WARNING: The following contains quite a lot of fairly arcane discussion about economic data. Proceed at your own risk.
The Australian Financial Review isn’t a paper I normally read online, and I can’t remember now what inspired me to go looking for it today. However I was interested to see this article in the Fin reporting on the Australian trade deficit, particularly given the recent news on the NZ trade situation.
The article is actually not very informative, only providing the size of the deficit for January (2.69 Billion) and comparing it with the expected value (1.3 Billion) and the December number (1.15 Billion). I was more interested in how it compared with exports and with GDP, particularly on an annual basis, since this gives a better sense of what the numbers really mean.
Continue reading →
The NZ Herald reports today that the trade deficit for the year to January is 23% of export receipts compared with an average for January of 7.8%. Imports increased by 3 Billion to 37.9 Billion. This implies that exports were 37.9 / 1.23 = 30.8 B. The deficit for the month of January alone was 42.6% !
Continue reading →
Just so these can easily be got at from one place, here are the links to the photos I took in NZ -
Christmas Day
Cornwall Park
Devonport
Michelle and Jeremy’s
Pakiri Beach
Tawharanui
Whangateau Boatyard
Birds
Saw this in the NZ Herald yesterday…
Maybe I’m just easily amused.
Interesting article on Yahoo News says most U.S. workers say they are getting less accomplished than a decade ago.
Continue reading →
Ok, these are the last of the photos from my trip. I spotted this young bird that was evidently injured outside the downstairs ranchslider at Mum and Dad’s. Apparently both its parents were taking turns to feed it –
Continue reading →
This is almost the end of my vacation photos. These ones were taken on a day that Mum and Dad and I drove up to Pakiri. On the way we stopped at Whangateau, a small settlement just south of Leigh on the western shore of the estuary behind Omaha Beach. The reason we stopped was because we spotted a boatshed from the road and what seemed to be an interesting craft.
Continue reading →
More photos, this time from & of the Tawharanui Peninsula, another one of my favorite places.
Continue reading →
Just minor housekeeping, but I have fixed the problem with the email subscription form not showing up on the left hand side of my home page. R|mail had changed something on their side that required me to make a change to the html in the page template. Subscribe away.
I really should be sleeping or even working, but there is such a lot going on in the world that begs to be talked about.
Tonight I heard Helen Clark talking to Larry Williams on NewstalkZB about her State of the Nation speech today. At the moment the audio is here:
http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/audio2/14182517.wma
It had been widely reported that the Government members treated Don Brash with utter disrespect during his reply speech. Williams quite reasonably asked for an explanation:
Continue reading →
