If the Government’s decision to suspend most of the economy and send most Kiwis home for a month is successful, I will be one of the first to applaud. Covid-19 has cast me in the role of a vulnerable New Zealander. Read more
We all know those newspaper segments which feature a previously famous person. And then we read these articles wondering why we have not heard from them for such a long time, and sometimes we may even be surprised to hear that they are still alive. Read more
You'd think it would be easy to figure out just what is an essential service when there's need for pandemic lock-downs. Food services and health services obviously make the cut; movie theatres and concerts, not so much. Read more
Professor Sir David Skegg raised the 64-thousand-dollar (or perhaps 64 billion-dollar) question in his testimony before Parliament’s Epidemic Response Committee this week. He asked whether the government had a clear the strategic objective for its unprecedented level-four lockdown. Read more
Yesterday, New Zealand’s biggest magazine publisher Bauer announced it would close its operations. Many well-established magazines including The Listener, North & South and Metro will disappear from the shelves forever. Read more
In a Select Committee this week, then-Police Commissioner Mike Bush expressed his unwillingness to release the “complex” guidelines his officers are using to enforce lockdown. Now, I don’t know about you, but the idea of the police with secret regulations you can’t break doesn’t spark joy in my life. Read more
In any reasonable top-10 list of things the Parliament’s health experts should be working on, the pandemic takes every slot. So why is the Health Select Committee right now working on regulate vaping? Read more
The coronavirus lockdown is a challenge for every one of us. Every worker, family, charity, public institution and firm. Read more
The Covid-19 outbreak is quickly developing into an economic crisis. A top priority for the Government now is to maintain employment and ensure firms can quickly recover when the lockdown ends. Read more
The New Zealand Government’s Covid-19 policy needs to directly boost capabilities in the health sector while providing the kind of appropriate economic support necessary when we’re all taking a lengthy staycation and some industries are put on ice. Uncertainty about the duration of this crisis makes deciding on the most suitable policy difficult. Read more
These are times like no other. Unless you are well over 80, you would not remember an existential and comprehensive crisis like this. Read more
Milton Friedman was wrong about the euro currency. Before its introduction, the godfather of monetarism predicted Europe’s monetary union would not survive its first recession. Read more
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. Or at least that's what Hunter S. Read more
In times of war, parts of the every-day rulebook for liberal democracies must be suspended. To protect personal and economic freedoms, in wartime governments must temporarily curb some of them. Read more
No one doubts the economic costs of lost jobs and income from Covid-19 will be substantial in the short run. But what can we know about the likely magnitude of those costs? Read more
