Utopia, you are standing in it!

The Reserve Bank says climate change is a risk to financial stability. It is proposing to regulate accordingly. A recent paper by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York finds weather disasters are profitable for large banks because they increase loans. In view of the apparent gulf in the two positions, and the lack of any credible evidence so far from the Reserve Bank for its position, the Bank needs to reconcile the gap between its position and the evidence.

Yesterday, I sent the following email to the Reserve Bank. It includes a promise to OIA the Bank at the end of February with a goal of finding out what the Bank has done with these papers:

From: Matt Burgess
Sent: Thursday, 18 November 2021 6:20 pm
To: xxxxxxxxxxxx@rbnz.govt.nz
Subject: Research on climate change and financial stability

Dear xxxxxxxx

In view the Reserve Bank’s interest in climate change, I attach…

On 12 October 1917 the following event took place about three miles from Passchendaele Ridge in Belgium: A soldier who had been slightly wounded in the fighting earlier that day left the line to find the nearest casualty clearing station. In the gloom, he deviated from the wooden duckboard path which snaked its way through the mire. Later he was discovered stuck fast in a shell hole. He was only a few yards from where he had started some hours before. Men were called up. Ropes and spades were brought forward. Repeated efforts were made to dig or pull him out. At one moment there were sixteen men working on this task. When his battalion was relieved the following night he was still stuck fast. His fate is unknown. But the probability that he drowned in the mud is very high.

What we will investigate is:

1. why men were sent…

Blackadder Goes Forth is the fourth and final series of the BBC sitcom Blackadder, written by Richard Curtis and Ben Elton, which aired from 28 September to 2 November 1989 on BBC One. The series placed the recurring characters of Blackadder, Baldrick and George in a trench in Flanders during World War I, and followed their various doomed attempts to escape from the trenches to avoid certain death under the misguided command of General Melchett. The series is particularly noted for its criticism of the British Army leadership during the campaign, and also refers to a number of famous figures of the age. In addition, the series is remembered for the poignant ending of the final episode.

By Dr Gary Sheffield

The scale of human devastation during World War One has often been blamed on incompetent leadership. Dr Gary Sheffield offers an alternative view.

The generals

Douglas Haig was ‘brilliant…

Biden’s spending bill will lavish over half a $1 trillion on projects geared to combating human-caused climate change. In reality, environmentalist groups will be given most of the money to continue their political activities. Two years ago, climate scientist Patrick Michaels was on the Laura Ingraham Show on Fox News to discuss what the program is really all about and doom and gloom predictions.

I regularly cite data about Europe’s sub-par economic outcomes in hopes of driving home the point that the United States should not copy that continent’s approach of onerous fiscal burdens.

Which is now a very relevant topic with Biden pushing for a big expansion of the welfare state.

This is not a good idea. Americans are richer than their counterparts on the other side of the Atlantic. Even more remarkably, lower-income people in the United States often have living standardsequal to – or even greater than – middle-income Europeans.

Another way of making this point is to compare economic outcomes in American states compared to European countries.

I first did that back in 2015, citing data to show that all be the very-richest European nations would be considered poor if they were part of the United States.

I want to augment that comparison today. I’m motivated by a

A few weeks ago I wrote a fairly discursive post on the losses the Reserve Bank had run up on its Large Scale Asset Purchase programme. I know some readers found the basic point a little hard to grasp (no doubt a reflection on my storytelling), so today I’m going to do a very stylised representation of what has gone on.

But first, as I noted in that post, as market interest rates rise losses mount. The Bank has now released its end-October balance sheet and this is the line item representing their claim on the Crown (the Minister of Finance indemnified the Bank for losses incurred).

So the losses have now reached $5.7 billion (roughly 1.6% of annual GDP). Market interest rates fluctuate each day, but as of yesterday’s rate current losses are likely to be very similar to those as at 31 October. Perhaps Covid has inured us…

In the general election of 1747 Frederick Louis, Prince of Wales again campaigned actively for the opposition but Pelham’s party won easily. Like his father before him, the Prince entertained opposition figures at his house in Leicester Square. When Prince Frederick Louis died unexpectedly in 1751, his eldest son, Prince George, became heir apparent.

The king commiserated with the Dowager Princess of Wales (Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha) and wept with her. As her son would not reach the age of majority until 1756, a new British Regency Act was passed to make her regent, assisted by a council led by Frederick Louis’ brother, Prince William, Duke of Cumberland, in case of George II’s death.

The king also made a new will, which provided for Cumberland to be sole regent in Hanover. After the death of his daughter Louisa at the end of the year, George lamented, “This has been a…

Europe’s great wind drought has focused attention on the unassailable fact that wind power is an utterly meaningless power source.

The demand for electricity is, always and everywhere, a ‘here and now’ kind of thing. Households and businesses couldn’t care less if there’s a roaring gale and plenty of wind power at 2 in the morning. But the absence of electricity at the point when power consumers (of all shapes and sizes) need it, is always noticed rather keenly – the experience of freezing or boiling in the dark during mass blackouts tends to collect in the subconscious.

The response to Europe’s wind power debacle has been a series of backflips that would do a Russian gymnast proud.

Despite lots of bluff and bluster from Boris Johnson about his country’s all wind ‘powered’ future, Johnson is now openly committed to building nuclear power plants, including a fleet of new small…

When Queen Victoria died on January 22, 1901, Edward became King of the United Kingdom, Emperor of India and, in an innovation, King of the British Dominions. He chose to reign under the name of Edward VII, instead of Albert Edward—the name his mother had intended for him to use—declaring that he did not wish to “undervalue the name of Albert” and diminish the status of his father with whom the “name should stand alone”.

The numeral VII was occasionally omitted in Scotland, even by the national church, in deference to protests that the previous Edwards were English kings who had “been excluded from Scotland by battle”. J. B. Priestley recalled, “I was only a child when he succeeded Victoria in 1901, but I can testify to his extraordinary popularity. He was in fact the most popular king England had known since the earlier 1660s.”

As king, Edward played a…

Yesterday, I shared part of an interview that focused on Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s scheme to give more subsidies to colleges, thus transferring money from poorer taxpayers to richer taxpayers.

Here’s the other part of the interview, which revolved around a very bad idea to copy nations that impose price controls on prescription drugs.

In some sense, this is a debate on price controls, which have a long history (going all the way back to Ancient Rome) of failure.

But my comments focused primarily on the adverse consequences of Pelosi’s approach.

And if you want more details, Doug Badger explained how Pelosi’s approach would backfire in a report for the Heritage Foundation. He starts with an explanation of the legislation.

The Lower Drug Costs Now Act of 2019 (H.R. 3), introduced last week with the backing of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., would double down on the failures of…