US leading indicators more up than down; China holds LPRs; Taiwan export orders retreat; nickel price fall closes mines; UST 10yr 4.10%; gold down and oil up; NZ$1 = 61 USc; TWI-5 = 69.9

Boeing are certainly a how-not-to case study but Airbus remains a leader. 

The idea that China and Russia are going to be able to join to create a centre of technical leadership is attractive but as likely as time travel given the governance of both dictatorships and the plunging demographics.

Boeing have not done much more than adopt the successful Airbus model of accessing multiple suppliers and they are, just as Concord was, in different countries. Be that as it may, Boeing have certainly managed to turn their  trusted and reliable 737 workhorse into a bloody big question mark. 

The function of the World Bank is to prevent other countries from growing their own food, to make sure that the World Bank does not give economic support to domestic agriculture. One of the most fateful requirements of the World Bank is that it only makes foreign exchange loans. Now, foreign exchange loans mean they’re going to develop the export sector, they’re going to develop roads and transportation for export commodities. The government will bear the cost of developing mining, of developing oil and minerals, of deforestation, but it won’t develop domestic industry. And if you look at agricultural development in the United States, most of this agricultural development spending is domestic.

There’s farm extension, there’s education, there’s price supports domestically to support domestic grain, there’s a whole plan of creating a family-based agriculture. And if you look at the World Bank reports of the 1950s and 1960s, you’ll find every country report, the ones that are published by Johns Hopkins, the advisors to the World Bank says you have to have domestic currency to support domestic agriculture and food sufficiency. Not a single loan has been made for that unless it’s for plantation agriculture and export crops. So, the idea is that other countries, Latin America, Africa, South Asia, should depend on American farmers for grain and food exports and they should export plantation products that do not compete with American agriculture because products that are equatorial, that depend on domestic weather and domestic soils.

While the World Bank is supporting these export crops, it basically serves as a market for American corporations, the big infrastructure corporations. And it also supports the private investors, US mining affiliates, US oil companies, US forestry companies. The idea is that countries will increase their exports to be able to pay for these loans, but the mining companies, instead of having to build their own roads, instead of having to build their own infrastructure, the World Bank convinces governments to pay for these to essentially support the private sector and then support the private sector avoidance of paying taxes.

A lot of countries in the global south actually has long faced the problem of balance of payment crisis (NZ included}, and then it becomes a big tool to control economic policies and restructure economy in a way by these global institutions. And that is primarily because the global south has been exporting low value commodities, and the global north essentially exports a lot of high value products, to begin with industrial commodities, but now also services and so on. So, there is always this very desperate need of foreign loans, and you give these foreign loans and then they redirect a lot of economic policies.  Link

The financialisation of industry is destroying the US industrial base. Another case in point is Hartzell Aviation;

https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/new-ownership-at-hartzell-raised-pr…

Private equity companies buys out Hartzell which was already profitable and promptly pumped the prices. Some of those prices rose more than 100% as greed takes over. The long term prospects for Hartzell now have to be pretty grim as customers look to other sources, and new companies step in to offer competing products. Ultimately the company may even be a target for a Chinese take over after the greed has destroyed the value.

Class system? Getting to somewhere where who your parents were doesn't matter?

Family money? Once set up, everyone moves.

The family goes into debt in the hope that the worker can send more money home than the loan.

Residence in NZ is worth many more times that, especially if you have (or are intending to have) a family.

Those I know at that age are funded or have borrowed from family.  However, there are news reports of them borrowing from the agents they're paying it to as well - not dissimilar to how our bar banks create debt out of thin air.

That's not the actual problem though is it.

The problem is that our current economic system and the general populace accept that as a on going fact that then requires on going growth. It simply can't go on forever, there must be another way.

Taxpayers end up subsidising those business that pay low wages with the likes of accommodation supplement and working for families..

It's many times worse when we let them import cheap migrant workers - it worsens housing and healthcare shortages and adds to our infrastructure deficit, and they don't pay enough tax to even pay their way.

Agree, however, Immigration is meddling with the market's ability to price wages and allocate labour correctly.  I'm a little biased too in that I've never seen the point of growing the population on a fixed sized piece of land since I was at school in the 80's.

Given we must have inflation (per RBNZ mandates), I would rather have inflation caused by wages rising than lowering interest rates to generate it like the RBNZ has spent most of the last 20+ years doing.  Look at what their lowering interest rates has done to cost of housing!  The cost of housing remains the biggest problem (appreciate tax treatment etc also plays a part), billions sent in bank profits and accommodation supplements to private entities.

BTW, personally I preferred the original 0-2% range but would actually be happy for some degrowth these days (PDK effect?).