Why IMF fears could be how Labour win 2023
As TDB has been pointing out for some time, I don’t believe the looming economic crisis is being fully appreciated here in NZ.
Every red light is flashing a warning now, the slashing the IMF just made to global growth next year is eye watering…
IMF cuts global growth forecast for next year, warns ‘the worst is yet to come’
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- The International Monetary Fund predicts global growth will slow to 2.7% in 2023.
- “The worst is yet to come, and for many people 2023 will feel like a recession,” the report reads.
- Its GDP estimate for this year remained steady at 3.2%, which was down from the 6% seen in 2021.
…this follows a similar warning in America by banking God Jamie Dimon…
US is headed for a recession, says head of JP Morgan Chase bank: ‘This is serious’
The US and global economy is facing a “very, very serious” mix of headwinds that is likely to cause a recession by the middle of next year, warned Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JP Morgan Chase, the largest US investment bank, on Monday.
Dimon pointed to the effects of runaway inflation, sharp interest rate rises and Russia’s war in Ukraine, as factors that informed his thinking. But he added that the US was “actually still doing well” and consumers were likely to be in better shape compared with the global financial crisis in 2008.
…and the worst economic indicators to come out of China for 7 years…
China’s holiday spending plunges to seven-year low as zero-Covid batters consumer confidence
Holiday spending during China’s Golden Week has plunged to its lowest level in seven years, as broad Covid curbs discouraged people from traveling or spending, while a darkening economic outlook continues to erode consumer confidence.
…where this all lands is the real possibility of an enormous shock wave to the economy next year.
This shockwave will crest in our election year and it will cause an enormous crisis.
That cuts all ways for the political spectrum.
The one thing Labour are good at is managing a crisis, and if the economic shockwaves are as bad as all indications suggest it could be, Jacinda and Grant have the capacity and experience to lead through another crisis which National simply don’t have.
National’s Achilles heel is that they haven’t costed out their tax cuts and in an environment where we may have a true economic meltdown, the market will do to NZ what it did to the UK when Liz Truss tried her right wing free market lunacy.
Catastrophic climate change, an escalation in the Ukrainian war and the global economy collapsing will demand a response from our leaders that goes beyond the basic tax cut bullshit.
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We will sail through all that easily, we are Antipodean Norway. World leading decarbonisation virtuesignallers. All right, slight difference : they are sitting on a fortune from oil and gas revenue and we have a rock star economy – addicted to white powder. We even let everyone bottle our water for free.
I’m not convinced that sound, costed economic policies win elections. National won’t need to do much to convince NZ’s majority white, middle class that tax cuts (more money for me), defunding public services (less money for someone else) and facing down Maori aspiration (but I’m not racist) are what’s needed in NZ. It’s a well tested political strategy that works consistently here and over seas.
Not having costed their tax cuts is not National’s Achilles heel. The detail, the minutiae, the ramifications are not important to Joe and Josephine Boggs. It’s what’s in the headlines, what’s in the soundbites.
After the election Luxon and Seymour will have carte blanche to do as they want to save us from recession and get us through the economic crisis.
And of course for the next many years when there are housing, poverty and employnent problems they and their supporters will say, “But they had the economic crisis of 2024 to deal with.”
Yes people will see the headline ” TAX CUTS FOR ALL”.
The detail will be irrelevant..
Chris Luxon $18,000 a year.
Joe Bloggs $104 a year
That simply isn’t how it works. The incumbent government always gets blamed for a current economic crisis, which is why 9/10 times they are voted out at the first opportunity. I this case it’s entirely justified as well, since the Labour government have done woeful job on every level – be it housing, poverty, crime, inflation, and the pandemic (specifically the amount spent on the lockdowns that didn’t work and a vaccine that does literally nothing to stop transmission (which automatically made forcing people to take it a breach of human rights BTW, since it wasn’t protecting others/community)).
The only way Labour wins in 2023 is if everything is back to how it was before they took office.
Good to see that you want wages slashed, health care american-ised and COVID allowed to rip thru the population, who cares about how many people die, as long as you rake in the profits.
Workers in this country have higher wages and a lot more protections now, than they ever had, and you want to take that away,.
So all it is going to take for Labour to be re elected is a global economic crisis, perhaps a small nuclear war and catastrophic climate change.
I cringed at the short sightedness of the closure of Marsden Point and the scaling back of oil and gas exploration off of Taranaki. We are currently watching an energy war play out that will leave Europe devastated, and whilst going “renewable” sounds nice there is no realistic roadmap to get there that can be taken without fossil fuels. Energy security should have been at the top of Labours’ priorities and not being left to the vagaries of international conflict, not international companies.
I also cringe at Labours mindless support of the USA versus China and Russia. The simple fact is that about half of our trade goes to Asia / China, and another quarter to Australia (who trade in turn with Asia / China). The US buys a comparatively tiny amount from us. We stand a chance in the latest conflict of becoming too aligned with the US / Euro block (who dont buy that much from us) versus the emerging powers. That could cost us markets. We are not doing ourselves any favours.
I’ll second that!
