Utopia, you are standing in it!

This is mostly a follow-up to my post last Saturday on the LSAP losses.

In that post I noted that while the LSAP was still running, the monthly line item on the Reserve Bank balance sheet recording the Bank’s mark-to-market claim on The Treasury under the indemnity was a reasonable proxy, on prevailing market prices, of the direct fiscal losses the LSAP programme would result in. And it was an official number.

The Reserve Bank published its monthly balance sheet for the end of March. The Bank’s claim under the indemnity as at 31 March stood at $7821 million.

However, as I also noted in Saturday’s post, this number is no longer even an approximate estimate of the direct fiscal losses from the LSAP programme. It is still a best guess, on market prices, of the unrealised losses on the bonds the Bank is still holding.

But the Bank’s holding…

John Tamihere asks who owns the water? and answers: Maori do:

. . .What is bizarre to me is that people who have stolen an asset are now having a debate about the rights over it.

We reject co-governance because we want to have the appropriate conversation about the elephant in the room: how did Pākeha get to the table on a 100% Māori-owned asset? . . 

What is bizarre is thinking that anyone can own water.

When does he think the ownership starts and ends? Does it begin in the clouds from which rain and snow fall and end when fresh water turns to salt water in the Pacific ocean?

He is also confused about Three Five Waters which is about water infrastructure.

We’ve gone from calling it Three Waters to Affordable Water Reforms which is just changing the colour of the lipstick on the pig and distracting…

Europeans with any sense have woken up to the fact that the much-touted wind and solar ‘transition’ is a cruel hoax driven by cynical crony capitalists and their political enablers.

Driven by starry-eyed ideology, rather than sound engineering and economics, the great ‘green’ reset fell apart because households, businesses and industries aren’t prepared to limit their power use to occasions when the sun is up in a cloudless sky and the wind is blowing, just right.

No, modern civilisation is built upon having electricity as and when we need it, rather than according to the fickle whims of nature.

And therein lies the fundamental flaw in claims that we’ll all soon be powered by nothing more than sunshine and breezes. For a while that myth was sustained by an equally specious claim about giant lithium-ion batteries filling the gaps in wind and solar output, when sunset and/or calm weather sets…

Today (28 June) marks the 175th anniversary of Queen Victoria’s coronation at Westminster Abbey. Naturally this major national event was attended by members of both Houses of Parliament. Although it was members of the House of Lords who performed key roles in the ceremony, with peers paying homage to the new queen, MPs also had a privileged view of proceedings, with two of the three galleries above the altar being reserved for them. (The third gallery housed the trumpeters of the orchestra.)

On the morning of the coronation around 500 MPs assembled in the Commons chamber. One newspaper report recorded that

‘Some excellent scenes took place on the entrance of Members noted for carelessness in their dress on ordinary occasions, but who appeared upon this instance in splendid attire. Mr Fector and Mr Campbell, the former of whom wore a peach-coloured velvet Court dress, while the latter was attired in…

Recently in a post called Silence of Conservative Lambs I wrote:

The 1991 blockbuster movie revolved around meek, silent victims preyed upon by malevolent believers in their warped, twisted view of the world. A comparison can be drawn between how today’s conservative thinkers and politicians respond to advocates of the pernicious global warming/climate change ideology. Instead of challenging and pushing back against CO2 hysteria, and speaking out with a rational climate perspective, Republicans in the US, and Conservatives in Canada and elsewhere are meek and silent lambs in the face of this energy slaughter. Worse, when they do speak it is to usually to pander and try to appease offering proposals for things like carbon taxes or other non-remedies for a non-problem, essentially ceding the case to leftists.

So to be more constructive, let’s consider what should be proposed by political leaders regarding climate, energy and the environment. …

Buzz from the Beehive

Not for the first time, we have had to wait a few days for a minister to acknowledge that something vital was missing from a statement posted on the Government’s official website.

In this case, Local Government Minister Kieran McAnulty made no mention of “co-govern”, “co-governance” or “co-government” in the statement he issued last Thursday on a major shakeup which will see affordable water reforms led and delivered regionally.

