Briefly in the news in Aotearoa’s political economy on Wednesday, January 7:
The Lead: Property developers in Hawkes Bay have identified a key flaw in the tool now being used more heavily by Councils and the Government to pay for infrastructure under new housing developments, casting more doubt on the overall strategy adopted by both major parties of making buyers of new homes pay upfront for infrastructure, rather than using Crown or Council balance sheets.
The Sidebar: Development levies only get paid after titles are issued, which means land-bankers who drip-feed sections onto the market only during boom years delay payments needed up-front by councils to pay for pipes and roads. See and hear more detail analysis below and in the podcast above on how this stunts attempts to grow housing supply.
Elsewhere in the news this morning, a new supermarket is set to open in Christchurch this morning (NZ Herald), a coalition of housing activists have called for more Government action to deal with womens’ homelessness, (The Post-$), EB Games is closing all its 38 stores in New Zealand (RNZ), France and Britain have agreed to put troops into Ukraine after a peace deal is signed (AP) and Donald Trump has suggested cancelling this year’s mid-term elections (The Daily Beast).
In the Scoop of the Day, David Fisher reports for NZ Herald-$ this morning from an interview with the Manage My Health hacker, Kazu, about ‘going in the front door’ with a password to hack the data, and how he’s talking to the company about being paid a ransom before a new deadline of this Friday.
In Chart Pack of the Day, Musical Chairs analyses fresh Reserve Bank data on lending in November and finds only a neutral to mildly positive credit impulse going into the economy, net of inflation and repayments, thanks to low business investment, farmers repaying debt, and only a modest recovery in property lending as prices and rents fall. Via BlueSky
Today’s Deep-dive of the Day is an analysis of why US oil companies won’t go into Venezuela to spend tens of billions reviving oil production. The political and financial risks are too high in the long run. (MSNow video via Youtube)
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