Electronic Card spending per capita continues to slump. More money spent on rates, insurance etc, and less money flowing through the economy in real terms. April was a sharp decline. Was it fuel? (1/5)

Why Chernoblyl needs to rely less on nuclear power...

Days like this when you realise that Government Ministers, their reckonomics advisors, and the ghouls in the lobby groups, are *fking dangerously ill-informed* about how Govt spending actually works. Let's have a look why this matters... [🧵 1/n]

Now in my third year of posting this little doom loop graphic.

Oosh. So 'below 60,000' means a cut of around 5,000. More if you include the crown entities and other bodies that will be dealing with frozen budgets. What does that mean for Wellington? [1/n]

The ghouls wailing about 'borrowing' $30bn to buy BNZ... Meanwhile the OG state-owned bank RBNZ pulls $30bn out of thin air to buy foreign currency assets without a peep from the media (after conjuring up $60bn to buy a tonne of Govt bonds). As I keep saying, the money is not the barrier!

Had a quick look at what's been driving changes in GDP (expenditure method). Before I dive in, yes, GDP is a crap measure of progress... but it does tell you quite a bit about what's going on, which is what it was designed for! Glorious detail first - what's pushing GDP growth up and down? [🧵 1/n]

Catching up with the weekly jobs data. It's crunch time - do we dip for the winter like 2024 and 2025, or do we stay strong like 2022 and get some real job growth going? I think you can guess my view. [1/2]

Not the worse of the genre - but spoiled in the latter half by ghouls' commentary. Same mistakes I've covered before. One way to get the debate going would be to suggest that pensions should be paid back from peoples' estates when they die - subject to a $1m threshold. Not keen? Opt out.

Ronald Reagan's appointment as Fed Chair, Alan Greenspan, laying out some hard truth on the benefits of building a fund to pay pension costs... Suffice to say the questioner was hoping for a rather different answer. www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNCZ...

I think a lot of debates about “markets” vs “planning” in the abstract would benefit from thinking a bit more about how investment decisions are made in the economies in which we currently live. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

Caroline nails it. Sadly, our commentariat still focus on Neanderthal 'prices go up, central bank needs to get tough and hike rates' nonsense. www.interest.co.nz/public-polic...

Got asked a great question: Why would private debt have to increase to enable the NZ Govt to run a budget surplus? Let's build this up from the basics... This graph shows total NZ bank balances - $455bn and counting. How does it keep going up? Where's the $ coming from? [🧵 1/n]

April benefits data 🧵. What's happening? Well, the number of people claiming a working-age benefit remains elevated - 10,000 souls above the forecasts from the end of 2025 and a whopping 40,000 above the December 2023 forecasts. Any good news? [1/n]

Quick check-in on the monthly prices data. We get data for just under half of the CPI basket on a monthly basis. Higher fuel costs are now clearly visible in these stats and we look well on track for CPI being just under 4% in Q2 of this year (higher for Q3).

Whoopsie. Might have cocked that up.

Catching up on an old favourite. Tax revenue is a decent indicator of economic activity. Look at that flaccid, trailing off into slumpy-slumpy. Image 2 shows the annual change in the data in image 1. Early-2026 signs of recovery? My arse.

Some terrible tribal govt debt scare threads doing the rounds over the last few days. Here's some facts to inflame / calm (depending on who you are). 1. First, the number you use for max debt scare drama... oh no, won't someone think of the grandkids?!? [🧵1/n]

Modi asking the public to reduce imports to protect the economy. We used to care about this stuff - how running a current account deficit with the rest of the world drains demand from our economy and requires us to sell assets to offshore investors (who then extract a ongoing return). See image 2.

In the interests of balance, this piece does cover the harsh facts, and I don't really expect Liam to call out the war that we appear to have declared on young people. The passive 'let's hope the economy gets going again' stuff drives me crazy though. Why? [🧵 1/n]

Yes, bank profits are a function of banks' total assets (mostly outstanding mortgage loans), the amount of equity they are required to put up by RBNZ, and their ability to maintain their social licence. Retail banking is a failed market - bring back the State mortgage.

Neither left nor right but delivering grey slop.

Martians arrive and marvel at our stupidity... why are so many young people left idle when there is so much work to do? Why do you listen to reckonomists instead of the engineers who actually build things? Why do you live in shacks when you have loads of empty houses?

🤷‍♂️

Great example of myths getting embedded. RNZ reporting on the OECD economy review of NZ: 'high public debt' a big concern? The report *actually* says NZ has low public debt... but then parrots Treasury's concern that debt will grow exponentially. Treasury's fiscal policy is so 1985. More? [🧵 1/n]

Ghouls gonna ghoul.

