Written By: - Date published: 10:18 am, March 26th, 2009 - 10 comments
Toad’s post on coastal shipping deserves re-posting: Coastal shipping is the most energy efficient means of moving freight. A ship consumes 75 – 80 percent less fuel than a truck per tonne hauled. It’s just got to be the way to go. The United States finally seems to be seeing this. A Bill before the […]
Written By: - Date published: 8:46 am, March 26th, 2009 - 39 comments
Stephen Joyce keeps saying the reason he has slashed investment in public transport to build more roads is that he is giving the people what they want. He says most people get to work in a car, so people must want cars. What wonderful logic. Imagine if we hadn’t introduced public health-care or public education because, […]
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 […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:08 am, March 20th, 2009 - 34 comments
The Government is taking nearly half a billion dollars out of public transport, cycling, walking, road maintance, and traffic policing to pay for more state highways. Transport Minister Steven Joyce’s reasoning for this – ‘86% of people go to work by car’. Doesn’t he get that people have to go by car because there aren’t […]
Written By: - Date published: 5:06 pm, March 19th, 2009 - 19 comments
The National Business Review has an interesting article online that suggests Simon Power’s recommendation of Dr Mark Berry to take over from Paula Rebstock as chair of the Commerce Commission is a sign the government is planning a radical deregulation of the competition landscape. The piece even goes as far as to describe Dr Berry […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:49 am, March 18th, 2009 - 32 comments
Over the weekend I pointed out that National’s plans to review the Overseas Investment Act would lead to even more foreign control of New Zealand and, ultimately, even more of our national wealth sucked offshore to pay the dividends of overseas shareholders. Murray Horton from the Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa weighs in today, […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:37 am, March 18th, 2009 - 21 comments
John Key in the NBR*: There is more chance in this decade than the last one of New Zealand moving up the OECD league table because other countries are moving backwards. So, it’s OK if we’re getting poorer because other countries are getting poorer even faster. Not so ambitious for New Zealand after all I […]
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 […]
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 […]
Written By: - Date published: 3:32 pm, March 12th, 2009 - 17 comments
Last week, Jon Stewart poked fun at the media who cheer-led the housing and stockmarket bubbles and are now blaming the people who took on subprime mortgages for the financial crisis. They bit back with hilarious results. Jon is interviewing Cramer today, it will screen Friday night here on C4.
Written By: - Date published: 6:04 pm, March 11th, 2009 - 53 comments
The 9 day fortnight scheme has finally been announced but I’ve got a few questions: Why do the taxpayer and the worker have to pay but the employer not? What about free training? Surely that would fit with the productivity argument National’s been making? Does anyone realise that those on the average wage would take […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:39 pm, March 8th, 2009 - 33 comments
The Obama administration has halted free trade talks with New Zealand. On one hand free trade is simply increased freedom of capital and without equivalent freedom of labour lends itself toward increased disparity between rich and poor. On the other hand Douglas and his neo-liberal thugs left us with no protections at all in the […]
Written By: - Date published: 2:21 pm, March 8th, 2009 - 26 comments
Gordon Campbell has been having fun pointing the finger at Treasury in “How Treasury put us on the hook to finance companies“. Essentially the treasury and therefore Bill English appear to have been somewhat idiotic. If a firm stopped taking deposits last September, and was heavily exposed in the current economic climate to a major […]
Written By: - Date published: 5:06 pm, March 6th, 2009 - 41 comments
The EPMU have released a short film on youtube explaining the recession and their response to it. It features Brian Easton, Gareth Morgan, Pete Conway and EPMU Secretary Andrew Little. It’s sobering viewing.
Written By: - Date published: 5:35 am, March 6th, 2009 - 68 comments
Helps if it’s pointing the right way, too. Great work Adders.
Written By: - Date published: 2:22 pm, March 5th, 2009 - 26 comments
A few points on the ACC issue and one on Kiwirail. Nick Smith says that, with assets of $10 and liabilities of $21 billion, if ACC were an insurance company it would have gone under years ago. But it’s not an insurance company. Because its costs can be met by the sovereign revenue raising power […]
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 […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:52 am, March 3rd, 2009 - 50 comments
Despite making sound profits Sealord are laying off 180 workers in Nelson. They claim the move is part of restructuring and that there will be fifty new jobs aboard factory ships that will fully process fish. Remaining workers are also being asked to take a pay cut. I’m not sure I buy that. Even with […]
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, […]
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 […]
Written By: - Date published: 1:14 pm, February 28th, 2009 - 44 comments
The crazy right-wing antics of today’s Herald would be funny if it wasn’t for the fact it’s the main paper in New Zealand’s largest city. First we’ve got Fran O’Sullivan talking about the need for the government cutting costs (I suspect she wrote the absurd editorial I commented on earlier this week). Essentially it’s more […]
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 […]
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 […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:26 am, February 27th, 2009 - 18 comments
Bill English is holding the country’s purse like an old woman on the subway. Far from doing what every other country is doing, injecting an adrenaline shot of spending into the economy to restore confidence by breaking the negative cycle, English is repeating the mistakes he made when he was Finance Minister during the Asian Crisis […]
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 […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:50 am, February 26th, 2009 - 4 comments
The Herald is again demonstrating its economic ignorance with its call for spending cuts in today’s editorial: Something has to give. If National will not postpone tax cuts due in April, it must trim some of the programmes it has inherited. The most costly of them, interest-free student loans, free childcare, KiwiSaver subsidies and the […]
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 […]
Written By: - Date published: 1:27 pm, February 25th, 2009 - 33 comments
For those of you who missed Brian Easton’s recent talk on the recession at Drinking Liberally Wgtn (or just couldn’t hear over the rain) the papers are now up online. It’s fascinating reading, if a little frightening. Part I on the world economy is here, and Part II on the New Zealand economy is here. […]
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 […]
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