Posts on the economy, work, business, income, and labour
Written By: - Date published: 9:55 pm, July 1st, 2012 - 13 comments
Another British bank scandal – interest rate-swapping on small business loans. Banks offered small businesses supposedly low hedging insurance on interest rate movements, knew they could get cheaper rates themselves because they had better market information, and pocketed the difference as guaranteed profit. It would be interesting to know if the same thing happens here.
Written By: - Date published: 10:31 am, July 1st, 2012 - 1 comment
I’m going to try and put up a piece each Sunday of interesting, longer, deeper stories I found during the week. It’s also a chance for you to share what you found this week too. Those stimulating links you wanted to share, but just didn’t fit in anywhere (no linkwhoring). This week: Feminism, capitalism & resource depletion.
Written By: - Date published: 7:07 am, July 1st, 2012 - 81 comments
In a desperate effort to hang on to a few red-neck votes, National keeps on ramping up rhetoric against solo mums. There was talk of compulsory contraception or sterilisation. National played up those ideas, even though it hasn’t followed through. Is it any surprise, then, that poor mums, who don’t follow the news closely, just hear the rumours, are being scared into abortions?
Written By: - Date published: 1:48 pm, June 30th, 2012 - 8 comments
Just before the parliamentary recess National released its latest set of Laura Naude targets. They will join all the others – catching up with Australia, jobs from the cycleway, government surplus by 2014, yadda yadda yadda. I can’t think of a single target National has actually met. These targets aren’t real; they are just there to provide fodder for uncritical media.
Written By: - Date published: 10:18 am, June 30th, 2012 - 24 comments
Banks engaged in market fixing. What a surprise. No doubt someone will be held to account…
Written By: - Date published: 5:21 pm, June 29th, 2012 - 39 comments
So here is the story that will probably summarise this government in the history books. The whole cabinet delegated responsibility to John Key and Bill English to achieve their promised land of surplus in 2014/15. They defined themselves as the only party that could deliver this goal, they jettisoned all other goals in pursuit of a single number, and they can’t even achieve it…
Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, June 29th, 2012 - 21 comments
Shanghai Pengxin’s bid to buy the Crafar Farms was accepted the 2nd time on promises it would invest in building the farms’ productivity in a way a New Zealand buyer couldn’t. Instead, they immediately turned around and tried to sell 3 of the farms at an outrageous profit. Pengxin has shown it has no intent of being bound to the commitments it has made.
Written By: - Date published: 9:45 am, June 29th, 2012 - 40 comments
We’re getting used to the Nats running bash the beneficiary /poor /Maori /unemployed /criminal /etc distractions but it’s getting pretty bad when Bill English gets in on the act. Weirdly his idea of drug-testing beneficiaries seems to have been picked up from a Daily Show piece on how it failed in Florida – costing money, not saving it, and proving beneficiaries use drugs less than the rest of the population.
Written By: - Date published: 11:07 am, June 28th, 2012 - 60 comments
Now the legislation to sell our assets has passed, the question on lefties’ minds is whether it’s more principled to refuse to buy them or to spend the money to ensure they don’t get sold offshore.
What’s not getting a lot of attention is whether they’re actually the great investment our Prime Minister keeps insisting they are…
Written By: - Date published: 12:14 pm, June 27th, 2012 - 12 comments
Competition is the wrong model for education, and National’s nonsense “league tables” are going to make it worse…
Written By: - Date published: 5:17 pm, June 26th, 2012 - 239 comments
They’re quite literally selling our country down the river.
Written By: - Date published: 1:54 pm, June 26th, 2012 - 6 comments
John Key must think the New Zealand public have the memory of a goldfish. He’s put forward bold plans before, but they usually end in failure. Closing the income gap with Australia, creating more jobs, reducing the number of people fleeing to a better life in Australia. And now the promise to get back into budget surplus, which he’s already backtracking on.
Written By: - Date published: 12:57 pm, June 26th, 2012 - 2 comments
That’s the Guardian headline. Supposedly designed to give the Tories “political momentum”, it is late and over budget. The Treasury is resigned to the programme costing money rather than providing savings. The LibDems won’t have a bar of it. Critics describe it as “pitch-rolling”, preparing the ground for further “reforms”. More like spin-bowling here.
Written By: - Date published: 10:32 am, June 26th, 2012 - 12 comments
National’s Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill will do significant damage to local democracy as they seek to restrict councils to “core” services, put in fiscal constraints, put power into fewer hands and override local concerns with amalgamations. Overall the legislation is shoddy. The Regulatory Impact Statement on the Government’s proposals from the Department of […]
Written By: - Date published: 8:58 am, June 26th, 2012 - 10 comments
Now we learn that directors’ fees are set to double after National sells or assets. Who pays for the fat-cats to get twice the cream for the same work? We do. Through higher power prices. It’s just another cost of privatisation that we all pay – despite the fact that Treasury reckons 95% of us won’t buy shares. No wonder 100,000 of us have signed the referendum petition already.
