Posts by Gareth Ward
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Well they could start explaining with a much better website/comms - the linked site is fine if you want to wade through fairly detailed economic targets, but neither that or the media release say plainly what it is they are doing?
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was part of a publicity blitz tied to Geoff's new album
Yech.
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Hard News: A Big Idea, in reply to BenWilson,
Because both the OCR and the VSR have "neutral" positions - i.e. a (say) 7% contribution rate is standard, not a tax but a compulsory private savings account. They may drop that to 6.75% during stimulators periods. That isn't a benefit. Increasing the rate you transfer your own money to 7.25% to constrain money supply therefore equally isn't best viewed as a tax.
At best the "tax" is only for the periods of constraining money supply, at which point you'd have to call the lower rates a benefit, or subsidy or something. I get the loose point, but believe labelling it a tax misses it's intention and operation.Also, the OCR "only" affects people with either interest-bearing savings or an interest-bearing loan. That's A LOT of people. I'm not convinced it's dramatically less than those people who will be enrolled in compulsory Kiwisaver (less sure).
The OCR is designed to increase or decrease the money supply - the fact it affects mortgages is just a by-product of the way it's implemented, not a feature or specific goal in itself. A VSR will do the same, just via adding another channel to that mechanism. One that during constraining periods just delays your own access to your "money supply" rather than removing it from you entirely and shipping it to others offshore. And during stimulatory periods will give you access to superannuation funds early. Broadening and lowering the mechanism for altering the money supply strikes me as a good thing.
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Hard News: A Big Idea, in reply to BenWilson,
Since it is essentially imposing a tax
Hearing this a lot - plenty of smart people claiming "regressive taxation!" - but that's only true if you believe the OCR also is "imposing a tax". At which point it's a tax whose revenue collection lands disproportionately in the overseas accounts of large global financial firms. I don't buy it.
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An intriguing idea, for this non-economist anyway. I presume the variations will be relatively in line with OCR adjustments - i.e. you'd expect your Kiwisaver contributions to change by 0.25%-0.5% each adjustment. It would be much broader in it's inflation-control (as the number of people in employment > number who own houses) and lining individual retirement funds with monetary policy side-effects seems significantly greater than lining (mostly) offshore funders and (lightly) local savers. And I'm guessing they'll retain OCR adjustments as well, so each of the VSR and OCR adjustments would be more "gentle" as the impact is spread over multiple tools.
Hizzah for compulsory Kiwisaver at the least - now who is going to grab the "Kiwisaver means-tested superannuation payments" third rail?
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Hard News: Standing together, in reply to Andrew Geddis,
their advisors ought to be spelling out the risks involved in any particular course of action.
And those advisors are often (usually?) the ones suggesting the course of action, so I find the standard "lawyers just execute their client's requests as per their obligation" line a little trite.
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Morales' tribute mix is incredible - you can feel how personal it is. Tears into Rock With You is a pretty beautiful ending too
"You can't hide" that Bob put up is legendary - Teddy Pendergrass original then that then Sneak's rework are all individually outstanding. Although when I was playing Frankie tunes on Tuesday afternoon my 3 y/o insisted I turn it off and put Your Love back on. He then proceeded to yell "MAKE IT LOUDER" and dance his little ass off around the lounge.
Personal faves:
And this with Morales is probably the greatest house tune ever. Probably.
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Although digital sales revenue fell 2.1%, it still accounts for two thirds of overall digital revenue. And digital in turn is trumped by physical sales, which fell 11.7% but still comprise more than half of record industry revenue worldwide.
Are these revenue figures BEFORE distribution costs? i.e. are physical sales revenues the in-store CD price?
If so that's a huge caveat, as the costs of distribution must be orders of magnitude higher for physical. And the 30% cut of your iTunes et al must be a serious part of digital.I guess I'm asking - do you know what the artist return is for physical vs digital vs streaming (for, say, a thousand people purchasing/listening)...
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Hard News: Things worth knowing, in reply to George Darroch,
As government, they've made remarkable progress on that score, while deprioritising investment in other things.
IIRC there were six priority measures implemented, all of which have done well. Are there measurements of the deprioritised areas? Interested to know what the tradeoffs have been for such a laser focus...
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I spent a fair while researching Wireless/DAC/Speaker combos when I wanted to set up something simpler for home than the old behemoths (legacy of a university-era hifi job). Interestingly found that Airplay effectively resamples everything to (IIRC) 48khz - I assume above that generates bandwidth requirements beyond what a standard congested home Wifi network would handle.
Very nearly picked up one of the few DAC/tube-amp combos (ooh eer) just because the idea appealed. But landed on Sonos in the end - the wireless streaming network is dramatically more stable than Airplay/Bluetooth and the quality of their components is surprisingly high for the price. Cleverly, they have a Line-In that you can set to auto-play whenever it detects audio on the line - an Airport plugged into that gives you an on-demand (no powering up, switching channels...) Airplay speaker for when Sonos doesn't have the music service you want (Soundcloud usually for me).