James Higham Hazel Tucker University of Otago Raise your hand if you’ve ever travelled for weeks or months as a backpacker on a limited daily budget. Keep your hand up if you were made welcome in the places you visited on your OE, enjoyed chance encounters and experienced the
Grant Robertson has written a letter telling the Reserve Bank that the government is unhappy about the cost of housing, and to find a way that the Reserve Bank can assist the government to relieve the situation for potential homebuyers. Adrian Orr is not someone who likes criticism. The Minister
We are all justified in breathing a sigh of relief that the economy seems to have survived the COVID pandemic reasonably well. Not all sectors, of course. International tourism and education have suffered terribly, and the hospitality sector is also still in trouble. Nevertheless, it is no time to be
The Labour Party may be useless at most things they do but one thing they are excellent at is acting like arrogant third-termers. It’s kind of weird to see people like Woods, Twyford et al behaving like entitled prats from just their first few days in the job.
In The Lord of the Rings, the great J R R Tolkien described how the price of peace is eternal vigilance. “Always after a defeat and a respite, the Shadow takes another shape and grows again”. Indeed, despite the seeming happy-ever-after ending of The Lord of the Rings,
It is amazing what rubbish you read in the mainstream media these days. Take these statements, issued by none other than our favourite source of ‘truth’, Stuff: Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was forced to defend herself against attacks from the Right and the Left on Tuesday morning as criticism mounted
The National Party has been admonished for its election advert claiming that retirees would pay $140 per week if a wealth tax was introduced. Let’s take a look at that figure, shall we? If a little old lady lived in a house in Auckland worth $1,730,000, then
Mary History has a way of repeating. My strong gut feeling is that the present hysteria happening with the Auckland property market is a repeat of the hysteria of the late 80s, which led to a massive crash in both property and equities. The common denominator is that in neither
Simon Black Bahia Beach, Puerto Rico sovereignman.com In early 1948, a group of US Air Force officers were working on a secret research project in the California desert codenamed MX981. The purpose of MX981 was to test how extreme gravitational forces from fast-moving fighter jets would impact the
Marcus Roberts mercatornet.com Marcus Roberts was two years out of law school when he decided that practising law was no longer for him. He therefore went back to university and did his LLM while tutoring. He now teaches contract and torts law. Aside from law, his passions include reading
Now that they are not an actual coalition partner in the new government, the Greens are using this opportunity to become unmuzzled. They have decided to go back to the idea of wealth taxes. Perhaps James Shaw is blowing his wealth tax horn because of his massive gaffe over the
Harry Scheule University of Technology Sydney There’s a row brewing in the corridors of financial power. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) recently advised the trading banks that the official cash rate might move from the barely positive into the negative. Right now the RBNZ is holding off
Simon Black Sovereign Valley Farm, Chile sovereignman.com On September 18 of the year 96 AD, a fairly obscure and elderly politician named Marcus Cocceius Nerva was proclaimed Emperor of Rome by the Senate. Rome was in chaos at the time; the empire had suffered from years of turmoil, economic
