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In my last column, I used a puzzling proverb to show that we can’t simultaneously have low inflation and cheap money. Today, I use the equally puzzling comment made by Adrian Orr in the OCR announcement that the government is ‘more of a friend than foe’ to explore the relationship between our government and the Reserve Bank. Read more

When I was a lad in the 1950s, I absorbed from adults the notion that it was shameful to be reduced to applying for a state handout. Self-reliance was virtuous. Read more

After spending an embarrassing amount of time trying to figure out whether paying NZ Steel an enormous amount of money to install a new electric furnace made any kind of sense, I have finally come to a conclusion. If the subsidy does make sense, it would indicate severe problems in how industrial allocations have been handled. Read more

“There is a lot of ruin in a nation.” It is one of those sayings that is easy to misinterpret. Taking Adam Smith’s famous quote literally, there are so many ways for a country to go wrong. Read more

Last week’s government Budget increased projected government operating spending over the next four years by $8.4 billion while projected revenue fell by $10.7 billion. Projected government borrowing rose by $20 billion. Read more

Let’s imagine a computer game, shall we? It is called ‘Master Lobbyist’, and your job is to play the governments of two countries off against each other. Read more

If a lot of the government’s health policy people started looking warmly at homeopathy and other kinds of medical pseudoscience and woo, we’d all recognise that as a problem, right? Maybe we would want to test our intuitions about it. Read more