When people try and tell you National are better economic managers of NZ – show them this

1. Great article. Also who benefits from the debt? Banks. What was John Key? A banker

   • Yes Merrill Lynch and maybe Goldman Sachs, any surprise

2. Yep, it’s shocking.

   How about a few stickers…

   ‘Friends don’t let friends vote for the National party…”.

   To get the bastards out, everyone needs to start to talk a bit more about politics, what the Natz have done to our country, and get all friends on board to vote!

   Get it out there on social media… cool graphics, interesting satire etc to reach those who are not into politics.

   • All said perfectly SAVENZ

3. That’s as precise and accurate an explanation as I’ve seen. Thanks @ Bomber.

   National and Right Wing Labour traitors have really fucked us over. I mean, really.

   And focusing borrowed funds on factory style cowsploitation is frighteningly dangerous for many reasons, the least of which is to render our drinking water fetid and un consumable.
   ‘ Farming’ is an alarmingly delicate enterprise and requires finesse and training on a farm by farm basis. Every farm is different for it’s logistical location, climate, soil type, topography etc and requires the passing down of local, intergenerational knowledge to farm the land correctly and holistically.
   Otherwise ? Little signs in the super market saying ” Sorry. Due to weather events in the region, vegetables are no longer available. ” I actually saw that in New World recently. The eggs should never be carried in the same basket.

   Cowsploitation is simply figures. Dollar figures. Take a piece of land, cut down the trees so as the rotary irrigators can sweep about. Build a rotary cowshed. Buy in cows. Artificially inseminate them. They have calves. The girl calves get tagged, drenched, injected and readied for the rooting robot. Just like mum. The boy calves are exterminated. I know, I’ve seen truck loads of them, dead and off to the freezing works to be rendered down to the blood and bone you sprinkle on your Ponsonby roses dahlings.
   Cows go out. Their tails are cut off so as they can’t switch them about and spatter their shit around in the rotating milking robot. The milk gets sucked out, tanker’d off to a huge milk powdering robot where the liquid milk is dried out, bagged and exported to the Chinese and others for the ‘ consuming… ‘.
   Fertilisers are spread to make grass grow faster but the grass is like lollies. It’s junk grass no doubt GE and rockets out of the ground because Nitrogen. Whoop!
   And overseeing all those wondrous goings on is the cowsploiter. The dreaded human. They pull the lever, push the button, take the readings, write the cheques, pray to their God, slap the cow, shout Heeyyy Uuup ! Heeeyyy ! Whoop ! Brom-brom the quad bike, hump the Sharon, make more humans, clump, trudge, slouch while saying yeah-nah and ‘sweet-as.
   Watching from on-high. Watching and scheming and doing the cyphering and the tickety, ticking on the Confusers are the Great White Sharks.
   The Banks. (Hear clap of thunder, see flash of lightening. Throw in a bat. Call it Ruth. )

   The Banks must looooooove getting all hot and sweaty around that $93,935,438,201.00 figure. I can hear the phones running hot in the brothels as I write.
   That’s Ninety three Billion, Nine Hundred and thirty five million, four hundred and thirty eight thousand, two hundred and one dollars. It’s not a lot of money on a Global scale but for 4.7 million people on a beautiful and fertile few islands it’s a fucking crime and a total treason.

   Gibbs, fay, richwhite, meyers, roge douglas etc, etc. How’s it going boys? Nice and comfy are we? Rounding the vowels are we? Practising your harrumphs of indignation? Honing your bullying skills ? Lawyering up? Checking the pass ports?
   Anyone. For any reason, who votes for National is either a duplicitous criminal or a fool.

   One more thing.

