Posts by Rich of Observationz
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the front page headline about the local body per person debt
I didn't see any corresponding data on local body assets per person. The gross debt might look alarming as a headline figure, but it will usually be offset by the assets (utilities and so on) that it was used to build.
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Hard News: Unwarranted risk, in reply to Joe Wylie,
So, next time I need to move a lot of stuff to/from NZ, I can get it shipped to Singapore or Dubai, where the ports are more efficient and cheaper. I guess I'd just float it the rest of the way...
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Hard News: It's In the Kete!, in reply to Jackie Clark,
Brains. The Larder in Miramar does excellent brains, and it's kinda appropriate.
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Hard News: Unwarranted risk, in reply to James W,
That's not economics, it's accounting:
Say I own a grocery store.
It's worth $100k. I have a ($100k) mortgage that costs me 8%, so $8k a year. (finance cost)
The store makes $10k a year (profit) , but I only draw out $5k of that (dividend). So it's costing me $3k in cash, but I'm salting away $5k a year in the stores bank account (retained earnings)
If I sell the store and pay the mortgage off, then I ostensibly save the $3k cash. But I'm losing the $2k a year of net retained earnings, so in reality I'm losing out.
That's basically the situation. You could also try modelling it with matchsticks.
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The mayor said his ability to intervene in the dispute were "severely limited" by laws governing the port
So, let me get this right? The people of Auckland own the port. They aren't allowed to have a say, through their elected representatives, in how it's run. Instead, it's basically operated as if it was the personal property of the CEO.
Isn't that property confiscation - or doesn't that apply to community property?
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the risks to the state balance sheet of owning make it overall unattractive
The risks are still there if they don't own AirNZ or the utilities. If they go bust (as Air NZ did) the government has to pick up the pieces (we can't go without electricity, or air service to Hamilton). Selling shares just privatizes the profit and socializes the risk.
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Hard News: Unwarranted risk, in reply to Matthew Poole,
Why do we need freight - all those containers are so 20th century. Now that we live in the future, can't we just download everything?
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the deferral of a major wind farm because demand was not there.
There's demand. There's 40TWh a year of demand.
The reason the wind farm isn't being built is that it's "cheaper" to dig coal out of the ground and burn it, polluting the world with CO2.
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In 1980, NZ had 90% renewable electricity. Today, it's 74%.
We need to get back to that 90% and move beyond (once we have 100% of current demand met by renewables, there's more work to do replacing transport and static fossil fuel use).
If we do this (and NZ is one of the best placed countries in the world to do so) we'll be in a great position with our economy isolated from rocketing fossil fuel costs and carbon charges. If we don't, then we'll be steadily stuffed by higher and higher energy prices.
This obviously doesn't make short term commercial sense to a company that can make better returns by sucking more gas out of Taranaki and burning it. Which is why we shouldn't let "commercial returns" determine our energy policy.
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It might also have the effect of deterring investment in New Zealand altogether. And it would certainly paint a big political target on Labour's back
A classic argument, best expressed as "safeguard your hovel and pittance - don't lose them by voting [for a previous, more leftwing] Labour"