Written By: - Date published: 7:15 am, June 26th, 2012 - 73 comments
“More than 20,000 unemployed people will be moved off the benefit within five years if the Government manages to meet its newly announced targets.”
Yes, but a target isn’t a plan.
Written By: - Date published: 9:37 pm, June 25th, 2012 - 39 comments
There – “Cameron announces Tory plan to slash benefits.” Here – “The Government wants Work and Income to cut the number of long-term beneficiaries on a working-age benefit, John Key has just announced.” Tories normally do this when they are in trouble.
Written By: - Date published: 8:25 am, June 25th, 2012 - 54 comments
There is a sociopathic policy of the leadership at ACC, which sees staff financially incentivised to push long-term claimants off ACC leading to many of them going on the benefit rather than getting rehabilitation. Now, we have proof that this policy came right from the top. National ministers set arbitrary targets for the number of long-term claimants to be booted.
Written By: - Date published: 12:15 pm, June 24th, 2012 - 44 comments
While we the public distract ourselves with trivia like car crushing, and focus on other important matters like asset sales, the TPPA which is quietly unfolding in the background is actually the most important ongoing political issue. It has potentially disastrous implications for our sovereignty and our future.
Written By: - Date published: 11:09 am, June 24th, 2012 - 57 comments
It’s sickening to see rich ministers and columnists saying ‘of course we need to green the economy’ and then turnaround and promote fossil fuel extraction and agricultural intensification – things that will ultimately wreck the environment and the economy that is built on it. The truth is, we’re a hugely wealthy country already – it’s just most of the wealth is with the endlessly greedy elite.
Written By: - Date published: 9:59 am, June 23rd, 2012 - 12 comments
“Markets have become increasingly concerned that the austerity programmes in the eurozone are causing a vicious circle of recession”, and “Markets were confused by mixed messages from European capitals”. I have only one word of reply: Bollocks. Did anyone phone me to ask how I, The Markets, was feeling about these subjects? Did they hell!
Written By: - Date published: 8:55 am, June 22nd, 2012 - 90 comments
Kevin Hague has discovered ACC managers are getting bonuses for kicking people off the scheme.
That’s not surprising – this government beats up on the weak almost as much as it sucks up to the powerful.
Written By: - Date published: 6:45 am, June 22nd, 2012 - 24 comments
When the government is hooting and hollering over 1.7% annual growth, it’s time to admit we’ve entered a new paradigm. In the past, you would have expected 4-5% growth coming out of a recession. Now, anything above the rate of population growth is treated as a miracle. Growth as we used to know it isn’t coming back. What does that mean for economic policy?
Written By: - Date published: 12:43 pm, June 21st, 2012 - 31 comments
It looks like the Nats’ attempt to pull a swindle on the meaning of “51% ownership” has been averted.
Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, June 21st, 2012 - 34 comments
Who guards the guardians if the police march on Parliament?
Written By: - Date published: 10:07 am, June 21st, 2012 - 20 comments
To paraphrase Mr Wilde, losing 1 board member looks unfortunate, but losing 4 & a CEO looks like a minister losing control of her portfolio. As much as the botox allows, Collins didn’t look happy when board member number 4 quit. But mama said never trust a tory. Expect the Nats to try to turn events to their advantage. Privatisation isn’t off the table.
Written By: - Date published: 3:04 pm, June 20th, 2012 - 41 comments
A draft agreement has been negotiated for the Rio+20 summit that starts today, but anyone who cares about the future of our planet should be disappointed. The expert panel of nobel laureates, scientists and ministers’ call to ‘seize the moment’ has largely gone unheeded, as the agreement is full of empty promises and lacking in concrete commitments.
Written By: - Date published: 1:41 pm, June 20th, 2012 - 48 comments
Written By: - Date published: 12:16 pm, June 20th, 2012 - 26 comments
Darkhorse writes amazingly insightful economic pieces on his ‘How Daft’ blog (the title gives you a clue as to what he thinks of the current state of affairs). The neoliberal experiment has been an abject failure by any rational measure. And there are alternatives. Darkhorse has given us permission to syndicate his posts, the originals are here.
Written By: - Date published: 7:15 am, June 20th, 2012 - 87 comments
Bill English has attacked the MED numbers showing that private electricity companies are 12% more expensive than public ones saying that argument assumes “that hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders are systematically paying more for electricity than they could?”. Um… Has English heard of Powerswitch? That multi-million dollar government campaign is based on exactly that premise.
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