TLDR: This week in geo-politics, the global economy and Aotearoa’s political economy, we learned:
PM Jacinda Ardern didn’t take the Three Waters offramp offered to her by the new mayors of Auckland and Christchurch;
Aotearoa kept growing jobs and real incomes at faster-than-expected rates in the September quarter;
Reserve Bank stress tests found banks were so profitable and well stocked with spare capital they could handle a 47% fall in house prices;
the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England both hiked their key interest rates by 75 basis points, setting the scene for the Reserve Bank to do the same on Nov 23; and,
Elon Musk bought Twitter, retweeted a crazy conspiracy theory, deleted the retweet, and then sacked the social network’s moderation and ethics team, while Substack launched a chat function on its iOs app for subscribers forming around writers and podcasters (including me).
What was in this week’s hoon
We talked with special guest University of Canterbury political scientist and IPCC climate change report co-author Bronwyn Hayward about this weekend’s COP27 conference in Egypt, including the geo-political challenges for emissions reduction and how well (or not) Aotearoa is responding.
Later, we talked about:
the mid-term elections in the United States this coming Wednesday (NZ Time);
the future of Twitter under Musk and the alternatives growing on Substack;
the return of Binyamin Netanyahu in Israel;
China’s Orwellian attempt (still) to eliminate covid1 ; and
how rising real incomes and rudely healthy household balance sheets contrast with the gloomy rhetoric of opposition politicians calling for the biggest tax cuts for the wealthiest.
What was on The Kākā this week;
For examples of how I covered these issues for paying subscribers this week, here’s my deeper dive analyses of:
rising real weekly incomes and the resilience of home-owners’ finances to rising interest rates and falling house prices in Thursday’s email;
the Government’s decision to drive past a Three Waters offramp offered by Wayne Brown and Phil Mauger in Tuesday’s email;
a Green call for a windfall profits tax in Monday’s email;
whether this week’s big rate hikes in the United States and Britain were too big and fast for the global economy to handle in Friday’s email; and,
how National’s tax cuts would deliver more than half of their $11.1b in lost tax revenues to the top 10% of income earners and landlords in Wednesday’s email.
Other places I spread my journalism this week
I talked on TV3’s The Project about rising real incomes and low debt
I podcasted about broken relations between councils and the Crown
I appeared on TVNZ’s Breakfast to talk about Three Waters
Charts of the week
Useful longer elsewhere for the weekend
Profundities, curiosities, spookies and feel-goods
Cartoons of the week
The Craic of the week
Mā te wā e hoa
Bernard
I am choosing not to capitalise covid because that’s my way of insulting the little bastard.
The week that was to Nov 5