There is no doubt that falling mortgage costs helped to pull the economy out of a job-killing spiral. But, as you can see, mortgage / debt costs are still above pre-cvid trends. The reckonomists think the OCR is at a stimulatory low - it's like they can't do the math.

Starting to get some April data now. Basically the general 'sliding sideways / stopped getting worse' position continues. Worth adjusting for population growth though... (1/4)

This is a total disaster for the country and it is not an accident - it is policy. We have knowingly created a 'buffer stock' of unemployed people desperate for work because ghouls think that this is the best way to stop wages/prices going up. Who suffers? The young and the marginalised. Disgusting.

Wild celebrations afoot because things didn't get any worse in the first quarter of the year. Go us! Worth a look at the RBNZ forecasts from the last couple of years compared to today's actual numbers. Now, let's see what happens when we throw a few billion at offshore fossil fuel producers...

Super affordability discourse has me mad again. There's a whopping lie that ruins any sensible discussion of what 'we can afford' as a country. The lie was immortalised in this Thatcher quote: "There is no such thing as public money, there is only taxpayers' money." Disprovable in minutes... [🧵 1/n]

We hear a lot about the 'green shoots' of growth being stomped on by the oil price shock. It is worth remembering that stagflation (no job growth / higher cost of living) was the likely path before Trump went full bull in a china shop. The labour market stalled. We needed CPR, we got DJT. [🧵 1/n]

Who get the $ when we pay our mortgage? What about when banks pay interest? Folks imagine $ being moved from Account A to Account B, like a bank transfer. That's NOT how it works. To be fair on Liam (this week) his answer (image 2) wasn't bad. But accuracy matters, quick explainer... 🧵 [1/n]

Rent control killed these cities. 😢

Niche update on monetary operations. First, the pink line is Govt *net* money creation. Comfortably above $20bn per year ($55m per day 🥂). This is capital spending picking up mostly and other costs ramping up as an *inevitable* result of economic malaise. [🧵 1/n]

'Where does your tax money come from?' is the question to start with. If Govt spend an extra $10bn, we have an extra $10bn to pay taxes with.

Mortgage data day... Always worth remembering that interest added to mortgage loans is still high compared to the settled norm from 2015 - 2020. Interest rates have come down, but total mortgages owed have gone up a load. [🧵 1/n]

Household living cost data is out. Living cost increases are only up 2% year-on-year in Q1 2026. Sound right? Nah, it's because cheaper mortgage costs (yellow) are pulling the cost of living down compared to last year. If you don't have a mortgage, you're getting all heat no relief [🧵1/n]

Latest monthly IRD / Stats NZ data is out. Lots in here, but a quick appetiser. All the talk before Trump declaring war on humanity was of green shoots. But, latest data suggests we were heading for 'meh' - bobbling along the bottom. Image 2 tells the story - permanent economic and social scarring.

Quick addendum to yesterday's household financial wealth thread. Let's look at NZ Inc together - Govt, households, businesses etc. Image 1 is the annual change in value of NZ financial assets. Now toggle to Image 2, which shows annual change NZ financial liabilities (debts). What do you see? [🧵 1/n]

Imagine how many tears the hopelessly naive Bishboy policy wonks would cry if the ETS was canned? Let's do Universal Basic Electricity instead.

Nice piece on the huge flaws in the economics theories that still dominates policy analysis and discourse. Indeed, we seem especially committed to those theories in NZ. open.substack.com/pub/braddelo...

No place, well, apart from in prisons and children's homes, then it's all good. It's about who the violence is visited upon. There are those that need protection, and those that, errm, feed at the bottom, and need, you know, violence.. Big time.

Got asked how NZ households can be bottom-of-the-league 'savers' while being extraordinarily rich in financial assets... on average 😉 (see image 2). It's mainly a definitional issue. Let's dive in to that - and then take a little tour of changes in household wealth in NZ. [🧵 1/n]

Productivity is measured by adding 'wages paid' and 'operating profits made' together and then dividing the total by either hours worked (for labour productivity) or capital invested (for capital productivity). What happens to jobs and profits in a sustained recession, Liam?

Great news everyone, job ads continued to grow in March.

Illustration of the nonsense assumptions that underpin RBNZ/Treasury economic models... the return to the mythical equilibrium; the higher prices for thing 1 reducing demand for thing 2, leading to lower prices for thing 2; the high unemployment ('slack' 🤢) pushing wages below CPI, etc.

Updating the 'who navigated the post-cvid-inflation period the worse' graph. The UK have taken the lead in most shit-ly handled. Still time to regain the lead.

Quick weekly jobs update to remind you that the promised recovery never came, the pace of worsening just slowed down a bit.

Because you should take the money Govt spend off people who don't have it any more?