Americans Become Easy Targets In Nationwide Surveillance Dragnet The Wall Street Journal BY SHANE SHIFFLETT AND HANNAH CRITCHFIELD Liz McLellan spent a morning in January witnessing the work of federal agents who had arrived in Maine to pursue the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Like other community activists, protesters and passersby…
Pressreader.com: Rise of the Machines
Really really really get the pressreader.com appFrom The Wall Street Journal, 27 February 2026 Anthropic Turns Down U.S. on AI Guardrails The Wall Street JournalBY AMRITH RAMKUMAR Anthropic said it wouldn’t back down in a dispute with the Defense Department over artificial-intelligence guardrails, complicating efforts to reach a compromise ahead…
Cross-Cultural Language Difference Appreciation
Interesting day! Quietly loving how the Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA) operates 🙂The BSA is a New Zealand government body created under the Broadcasting Act 1989. Their function is to “receive and determine complaints from persons who are dissatisfied with the outcome of complaints made to broadcasters”, and to encourage the…
Falling in Love: RBNZ Governor Edition
I was listening to the new Reserve Bank of New Zealand Governor on RNZ today. She’s awesome! I’m liking the cut of her jibb.Her economics are orthodox, her communication is on point and not distracted from the minimalist message she wants to say, and she’s quite happy to jump out of…
Dead Hand of Government – Kiwisaver Edition
Kiwisaver was a policy initiative introduced with a big hiss and a roar by Michael Cullen back in the Helen Clark government in May 2005.Convinced that he had single handedly created a government fiscal surplus through his superior fiscal rectitude, he seemed to think no one was as good at…
Sustainable Development Seen Through an Economics Lens
When we think about environmental resources what do we mean by “sustainable” development? Economic growth is the change over time in the volume of goods and services which are available for investment or consumption. With increased production comes higher incomes, wealth, and improved living standards. Economic development, the reward from…
If it felt like it hurt, its because it did
Stats NZ updated their annual national accounts for the year ending March 2024 today. These updates bring their GDP stats into line with the Annual Enterprise Survey and other benchmark data sources. The annual measures shake out as much of the data vagaries that plague the quarterly measures, and reset…
Housing Cohort Effects
I’m wondering about the systemic effects of large mortgages. I might be wrong, but here goes. The scenarioSo we are looking at moving houses. But moving up in house quality means moving up in price. Twenty years ago, moving up in quality meant going from a $100,000 house to $200,000 –…
Pretty Trigger Happy
… did President Donald Trump really just drop the single biggest explosive motherlode since Harry Truman?!?I give it 3-6 months before America sees the next 9-11 terrorist attack.Note to world: Iran “didn’t have strong cards”
Pay Equity Laws and “Structural Gender Discrimination”: Economics Component
As an Economist, this REALLY annoys me: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/560417/opposition-ramps-up-to-government-s-pay-equity-moveThe whole concept that you can look across different industries and try to equate remuneration rates without looking at the demand and supply pressures on the industries themselves is economic ignorance and massively annoying!For Economists, its like people claiming the Earth is flat…
Pay Equity Laws and “Structural Gender Discrimination”: Legal Component
Key Pay Equity CaselawWith a good head of steam built up, I dived into the main caselaw: Terranova Homes & Care Ltd V Service And Food Workers Union Nga Ringa Tota Inc Ca631/2013 [2014] NZCA 516 [28 October 2014] (Bartlett Case), fully expecting to find another ugly piece of activist…
Another Mighty Totora has Fallen
Regular readers of Sir Bob Jones’s blog, No Punches Pulled would have been aware that his last posting was the 16 April.For a prolific commentator like Sir Bob, not posting something for close to three weeks is unheard of.It was for this reason that I have been scanning the media…
The Trade Secret of Intellectual Trumpism
Extracted from the Wall Street JournalPOLITICAL ECONOMICS By Joseph C. Sternberg · Apr 11, 2025The goal of all these tariffs for avowed protectionists is to make Americans less able to purchase things.President Trump’s sudden reversal this week is unlikely to mark the beginning of the end of his adventures in…
Big problems in little New Zealand
I and every economist with a bit more than pudding between our ears saw the economy crashing coming mainly because of the Reserve Bank doing this and this clown doing everything I’ve accused him of in this.Grant and Jacinda started this with REALLY bad economic management, which all the lefties…
Who’s winning?
Mmm… American politics are for Americans to decide. But… …Was Biden the best candidate the Democrats could really offer up to American voters?
Why Can’t New Zealand Make Something This Creative?
I’ve long been an admirer of the Singaporeans. For the modern day equivalent of Greek city states, the Singaporeans have no lawrels to rest upon. They’re not endowed with mineral resources like Australia. They don’t have old money like Europe. They weren’t endowed with fertile lands like New Zealand. And…
Trash Town: The shabbiest little capital in the world
My partner and I were coming back from dinner when I recorded this display of people-trash making public trash.Walking back from dinner, we had already passed two separate areas of homeless people, each camped out around Victoria and Manners streets.Before I snapped this tirade between three homeless, or whatever people…
Eugenie Sage: Our Most Regressive Politician
Before she, thankfully, stood down from re-election in October, Eugenie Sage from the Greens already ranked highly on my shit-list of worst political decision-makers ever.She was the “brains” behind the outlawing of single use disposable plastic bags. A Really Bad Decision-makerShe wasn’t alone in her left-wing appetitite for using public…
The Price of Booze and Smokes
Stats NZ released its Consumer Price Index today. Booze & Ciggie InflationHere’s what’s been happening to the relative cost of your weekly booze and smokes.Booze and smoke annual prices increased approximately 1.6% faster than other goods and services between 1988 and 2009. All other goods and services increased in price,…
Working From Home
Lots of the talking heads think that Wellington needs to return to the office for both productivity reasons, and also the good of the inner city.I’m currently at the Bank of New Zealand, and I asked my team why they don’t want to come into the office more. The most…