Utopia, you are standing in it!

Given events in France and other nations perhaps this should become a series.

It seems that the Rainbow Nation’s problems are escalating rapidly across many areas of society, with the latest one being their energy system, which this article argues is at the heart of things.

But I don’t think that’s true, especially when you track down the roots of their energy system woes, which is basically what a former CEO of the giant state-run energy company Eskom, Andre de Ruyter, said in an interview following his quitting the job in December, 2022.

But before getting into that, here’s a quick synopsis of the conditions, which only really grabbed the attention of people outside South Africa when this was announced:

On February 15, the U.S. embassy in PretoriaadvisedAmericans in South Africa to have at least seventy-two hours’ worth of food, water, medicine, and hygiene supplies in case…

Restructuring the health system during a pandemic was an act of madness.

Wasting money on a transition unit that did little, if anything useful makes it worse:

. . . It will take until next year’s Budget for the public to discover how the overhauled health sector will be funded, despite more than $30 million being spent on a “transition unit” within the Prime Minister’s own department.

That’s left health industry insiders and watchers worried about the time and energy required to establish the new system, while, at the same time, it’s struggling with workforce issues, Covid-induced backlogs, and creaking infrastructure. . . 

The Health and Disability System Review Transition Unit, within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC), was established in August 2020.

The following month, then-minister Chris Hipkins announced former director-general of health Stephen McKernan, head of consultancy EY’s government and public sector practice, would lead…

The US government has granted America’s offshore wind industry a sweeping licence to destroy thousands of whales, dolphins, porpoises, seals and more – while permanently trashing critical marine environments in the process.

The damage done starts with seismic surveys carried out pre-construction and continues as hundreds of 240m high turbines are punched into the seabed and trenches are ripped up for transmission cabling.

The industry euphemistically calls the direct and indirect harm caused to marine mammals “harassment”, when ‘pointless slaughter’ would be a more accurate description.

Bear in mind there is no commercial value for electricity that cannot be delivered as and when consumers need it; the only ‘value’ attached to wind power is the massive taxpayer and power consumer subsidies collected by generators. Cut the subsidies and this so-called ‘industry’ would disappear in a heartbeat.

As Constance Gee explains below the US government is complicit in what, once upon…

The death of Queen Anne on 1 August 1714 heralded the arrival of a new dynasty in Britain – literally – the kingdom had to await the arrival of the new king from Hanover on 18 September. Continuing our Coronation blog series, Dr Stuart Handley examines the preparations for and proceedings of George I’s coronation in 1714.

Following the death of the queen, according to the Act of Regency of 1706, a group of regents, both appointed and ex officio, took over running the country. On 1 September the Privy Council set up a committee composed of 15 councillors (all members of the House of Lords except for the marquess of Annandale) to look into the Coronation. At their first meeting on the 3rd, there was discussion about the Coronation medal, with Master of the Mint, Sir Isaac Newton’s designs being rejected. The chosen design bore the inscription…

I obviously haven’t seen, or read, the best advice expert commentators have been providing to their wholesale market clients over the last 24 hours but in what I have heard and read I’ve been struck by how little attention seems to have been paid in the more popular/accessible part of the market to this from the MPC’s statement (emphasis added). Looking at some of the changes in market prices, it isn’t clear how much weight markets have put on it.

Below, by contrast, are the “bias statements” (comments about what might happen next) from the OCR decisions back to August 2021. Yesterday’s statement – for all the gung-ho 50 basis point move – ends on a very different note. They seem genuinely open minded on whether the next move might be up or down, and whether any such move might be soon or far away. The MPC are no better…

Now that was a boring title wasn’t it?

There was a mistake in Monday’s post about the Reserve Bank’s MPC external member Caroline Saunders’ term (and I am grateful to Brad Olsen of Infometrics, on Twitter, for pointing me back in the right direction).

Saunders’ 4 year term, from 1 April 2019, expired last Friday. She is eligible to be appointed for one more term (the law sensibly limits external members to no more than two four-year terms) but she has not, it appears, been reappointed (by contrast, the other two externals were reappointed when their first terms expired this time last year).

As I noted in Monday’s post, the Minister of Finance has the ability to extend the term of an MPC member (each of the clauses referred to here are from Schedule 3 of the Reserve Bank Act)

Any such extension to a first term sensibly counts against…