NZ Herald, Nov. 15 2005
Hard on the heels of the recent news that NZ has the lowest unemployment rate in the developed world, the Herald reports that NZ also has the highest official interest rates of anywhere in the world, and a huge current account deficit.
“New Zealand’s official interest rate is currently the highest in the industrialised world, at 7 per cent, but investors are starting to consider other matters like the beating the high exchange rate has given the country’s export sector. The annual current account deficit hit 8 per cent of gross domestic product in the second quarter and is still widening. Labour pressures remain strong, however — compounding expectations of another interest rate hike here next month.”
Incidentally 7% is more than twice my (adjustable rate) mortgage rate. The current account deficit of 8% compares with the already frightening 6.3% in the US (see this CNN article). The large current account deficit can be expected to lead to a drop in the value of the dollar. Yet the US$ is actually appreciating while the NZ is falling, perhaps reflecting the fact that foreign investors see greater inherent strength in the US than in NZ.
Overall, I think these numbers reflect the fact that NZers are much less well-off economically than Americans – high interest rates and a falling dollar.
This thing in Australia is out of control. Five separate articles today in the Sydney Morning Herald on the controversy over the teaching of ID -
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Sydney Morning Herald, Nov. 14 2005.
This is another article that reports a White House aide again failing to rule out the use of torture on terrorist suspects. It quotes Stephen Hadley as saying that
“The president has said that we are going to do whatever we do in accordance with the law”
but we know from the Slate article I mentioned earlier that this relies on the very dubious interpretation of the US ratification of the US Convention on Torture that it applies only to actions taken within the US.
In other words (according to the Bush administration), there is nothing fundamentally wrong with torture.
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Sydney Morning Herald, Nov. 13 2005
This article refers to a DVD that is being distributed by Campus Crusade for Christ to 3000 public and private schools in Australia promoting ID.
I can’t help wondering if this is a little premature. While I’m very sympathetic to ID, it’s credibility as a teaching tool must depend on the soundness of its scientific basis. And I’m not convinced that nearly enough people actually yet understand the mathematical foundations of ID to actually make that assessment. I think pushing ID in schools when there isn’t widespread understanding in the community of its intellectual foundations may serve only to reinforce the view among opposers that it’s proponents are not genuinely concerned with sound intellectual endeavour.
http://www.slate.com/id/2130028/
This article from Slate of Nov. 11 is a pretty damning criticism of the Bush administration’s interpretation of acceptable treatment of prisoners under US and international law. It claims that during the confirmation hearings for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, the administration disclosed its view on the 1994 UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment that –
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http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10354987
This is an Interesting article that links a crash in bird and sea life in the Pacific NW to rising ocean temperatures caused by global warming. But something seems a little fishy (if you’ll excuse the expression). They cite a 7 C rise in temperatures above normal. Now that’s a huge leap way beyond anything that global warming has been associated with. We need to understand whether this is really part of a long range global phenomenon or a quite different short term event. Unfortunately we won’t get that kind of in depth analysis from the Herald.
After watching quite a few movies in the last few weeks and being only moderately impressed with them, it got me thinking about movies I’ve seen over the years that I have really liked. So this is a quick stab at a list of my favorite movies. I have to preface this by saying that I have a shocking memory, so there may be some great moviesI’ve seen that I’ve just forgotten about, and the list is probably going to be biased to those I’ve seen in the fairly recent past, but anyhow, here’s what comes to mind…
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There have been a number of articles in the last few weeks about the Reserve Bank’s concern over the overheated housing market and possible policy changes aimed at “correcting” that.
Bollard warns of ‘excesses’ in economy – NZ Herald 14 Oct 2005
Reserve Bank plays with fire – Stuff November 11 2005
Government looks at curbs on home loans – NZ Herald 11 Nov 2005
Bankers recoil at housing market plans – NZ Herald 11 Nov 2005
Most of the media commentary has been very negative about the Bank’s suggestion that it intervene in mortgage markets to reduce borrowing. The consensus seems to be that it will generally increase the cost of borrowing overall and may overcompensate for the rise in house prices, causing a price collapse.
Personally I’d be a bit surprised if the consequences were quite as dire as is being suggested. Nonetheless I find the proposals fairly distasteful, simply on the basis that I don’t think it’s the state’s responsibility to interfere in open markets without clear moral justification.
One report also noted that the Australian and British markets, which had similarly been viewed as very overheated, have corrected themselves quite naturally without intervention.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=3&ObjectID=10354535
The NZ Herald reports that unemployment in NZ has fallen to a 23 year low of 3.4% – the best in the developed world. The next lowest is South Korea with a rate of 4.1%.
This is really an impressive result, though analysis of the factors that have produced this situation has been conspicuously absent from the media. This is really what we need to know, especially when one considers that average NZ incomes are actually well below many other countries in the OECD and the current account deficit is phenomenonally high. One piece of information that I thought was pretty interesting – the last time the unemployment rate in NZ was this low was in 1982, during the wage and price freeze imposed by Robert Muldoon. And most would agree that they were actually pretty rough days for the NZ economy. So the current results can’t be viewed as unambiguously good.
I’ve watched three movies in the last couple of weeks and In the Bedroom was by far the most satisfying, even if a little ponderous at times. The other two were Hitchcock’s Notorius and a Val Kilmer thriller called Spartan. I was disappointed with Notorious, I think mainly because I found the morality of the situation it described so distasteful – a beautiful woman (Ingrid Bergman no less) is induced to marry a German conspirator in order to elicit information for US intelligence. Strike two for Hitchcock in my recent viewing.
Spartan was worse. It was about a US Ranger who rescues a politician’s daughter from a human trafficing ring in Dubai. I won’t say more except that language and violence advisories apply.
In the Bedroom was a movie I had resisted watching for some time. I knew it had received critical acclaim, but the title just didn’t sound like something I was going to enjoy. Fortunately, the connection between the title and the theme of the movie was fairly tenuous. A young man gets involved with an older woman (she looked pretty young to me – I guess I’m getting old 
), and ends up getting murdered by her ex-husband. At that point the movie seemed to go into slow motion as it examined the impact of the murder on the lives of his parents, and to a lesser degree his girlfriend. Eventually, his father decides to murder the guy who killed his son. The movie ends with him lying on his bed, evidentally agonizing over what he has done.
What I thought was really interesting about this movie was that you could see the corrosive influence of the bitterness held by the young man’s mother. She could not forgive. She could not accept the tragedy and move on. It haunted her, and in turn her husband. Eventually, killing the murderer was the only way they could find to satisfy their own need for justice and retribution. Yet when the deed was done, we see them left with the awfulness of the deed they have commited, and still with the burden of having lost their son. A very sad story, and yet I think a very dramatic portrayal of what things can be like for people who have no view beyond this life to enable them to cope with tragedy and injustice.
