What was available could have been shared out more fairly, but the Budget’s courageous realism kept the shotguns unloaded Listener: 4 June, 2011. Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money; Mentioning credit ratings at the 2011 budget was like mentioning sex at a wedding. Everyone knows, but you dont say it. Instead they focus on the feast and…
Continue reading this entry »
Listener: 28 May, 2011. Keywords: Political Economy & History; India told those negotiating the Doha Round – the multilateral attempt to liberalise world trade – it had over 700 million people dependent on subsistence farming, more than the entire populations of the European Union and the United States combined. It was not willing to sacrifice…
Continue reading this entry »
Wairarapa Institute of International Affairs: 25 May, 2011. Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; It is easy thinking about the future by projecting recent trends. But if the past is a foreign country, so is the future . Tonight I am going to paint a scenario of a world economy which will be very different from anything…
Continue reading this entry »
This was a note I wrote – ‘Listener’ style – in response to the critics of the 2011 budget. Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money; Dealing with addiction is confounded by denial: ‘I’m not a drunk’; ‘One more wont hurt’; ‘I need it to get through the day’; ‘He drinks more than me’. ‘I’ve cut back my…
Continue reading this entry »
Listener: 9 May, 2011 Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money; Regulation & Taxation; John Key has shown considerable ability responding to the moods of the New Zealand public. That’s why I’m astonished by his rejection of an earthquake levy, involving a relatively small tax on income over 10 or more years to pay off the costs incurred…
Continue reading this entry »
Listener: April 26, 2011 Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money; ‘We object so strongly to having our own incomes further reduced by taxation that we think the incomes of pensioners should be reduced instead … In times of depression it is necessary to curtail the community’s consumption of many goods and services. Already people with large or…
Continue reading this entry »
Listener: April 16, 2011 Keywords: Political Economy & History; In 1947, newly independent India embarked on a strategy of economic self-sufficiency in which domestic industry was protected from external competition behind high barriers. That reflected the fashion of the times, but also that Indian industry had had a pretty rough deal under colonial rule. It…
Continue reading this entry »
Sunday Star Times: 3 April, 2011. Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money; The government may come to regret its decision not to impose an earthquake levy on taxable income. It says the public is not interested. That is not the sense I have. New Zealanders are dismayed by the devastation in Christchurch. There is a widespread desire…
Continue reading this entry »
Listener: April 2, 2011 Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money; As the nation comes together in its response to the Christ church earthquake, the activities of opportunists are particularly detestable. Most obvious were the few looters taking advantage of people’s unprotected homes. But the worst case of opportunism may be in economic policy, when it is claimed…
Continue reading this entry »
In March 2011 we were invited by the Editor of the Christchurch City Libraries’ Digital Library Web Team, Richard Liddicoat, to write something for the Canterbury Earthquake for the Christchurch Public Library. Keywords: Literature and Culture; Dear Richard, I could not write to anyone in the Christchurch Public Library about what is happening after the…
Continue reading this entry »
Earthquakes are bad for the economy, despite the wool some are trying to pull. Listener: 19 March, 2011. Keywords: History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy; Business journalists sometimes seem to compete among themselves for the silliest argument, but the height of fatuity must be the crowing that the Christchurch earthquakes will increase our gross domestic…
Continue reading this entry »
Those who favour privatisation can be divided into four camps … Listener: 5 March, 2011. Keywords: Business & Finance; Governance; Macroeconomics & Money; Ideologues who hate the Government succeeding and want to scale it back, even if it is costly, as was privatising the Telecom monopoly. They would do the same to the three electricity…
Continue reading this entry »
I went to Christchurch Boys’ High School with Paul Dunlop (1943-22 February, 2011). While our paths diverged at university – after physics, he worked as an optician in the Christchurch family firm – we kept in touch. He was one of three in Christchurch’s Methodist Durham St Church rescuing a pipe organ (they were his…
Continue reading this entry »
I was asked to write for the March 2011 New Zealand Books Month something about my reading. Keywords: Literature and Culture; There are hosts of books which opened up new vistas in my adolescence and the decade after. My reading today could not be possibly offer similar experiences; instead it enriches these landscapes. The exceptions…
Continue reading this entry »
The Keralan remittance and tourist economy is rather like many Pacific Island ones. Listener: 19 February, 2011 Keywords: Political Economy & History; The huge South Asian peninsula has a larger population than Europe and about six times the population density. Both have suffered a high degree of political fragmentation. Even under the British Raj, a…
Continue reading this entry »
Paper to the 2011 Asia-Pacific Economic and Business History Conference, San Francisco, February 2011. (Revised March 2011)[1] Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money; Political Economy & History; The International Context There is a considerable – and partly contested – historiography of the interpretation of the events which surrounded the worldwide Great Depression. It is usually said to…
Continue reading this entry »
Keywords: Miscellaneous; In July 2009 I was approached by Colenso BBDO in regard to an advertisement they were doing for DB involving the 1958 ‘Black Budget’. They explained they wanted to promote the contributions of Morton Coutts, the man who – among other things – sometime earlier invented the continuous fermentation method of brewing beer….
Continue reading this entry »
Paper to a Student Group from Carleton University, 10 February 2011. Keywords: History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy; Political Economy & History; Social Policy; Europeans were greatly puzzled by the American debate over President Obama’s health reforms, for almost everyone there assumes the public sector should actively promote universal health care. Clearly that is not…
Continue reading this entry »
We need to do what is necessary now, before we head down Greece and Ireland’s path. Listener: 5 February, 2011. Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money; If you look at countries’ foreign liabilities in relation to the size of their economy, you will see several were bunched together in 2009: Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and New Zealand….
Continue reading this entry »
Management Magazine, February 2011, p.9. Keywords: History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy; While like Colin James in his November column (Management Magazine), I would be delighted if New Zealand were to produce a economist or philosopher of the international quality of David Hume or Adam Smith – the leaders of the Scottish enlightenment – the…
Continue reading this entry »