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New Zealand’s government must always remember the line attributed to Lord Earnest Rutherford: “We don’t have the money, so we’ll have to think.” Government accounts are already under pressure. And in the longer term it is hard to see this pressure letting up. Read more
According to the Mayan calendar, the world will end on 21 December this year. It’s not clear, though, whether this was the motivation for the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) to cut interest rates to 3% doomsday levels. Read more
Negotiations on an extension of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a free-trade agreement meant to liberalise economic relations across the Pacific, are to go into their fifteenth round next week. Proponents of the TPP hope it will improve conditions for foreign direct investment (FDI). Read more
The announcement of ‘KiwiBuild’ by Labour leader David Shearer was certainly bold. Under Labour, for the next decade the government will build 10,000 homes every year, for less than $600,000 each. Read more
World share markets rose markedly on Monday this week: the US S&P 500 (by 2%), London FTSE (by 2.4%), Paris CAC (by 2.9%), Tokyo Nikkei (by 1.4%), and the Hong Kong Hang Seng (by 0.5%). Europe saw the biggest daily gain in 10 weeks, but from the lowest levels for months. Read more
The first week of November was Gender Diversity Week, which is a sad reminder that no country has yet achieved gender equality. The Global Gender Gap Report 2012, released in late October, shows New Zealand ranked sixth out of 135 countries, having closed 78% of the gap between men and women. Read more
No one should ever compile a cost-benefit analysis of the United States elections. After a campaign that lasted about 18 months (and felt even longer), and having spent an estimated US$6 billion promoting both candidates, nothing has changed. Read more
New Zealand’s second internet cable is once again making headlines, this time courtesy of Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom. German born Dotcom has hatched a plan to resurrect Pacific Fibre and build a second fibre cable to the United States. Read more
When the New Zealand Electoral Commission was asked to review how the Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) electoral system was operating, the outcome was pre-ordained: the report would extol the virtues of MMP, recommend a reduction in the 5% threshold, and scrap the one seat rule. And so it has come to pass. Read more
George Mason University’s Mercatus Center is a top public policy think tank based in Virginia near Washington, DC. Some of its 2012 publications might be of interest to readers of Insights: a 28-page blueprint for regulatory reform in the United States (the blueprint could be easily applied to New Zealand). Read more