Posts by Rich of Observationz
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I've seen it suggested elsewhere that the Chinese will be zeroing their interest rates in response to their stock market crash. If they do that, then sure, it'll get the stock market moving upwards, along with every other "market" that could benefit from a flood of very cheap money. Essentially the Chinese government will be printing money (there will be no other way to fund the banks other than through QE) and feeding it to the middle class to buy assets on margin.
Of course, this will have two effects:
- nobody will bother building up their widget factories when they can make way more money in financial speculation
- eventually, the governments cash/credit will run out and it'll all come to a juddering haltIf they do this, I expect we've got 2-5 years before the crash, depending on the level of tolerance international markets have
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The Manapouri power goes direct to Tiwai and there are no high capacity lines to ship it north when (not if) the smelter closes
There are lines - the current problem is that they don't have capacity to ship power South, not North. Obviously, power doesn't have to be transmitted all the way from a generator to a user. If Tiwai Point closes, Manapouri will (e.g.) supply all the power to Dunedin and points south, so they won't sink power from Christchurch, which will mean there'll be more power for the North Island, etc.
There's also a difference between peak power and continuous energy - even if the lines are at full capacity at peak times, they won't be at off peak times and it will be possible to export power north, avoiding the use of water in the Clyde and other dams.
Also, the system is already being enhanced, both in the lower South Island and the Cook Strait interconnector:
http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/if-tiwai-point-smelter-shuts-no-problem-getting-power-auckland-ck-138278
https://www.transpower.co.nz/sites/default/files/plain-page/attachments/LSI%20Reliability%20GUP%20Attachment%20C%20-%20Power%20System%20Analysis_1.pdf -
When does Hosking have a not-Alan Partridge moment?
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Polity: House-buying patterns in Auckland, in reply to Katharine Moody,
all through the Clark/Cullen years the surpluses were mainly due to the influx of overseas capital taking ownership of our farms, forests and houses
How does that create a * fiscal * surplus, though? The Clark/Cullen administration stayed in surplus simply because they had an efficient public service and ran taxes at a level that adequately covered costs.
National have cut taxes for their mates, damaged the tax base (it started under Clark, granted) by letting the wealthy convert taxable income into untaxed capital gains and damaged public service efficiency (think consultants replacing salaried staff). Hence they struggle to run a surplus despite lower levels of services.
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I wouldn't expect a real estate agent to collect statistics. I would expect the public bodies paid to do this to collect decent data on the largest part of the economy.
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Polity: House-buying patterns in Auckland, in reply to David Hood,
What does "value of NZ houses" mean? Is that the total volume of sales, or a proxy for it.
Why don't Stats collect proper data in this area, anyway? They could get the transaction data from Linz, you would think, and provide figures for total volume, average price/GV, etc. It's impossible to even track down numbers for total GV in a region or nationally - you have to guess by dividing council income by the rates percentage (which is also a hidden number).
Anyone would think this data is deliberately obfuscated?
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Polity: House-buying patterns in Auckland, in reply to A C Young,
It's only the land that has long term value and inflates. The shack you built on it will be firewood in a few hundred years, and the flash kitchen will be in the dump shop in thirty. People forget this as part of their house porn fueled delusions, of course.
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Polity: House-buying patterns in Auckland, in reply to BenWilson,
The answer would be a scheme where the state bails out the (former) home-owner by swapping their unpayable debt for government bonds, taking ownership of the property and granting them a lifetime, maintaining tenancy. Then put the properties into community co-operatives so that people have collective control over "their" joint properties rather than dealing with the government directly.
Dancing Cossacks FTW!
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the rest to investors from Greece, Italy and China
Maybe the Greek government could engage Rob to scan the UK land register and identify investors with names like Serepsisos or whatever as possible sources of tax revenue.
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Also, I do have a solution that doesn't involve any forms of racial discrimination.
The Reserve Bank has a target range for general inflation, which they enforce using interest rates with reasonable success. They have no such range for property inflation (and indeed, such data is excluded from the price index and generally ignored by Stats NZ, presumably by edict from above).
Have them make a plan for house prices - maybe 2-5% growth in the next 12 months, tapering thence to ±1%. Give them a set of clubs to enforce this with, ranging from the current light putter of bank lending requirements through to the nail studded lump of wood of a 100% tax on sale proceeds over a certain percentage of GV (making sales above that price fruitless for the vendor). Apply these accordingly to hit the target.
After a while, it'll become clear that profits can no longer be made in the Auckland market, and "investors" will go elsewhere.