   GO ! THE DAILY BLOG ! xxxx

4. “And all the while choking off public broadcasting so they act like lap dogs and not watch dogs”
   This is not all that is being choked off.Three years ago as the situation in the Ukraine unfolded I noticed that in the N.Z.herald, and in our public broadcasting, that a very one sided narrative was being portrayed.Events like the C.I.A. coup against a democratically elected state,the role of Victoria Nuland and her five billion dollar regime change fund, the existence of Neo-nazi armed groups on the”progressive “side,the agreement for the Ukraine to be able to veto and shape the results of the investigation on the downing of the MH17, were being completely ignored.I contacted the Herald and sent in what I felt was an analysis of the situation that would provide balance.In essence,they refused to publish it.But what was fascinating was their response to my correspondence ,which was an apparent lack of understanding of my suggestion that their narrative was unbalanced. .However they did not deny the events.In exasperation I suggested in an email “Either the N.Z. Herald are aware of the events and chosen not to include them in their coverage, which suggests a lack of accuracy,fairness, and balance, or they are blithely unaware of them, which brings into question the competence of the Herald as a newspaper. Which is it?” I proceeded to lay a complaint with The N.Z. Press council. The council replied “It is up to the editor to decide what is newsworthy.”In other words it is not up to the press council to interfere when a newspaper gives an unbalanced narrative!What meaningful function they observe escapes me!
   Since then there appears to be a disappearance from the N.Z. landscape of avenues for citizens to comment and criticize.The opinion columns in the online N.Z.HERALD have disappeared. The T.V. current events programs have become breathless cheerleaders for the Govt.

   A well informed citizenry is indispensable for any Democracy. Unfortunately our news media are no longer performing this function!

   • New Zealand society now functions on the basis of everything having a commercial imperative. If it’s not generating cash, through advertising revenue or other means, it’s of negligible worth. Profit is everything, the public good comes a distant second. News is now selectively reported, and those ‘sensitive’ stories that might annoy political or business ‘stakeholders’ are generally massaged to within an inch of their lives, or subject to so much spin I’m surprised the people involved don’t suffer from perpetual motion sickness.

     The sad thing is, you don’t have to be particularly clever to notice it. You just have to be curious. Or cynical. More often than not, the most cursory investigation and a little cross-referencing will lead you to a more accurate and less disingenuous reporting of events. Granny Herald is the fly-blown carcass of what journalism used to be. It’s awash with professional bullshit artists, and people who couldn’t travel in a straight line if you dropped them down a well.

5. I’ve shown these graphs to National voters, you honestly wouldn’t believe how strong their denial is. One person asked me “do you really think treasury figures are a good source for figures?”.

   You cannot make this stuff up.

   • REALIST

     Nactional voters = lemmings

6. Martyn,

   This racking us up with foreign debt is just what the Goldman Sachs need to Greece for them to still make money off renting that debt and they did to Greece last.

   Then the NATZI’s Claude Jean Junker & Donald Tusk and the Angela Merkel the German leader all followed behind the EU Commission who all blamed Greece for foolishly borrowing so much “foolishly” remember this?

   We are deliberately now being set up for this big fall as Greece has been destroyed with already.

   History repeats itself sooner than we will know. As a next Economic crash comes; = boom!!!!!!

   http://thesovereigninvestor.com/exclusives/80-stock-market-crash-to-strike-in-2016/

   https://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2015/02/24/eu-commission-welcomes-greek-list-as-valid-starting-point

   “Tuesday’s deal comes just days before Greece’s 240 billion-euro ($270 billion) bailout program expires and is aimed at buying time for both sides to agree on a longer-term deal to ease the burden of the bailout loans. Greece will, in all likelihood have to negotiate a new financial agreement with its creditors to see it past June, when big bond repayments are due. Though Greece has made great strides getting its public finances into shape — it is actually posting a surplus once debt and interest payments are stripped out — its debt burden remains exceptionally high at around 175 percent of the country’s annual gross domestic product.”

   • +100 CLEANGREEN

7. This not normal governance .

   There is something very unhealthy that has been driving this National party for quite some time. Since at least ,… 1984 onward’s.

   And it has to do with banks , … and yet another group. And effectively , what we are seeing – ( and is no different to the originals Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson ) – is a form of proto / pseudo Nazism.

   Here is a link to explaining just what and who guides them , specific to recent New Zealand political history and how and why they affect us :

   New Right Fight – Who are the New Right?
   http://www.newrightfight.co.nz/pageA.html

   • Bloody Good article by Hugh Price. Wow.

     We have been played as fools everyone, so vote these monsters out of NZ

8. Is there anyway to verify that figure?

   I had a look around the treasury reports and found the financial year report for end of june 2016 stating debt was $62 billion?

   http://www.treasury.govt.nz/government/financialstatements/yearend/jun16/10.htm

   • http://www.nationaldebtclocks.org/debtclock/newzealand

     • Nope. Apparently it is just over 60 million. Where the 90 million figure is from is anybody’s guess.

       • Its “billions,” not “millions,” or you could have said 86,900 million. Heres the relevant bit.

