A review of things you need to know before you go home on Friday; Westpac leads the way down for savers, S&P holds NZ ratings, RBNZ buys kiwi dollars, PengXin makes another big buy; swaps firm

Not really very odd or maybe the word is un-usual, at all but a behaviour I have seen repeatedly, sometimes to my cost. ie some ppl will gamble an event will not occur because doing something to prevent it is a 100% certain cost on them, better they feel to gamble then they will have to do zilch even if they or usually someone else pays 200~300% if it goes wrong.

When the problem is unfixable then tunnel vision on the fixes will be the result. I expect more of the same.

woo. $700 big deal. won't even get me one university course. maybe a 6 weeks of groceries.

the problem that arises is that the _money_ (tradeables) is paid from debt (or foregoing income for servicing debt). That debt must sooner or later be repaid or the continual cost will continue to need to be meet - day after day - generation after generation.

If the government "gives" currency money to pay the proles a pittance off what the proles already have to pay them, and the government isn't paying its own credit card bills, it isn't fixing anything. the constant drain on resources will still be there, with interest, next month, and the month after that, and the month after that. Create jobs through bureaucracy, and the payment for that, just costs more interest, month after month after month.
That is the debt trap and -governments- which are the most insolvent of all bodies are the worst as their collective projects and defined inability to add value* constantly make then vulnerable to such economic disaster. Government operates on a constant "too big to fail" attitude on a permanent bankruptcy position behaving like the biggest bully in the playground to get what it wants. Until the government, and its parasitic bankers, get beyond that model disaster and failure are constants. This is directly because governments use debt to do their works, yet never have the time to fully pay off their wants - thus there is no economic value from the ownership of such works, only ever mounting debt to rollover, as project after project, fat salary after salary adds to the burden to be serviced - who else but government or economists would expect a burden to get lighter by adding to it??

* because government can do work that private sector does - but if the government profits it pushes out the private economy development, as the private sector can't compete with the bullys funding model or ability to invent obstacles. So government profiting is not healthy.
If government takes on large projects that are breakeven, then it blocks private profits and development from growing.
If government limits itself to social unprofitable projects, it creates a constant never-repayable burden for the private economy to have to carry.

It therefore lies to government to chose if it is going to allow freer markets, or attempt to fake a free market which is difficulty because they must properly understand the whole market dynamics AND well enough to simulate desirable behaviour in the pseudo-market - or if it is going to use its force to crush the market openly and oppress people into what government wants.
All while getting normally bad, self-interest advice from banking interests

To start with we could argue that the drop worked as we didnt enter a Greater Depression, just stagnated. There is also comment by Paul Krugman that the size of the drop was 50~100% too small and diluted too boot. On top of that the Republican Congress stood in the way of Obama fixing the problem because they wanted him to fail, indeed destroy him. So we have to consider the all else being equal factor. QE's fail? well we didnt enter a Greater depression for 6 odd years so Im not so sure its a failure. Can it be fixed? 6 years ago by cleaning out the banks maybe, that was politically impossible. In any event that would have been a short term fix until the effects of peak oil become overwelming.

Of course NZ will feel a Greater Depression when it eventuates, the only Q is when. Indeed I expect it to be lethal for some ppl example pharacuticals needed to sustain life become unaffordable/available.