Category: Dominion Post

Two days before Christmas Treasury Secretary John Whitehead announced a cleanout of his top ranks. This day of the long knives was a step in the Treasury’s bid to regain premier status under a government which wants a “step-change” in economic performance.

Whitehead replaced all four deputy secretaries with two new deputy chief executives, one from the Prime Minister’s Department and one from Britain, and two new deputy secretaries. He appointed a chief economist, also British. Crown business and “state sector performance” monitoring got a new boss. There is a new chief accountant. read more

We spent the double-noughts decade on a spending binge. The tens are payback time. It might take a while.

By we, I mean Europeans, North Americans and Australasians. The result has been to push along a redistribution of economic power.

Floyd Norris of the New York Times calculates that an investment spread across all “developed” markets, with all dividends reinvested (and investors “somehow avoided all taxes”), would have had an annual return through the 2000s of 0.2 per cent, “not enough to offset the transaction costs and far below inflation”. The United States return was “negative 2.3 per cent”. read more

In 1999 the United States ran the world. By 2009 pretenders had grown more assertive and power more dispersed. To navigate these shifting tides this small country will need to keep its wits about it.

Four events shook the United States in the decade after 1999: the dotcom crash in 2000, ending investors’ digital euphoria; the islamist terror of September 11 2001; the banking crash of 2007-08; and Chinese and Indian intransigence at Copenhagen. read more

OK, you’ve now begun to break those resolutions you made last Thursday midnight. Some you’ve forgotten. Some you wish you’d never made. Some you will make again 361 days hence.

That’s the good thing about New Year’s Eve: it comes round once a year. You get another go.

Here are 13 other resolutions that might have been made on Thursday — or might not. read more

It’s been a year of flags and forelock-tugs. John Key so reveres the Union Jack he gave us back knights and dames. Then he runs the tino rangatiratanga flag up the pole alongside his quaint vestige of empire.

Meet the bifurcated Prime Minister, part-ancient, part-modern. He said the iwi flag is a symbol of the Treaty of Waitangi as the nation’s founding document — a historical relic. He also said the meaning he takes from it is “potential and hope” — a signpost to the future. read more

This week the government will invite us to think in two different ways about investment. One invitation is implicit and the other explicit.

The implicit one will come late in the week from Simon Power and other social services ministers on the “drivers of crime”.

Power’s main focus has been to be tough on crime, increase police powers and take victims’ side. While American states have been trying to cut prison numbers to save cash, John Key’s cabinet has been determined to put more in prisons. read more

John Key turns out to be a slow follower: a ticket to Copenhagen, long after dozens of other heads of government have bought theirs.

He gets to have dinner with the Queen — Denmark’s, not his — then a day of schmoozing, all to limited avail except that not to be there sends a message of insincerity. read more

One thing is uncertain in life: taxes. You can never be sure what the government will do to you next year.

Where the cabinet goes on tax will say a lot: how strategic it is, how adventurous, how well it can pick its way through intellectual complexity, how prepared it is to face down vested interests and how good it is at selling reform. read more

Labour and National agree on free trade. But they don’t agree on emissions trading. Now Labour has called an end to a 20-year agreement on inflation targeting. What does that mean?

Nothing immediately — and nothing for at least two years, more likely five and possibly eight while Labour enjoys opposition. read more

John Key, annoyed by Hone Harawira, has bid us focus on “real” issues. Either he hasn’t figured there is a real issue in the Harawira fracas or he is being disingenuous.

The real issue is not that Harawira skived off to Paris on a taxpayer-paid trip to Europe. We benefit if he comes back richer in his European heritage. read more