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Monday, March 25, 2024

Professor Robert MacCulloch: The Blame for NZ's Recession lies with our Prejudiced Big Media


The Blame for NZ's Recession lies with our Prejudiced Big Media - not National - not even Labour

What's prejudice? It is an unreasonable opinion especially when formed without enough thought or knowledge. We're going to make the argument that the cause of the recession we're now suffering is our Prejudiced Big Media which suppressed alternative views in September 2021 about the economic consequences of Auckland's disastrous almost four month second lock-down.

It was that lockdown & snails pace opening up which is the cause of our current malaise. That was when government debt skyrocketed, money was recklessly printed & Aucklanders became so fed up, many left the country and one's that didn't ejected Labour from power. Last year, the Australian Financial Review said, "The latest data from across the ditch suggests NZ is the first advanced economy to enter into a bona fide stagflationary recession". To my knowledge, no other nation is in a double-dip recession. While GDP stagnates, immigration sets all-time records (2-3% of the population) meaning GDP per capita is plummeting at Global Financial Crisis proportions. It may be the start of a long-term malaise as Kiwis lose faith and leave in an exodus to Australia and other countries.

Who or what's to blame? It is important to know since only then can one fix the source so it doesn't re-occur. The cause lies with our Prejudiced Big Media. In September 2021 a group of us tried in vain to rally opinion against Auckland's second lockdown to avoid the devastating economic costs we're now experiencing. This Blog argued on 15 September that Auckland's lockdown was not adding up. In desperation we wrote:

"Can Treasury please do the cost-benefit analysis which we've been pleading with them to do for months".

One of our country's top economists, John Gibson, published articles on the topic, warning of the dire destruction being wrought. On 12 September 2021, he wrote:

"The apparent kindness of locking down to limit Covid-19 deaths will, instead, be killing more people by making us poorer - lockdowns are one of our greatest peacetime policy failures .. safety at all costs - costs lives".

Meanwhile Dr Martin Lally at Capital Financial Consultants produced his own private cost-benefit analysis of lockdowns supporting such arguments. We were all shafted by Big Media. It colluded with Labour to avoid shining light on the truth that the cost of Auckland's September 2021 lockdown wildly exceeded its benefits. A Treasury cost-benefit would've brutally exposed it at the time but Labour's leaders refused to order one. They slammed that door shut. The truth got in the way of their agenda. Big Media refused to report our views. Had it done so and we gained traction, our current economic mess may have been avoided. In September 2021 Deputy PM Robertson repeated his mantra, "A strong public health response is still the best economic response". Big Media selected its own anointed experts who were put on its front pages to back him up, whilst de-platforming those of us with different views.

Were folks like Gibson & me shunned since we were nobodies? After all, I am a nobody like everybody. Many of this Blog's readers are, no doubt, fed up with folks calling themselves experts, but if an expert nerdy type is what you want, people like Gibson & me had academic backgrounds more than matching the Government-Media team of self-declared Covid know-it-alls. In the ranking of NZ economists, we comprise half of the country's top four (Peter Phillips, a Nobel Prize contender, is first). But none of our skills meant a thing to Big Media. The current calamitous state of the nation's finances vindicates our predictions. Money has now become so short that our health system has run down, education system is declining & impact on young lives will end up being far more devastating than the benefits stemming from that September 2021 lock-down. Were NZ now growing at 2% per annum, instead of stagnation, $8 billion would be added to the country's ability to save lives & livelihoods in this year alone. How many people will now die because they're on hospital waiting lists & can't get the drugs to save their lives? How many young Kiwis will grow up in despair because of the poor education they've received these past 5 years? How many will commit suicide?

Next time Big Media gangs up with politicians against the public, it should realize one day it will pay a price. That price is the disdain we now have for it, because it betrayed us. Big Media's betrayal resulted in the suffering of countless people due to our recession & cost-of-living crisis. Instead of apologizing, journos now run sad stories painting Luxon as a cheat by claiming a housing allowance & Seymour as racist. They call it upholding democracy. NZ's Big Media misled us. Not our politicians. They were just being politicians. Prejudiced Big Media lost its integrity.

