US Fed shifts policy emphasis; US personal incomes fall; China profits fall but electricity use rises; Taiwan confidence rises; Aussie capex drops; UST 10yr yield at 0.75%; oil and gold soft; NZ$1 = 66.4 USc; TWI-5 = 69.4

Very true. As sides get more polarised they tend to characterise the entirety of the "wrong" side as resembling its most nutty and extreme members' viewpoints. Dialog becomes more and more difficult because everyone keeps busy standing up and burning down caricatures and straw men.

Those who have been around here a while know I don't vote. Democracy is an illusion. Generally I stay clear of the political debate every 3 years, it is pretty inane and tiresome. Sort of descends to children in the school yard mentality, my dad is tougher than yours.

Billy is interesting though, I saw the claim he is #3 ranked for preferred prime minister now. Haven't seen that corroborated. However I think he will make inroads to the NZFirst vote when it comes to capturing the conspiracy theorists.

Wow, come into your home without warrant and remove your child. That is pretty scary. That will be preparing the way for mandatory vaccine.

We've got our own dilution of a mans home is his castle within the Covid Act.

The question is always what right do you want to give up next. The woman I refer to above, intelligent, old classmate & scripwriter by profession, was all over exceptions to principle until I raised equal rights for woman.

Australia is making some very strange and dangerous moves to “control” the population. Very unsettling over there at the moment and will probably get much, much worse.

That's why it's best to sit on the fence. That way you can join whatever side is going to win and not be slaughtered (historically speaking).

Good post. I've been known to be provocative on here just to see what comes out, this is one of those days. This site was awesome ten years ago, some really cool discussions. It has become less good of late as some of the better minds moved on (some sadly passing, the late Walter Kunst whom I had the pleasure to meet in person. I'm hoping Christov (The Count) is still with us, but I suspect not). Some other good minds still do the odd fly by.

This was definitely one of those provacative posts, trying to get people to think and question. Doesn't always work, but if I get one person to question their beliefs then it is a success.

My struggle is one for clarity of thought, and then to convey the things I see in words. I'm a designer, I form ideas in 3D when at my best, so translating thoughts to symantics, or symbols, is what I do for others more than myself as the thought is usually clear to me at that point. I try to boil things down to basics, which is what I've done with the revision of the quantity theory of money.

Today I'm mildly surprised at a good show today :-) Even the ones I disagree with add a lot of value.

PS. I am an INTP "thinker", it is simply what I do.

Yeah, it looks like the global political class have looked at Japan and Europe, shrugged, and said "yeah, looks OK, why not?"
Or, the lesson they learned from 2008 was: don't let the first brick fall! Prop up every bank and every asset class to avoid nastiness.
If I had control of, say, Paraguay, I'd raise interest rates to 5%; watch the endless trillions roll in; and use the now-mighty Paraguayan dollar to purchase every tangible asset in the world. One could buy an empire very cheaply and have a population living in Saudi splendour for decades to come.

We've been remarkably successful at eradicating or massively reducing the prevalence of many contagious diseases over the last 100 years. The best minds in the world are working on it, several vaccines are in their last trial phases. 1 case in 23 million cases of confirmed reinfection since late 2019 indicates that a vaccine can keep in top of the mutation rate.

Your pessimism is really overblown.

It wasn't me. No the project I'm working on benefits the general public rather than a privileged minority.

Just classic political hypocrisy and lying. I had thought more highly of James Shaw than this. Luckily, I never had a high opinion of Hipkins. This will reflect badly on The Greens at election time.
On a closely related note, why not spend that money on trying to make education in all schools a bit greener?

The religions that can't take a bit of mockery and lampooning are the ones to be scared and careful of. Especially if they have, "useful idiots" helping them along.

Don't be so precious. Religions need steadfast criticism to stop their bad ideas getting too deeply rooted and acceptable. That's particularly true of the ones that aggressively and at times violently subjugate the freedoms of those born under their control. Mocking is part of that.

Ivor's great love his analytical approach to things.

That's just the kind of distraction he'd likely use. Scary thought. I'd hope the JCS is headed by someone with enough balls to put their career on the line and be able to say NO to the CiC.

DP

President Trump reading a book? Haha! Maybe if they air it on Fox news, or Kanye tweets it.

If the US population can be persuaded that China and Russia are a threat they'd have a nice excuse for a giant deficit spend on the military over the next few years though wouldn't they?

The error here is that you are assuming that the US will be the instigator (protagonist - antagonist depending on perspective), but what if China pushes the button? They may think that they are in a position to win, and now is the time to win. The US forces are, as you indicate, highly dependent on a cohesive, advanced technology based force structure. But if China can either match that or disrupt it, the US will be very vulnerable. As you have indicated in the past the US in their exercises don't look favourably on people who can think outside the box and find ways to disrupt or neutralise technological advantages. But one of the prime rules of warfare are that if you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin'!

I don't think Russia will necessarily jump in with China. More likely Putin will use the distraction to move in western Europe.

Typical oldbloke1 hysterical comment.

If a govt wastes money on bad policy it costs lives because we don't have as much money to pay for the social programs and health systems we would be able to afford if the govt had more money. Starkest demonstration of this is the Qaly system of funding used by Pharmac, but extends to other things like poorer roads with more deaths and more drownings (because school pools no longer funded). Just because those who are dying as a result aren't trumpeted by the media the same as a wuflu death doesn't mean they aren't real people.

OB1, but don't you care about our children?

OB1 you could apply the same logic to the costs of keeping “him who shall not be named in prison” for life against those who die because the Govt/Pharmac did not get the medication they required and for those who suffer in pain because they did not get life enhancing operations. Your choice who should we direct our limited funding to, a mass murderer or your fellow kiwi?

Agree Wilco, we are not the low cost producers some espouse, and haven't been for a long time.
Did you see the DairyNZ, Jamie McKay facilitated, Q & A session, The View from the Cowshed, with James Shaw, Damien O'Connor, David Bennett and Mark Patterson? Its on the DairyNZ facebook page.

Wallabies are also becoming a serious problem in the Bay of Plenty region. Also been anecdotal reports of the Hawkes Bay experiencing spillover from the neighbouring BOP population.

Also to add, we're at serious risk of vast areas of productive horticultural/agricultural being irreversibly changed into pine forests.

The Fed is not the central banker for the world - hence we depend on the will of G-SIBs to re-activate their eurodollar practices.

We don't live in a world dominated by Austrian economics anymore - those rules are irrelevant at present

It's Keynesian economics on steroids right now... until death do the currency apart

AJ... great quote.
For me, this is so... so true..
Govts. and Central Banks are heading us towards the second outcome.

I don't know how much longer people will keep taking the blue pill. Even the guy in Christchurch who has been labeled a terrorist, I suspect he was actually an anti immigration Nationalist, but we are not mature enough obviously to have that discussion.
One daughter got offered a job but after student loan deductions and tax she could hardly even paay board.

the biggest problem is housing and no government has been prepared to stand up and deal with it, they just let the bubble grow. Unaffordable housing will cause civil unrest.

Even with diminishing resources it's naive to think that the distribution couldn't be improved to even things out a bit should the will be there.

no it stands for Tradeable IP - Tesla may not make much money on their cars but VW will.