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6:00 am, July 9th, 2025 - 39 comments
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What happened to the Epstein Client List?
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What happened to the Epstein Client List?
Yesterday tge Minister of Local Government praised Selwyn District as the first to get its new water entity CCO up. Basically keeps it to themselves and doesn't share.
And also yesterday Waitaki pulled out of the Southland-Gore-Clutha water group.
Dunedin retains its water entity. So does Christchurch. And Queenstown-Lakes.
All those anti-Three Waters areas aren't buying the National alternative.
Santana just bought nearly 3,000 hectares above Tarras ready for the new Bendigo gold mine.
This will dwarf Macraes monster pit. It's happening and it's mad.
Gee you've made to comments in to days about goings on without citing or linking, just random little rants, 🤔
Here you go.
https://www.odt.co.nz/regions/central-otago/santana-buys-2800ha-central
He does have a credible track record…does this count for nothing?
Just being naughty ad might know why,
I'd love to know why he's anti the mine , because it's mining or because it's will sully the holiday homes back yard?
I freely admit that Otago's economy was founded on gold mining, and that the Bendigo seam was mined successfully for gold for decades.
I also happily agree that this is the right time to be mining gold at over US$3,200 an ounce which is extraordinary.
There's good grounds to be against it.
– New Zealanders including locals had no capacity to object to it since it was one of the legislated Fast Track projects. Truly insufficient scrutiny of all of its effects.
– It will be easily the size of the Macraes mine which has essentially formed a new mountain range with the tailings, and a new toxic lake with the evaporating sludge. Go on line and check out the scale of that thing; far, far bigger than Waihi.
– I object to the "quarry-enclave" economy we should be getting away from. We have dead and dying viollages up and down the west Coast if you want to see what that is. It generates a wee temporary enclave of beneficiaries with solid salaries, then it closes down once the resource is extracted and there's no sustained economy to keep a village or town going.
– The socialised harm for the public to deal with is towards the end of the life of the mine, and that always falls on you and me. Inevitably the company is nowhere to be found when it comes to rehabilitation of toxic dumps, cyanide sludge dams, and actual landscape-scale rehabilitation.
Does the machine you're reading this on contain any gold? If so, where would you prefer the gold to be mined?
I'd prefer we had right to repair globally, and we used our big monkey brains to make tech more sustainable, thus necessitating less mining. But it's a fair point that the left struggles to address.
Imo, this kind of issue points directly at the need for a steady state or even degrowth economy rather than perpetual growth one. We live on a finite planet, both in terms of resources and waste. Doughnut economics is a useful model that's in reach of our current ways of thinking if degrowth is too much to take in. But ultimately we have been living beyond our means and at some point that will bite us, very badly.
No need to mine it, there's tens of thousands of tonnes of gold reserves doing pretty much nothing as is – such is the 'economic wisdom' of man.
Of the 4,000 tonnes of gold used each year, over half is for jewellery. At that rate of use, global gold reserves would last about a century.
Civilisation has enough gold reserves to make ~180 billion computers!
Makes you think?
Oops, got the calculation for how long the global gold reserves would last wrong. They would last over a century if they were used for technology only, but their use for jewellery, investment et al. would cut that to ~10 years without recycling.
https://www.gold.org/goldhub/data/gold-demand-by-country
Trillions of dollars of useful metal sitting around in bank vaults doing nothing certainly seems like a waste. But I can't helping thinking it's the most spectacular Chesterton's Fence in the world.
https://www.fma.govt.nz/library/warnings-and-alerts/fraudulent-cryptocurrency-investment-platforms/
https://www.fma.govt.nz/consumer/investing/types-of-investments/cryptocurrencies/
Better than Crypto – we're all gonna be sorted! What a wonderful world
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptocurrency_in_the_second_Donald_Trump_administration
I would imagine that national being such amazing deal making business leaders they will make sure that most of the money will stay in aotearoa so that all the down sides you talk of can be mitigated and or remediated
Waihi residents could doubtless give some useful information on what it is like to have gold mining on a large scale.
Sure, jobs emerge for some (which is all the politicians want to hear) but there are downsides which only appear later.
"does this count for nothing?*
No, because it that would come down to how popular the claims are.
One person's proven track record is another's anti-vaxxer
Conflict of Interest? We don' need no steenkin' conflict of interest ! (fyi : blazing saddles bandits)
Scott is not only Dynes Transport ( a rural trucker outfit from Tapanui) he also has much involvement with HW Richardson….
There was competition for this No Conflict project…..
Until we get a really well funded Commerce Commission with powers more like the ACCC, in reality New Zealand's entire political economy is just a series of tight postcolonial networks with a few upstarts thrown in each decade.
"series of tight postcolonial networks" = small-time, provincial, politely 'Kiwi' mafia
It's not just corruption but also talentless cronyism that you get from this atrocious COC….I'm still getting over Paul Henry being appointed to the TVNZ board.
So inappropriate.
One term government.
IMO you could substitute town for time, and be also on the money as it were.
As I (and others) are well aware, these hidden 1%er gangs really run them.Very lucrative. Membership ? Those who know the reality of it all..will indeed know who they are.
And it only cost twenty grand…to get $8million taxpayer paid subsidy..
That is some return on investment..
..and politicians come quite cheap in this country .eh..?
Yep, this CoC lot aims to take what’s left of the Kiwi commons – thick as thieves.
