Cam Slater: Everything Is Going along Sweet as Bro… Oh Wait!

The Government and Grant Robertson would have you believe that everything is going swimmingly in the economy. This is despite them tipping us into recession, borrowing and spending like a drunken sailor, with poorly targeted government spending, like the multi-billion dollar Covid fund, all fuelling rampant inflation.

Everything is just fine. Except it’s not.

The government’s accounts have deteriorated further from the track marked out by Finance Minister Grant Robertson in the Budget.

The Treasury reported that the government’s operating (Obegal) deficit for the 11 months to the end of May stood at $6.5 billion, which was $2.1b higher than the forecast it released in the Budget.

The deficit had been $1.3b behind forecast at the end of April.

Net core Crown debt has now risen $5b above forecast to $73b, or to 18.9% of GDP.

That is significantly above the Budget forecast which had charted that it would stand at 17.6% of GDP at the end of May.

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These clowns and economic vandals are fiddling while New Zealand burns, and they are throwing cash on the economic bonfire.

No wonder they had to let the fuel excise discount lapse, to hit us harder at the pump. They need every dollar they can find, just to keep the lights on.

To put that amount of extra borrowing into perspective, you’ll remember the outrage over Labour agreeing to Winston’s Provincial Growth Fund, which was $3 billion. We at least got things for that; with this extra borrowing, which is nearly double the PGF, we’ve got nothing, not even an explanation.

Which now brings me to the next bit of bad news.

New Zealand is likely to go through a “double-dip” recession this year, Kiwibank economists say.

They have revised their economic forecasts up, but still expect a downturn.

The economists said after the summer quarters put the economy into a technical recession, there would be a bounce back in the second quarter’s gross domestic product (GDP) update.

That was likely to be followed by another dip in the third and fourth quarters of this year, and the first quarter of next year.

“We expect a three-quarter, cumulative 0.4% contraction in economic activity beginning from the second half of the year. If we include periods of effectively no growth in 2024, we’re expecting about 12 straight months of very weak activity ahead.

“It’s a Reserve Bank-engineered recession.”

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Do you know what else a double-dip recession signals? A depression.

A depression occurs when one of two events happens:

1. a decline in real GDP exceeding 10 per cent, or
2. a recession lasting two or more years.

Now ask yourself this: can you see things improving if a Labour/Green/Maori coalition is returned at the election?

You should be very afraid about the economic future of this country if we continue to have economic illiterates like Robertson in charge, but now, adding in the economic saboteurs of the Greens and the evilness of the race-based politics that the Maori Party brings to the table, you should be terrified.

As I’ve said before, if you want a change of government at the next election, in just 100 days, then there are only three parties to vote for. National, ACT or NZ First. Place your party vote with whichever party you think suits your own personal circumstances, and do whatever you like with your electorate vote.

Cam Slater is a New Zealand-based blogger, best known for his role in Dirty Politics and publishing the Whale Oil Beef Hooked blog, which operated from 2005 until it closed in 2019. This article was first published HERE