I really enjoy Shamubeel’ s thinking. So, it was interesting to read this article this week in Stuff from Shamubeel Eaqub commenting on the pros and cons of lockdowns. He stated: Level 2 restrictions did not have a big impact on the economy, but level 3 reduced economic activity by around 30 per … [Read more...]
This is a brilliant analogy of how we are careless about saving cents and causing millions of costs:
In this article Eric Crampton tells the tale of the faulty O-ring which caused the explosion of one of the Space rockets and the death of all the astronauts inside. It was a simple, in fact cheap, fitting which failed and destroyed everything everybody had been working on. In this article … [Read more...]
Mainfreight sends a message to Local Government about long term planning:
One of my late mates, who I really miss, is Neil Graham one of the two founders of Mainfreight. Neil, whenever he met somebody and when asked what he did, always replied that he was a truck driver. He was a guy who started working for himself when he was 17, and never worked for anybody else. Not … [Read more...]
Green Economics – Cycling is a disaster!
Sanjay Thakrar, CEO at Euro Exim Bank Ltd got economics thinking when he said: A Cyclist is a disaster for a country's economy. They do not buy cars, or take a car loan. They do not buy car insurance or fuel. They do not send their car for servicing and repairs. Do not pay for parking, or pay … [Read more...]
The big accounting firms. Is their time up:
One of the casualties of neo-liberal dogma and nonsense like “lower taxes” has been the loss of expertise within the public sector. It has frustrated me time and time again to read of a yet again expensive report by one of the large accounting firms on a vast myriad of topics. These accounting firms … [Read more...]
Conventional economics has let us down:
Remember wherever you worked economists had injected the word “efficiency” into our economic landscape? Efficiency implied that we could not produce goods as cheaply as China and so we had to close down our factories. The discussion rarely mentioned the reason why China was cheaper was because we … [Read more...]
More thinking about banks from an international perspective:
It’s always interesting to see how the rest of the world is struggling with restarting their economies. We are not on our own and recently the Guardian considered the role of central banks and the function banks must play in the rebuild of our economies. In New Zealand our banks have a dreadful … [Read more...]
ANZ bank caught again by regulators:
Once again, the ANZ Bank has been dragged into Court by the Financial Markets Authority. Here’s what happened. ANZ first identified a duplicate policy issue around September 2017. The ineligible customers issue was identified around May 2018. ANZ did not disclose either issue to the FMA or Reserve … [Read more...]
About banking and the role of the NZ Reserve Bank
I received this article from Liz Griffiths, who was a bank manager at one stage in her life. Here it is: The best economic future for government spending in NZ is for the Reserve Bank, which is government owned, to issue credit to the government as required. I am not about to say anything … [Read more...]
Garry Writes 12 May 2020
The fascinating thing, for those of us who are followers of economic trends, is that nobody knows what is going to happen to our economy. Or the economy anywhere, for that matter. There are some who know a lot, but most are just tongue flappers. One thing is that our media, in its weakened … [Read more...]