         “Gross debt, which reflects the borrowings of the core Crown, was $0.8 billion higher than a year earlier at $86.9 billion (Figure 12)”

9. 35% of debt to gdp…. most developed countries would kill for that. Would of your rathered austerity? You really need to get a grip of basic economics before you call New Zealanders idiots, the irony is cringe worthy.

10. As usual we will be “reminded” of the two large earthquakes in Christchurch, the recent one near Kaikoura and the northern part of the South Island, of course also that “deficit budget” that Labour left them in 2008, the Global Financial Crisis, necessitating bail outs, and the need to kick start the economy afterwards.

    Now we have had the economy drugged by high level immigration gains, to make the figures look better, i.e. high GDP growth, but they never like to talk about the miniscule “growth” of GDP per person, which is a more relevant figure.

    Tax cuts were more important to keep their voters happy, the higher earners and wealthy, and then the partial sell off of the power companies was also important, to shift large share packages to their supporters, who were the only ones who could really afford buying such shares.

    That left SOEs with less to earn and return to the state, given the reduced shareholding.

    Only this time have the Nats more or less accepted that tax cuts are not an option with this budget, as the pressure has mounted, on services and infrastructure, so they will spend to get some things done which they neglected for years, just to see them through the election.

    Come next year, they will be back to their own tricks, and it will always have been Labour’s fault, no matter they had low deficits and payed off debt during their last nine years in government.

    But the national debt alone is nothing to make arguments with, the Nats will simply wave around the low government debt, which is only part of total debt for NZ Inc, most debt is private, and mortgage lending has reached massive proportions, add the student loan debt, we are living in territory not much better than Greece, but nobody out there, apart from a few, really seems to get it.

11. I too am worried about NZ’s deteriorating debt position and it’s great to see the left are focused on reducing it. Are you advocating lower government spending or higher taxes to reduce the Government debt levels back to the levels of the those of the Helen Clarke’s Labour administration?

12. Can someone more literate in these matters than I please explain how the graph above showing this government’s increasing debt allows Finance Minister Joyce to say in Parliament today that “we have returned to surplus”? Are there some alternative facts/figures we’re not being told about?

    • You may have heard or read some of this kind of reporting:
      http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/90133985/Budget-surplus-is-outpacing-forecasts-by-700m-as-business-taxes-beat-expectations

      Excerpt:
      “The operating balance before gains and losses (OBEGAL) was in surplus by $1.145b, compared to a forecast surplus of $442m.”

      What they are talking about is the OPERATING BALANCE, after OBEGAL, so that means, it is the balance for a year, and long term debt is repayable at certain rates and interest, which is broken down, so the operating surplus is for a short period, which includes the debt instalments and interest payable for that period.

      Of course the total government debt is long term, and total national debt also includes private debt. So the operating balance does not say much about total debt.

      Also see this info for some clearer explanations:
      http://www.treasury.govt.nz/budget/forecasts/befu2016/013.htm

      Compare it with your annual household budget, which is different to the long term outlook and situation, as you will only pay a mortgage off over many years, so the annual payments are just part of the total debt to be paid off.

      • Thank you MIA. Very helpful explanation.

13. The Key/English/Joyce government – the most incompetent and irresponsible government in New Zealand’s history. This will be the verdict of the historians and they will look aghast at the so-called ‘popularity’ that kept them in power. But the clever historians will uncover the dirty politics, the biased media, the media shockjocks and the ascendancy of reality television, the destruction of journalism, the character assassinations of opposition MPs, the cynical manipulation of the non-vote, the domination of business and the general colonisation of the mind that is the hegemony of neoliberalism. More than any other time in our history, they will say, we were a people conned.

14. You obviously failed to read the 2008 PREFU whichpredicted the rise in debt BEFORE National came to power.

    • Haha, that PREFU was of course seeing everything differently, right after the unexpected GFC hit world economies, incl. NZ Inc.. Had Labour been reelected, they would have made some necessary adjustments in the Budget in 2009.

      But NZers grew tired of Aunti Helen and voted in a charmer, a former merchant bankster named John Key, who has now left us with a far greater mess, which will only become clear to more Kiwis in coming years, when the shit will hit the fan.