Sources:
https://www.waikato.ac.nz/news-opinion/media/2021/opinion-safety-at-all-costs-costs-lives
https://www.nzcpr.com/lockdown-again/
https://www.downtoearth.kiwi/post/having-resisted-our-calls-to-show-us-the-numbers-the-government-finally-relents
https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/THE-COSTS-AND-BENEFITS-OF-A-COVID-LOCKDOWN-2.pdf

Professor Robert MacCulloch holds the Matthew S. Abel Chair of Macroeconomics at Auckland University. He has previously worked at the Reserve Bank, Oxford University, and the London School of Economics. He runs the blog Down to Earth Kiwi from where this article was sourced.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Who's to blame?

CONTROL OF THE WORLD LIES NOT IN THE HANDS OF KINGS, QUEENS, DICTATORS, PRESIDENTS, OR MONARCHS. CONTROL OF THE WORLD LIES IN THE HANDS OF CENTRAL BANKS WHO COLLECTIVELY CONTROL THE WORLD ECONOMY, THE FINANCIAL MARKETS, AND THEREFORE THE ENTIRE FINANCIAL SYSTEM. MOREOVER, THEY NOW CONTROL THE NARRATIVE AND THEREFORE THE FLOW OF INFORMATION.

Rob Beechey said...

Thank god we have the independent platform, Breaking Views, and contributors like Prof Robert MacCullock to deliver a scathing attack against our despicable MSM. His criticism is becoming refreshingly more blunt and justifiable as we discover every day what a financial basket case our economy has become. I encourage our new Govt to stop having to explain themselves to these treacherous vermin as they navigate us out of this Robertson, Ardern, Orr, Hipkins disaster.

Anonymous said...


Various comments
1.Why does NZ appoint Finance ministers whose credentials are in other academic fields.
e.g. Deputy PM Robertson (Political Science), Minister Willis(in Arts and Journalism).
One would think qualifications and extensive experience in Economics/Finance/Banking are vital - especially in a crisis.

2. Labour's assault on the NZ economy was not just incompetence . It was deliberate as part of the objective to achieve equity. To do this, competence and quality must be reduced - and even destroyed.

3. A further example of Big Media disinformation:
Recently, a Left-leaning British person raved to me about the success of the Ardern regime - all gleaned from one source, namely "The Guardian".

Anonymous said...

@ Prof, Please start a petition for the defunding of RNZ and TVNZ. Let them sink like NewHub.

Anonymous said...

What is the number one economic or social problem the government of New Zealand should address immediately?

We have many issues. High inflation. A huge current account deficit. A divided society. However, none of these issues is our most pressing.

Without question, I would say that the number one issue the government must address right now is the undemocratic stranglehold that a cabal of extreme neo-Marxists hold over the people. Far-left extremists completely control our mainstream media. This neo-Marxist cabal has us by the throat, and represents the biggest threat to the future prosperity and cohesiveness of this country.

You see, high inflation, or any other problem, can be fixed, if the people and the government have the will. The only thing that might stop them doing so is these terrorists from within. The media can't be voted out.

Our far-left mainstream media has prevented the country improving, by eliminating any dissenting voices from their neo-Marxist propaganda.

One Pravda, Red Radio and other extreme left media are actively sabotaging and vandalizing this country, by exclusively and relentlessly promoting far-left anti-government rhetoric.

Mr Luxon needs to wake up, and fight back against these unelected fanatics, or all will be lost.

Defund them all.

K said...

I think you might ok me calling you Robert...
Robert, Thank you for the on-going thought provoking articles. Always 'on-the-button'.
Cheers.

Anonymous said...

Robert, the fight back starts here. With great people such as yourself highlighting facts and the truth. Keep up the great work. You have a large team behind you mate and it's getting larger by the day. Everyone is sick of the left and are becoming more vocal about their divisive agendas.