Climate change, peak oil, resource exhaustion, and over-population are combing to cause a new food crisis. Grains supply half the calories we consume directly and feed much of our live-stock. The prices of those are skyrocketing because supply can’t match demand. Starting with Russia, major exporters are limiting the amount they send abroad to keep what they have for their own people.
In his own surreal and ultra-privileged way Paul Holmes has discovered the recession. And it seems to have shaken him up a bit. Paul cuts loose with some Holmes truths about the useless Nat government. But in claiming that there is no alternative Holmes reveals nothing but his own lack of vision…
Perpetual growth is the cornerstone of our liberal democratic/capitalist system. It is fundamentally threatened. A double-dip recession is widely expected but most aren’t prepared to acknowledge the underlying problem that isn’t going away.
The recent global recession represented a spectacular failure of unfettered capitalism. We never felt the full force and completeness of that failure because the worst was averted – or rather just delayed – by vast injections of Government bailout money. America has learned its lesson, yesterday passing the strictest restrictions on banks and Wall Street since the Great Depression.
I’m really surprised that this comment from John Key hasn’t elicited more reaction: “[Future] recessions are almost certainly in my view going to be global in nature and probably more severe… I think the question is not whether there is going to be another global recession but when that recession is going to hit.” A sovereign debt crisis this year or an oil supply crunch in 2012?
The recent recession represented a spectacular failure of unfettered capitalism. One of the main causes in America was a picking apart of financial regulations. This allowed the “innovative” products and practices that brought the system down. Perhaps America has learned the lesson. A new Democratic proposal outlines “the biggest overhaul of regulations since the New Deal”.
Leading US economist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman sees a 30-40% chance of the US re-rentering recession this year, and the conditions that […]
“2500 people waited up to seven hours to apply for one of 150 jobs at a new South Auckland supermarket”* OK, maybe 16 […]
Well, I didn’t think it could done but it has been. National has been promising to close the gap with Australia, and damned […]
Recessions are meant to be about fixing economic problems that built up during the previous boom – unwinding imbalances in the parlance. Higher […]
A range of interesting political/economic comment today in the Herald: Fran O’Sullivan joins the left-wing and groups like Federated Farmers in calling on […]
The newly released figures show 0.1% growth in the June quarter. The March figure was also revised up to -0.8% (from -1.0%). Here […]
A coalition of unions, Labour, the Greens, the Maori Party, and community groups has come together to support Darian Fenton’s Redundancy Protection Bill. […]
The economists think the recession is probably over (for now). If you’re one of the lucky ones, you may very well be thinking ‘well […]
Jon Stewart talks to Austan Goolsbee, Chief Economist for President Obama’s Economic Recovery Board: “when you’re looking in the face of the next […]
One of Bill English’s favourite lines is that New Zealand entered recession ahead of the rest of the world ‘due to Labour’s mismanagement […]
No, not another post about Bludger Bill, this one’s about that thing that he and Key are meant to be taking care of. […]
Today the Household Labour Force Survey, which includes the official measure of unemployment, will be out. The headline number is expected to be […]
17,000 youth jobs. That’s what Key has promised with a $152 million programme (some of this is existing money). Like Colin Espiner says […]
Tomorrow John Key will be announcing policies on youth unemployment. Looks like rehashing of the already announced Youth Guarantee and probably something more. […]
‘A nightmare’ scenario. That’s how ANZ chief economist Cameron Bagrie speaking on Morning Report described the outlook for the economy as the recession […]
Normally, $9 million in government spending is such a puny amount it’s not worth covering but as Key has nailed his crediblity to […]
Like New Zealand, the UK has had a deluge of ‘green-shoots’ news from the corporate media and the financiers desperate to jawbone the […]
Exiled Online, a US site, has excellent coverage of the recession and the sub-prime crisis from a ground-level view. Yasha Levine moved to […]
It was excellent to see Phil Goff laying down the gauntlet to Key yesterday. He announced Labour’s policy to temporarily relax partner means […]
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 […]
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. […]
According to NZPA John Key is going to deliver a big speech tomorrow in which he will “detail the problems and solutions for […]
The Herald’s ‘Mood of the Boardroom’ survey is predictable reading. Year after year, it’s the same ideologues with the same outdated ideas. The […]
As you know, things are tough in the job market at the moment. The firm figures won’t be out until later this month […]
Now days everybody wanna talk, like they got something to say, but nothing comes out when they move their lips, just a bunch […]
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 […]
National is overseeing the most dramatic rise in unemployment on record (yep, 2000 a week is more than the 1980s, more than the […]
I remember just over a year ago, Helen Clark announcing that the number of people on the unemployment benefit had fallen below 18,000 […]
John Key’s government has reacted to the thousands of job losses occurring each week in this country in much the same way a […]
