So National’s redundancy package is out. It is different to my initial impression and slightly different to the Labour package. As well as randomly asking banks to be generous National said it was increasing the accommodation allowance for people who are made unemployed and also increase working for families for people who are made unemployed […]
So Labour is making it that people who lose their jobs during the economic downturn can get the benefit straight away – and over the first 13 weeks no-one will take account of their spouses income (ht the Standard). Tell you the truth, this sounds a lot better than the scheme National are indicating they […]
According to figures out yesterday, New Zealand corp has greatly increased its spending overseas over the past year. In part this seems crazy since we have been in a recession over the past nine months – however, there are reasons: Our exchange rate fell (assuming demand is inelastic – or is not passed on through […]
The Fed lopped 50 basis points off its cash rate, taking it to 1%. With real interest rates already well in negative territory I’m not sure this sort of action is really necessary – maybe they want to stabilise consumer confidence or something of the like. Anyway, our concern here is New Zealand – so […]
We have discussed where we stand on the political spectrum before, but now it seems that there is a quiz that tells us where we stand (ht Kiwiblog). Below I will tell you the results of the different authors here: Matt: National (83%), United (73%), NZF (64%), ACT (63%), Labour (61%), Progressives (50%), Greens (46%) […]
Or so say economists at Infometrics (a organisation I am involved with 😛 ). Why should we expect another recession over the first half of 2009 – especially when we are coming out of a drought! Well one justification could be that households are highly indebted, and the price of that debt is going up […]