Public assets must go Go GO! That revenue rightfully belongs to the sorted.
Not that I would expect either truth or gratitude from our squillionaire class no matter how glorious their technological prowess, could Peter Beck scale the hubris back just a smidge?
In case anyone forgets, the New Zealand government had to set up an entire new regulatory arm just to deal with this business. And in actual taxpayer subsidy to get it off the ground so to speak, Beck should at least thank the following taxpayers for these subsidies:
The Economy is going backwards at a huge rate, the lady who repairs my watches told me her business is down 70% on even their meat and potatoes stuff, and the neighbour – a well regarded builder with several staff – has laid everyone off and is on the verge of a mental breakdown since he has had no substantial work for three months. local retail is in free fall, our regular café has reduced hours and got rid of staff.
If this was happening under a Labour govt NZME would have wall to wall coverage. Instead, we get snide sniping at Hipkins and silence on the real economy.
Yes, I am in construction and it's pretty ugly out there, Since the interest rates have almost hit the lowest they will go I think the hurt is about to get worse towards the end of this year as it gave a small break earlier in the year. The cost of living, expenses, materials, gas all still on the rise has lots of companies on the line.
Every business is in the same boat, its going to take a long time to improve. It will take a while for people to come off their fixed rates and onto the lower rates not to mention fincancially recover. Lots of young people servicing 750k and up mortgages that basically have no discretionary spending at last years interest rates.
Given its the first time lots of mortgage holders have experienced higher interest rates suspect people are going to be far more cautious before topping up the mortgage for a new kitchen, car or holiday and banks wont lend so readily either as a heap of equity has been lost if you enterered the market in the last 3-4 years.
What is making the cost of construction materials rise?
Because government’s budget is just like a household budget.
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Briefly in the news from Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, poverty and climate on Tuesday, July 8:
[…]
(full size image https://d5xv2m7azciwm3.archive.li/fKkJX/2dc0b92c176853e13164263e6596ca8886e416ee.webp )
https://thekaka.substack.com/p/nz-economy-sliding-back-into-recession
Great graph. Very depressing.
There is no recession in New Zealand, at least not under a NAct govt – Yeah right.
Geoff Bertram has such a cheek to ask that question! Nicky No Boats' economic chops are the stuff of myth and legend – a bit like Liz Truss.
On top of the patsy msm interviews and various soapboxes for coalition friendly views the sheeple get well funded spin out and about.
Tron has Potaka up on a large e-bill board claiming reduced emergency housing and more against a thumbs up economy.
Not to worry – last night's Seven Sharp led with a riveting and timely item on tea towels vs air drying for the dishes. As good as it gets in the ‘keeping it light’ dept.
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/shows/seven-sharp/episodes/s2025-e103
Tama push-up Potaka : Not necessarily….
Deny Deny Deny but here some Irony…(unintended Im sure)
Previously , Luxury Luxon also rejected an obvious. (Well thats always a given)
You cannot measure pain but there’s a lot of underlying pain in NZ.
https://www.interest.co.nz/economy/134140/reserve-bank-plans-keep-cutting-rates-doesn%E2%80%99t-want-risk-inflation-reigniting
Media and business told themselves that the little corporal wouldn’t do the insane things he said he was going to do, too
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Hitler’s Terrible Tariffs
By seeking to “liberate” Germans from a globalized world order, the Nazi government sent the national economy careening backwards.
By Timothy W. Ryback
From almost the moment Adolf Hitler took office as chancellor of Germany, tariffs were at the top of his government’s economic agenda. The agricultural sector’s demands for higher tariffs “must be met,” Hitler’s economic minister, Alfred Hugenberg, declared on Wednesday, February 1, 1933, just over 48 hours into Hitler’s chancellorship, “while at the same time preventing harm to industry.” Foreign Minister Konstantin von Neurath was concerned about lumber imports from Austria and a 200-million-reichsmark trade deal with Russia. With several trade agreements about to expire, Hitler’s finance minister, Count Johann Ludwig Graf Schwerin von Krosigk, insisted that “immediate decisions” needed to be made. Hitler told his cabinet he had only one priority—to avoid “unacceptable unrest” in advance of the March 5 Reichstag elections, which he saw as key to his hold on power.
[…]
“National Socialism demands that the needs of German workers no longer be supplied by Soviet slaves, Chinese coolies, and Negroes,” Feder wrote. Germany needed German workers and farmers producing German goods for German consumers. Feder saw “import restrictions” as key to returning the German economy to the Germans. “National Socialism opposes the liberal world economy, as well as the Marxist world economy,” Feder wrote. Our fellow Germans must “be protected from foreign competition.”
Even though Hitler’s own foreign minister, Konstantin von Neurath, was concerned that the strategy would spark a trade war, and could drive up the price of imported eggs by 600 percent, Feder’s tariffs fit into Hitler’s larger vision for “liberating” the German people from the shackles of a globalized world order.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/04/nazi-germany-tariffs-trade/682521/
archivedotli
Tariffs and protectionism are not always a bad thing.
Undirected and idealogical ones imposed at random by fools such as Trump are dysfunctional.
However, note that our dairy industry grew because we have mollycoddled it with protection, subsidies and Government assistance. Something which many of our potentially more economically productive industries, could well have done with!
Working people can see perfectly well that they have been, mostly, the losers with the idealogical mania for “Free trade” and globalisation.
I can see the attraction of the alternatives.