Posts by Terry Baucher
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
How about: women's U-17 soccer world cup, women's U-20 soccer world cup?
Indeed. The remarkable Rosie White a hat-trick against Columbia in the U-17 WC and 17 days later another against Chile in the U-20. What's more she's only 15 and therefore eligible for both tournaments again in two years time. Their final pool match is tomorrow against England. Fingers crossed...
-
Nope, but I was rather proud of it.
And rightly so. In my eagerness to read (and rant) the cleverness of the title passed me by. RTFQ (or RTFT in this case) eh?
-
During one of these games I stumped the entire group by asking which golfer was retiring after 72 tour wins. I neglected to mention the ten majors because I thought it would give the answer away: Annika Sörenstam.
Nice...but the trivia question for the ages will be who scored hat-tricks in successive world cups a month apart?
-
There are no Global Release Periods in a Rugby World Cup year.
FFS how did they manage that? What exactly does Mark Miller do as IRB CEO? Oh yes I know go to Premier League matches whilst the HEC semi-final is on at Twickers?
Still no doubt in the manner of the Masters of the Universe pre GFC he'll pocket a massive bonus. :(
On the June tours I'm coming round to the view the SH would be better to say "thanks but no thanks" and instead increase the (NH) Autumn period to six weeks. We could then start the Super 14 in late March/early April, run the Tri-Nations or whatever in August/September and then go on to the NH or receive tours in September/October.
Still pigs might fly...
-
Murray Mexted, in fine form, said at one point: "Listen to the silence".
He topped that with "And the referee explains everything for all to understand - which I don't understand."
-
Can't say I'm impressed with the weather under this National Govt.
At least it's still free.
-
Funnily enough, this is also the bit of Reaganomics that never seems to be mentioned...
The massive post-70s-recession spending on the cold war, i.e. a gargantuan Keynesian knees-up for those in uniform. I seem to recall that it was second only to WWII as a US government borrow-and-hope programme.
You're quite right David it was a truly colossal spend up. We've actually had two wars this decade but unfortunately they've been the wrong sort of wars where the US can't deply massive amounts of tanks, warships and aircraft so the effect has been somewhat muted. Seems to me that if the US wants another big military spendup they should be winding up the Russians and Chinese...
On the pre WW2 build up I thoroughly recommend Adam Tooze's magisterial The Wages of Destruction on the Nazi economy. Hitler was welll aware of the US re-armament programme and its likely outcome and Tooze argues Hitler was very actually quite rational in his approach to gearing up for a short war.
I guess I get banned now I've mentioned Hitler...
-
Krugman's blog has more on this including his calculation of the fiscal stimulus required US$600 billion. Wonder what the equivalent NZ figure would be - enough to induce a coronary in Douglas perhaps? ;)
I wrote this morning’s column partly because I had a hunch that the Obama people might be thinking too small on stimulus. Now I have more than a hunch – I’ve heard an unreliable rumor! So let’s talk about stimulus math, as I see it.
Actually, before I get to the math, some concepts. Nearly every forecast now says that, in the absence of strong policy action, real GDP will fall far below potential output in the near future. In normal times, that would be a reason to cut interest rates. But interest rates can’t be cut in any meaningful sense. Fiscal policy is the only game in town.
Wait, there’s more. Ben Bernanke can’t push on a string – but he can pull, if necessary. Suppose fiscal policy ends up being too expansionary, so that real GDP “wants” to come in 2 percent above potential. In that case the Fed can tighten a bit, and no harm is done. But if fiscal policy is too contractionary, and real GDP comes in below potential, there’s no potential monetary offset. That means that fiscal policy should take risks in the direction of boldness.
So what kinds of numbers are we talking about? GDP next year will be about $15 trillion, so 1% of GDP is $150 billion. The natural rate of unemployment is, say, 5% — maybe lower. Given Okun’s law, every excess point of unemployment above 5 means a 2% output gap.Right now, we’re at 6.5% unemployment and a 3% output gap – but those numbers are heading higher fast. Goldman predicts 8.5% unemployment, meaning a 7% output gap. That sounds reasonable to me.
So we need a fiscal stimulus big enough to close a 7% output gap. Remember, if the stimulus is too big, it does much less harm than if it’s too small. What’s the multiplier? Better, we hope, than on the early-2008 package. But you’d be hard pressed to argue for an overall multiplier as high as 2.
When I put all this together, I conclude that the stimulus package should be at least 4% of GDP, or $600 billion.
That’s twice what the unreliable rumor says. So if there’s any truth to the rumor, my advice to the powers that be (or more accurately will be in a couple of months) is to think hard – you really, really don’t want to lowball this.
-
Don't know if you're a long time lurker, second time caller, Terry, but "what the hell happened to Three's news and current affairs?" is a question that comes up as often and unpleasantly as bad shellfish. I'd say the only clear win Three has had over TVNZ for a long time was the only debate they ran. Campbell got a lot of stick for trying to derail the Two-Headed Talking Point Monster, but at least he made the effort. Sainsbury, on the other hand, swung between the extremes of 'the lights are on, but nobody's home' non-moderation, to asking questions that would have been cringe-worthy on breakfast TV.
I haven't been lurking for a while so other than picking up on a general distaste for Duncan Garner I wasn't aware of the debate over TV3's news & current affairs. But now that you mention it...
I agree with you about John Campbell's handling of the debate. Sainsbury was utterly crap in the first one and not much better in the final ("The Decider"). It seems strange to have questions coming from three different sources (YouTube, Sainsbury and the panel) and as far as I could see no-one properly following up the initial question. But then when profits are put ahead of democracy what can you expect. It's illuminating, and damning of both TVNZ and TV3, that the US Presidential debates were carried live on all FTA TV channels WITHOUT INTERRUPTION. Democracy doesn't come in 7 or 8 minute bites.
As an aside what puts me off about TVNZ is that it always seems to be about them rather than the news/subject matter. There's a distasteful arrogance about the channel that smells as fresh as a week old snapper.
-
Incidentally, the criticism of Nikki Kaye does seem churlish. She seems a bit vapid, yes (going on a two minute clip on Campbell Live) but going out door knocking and overturning a sitting minister with strong name recognition deserves respect. The journalist who interviewed her said she'd knocked on her door.
I don't live in the Auckland Central electorate but I have to say I haven't been impressed with Tizard as Minister for Auckland. I notice Russell made a few comments a while back about her failings over the copyright bill.