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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 average cost of each stay by Kiwis in hotel quarantine here is over $3,000. That cost is being footed by the taxpayer. 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
Wellington, 19 June 2020 - To plug the fiscal gap created by Covid-19, the Government must rethink its retirement income policies, according to a new report by The New Zealand Initiative. So far, the Government’s primary responses to the challenges of Covid-19 appear to have focused on spending more money to help New Zealand’s lagging economy. Read more
On this week’s podcast, reports this week show that New Zealand’s quarantine protocols are not as robust as people thought and the question of what to do about protecting the border from fresh Covid-19 cases is now front and centre. Our chief economist Dr Eric Crampton is outlining a gold standard quarantine system which may need to involve the private sector and require a deep rethink from the Government. 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