At the end of April, the Reserve Bank removed mortgage loan-to-value ratios (LVRs) for 12 months. This decision was made to ensure LVR restrictions didn’t have an undue impact on borrowers or lenders as part of the mortgage deferral scheme implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now there
31st October 2020 I am sitting here waiting for the announcement of a new lockdown in England. It was scheduled for 4pm, then deferred to 5pm, then sometime after 5pm and then 6.30pm. As the contents of the speech due to be made by the Prime Minister have been
In the lead-up to the Brexit referendum, Remainers were hysterically predicting every calamity from World War III to instant economic calamity if Britain voted to leave the EU. Suffice to say, the world failed to self-immolate in a cloud of radioactive fire and any economic calamity can be sheeted home
covidplanb.co.nz A group of New Zealand health practitioners have joined a growing international movement that says COVID-19 is not a sufficient threat to warrant the elimination strategy and lockdowns. The founding signatories felt obliged by their professional ethics to express support by signing a statement of principles that
Ananish Chaudhuri With the government borrowing heavily to fund its pandemic response and recovery, it has been suggested it could simply cancel its debt by printing more money. That sounds like an attractive idea, but it is one that would have seriously adverse consequences. Derived from “modern monetary theory” (MMT)
Launceston has long grown accustomed to empty shopfronts in its CBD, a trend only exacerbated by the Wuhan plague. So, when a new shopfront opens it naturally piques local interest. The more so when the shop sports entirely Chinese-language livery, is stocked with row upon row of baby formula – and
Jacinda Ardern’s landslide election is widely – and almost certainly, rightly – attributed to her handling of the Wuhan pandemic. But it is also true that Ardern was able to capitalise on the Chinese virus because voters are yet to really feel the effects of her panicked resort to lockdowns and
Well, I suppose it’s nice to know that the great minds who get the big bucks for pontificating in the national daily are thinking alike to your humble correspondent. In my Insight column today I argue that Jacinda Ardern’s landslide election win may well turn out to be
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Economist Thomas Sowell warns, in Basic Economics, that no matter how well-intentioned, government interventions in the housing market almost invariably result in a short supply and increasing cost. New Zealanders who’ve watched the Ardern government’s spectacularly failed Kiwibuild policy have grim experience of this economic rule. But it’
Judith Collins has raised the spectre of Labour supporting the Greens’ idea of a wealth tax; so much so that Labour will implement the tax if they win the election. Labour’s response is that they have denied this many times and that National is “desperate”. Labelling the opposition as
