does seem that a lot of public money is going to the extremely profitable fast-food giant (and, presumably, its franchisees) every year. I’m all for […]
Written By: - Date published: 5:39 am, July 2nd, 2009 - 26 comments
National is overseeing the most dramatic rise in unemployment on record (yep, 2000 a week is more than the 1980s, more than the 1990s). They’ve got no answers, no ideas. All they can talk about is what Goff said 20 years ago and laugh. Like 2000 people a week losing their livelihoods is some kind […]
Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, July 1st, 2009 - 24 comments
I see John Key is promising new ideas to stop job-losses: We’ve got an economic strategy … and I intend over the next few weeks to spell out my thinking in that area It strikes me as another one of his vague PR-driven promises. Like the promise he made in March about the initiatives that […]
Written By: - Date published: 5:48 am, July 1st, 2009 - 104 comments
Why does this myth that the private sector is better persist in this country? At every turn, the bosses show themselves to be a bunch of greedy, short-sighted half-wits. Take Line 7. Outsourced their production to China. Built their business model on the assumption that the NZD would stay high. Didn’t hedge. NZD, predictably, falls. Business model stuffed. […]
Written By: - Date published: 5:58 am, June 30th, 2009 - 33 comments
In the face of widespread criticism that his government is asleep at the wheel, John Key has boldly relaunched some tired old spin. See, we’re meant to believe the reason why our government, alone amongst the developed countries, has done bugger-all to save and create jobs is that, rather than a ‘big-bang’, Key has adopted […]
Written By: - Date published: 1:14 am, June 24th, 2009 - 25 comments
Yesterday, Goff asked Key for some evidence that his government is doing something to save jobs. Key squirmed and squirmed. Goff: What have the three main ideas that emerged from the Job Summit, and that he promised would save or create thousands of jobs, delivered in actual job numbers? Key: I would say that the […]
Written By: - Date published: 8:43 am, June 23rd, 2009 - 17 comments
So 1,001,880 Australians visited New Zealand in the year to May, up 3.7% over the last May year despite the recession Yay? Well don’t pop the bubbly just yet. The total number of visitors fell 2.6% from 2,482,881 to 2,418,647. The decrease from other countries wiped out the gain from Australia. And here’s the important […]
Written By: - Date published: 1:34 pm, June 9th, 2009 - 23 comments
There was nothing in the Budget for productivity. Education, the foundation of producitivty, was actually cut when you take into account inflation and population growth. There was a bit more for a few more roads but shaving a few minutes of the commute has no effect on productivity. Yet Bill English is very keen for […]
Written By: - Date published: 2:28 pm, June 7th, 2009 - 63 comments
Is its business leaders. There’s Keys, the Fyfes, the Weldons. Who all spend so much money to look good on the covers of magazines. Who expect us to love them. They want to be hailed as messiahs or Atlases carrying the rest of us. These are the muppets who banged their heads together for a […]
Written By: - Date published: 3:44 pm, May 31st, 2009 - 44 comments
On Q+A this morning Guyon Espiner interviewed Bill English. Guyon had received papers from a treasury official that apparently show the cost of cancelling the government’s contributions to the Cullen Fund for 10 years will be $8 billion over and above the cost of borrowing to fund the contributions. $3.5 billion from lower value of […]
Written By: - Date published: 8:04 pm, May 29th, 2009 - 28 comments
The Budget is already costing jobs. AirNZ has announced that it will be cutting flights. 80 jobs will go. The EPMU has said it will fight hard for the jobs. It’ll be tough to save them all. Why is AirNZ cutting the flights? Not enough passengers. AirNZ was hoping for something for tourism […]
Written By: - Date published: 7:08 pm, May 28th, 2009 - 114 comments
I’ve had a dig into Treasury’s numbers and worked out that they expect the Superannuation Fund will make a 13% return next year, falling to 11% a year by 2012. Those figures seem pretty good, not too optimistic. It’s what the Fund made in ordinary years before the crunch and bear in mind the Fund […]
Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, May 28th, 2009 - 32 comments
Seems this op-ed was off-message for one of our larger media outlets, we’re happy to run it: _______________________________________ Alan Blinder, Professor of Public Affairs at Princeton recently warned Americans: ‘ Prematurely changing fiscal and monetary policies – from stepping hard on the accelerator to slamming on the brake – can be hazardous to the economy’s […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:37 am, May 25th, 2009 - 36 comments
Remember – March against National’s undemocratic supercity today 25th, noon, Queen St [More info] Thousands of protesters take to the streets of Auckland today to save local democracy. Key’s response: ‘let them eat oysters’ Nah, what he said was the hikoi is “unlikely to make a difference, is premature and the wrong forum to raise […]
Written By: - Date published: 5:35 am, May 22nd, 2009 - 53 comments
This just in – the electricity market isn’t working. Well, plenty of people were saying that would happen back in the 1990s when National insisted on giving it a go. They split up the ECNZ into four bite size pieces to compete against each other. They planned to sell them all and create a totally private electricity […]
Written By: - Date published: 1:45 pm, May 21st, 2009 - 58 comments
I reckon New Zealand’s a bit of an economic miracle really. Small country, new country without centuries of infrastructure, middle of nowhere, good only at making dead animals and animal products. Yet we’ve got one of the highest living standards in the world. Not that you would know it from our ‘business leaders’. Always whining […]
Written By: - Date published: 7:10 pm, May 20th, 2009 - 33 comments
The Fast Forward Fund was axed by the NACT government in Feburary. This was a fund that was to be invested and the proceeds and capital drawn down over 10-15 years to invest in agriculture. The funds would be distributed with equal contributions from agricultural businesses. Farming provides well over a third of our overseas […]
Written By: - Date published: 1:11 pm, May 13th, 2009 - 6 comments
Most of us work for a living, and worry about money measured in tens, hundreds, or thousands of dollars. For myself, I find the numbers involved in the economic crash and the bailouts to be so insanely huge as to be meaningless. This article summarises some of the numbers involved in America, and actually manages […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:27 am, May 11th, 2009 - 15 comments
Here’s a question for Mr Key but you can play along too. What if you could buy into an asset that performs well usually but had a very bad year last year? Because of that bad year, the price is now at historically low levels but the outlook over the short and long term is […]
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