Wednesday, 12 May 2021, 11:50 am
Last week, out of left field, the government placed a
three-year embargo on normal public sector wage bargaining,
essentially a salary freeze. While there has been a certain
amount of backtracking since, it is clear that the
government has been very committed to ‘fiscal
consolidation’ (aka ‘austerity’).
What were they
thinking? What problem were they trying to solve?
Some
governments are obsessed with their own debt levels, and
prioritise the reduction of their own household debt over
the economic management of the country. Such governments set
themselves on a path of opting out of governance; it would
Keith Rankin, 29 April 2021
We
humans seem to have a need to coalesce into tribes, and we
do this by identifying – and sometimes demonising, or
holding in condescension – others who are not us. We also
like to anthropomorphise, treating both animals and nations
as if they were humans. Thus, Peter Rabbit does this ; and India does that .
Of late one of our favourite
activities has become calling out others; we like to tell
off – even cancel – individual people (or people
stereotypes), and we like to tell off countries (or country
stereotypes). In doing this we are usually letting off
steam , and our actions tell us more about ourselves than
The first ‘podcast’ listed above includes interviews with two highly competent economists, University of Auckland property economist Michael Rehm, and former Reserve Bank monetary economist Michael Reddell. The hologram of another such economist, Arthur Grimes, was present also. The interviewer is Kathryn Ryan, certainly one of our more intelligent journalists, more prepared than most to dig a little, though prone to asking questions heavily laden with assumptions.
Kathryn Ryan to Michael Rehm: “Do you believe house prices will correct [ie, in times of low inflation, ‘fall substantially’], and how?”
Michael Rehm: “I have long believed that house prices will correct … around five years ago Arthur Grimes called for, with what seemed like madness [ref. John Key asking: “Where you’d get a 150,000 homes from overnight, I don’t know?”] at the time, for house prices to be engineered into a 40% drop … if we’d done it back then we’d be in a much better or healt
The first podcast listed above
includes interviews with two highly competent economists,
University of Auckland property economist Michael Rehm, and
former Reserve Bank monetary economist Michael Reddell. The
hologram of another such economist, Arthur Grimes, was
present also. The interviewer is Kathryn Ryan, certainly one
of our more intelligent journalists, more prepared than most
to dig a little, though prone to asking questions heavily
laden with assumptions.
Kathryn Ryan to Michael Rehm: Do you believe house prices will correct [ie, in times of
low inflation, fall substantially ], and
how?
Michael Rehm: I have long believed that house
prices will correct … around five years ago Arthur
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