In extraordinary comments this week, Shamubeel Eaqub called ACT Leader David Seymour "economically illiterate". It was said in response to Seymour arguing that government spending was helping to drive inflation. Eaqub stated, "It is not Government spending that is driving inflation. We had the UK hit 9 percent inflation yesterday because there is a global inflation crisis ... Yes, we should talk about inflation, yes, we should talk about Government spending but you can't just

It's a shame that our Deputy Prime Minister, Grant Robertson, has an ambition, come what may, to achieve a Zero Carbon target, yet no plan to achieve Zero Poverty. "Monday is the most significant day in NZ's journey to combat climate change", Robertson said today. When was our "most significant day" in the journey to eliminate poverty? So how about the following plan to achieve Zero Poverty (you be the judge about priorities): Overturn Labour's ban on new oil & gas exploratio

Back in August last year, when this Covid-19 outbreak had begun (and which has never been eliminated) the Coronavirus modelers hit the headlines in the NZ Herald: "Expert's worst-case scenario: 1000 cases and weeks in lockdown" Te Pūnaha Matatini modeller Prof Shaun Hendy said the cluster was clearly reaching towards the upper limit of expectations when it was detected in Auckland nearly a week ago" ... Hendy said a "best-case scenario" could see about 200 cases .. "It's very

In what must amount to extremely damaging comments, John McDermott, who is the Director of Motu and winner of this country's most prestigious award for economists, a Yale PhD graduate, the former Chief Economist and Assistant Governor of the Reserve Bank and who has worked at the IMF & National Bank of NZ, writes in the NBR today: "Just when we needed a disciplined monetary policy framework the most, the Reserve Bank started an excessive quantitative easing programme & talked

It fell on Max Key to pose a brilliant question to the PM at a Business NZ event. He addressed the single biggest issue confronting the nation. Max started by saying he wanted to ask about "intergenerational fairness". Then he went on to enquire as to whether the PM was "concerned" about how the cost of the build-up in Government debt will have to be repaid by young Kiwis. His specific words were, "Do you think that this is fair?" However PM Ardern poured ice cold water over

Way back in the middle of last year, we were forecasting high inflation in NZ, fully breaching the country's agreed targets, at the same time as the RBNZ & Finance Minister were not. We questioned the Monetary Policy Committee's repeated characterization of Kiwi inflation as "transitory". We have long disagreed with the Finance Minister's assertion that most of our inflation is being driven by external shocks completely outside of his control. Now a former Chair of the US Pre