The statement did set out plans to establish 10 new regionally owned and regionally led public water entities, to be owned by local councils on behalf of the public.  The entity borders would be based on existing regional areas, each entity would be run by a professional board, with members appointed on competency and skill, and strategic oversight and direction would be provided by local representative groups

“… with every local council in the country, as…

March 03,2023

Todd Rokita, AG Indiana, asks in his Newsweek article Why Did The U.S. Solicitor General Flip-Flop on Climate Change?Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

In a case called Suncor Energy Inc. v. Board of County Commissioners of Boulder County, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar recently told the Supreme Court that climate-change cases should be heard not in federal courts, but in deep-blue, progressive state courts.  Calling this proposal politically opportunistic would be an understatement.

Sixteen states disagree, as we have made known through a brief
filed by my office. Federal law should govern this and similar cases,
according to legal precedent.

My office always stands for the rule of law and fights for it in the courtroom. This case is no different, as it represents a sharp departure from the Justice Department’s longstanding view that global climate change is a federal issue that belongs in federal…

There’s a stately, almost funereal seriousness to Brit director Guy Ritchie’s first combat film.

“The Covenant,” billed as “Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant” so that it isn’t confused with any horror movie titled that, has little of the antic energy and none of the dark, wry fun of the British underworld pictures that made him (“Snatch”) or that characterized his jaunty “Sherlock Holmes” outings with Robert Downey Jr.

But as we settle into this Afghan War story of an American sergeant (Jake Gyllenhaal), his Taliban-arms-and-IED hunting team and his uneasy relationship with their new interpreter (Dar Salim), we see the movie bend away from genre routine. “Covenant” evolves into a tale that travels from mistrust and disrespect towards loyalty and the debts a soldier collects in combat, a “covenant” that eats at this one GI until he can honor it and repay those debts.

Ritchie’s giving us…

On 14 April the New Statesman published an article which was intended to show that the Irish economy is booming at the expense of ‘Brexit Britain’. This conclusion was backed by some striking graphics, which are still being gleefully shared by the usual suspects.

But it was also baloney. People have been taken in here by what Paul Krugman has called ‘leprechaun economics’ (or, if you prefer, ‘shamrock economics’, with the emphasis on ‘sham’).

The one strong point in the article was that the Irish economy has benefited from relatively low rates of corporation tax. You might normally expect the New Statesman to rail against ‘tax havens’ and ‘profit shifting’, but presumably that would have muddled the anti-Brexit message here.

So no mention either of concerns that the Irish economy has become too dependent on revenues from multinationals, with more than half of corporate tax being paid by

Jonathan Lesser explains in his Real Clear Energy article Why “Net Zero” Is Not a Rational U.S. Energy Policy.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Cost of achieving net-zero carbon emissions would be staggering for neglible climate impact.

Despite Germany’s last-ditch attempt at realism, the European Union recently approved a 2035 ban on gas-powered cars, moving ahead with its “net zero” emissions agenda.In the U.S., the cost of achieving net-zero carbon emissions would be staggering – $50 trillion if the goal is reached by 2050 – as would the demand for raw materials, which in most cases would exceed current annual worldwide production. 

Global critical metal demand for wind and PV

The impact on world climate, however, would be negligible. Emissions in developing countries will continue to increase as those countries’ focus is economic growth for their citizens, not permanent economic misery to…

Subsidising net zero type so-called climate policies in the US is not only enormously expensive but globally disruptive as well, it seems. Climate protection becoming climate protectionism?
– – –
Joe Biden’s flagship green energy policy risks plunging the world into the economic “dark ages”, Jeremy Hunt has warned.

The Chancellor urged world leaders not to put up trade barriers after the US President passed a $369bn package of subsidies to support climate and energy businesses, reports The Daily Telegraph.

Mr Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act has drawn an estimated $200bn in investment since it was passed last year, according to estimates from the Financial Times, and both the EU and Britain have been forced to draw up responses of their own.

It has sparked fears of a new era of protectionism, where economies are closely managed through tariffs and subsidies.