      At least Labour left the new government with little debt, which they used to spend up again, bailing out finance companies, on the Christchurch rebuild, and by offering tax cuts to the better earners, shifting the tax burden to low earners, who spend on consumer goods mostly, food and so, most GST taxed.

      Now they want to offer new tax cuts, again, while total government debt and national debt continue to increase, just insane.

    • You obviously failed to read the 2008 PREFU whichpredicted the rise in debt BEFORE National came to power.
      

      That’s right, Gosman. The predicted rise in debt was based on off-shore events: the Global Financial Crisis which had already impacted the previous year.

      But here’s the real ‘kicker’; despite the 2008 PREFU forecasting deficits (because of the downturn in exports and other GFC-related effects), National still persisted with their 2009 and 2010 tax-cuts .

      National was borrowing billions – $380 million per week by May 2011 – to pay for government as well as tax cuts;

      The Government is borrowing $380 million a week and next week’s budget will carry a record deficit of about $16 billion, Parliament was told today.

      Finance Minister Bill English said the Government’s financial position had deteriorated “significantly” since late 2008.

      “The pre-election update in 2008 forecast that the deficit for this year would be $2.4 billion,” he said.

      “It’s much more likely to be around $15b or $16b.”

      That level of deficit, as NZPA has previously reported, will be the highest in New Zealand’s history and Mr English confirmed that today.

      Prime Minister John Key confirmed the average weekly borrowing figure, which he said was unaffordable.

      ref: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10724665

      Even Key admitted that National’s massive borrowing was unaffordable.

      And Treasury warned the Nats as far back as October 2008 that the country was facing a potential blow-out of $30 billion in debt;

      John Key has defended his party’s planned program of tax cuts, after Treasury numbers released today showed the economic outlook has deteriorated badly since the May budget.

      The numbers have seen Treasury reducing its revenue forecasts and increasing its predictions of costs such as benefits.

      Cash deficits – the bottom line after all infrastructure funding and payments to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund are made – is predicted to blow out from around $3 billion a year to around $6 billion a year.

      Mr Key said National anticipated that the figures would be bad but thought “even Michael Cullen could do better than this”.

      But he said his party would proceed as planned with the announcement of their tax strategy on Wednesday and he said there would be tax cuts.

      “It’s not about playing the blame game, the facts are that after nine years of Labour Government we are now staring down the barrel of a deficit,” Mr Key said.

      Mr Key said National would be looking at Treasury’s numbers and declined to comment if the tax cuts will still be in the vicinity of $50 a week.

      ref: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10536073

      Yet the Nats persisted with cutting taxes at a time the government could ill afford to. We had to borrow from offshore to fund those tax-cuts: the money that went into our wallets and purses came from other peoples’ savings.

      Instead of acting on Treasury advice on the growing GFC, Key snidely tried to blame Labour for the predicted deficit, even though Cullen had posted nine consecutive budget surpluses, as well as implementing the NZ Super Fund, Working for Families, Kiwisaver, etc.

      What did National give us? Cuts to the civil service (despite promising not to cut jobs); assets sales; increasing GST (despite promising not to); more and more debt; rising house unaffordability; rising child poverty; and corporate welfare.

      You can try all you like to present your “alternative facts”, Gosman, but history is not on your side.

      • For your information, Gosman from the 2008 PREFU (that you so love to quote);

        The sub-prime mortgage crisis, which developed in the United States (US) in mid-2007,
        was the trigger for the unwinding of these
        imbalances and the world economy, especially
        the US economy, is now undergoing the necessary
        adjustment. House prices have fallen
        in many countries and market interest rates have increased. High commodity prices,
        particularly for food and fuel, are impacting on household budgets in both developed and
        developing economies. Production costs are increasing in the developing economies,
        making them a source of inflation rather than deflation in the world economy. Trade
        imbalances are being corrected as the pattern of growth in developed economies shifts
        away from consumption towards exports. This process of adjustment is expected to be
        protracted and to involve both developing and developed economies.

        ref: http://www.treasury.govt.nz/budget/forecasts/prefu2008/prefu08-pt3of9.pdf (page 14)

        The report goes on to state that “so far, these developments have had little direct impact on the New Zealand economy”, but that observation proved to be wildly optimistic. The growing GFC, plus other factors (including a drought impacting on agricural/dairy), was already hitting the economy.

        It is against this back-drop that Key and the National government persisted with their irresponsible tax cuts in 2009 and 2010.

Comments are closed.