Fairly obvious really:
1. We will be in recession next year
2. Labour will wear it
3. National has already won
What should we personally be doing Martyn – to manage when all political parties can’t get vision through either end of the telescope? At the small end they can’t focus on the reality of life on the ground of those they think of as the masses to manipulate. The bigger end shows them vistas beyond imagining; and their heads in a whirl they settle on the nicest view they can, and imagine themselves there.
Personally I’d let them go; not call ‘Come back, all is forgiven’ and give them opportunity for free rein. But we may need the present incumbents to stumble on with their nostrums for the poor, ailing patient, who has to put up with their blood-letting to a limited degree. However we might have to adopt homeopathy with less dilution than recommended by the pure. Just enough treatment to keep the body politic alive so that we can find its heart, and get the arryhthmia stabilised. And then change our doctors and medicines and approaches for the ones engaged in true healing and wise ways who think rationally like Ian Powell! Then have an informal toasting day getting together and wishing each other good health. ‘To drink to one another’s health promoted social harmony and concord’ says one writer. So let ‘harmony’ replace ‘money’ as our social bond; Hah!
Then take this happy idea of Cheers/Good Health around the world. Omniglot guides the way – https://omniglot.com/language/phrases/cheers.htm –
Irish (Gaelic) Sláinte! (Health) –
Māori Mauri ora! –
Scots (informal) Here’s tae us, wha’s like us? Gey few, an’ they’re a’ deid.
And then we all laugh and raise our glasses in joy, and anticipation of having a working national system that’s good for all and effective to ameliorate the tribulations to come.
Even when the US was in the midst of a baby formula crisis they wouldn’t buy our milk powder, not even as a one-off.
And this right when Ardern thought she was such a hit with the US. They gave her a fake degree in return for her spouting the authoritarian rhetoric the US thought might be more palatable spiced with her cute ‘caring’ and emoting. Then they trotted her out at NATO to promote war. All in defiance of NZ’s much touted independence and anti-nuclear stance, and even that won jack shit in trade with Europe despite weakening NZ’s actual economic interests by obediently and publicly dissing our biggest actual trading partner. As the US goes down NZ is stuck holding onto its shirt tails and for absolutely no benefit other than in Ardern’s photo albums.
The US knew exactly what to appeal to – cheap, fake, tinsel and completely illusory personal fame. For her. To betray this country’s interests on the brink of a massive international economic crisis.
We needed a hard-headed adult. We still need grown-ups leading politically. Unfortunately, we don’t have any. But Ardern showed her true colours, egged on by her PMC wannabes and now her political future is toast. (And without it, so is her crass US talk show career.)
This has been disgraceful. People are really hurting but hey, let them eat cake ay?
Authoritarianism?
The only authoritarianism I see is the GOP trying to incite mass progroms against the LGBTQ community, outlawing abortion and birth control, and Derek Chauvin thinking he can just execute a black man and get away with it.
You just wait till the god botherers start sending the cops round to your place for not following the Bible. That, is authortarianism
what+now I don’t like your bedtime story. I think the answer from our politicians to the grim fairy tale would be – never to go to sleep again.
“All polling suggests” people are delusional. The myth that National are necessarily better managers of the economy are purely media driven rubbish. It clearly has not been “feels” that have economy where it is and to suggest National would have done things so differently over the COVID period is laughable too. A lower vaccination target and a still to be completed massive quarantine hotel near AKl airport probably being the difference. Luxon suggesting tax cuts and banging on about inflation all in the same breath are all you need to hear.
Tanking economies of late all have one thing in common, neo-liberal puritanism.
Act and the nats have nothing else but neo-liberal puritanism.
We are so screwed when the cut taxes, and then cut spending to core services. Watch our economy fall to shit faster than Sri Lanka
Utter shit storm coming, lead but idiots who have no imagination. But bucket loads of ideological purity.
Ahh the hard right in NZ, the true believes.
I agree completely but need to ask – what does Labour have other than the same neo-liberal purity that is leading most of us off a cliff -the (surviving) poor first.
Never have we so urgently needed an actual left.
You do realise that austerity hit the lower and working classes hardest. Social housing gets chopped, health gets chopped, wages gets held down.
I think rich pricks like yourself need to start taking the hit. Having your investment portfolio written off by 25% has a lot less impact than a supermarket worker having to pay more for their anti-depressants, and more the doctor to prescribe them.
You support massive cuts to public services, and the Americanisation of healthcare. That will hit the working class hard. But you don’t seem to care
Repressing free speech is authoritarian, Millsy.
And since you cite the GOP, I could list numerous human rights abuses for which those in authority in the US are responsible – across political parties.
I’m currently reading ‘Our Class’ by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Chris Hedges. He tells the true story of a literature class he taught in East Jersey. State Prison.
If you want horror – absolute freaking horror, not in some imaginary future, but happening right now, I challenge you to read it – and weep.
Calling someone a ‘sodomite’ or ‘nigger’ is not free speech.
With this crisis on the way, Labour decides that as a world first, we will tax our biggest export earner – Maori excepted – and reduce their output by 20%. There is no limit to their incompetence.
Farmers have been raking it in, and have had it too good for too long in this country. Every single cent they make, has been at the expense of our waterways, lakes, and also our public services. Fuck them all.