In less than a week since Russia invaded Ukraine, the war has turned German politics upside down. We are used to seeing about-faces, changes of mind, and U-turns in politics. Read more
The government’s Covid testing system has fallen apart and we are now largely flying blind, as Siouxsie Wiles put it. But it is worse than that. Read more
Tolerance for legitimate protest is one thing. The current illegal occupation of public and private property around Parliament is another. Read more
The coming weeks of Covid are going to be very grim. Kiwis became far too accustomed to waiting for Government guidance rather than weighing risks ourselves. Read more
Flushed with success from restricting the distribution of Rapid Antigen Tests, the Ministry of Health is considering regulating other 'at home' medical testing devices. "The household thermometer is an obvious candidate," Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said. Read more
‘Historic’ is a word we tend to use too much, but there is no doubt the 24th of February 2022 is a turning point in European and world history. With the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the post-1989 era has come to an end. Read more
"Unlearning Helplessness" may sound like the theme of a TED talk event. Or the title of a book in Whitcoulls' personal growth section. Read more
It has become fashionable to complain about New Zealand's cost-of-living crisis. And it is true: life has become grotesquely unaffordable for many Kiwis. Read more
You’ve heard all the jokes before: If you laid all the economists in the world end to end, they still wouldn’t reach a conclusion; put 10 economists in a room and you’ll get 11 opinions; economics is the only field where two people can share a Nobel Prize for saying opposite things. While the first two are purely speculative, that last one actually happened, in 1974. Read more
Europe’s environmental taxonomy system is working so well it is being extended to cover everything else. The system is very advanced. Read more
The Wellington economics fraternity was up in arms last week. The reason was a job opening. Read more
Last November we published a report, Walking the Path to the Next Global Financial Crisis. Public debt ratios in many major economies are alarming. Read more
It’s the standard critique of local government, and it’s often right. Councillors and mayors are more interested in spending a lot of money on flashy convention centres than on maintaining the pipes. Read more
It is hardly the highest-profile job in the country, but it is one of the more important ones. The members of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand set the country’s monetary policy. Read more
If you thought central planning was buried with the fall of communism, you should look at the European Union. In recent years, the EU has been working on its so-called taxonomy. Read more