Posts by Danyl Mclauchlan
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The “Greek bail out” doesn’t seem to me to be a bail out of the Greeks, but a bail out of the banks
It is a bail-out of the Greeks. Even if Greece defaults on all its debt, it still can't afford to run its government and its loss of credit would mean instant bankruptcy and force it to implement staggering austerity measures. So they're trying to work towards a compromise where Greece's debt-holders accept a write-off, and Greece continues to borrow while it turns its economy around, with the understanding that its creditors will eventually get some of their money back.
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Wikipedia has a nice chart illustrating what went wrong.
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the average Greek worked 2,116 hours in 2008, while the average German worked 1,426 hours.”
That’s about labour productivity. German workers are much more productive than Greek workers, so they earn more, so they work less.
The US dollar was a load of bollocks from day one, you can’t have one monetary policy with multiple different fiscal policies, it can’t and never will work over a period of time, it is an impossibility
But voters in places like California and New York seem happy with permanent wealth transfers to places like Alabama and Mississippi, while German voters don't seem so taken with the idea.
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One of the interesting bits that jumped out at me from the Times article was the excerpt on industrial clustering:
“The entire supply chain is in China now,” said another former high-ranking Apple executive. “You need a thousand rubber gaskets? That’s the factory next door. You need a million screws? That factory is a block away. You need that screw made a little bit different? It will take three hours.”
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Because it kind of sorta really mattered that no half-way credible economist or policy wonk I can think of believed a word of English and Cunliffe’s rosy projections of when the nation’s books would return to the black.
Their predictions were based on the Treasury forecasts, which Treasury emphatically stood by whenever they were questioned, and then revised less than a week after the election.
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This can only mean one thing as far as I can see. Key knew of the device before it was discovered and that points to collusion between Key’s team and the journalist.
Why? well it sure took the media’s attention off anything Labour had to say in the last week leading up to the election and that, I think, was the whole point.Right. So ‘the plan’ and their arrangement with Ambrose would go something like:
We’d like you to secretly record our conversation, in which we make several mildly embarrassing statements. Then take it to the media outlets you work for, but arrange it so they just report on the tape but don’t release it.
Then we’ll attack you and conduct a campaign of character assassination against you, accusing you of gutter journalism to make it all look believable. Then we’ll lay a complaint with the police -and rely on your discretion not to reveal this arrangement - and in response you file proceedings against us in the High Court. Then we’ll seek $14,000 court costs against you, again, just to make it all look really realistic. Deal?
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Graeme, you should have been a logician. The sort who says, Yes, there appears to be at least one cow which appears on the side we can see to be black in these lighting conditions.
Graeme kind of reminds me of the Fair Witness profession in a Heinlein novel:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranger_in_a_Strange_Land#Fair_Witness
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During the Christchurch town-hall debate I was google-chatting with a National Party press sec, and I said something along the lines of ‘I’m going to start a fake rumour that Cunliffe refused to release his costings to Goff and then tipped off the PM’s office.’ I didn't, but I occasionally fret that this got taken up and spread around.
Anyway, Labour released ‘the numbers’ about five days after the ‘show me the money’ moment so no, Goff didn’t have the numbers.
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How’s this for an idle speculation:
what if the Act deal is that Key leaves after the electionI'm not sure if 'idle' is the word you're looking for . . .
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According to Joyce, 81% agreed that there were more important issues to focus on, and only 13% said the so-called tape was worthy of further attention. This, said Joyce, was evidence that the matter was of interest only to those within the "Bowen Triangle", while the public was of a higher mind.
There's a gap between what people think they're supposed to think, and report back to pollsters and what they actually think and base their private voting behaviour on.
It's also the case that overall majorities aren't that important here. If 4% of National supporters switch their vote over to Winston Peters on the basis of this affair, then that's a strategic catastrophe for Joyce's party, no matter what the other 96% do.