Posts by Andrew E
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More seriously, ask them whether they think ISPs are common carriers or publishers.
Ask them if they think internet access is now a utility like water, electricity and gas, and therefore should be regulated as such.
Ask them if they think Treasury imposes too high a discount rate on infrastructure investments. See here (pdf).
Agree you should ask them Idiot/Savant's question about copyright.
Ask them if they think they would ever want to force ISPs to retain all traffic and content data for government data mining, like the UK.
If you get credible answers to half of these you'll be doing fantastically.
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Sean Plunket will moderate. Fran O'Sullivan and I will ask questions and pass on live questions from viewers. There'lll also be a studio audience asking questions, a live IRC channel, questions submitted via Skype and online polls. Yes, it does sound complex.
Yes, it sounds far too complex, with a large proportion of the first hour possibly being wasted on transferring between the different channels of questions coming in to you.
But nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition...
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Seriously, buy some wheat, dairy, vegetable and even oil stocks, and get the hell outta Dodge.
oh thanks, and push all our food and petrol prices even higher, causing more riots in developing countries and truckie strikes in developed ones. do you really want the revolution to start right now?
Like I said, I'm not an economist. So, if someone can explain to me the link between buying stocks in a company producing a product and the price those companies are able to get for their product on the open market, I'd be grateful.
The revolution has to start sometime. The collapse of capital seems as good a time as any.
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But then, as I said, I'm not an economist, so what do I know?
Then again..what do they know:
Yeah. I've a mate who works for Merril in London and he was (like me) pretty much always sceptical of analysts' reports.
How Citigroup could still be recommending a 'Hold' on 11 September is pretty amazing. The banks' profits have been dropping like stones, along with write-offs going through the roof, for over a year. Why anyone would still bother to have their scones in a financial stock as opposed to some company that actually makes a a tangible, necessary, product, I don't know.
Seriously, buy some wheat, dairy, vegetable and even oil stocks, and get the hell outta Dodge.
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I am putting my money into scones.
Do you want to securitise those scones?
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As a non-economist, I think there's still some problems with this, even if you accept that Cullen has done 'the right thing' by 'taking some heat out of it' when the economy is 'chugging along' and could now 'use those hoardings to inject back into the economy as it turns.'
Yes he could, and that would be the sensible thing to do, it seems to me. The problem is, that rather than do that from the centre, where he can control where the fiscal expansion should go, to best boost the economy/avoid the downturn, he's given in to this ridiculous mantra about 'the government's running a surplus so we should get tax cuts'. Which means that he apparently wants consumer spending to boost the country out of a downturn/avoid it.
The problem with this is that, in spite of relatively high interest rates NZ consumers have been on debt-fuelled consumer boom of their own over the last few years. So do we really want to add to that?
Especially as we've got a Reserve Bank which is now lowering interest rates to ease the pain for mortgage-holders and ensure companies still consider borrowing to invest.
So, tax cuts plus lower interest rates means consumers might spend more. But the lower interest rates also lowers the relative strength of the NZ dollar (artificially boosted by all those overseas investors who saw a much nicer rate of return on their savings if they were held in NZ dollars, rather than, say, yen), which means that exporters aren't getting as much for their products anymore and consumers can't actually spend our way out of the downturn because their dollars won't buy as many imported goods.
Not to mention that our high interest rates and relative economic stability were also what fended the hard questions about the huge balance of trade deficit.
Seems to me that reducing interest rates or cutting taxes might be sensible, but doing both simultaneously isn't a good way to go.
Personally, I'd prefer the reduction of interest rates to the reduction of government tax income. The reduction of the strength of the NZ dollar may reduce the export earnings in one way, but if it makes NZ products cheaper, then hopefully they'll sell more. And I'd rather have an export led recovery (/downturn avoidance) than a consumer spending spree of tax cuts on more imported goods. I'd prefer to trust a finance minister to spend the money on things where the needs are identified (infrastructure/health/education).
But then, as I said, I'm not an economist, so what do I know?
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Oh, I thought they eliminated the subeditors as part of the last cost cutting excercise along with journalistic integrity.
That would explain it then.
But doesn't excuse whoever drafted the Labour Party press release. I suppose proofing/fact checking for their candidates is passe too?
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Also says something about the subbing at the Herald and Radio NZ that this error was blithely perpetuated in their reporting of the list.
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Completely off-topic, it is amusing (and slightly worrying) to see that the NZ Labour Party apparently doesn't know who the UK Home Secretary is. Its press release about who its list candidates are says that one of its candidates, Jacinda Ardern, is working for 'Home Secretary, Sir Ronnie Flanagan'.
Actually Jacqui Smith is the UK Home Secretary and Sir Ronnie is a former Chief Constable of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, now Chief Inspector of Constabulary.
But anyway...