It has been a decent week: farmers confidence is up and markedly, our confidence is up a bit —still overall pessimistic, but up nevertheless— and last week we saw business confidence rise a bit.
Then come the newest numbers, our current account.
It’s a mess. We are a mess. In essence we buy more from the world than we sell it, and given we are in the business of selling stuff, that doesn’t make us a very good business.
Glass half full, the figure we got yesterday is stable as a percentage of GDP. But the percentage of GDP is hopeless, that's the worry.
This by the way is for the June quarter. In actual number terms it widened by $269 million.
It's all part of the wider picture we will get later today on the actual GDP, which we mentioned earlier has almost certainly gone backwards for the same period.
So, join the 2 bits together. You have an economy going backwards, driven in part by the fact that we buy more stuff than we sell. Think about that scenario in your own life.
You make a living selling stuff, but you still buy more things. They cost more than what you make, you are sinking. That's the story of this country.
Our net investment liability position —another good comparison we can make with our own lives, note the words net liability— was $205 billion, which is 49.7 % of GDP. That is over $6 billion more than it was in the last quarter.
It’s getting worse, we are more liable. You don’t in life want to liable, you don’t in life want a deficit. In really simple terms, in the deals that involve NZ and the world, we have more liabilities than we have assets.
As I say most of us don’t run our lives that way, and yet we seem happy to watch our country being run that way.
It has become very clear this week from the Tory Whanau revelations that we have people in decision making positions who have no idea how to turn a dollar, spend a dollar, value a dollar, or run anything that resembles an economy of any sort or size.
The numbers don’t lie. The numbers aren't good but they can't be a surprise given the sort of people who have been in charge.
Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings - where this article was sourced.
Glass half full, the figure we got yesterday is stable as a percentage of GDP. But the percentage of GDP is hopeless, that's the worry.
This by the way is for the June quarter. In actual number terms it widened by $269 million.
It's all part of the wider picture we will get later today on the actual GDP, which we mentioned earlier has almost certainly gone backwards for the same period.
So, join the 2 bits together. You have an economy going backwards, driven in part by the fact that we buy more stuff than we sell. Think about that scenario in your own life.
You make a living selling stuff, but you still buy more things. They cost more than what you make, you are sinking. That's the story of this country.
Our net investment liability position —another good comparison we can make with our own lives, note the words net liability— was $205 billion, which is 49.7 % of GDP. That is over $6 billion more than it was in the last quarter.
It’s getting worse, we are more liable. You don’t in life want to liable, you don’t in life want a deficit. In really simple terms, in the deals that involve NZ and the world, we have more liabilities than we have assets.
As I say most of us don’t run our lives that way, and yet we seem happy to watch our country being run that way.
It has become very clear this week from the Tory Whanau revelations that we have people in decision making positions who have no idea how to turn a dollar, spend a dollar, value a dollar, or run anything that resembles an economy of any sort or size.
The numbers don’t lie. The numbers aren't good but they can't be a surprise given the sort of people who have been in charge.
Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings - where this article was sourced.
6 comments:
Mike, you seem to think the economy will be saved by making people working from home return to work.
Because they will buy a flat white and perhaps a muffin.
If it was that simple...
Mike , The June quarter deficit of NZ spending over selling ( export receipts) is starkly identified in the closing of Winstone Pulp and Paper at Ruapehu. They exported $250 million and that NZ Inc income is stopped because of NZ's ridiculous elecricity conglomerate greed and subservience to sharehoders .
NZ needs new baseload power NOW without a protracted consent process or the deficit will continue to widen . YES coal or nuclear NOW. Both are just extension of harmless electricity generating steam turbines.
New Zealand’s economy shrank by 0.2 percent in the second quarter of 2024, as key sectors like retail, construction, and agriculture saw significant declines, according to data from Stats NZ. Real gross national disposable income dropped by 1.1 percent year-on-year.
Yeah, all good then.
Ideologue muppets have run this country into the ground.
All the natural resources you could wish for and a small population to service and yet we are a basket case.
Get real NZ, get off your arses and mine some stuff, make some stuff and pay the bills
Why does NZ appoint Finance Ministers with no high-level professional qualifications or experience in finance? They must be relying heavily on someone in the background. The Reserve Bank?
I think I see a great business opportunity. All I need to do is develop a way of producing all of the goods we currently produce, without using any electricity.
O.K. I'm all over it, but in the mean time there is talk of, dare I say it, nuclear power. Eventually NZ will be forced to send the "Nuclear Free" holy cow to the abattoir and the sooner this happens the better. Factories are already closing, giving high electricity prices as the reason.
Now is not the right time to talk about having nuclear power, the right time was many years ago, but if we start it now and start planning for it's location, support infrastructure and integration into the grid system we may just be ready to have some of the small modular reactors being developed. As a stop gap, we need to expand our gas and oil production.
What the MSM don't report is that for every job lost in a factory, one, one and a half or even two jobs are often lost in support industries.
Thanks Jacinda.
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