Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money; I should like to begin by congratulating the organisers of the conference. There has been an open, vigorous and flowing debate, reminiscent of the New Zealand economics community of the 1960s and 1970s, where a wide range of views were presented as diverse as Wolf Rosenberg on the left through to…
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Some Preparatory Notes: ultimately not used. Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Macroeconomics & Money; I am not sure you have asked the right person to be on the panel, since the topic is policy; my interests are research. So I thought I would consult an old friend, Cassandra. Fortunately I dont have to channel her; she…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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….
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This is an appendix for ‘Not in Narrow Seas: New Zealand History from an Economic Perspective’, a book I am writing. It is published here so that people can access the technical material. The data is available on request. Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money; Political Economy & History; Statistics; Over the last sixty years we have…
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I wrote this note to clarify some matters to myself; I shant be surprise if they become more prominent in 2011. Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money; Statistics; I have been looking at the International Investment Position focusing on the equity to debt ratio, in effect thinking about New Zealand’s external balance sheet as if it were…
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Review of Crisis: One Central Bank Governor and the Global Financial Collapse Alan Bollard with Sarah Gaitanos (Auckland University Press, $29.99) in New Zealand Books: Summer 2010; p. 10. Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money; I examined carefully the Reserve Bank bill before parliament in 1988, to ensure that come a financial crisis the Reserve Bank would…
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The Zombienomics policies of the past few decades have not been working. Listener: 27 November, 2010. Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money; Economic theories are going through a major revision in the wake of the global financial crisis. I doubt that the foundations, built over the past 200 years, will markedly change but their superstructure (the bit…
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If we want to promote economic growth, we need a big rethink. Listener: 13 November, 2010. Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money; The global financial crisis is not over; it just keeps morphing into new phases, without leaving the old ones entirely behind – and so the risk of financial institutions falling over remains. The world struggles…
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With the economy more sluggish than predicted, could we be in a long recession? Listener: 30 October, 2010. Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money; That another long recession started in 2007 can’t be ruled out. In more than a third of the past 150 years, our economy – measured as gross domestic product per person – has…
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The country is weighed down by a mountain of foreign debt and ownership. Listener: 16 October, 2010. Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money; In the decade to March 2009, about $340 billion was invested in New Zealand. Of that, about $205 billion was spent on replacing old assets, leaving $135 billion for new ones. Whether this was…
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In early 2009 I published a summary of my writings on the Global Financial Crisis from August 2007 to March 2009: www.eastonbh.ac.nz/?p=1351 (itself following an early note on what I called the Millennium Depression: www.eastonbh.ac.nz/?p=174). This index updates the earlier summary and its prologue remains relevant here. The summary is to trace my thinking on…
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The crew worked extremely hard to keep the good ship New Zealand afloat. Listener: 18 September, 2010. Keywords: Governance; Macroeconomics & Money; Political Economy & History; When Alan Bollard transferred from the position of secretary of the Treasury to that of the governor of the Reserve Bank, a good friend announced it was “more pay…
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