Some conversations are difficult, but critical. This week, Sir Peter Gluckman, the Rt Hon Helen Clark, and Rob Fyfe released a short ‘conversation paper’ called Re-engaging New Zealand with the World. Read more
The proverb “All that glitters is not gold” is a line from William Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. Any doubts about the Bard’s wisdom were dispelled this month when New Zealand’s “gold standard” quarantining was shown to be fool’s gold. Read more
We all know the analogy about barring gates after the horse has bolted from the barn. It speaks to the futility of doing something too late solve a problem. Read more
When Germany’s Constitutional Court ruled on the legality of the European Central Bank’s asset purchase programme on 5 May, it sent shockwaves through financial markets. In one fell swoop, the red-robed judges accused the ECB of going beyond its mandate of monetary policy and the European Court of Justice of covering up the breach. Read more
When in the US earlier this year, I came across many souvenirs mocking the country’s leader, including a card game called, Trump Cards: The Wackiest Game of Fake News. It looked like a fun party card game in which players tried to pick out 'Fake News' from real quotes by President Donald Trump. Read more
It says a lot about this economic crisis when a forecast of -4.5% annual growth is regarded as good news. Yet that was the forecast the International Monetary Fund released yesterday. Read more
The public health system is a political football. Every change of administration is an opportunity to boot the ball at a different set of goalposts. Read more
It’s been hard to get a decent night’s sleep lately. Stories of the Government’s mismanagement of its quarantine facilities and of the pandemic worsening abroad make for restless nights thinking through safer ways of running those operations. Read more
The Cold War is mainly history today with more people remembering the spies than the ideological warfare. But at its heart, it was an ideological battle, which makes comparisons with today’s tensions between China and the West natural. Read more
On Tuesday afternoon, the Environment Select Committee published its report on Shane Jones’ Forests (Regulation of Log Traders and Forestry Advisers) Bill in Parliament ahead of its second reading. Despite its many flaws – and an unprecedented chorus of disapproval (including full page advertisements in the media) – the Bill has emerged from the Select Committee largely unscathed. Read more
The Government’s plan to recover from the Covid-19 crisis has essentially been about finding new ways to spend. As a result, public debt is expected to increase from 19% of GDP in 2019 a whopping 54% by 2024 and remain elevated for decades after. Read more
New Zealand’s border is its first line of defence against Covid-19. The gross failures exhibited this week cannot be repeated and require a complete reversal of the Government’s border procedures. Read more
Germany is leading the way with a debate on its constitution, the Basic Law. After seven decades in operation, politicians of all parties want to remove racist elements from it. Read more
If you try to make a balloon smaller by squeezing it, you should be careful. It tends not to work well. Read more
Never have governments and central banks spent other people’s money more freely to support incomes and boost banking system liquidity. Never before have the world’s major central banks’ policy interest rates been clustered so close to zero, if not already in negative territory. Read more