CoveragePost
November 28, 2025
Analysis by Keith Rankin. TVNZ’s special programme on Tuesday (News Special: You, Me and the Economy; 25 November 2025) included (about two-thirds of the way into the programme) among a number of helpful and unhelpful suggestions, a call for New Zealanders to get onto the compound interest bandwagon, the magic formula of getting rich in ... <a title="Keith Rankin Analysis – Compound Interest in New Zealand’s last 100 Years" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2025/11/28/keith-rankin-analysis-compound-interest-in-new-zealands-last-100-years/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Analysis – Compound Interest in New Zealand’s last 100 Years">Read more</a>
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November 14, 2025
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Labour Party Policies Last month the New Zealand Labour Party announced two policies: a second sovereign wealth fund, and a capital gains tax on non-owner-occupier real estate. For me, both are worrying, representing further steps in the financialisation of an already over-financialised economy. Then yesterday, I heard a story (Report highlights ... <a title="Keith Rankin Essay – The Mansion as a Metaphor for Neoliberal Finance Capitalism" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2025/11/14/keith-rankin-essay-the-mansion-as-a-metaphor-for-neoliberal-finance-capitalism/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Essay – The Mansion as a Metaphor for Neoliberal Finance Capitalism">Read more</a>
CoveragePost
October 24, 2025
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Earlier this week, in The Truth about Prices in New Zealand, (on Evening Report, and on Scoop), I showed how the Consumers Price Index (CPI) is a lagging measure of inflation, and that the Producers Price Index (and the use of six-monthly rather than annual data) gives more timely information about turning points in ... <a title="Keith Rankin Analysis – A Quarter-Century of New Zealand’s CPI Inflation" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2025/10/24/keith-rankin-analysis-a-quarter-century-of-new-zealands-cpi-inflation/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Analysis – A Quarter-Century of New Zealand’s CPI Inflation">Read more</a>
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October 21, 2025
Analysis by Keith Rankin. The first chart shows annual price increases in New Zealand for businesses (PPI: Producers Price Index) and consumers (CPI: Consumers Price Index), since 1999. We note that the latest CPI datapoint is for the third quarter of 2025, meaning that it’s centred on mid-August. The most recent PPI data is for the second ... <a title="Keith Rankin Chart Analysis – The Truth about Prices in New Zealand" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2025/10/21/keith-rankin-chart-analysis-the-truth-about-prices-in-new-zealand/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Chart Analysis – The Truth about Prices in New Zealand">Read more</a>
CoveragePost
October 8, 2025
Analysis by Keith Rankin. New Zealand’s monetary policy decision today was presented as a “line call” (RNZ news) between a cut of 0.25 or 0.50 percentage points. In that context, the correct decision was made; 0.50%. In the context of the understood policy narrative, it was a binary choice. In the mainstream expert and pundit ... <a title="Keith Rankin Analysis – Official Cash Rate: The Correct Decision. But?" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2025/10/08/keith-rankin-analysis-official-cash-rate-the-correct-decision-but/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Analysis – Official Cash Rate: The Correct Decision. But?">Read more</a>
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October 3, 2025
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Last week I looked at how, for modern day purposes, monetary policy started around 1750. It began with the departure from the presumption that money is wealth to the idea that money is a veil and that therefore wealth is something else. That was, in a sense, the beginning of political ... <a title="Keith Rankin Analysis – A Brief History of Monetary Policy (Part Two), including Modern Monetary Theory" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2025/10/03/keith-rankin-analysis-a-brief-history-of-monetary-policy-part-two-including-modern-monetary-theory/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Analysis – A Brief History of Monetary Policy (Part Two), including Modern Monetary Theory">Read more</a>
CoveragePost
September 24, 2025
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Back in the day, Economics 101 students learned that trying to recover from a depressed economy using monetary policy alone was like ‘pushing on a string’. Easy monetary policy is supposed to work by getting people – households, businesses, and governments – to incur more debt; in a phrase, to borrow ... <a title="Keith Rankin Analysis – Pushing a String: Ineffective Monetary Policy" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2025/09/24/keith-rankin-analysis-pushing-a-string-ineffective-monetary-policy/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Analysis – Pushing a String: Ineffective Monetary Policy">Read more</a>
CoveragePost
August 31, 2025
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Public policy in New Zealand is paralysed by an unwavering mis-framing of the current economic stagnation. A key part of the problem is the popular attachment to the phrase ‘cost of living crisis’ as a catch-all for contemporary economic malaise. The first task towards clear thinking is to disentangle ‘cost of ... <a title="Keith Rankin Analysis – Intellectual Paralysis: Cost of Living, Inflation, and Interest Costs" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2025/08/31/keith-rankin-analysis-intellectual-paralysis-cost-of-living-inflation-and-interest-costs/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Analysis – Intellectual Paralysis: Cost of Living, Inflation, and Interest Costs">Read more</a>
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August 25, 2025
Article by Matt Robson, former Alliance Party and New Zealand Government Cabinet Minister. The Initial vote on Kiwibank in the Labour-Alliance government in 2000 was 16 Labour against to 4 Alliance for. I was there when this was reversed, and in 2001 the 4 insurgent Alliance Ministers – Jim Anderton, Sandra Lee, Laila Harre and ... <a title="Matt Robson: The Public’s Kiwibank on the Auction Block" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2025/08/25/matt-robson-the-publics-kiwibank-on-the-auction-block/" aria-label="Read more about Matt Robson: The Public’s Kiwibank on the Auction Block">Read more</a>
CoveragePost
August 22, 2025
Analysis by Keith Rankin. This year, the heated non-debate in Aotearoa New Zealand about pay equity, has left important answers unquestioned. Equal Pay versus Pay Equity The first point that must be made is to distinguish ‘equal pay’ from ‘pay equity’. Equal pay means, for different identity groups, the same pay for the same work. ... <a title="Keith Rankin Analysis – Equal Pay, Pay Equity, and Cost-of-Living Narratives" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2025/08/22/keith-rankin-analysis-equal-pay-pay-equity-and-cost-of-living-narratives/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Analysis – Equal Pay, Pay Equity, and Cost-of-Living Narratives">Read more</a>
CoveragePost
July 29, 2025
Analysis by Keith Rankin. The following two tables show New Zealand and the 24 other economies in the world most easily and fruitfully compared to New Zealand. The countries are sorted with the worst-performing economies (in terms of economic growth per capita) listed at the top. Thus, taking four-year compounded growth for 2020, 2021, 2022 ... <a title="Keith Rankin Analysis – How did New Zealand compare in the first half of the 2020s?" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2025/07/29/keith-rankin-analysis-how-did-new-zealand-compare-in-the-first-half-of-the-2020s/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Analysis – How did New Zealand compare in the first half of the 2020s?">Read more</a>
CoveragePost
July 10, 2025
Analysis by Keith Rankin. I just heard on Radio New Zealand a claim by a British commentator, Hugo Gye (Political Editor of The i Paper), that the United Kingdom (among other countries) has a major public debt crisis, and that if nothing is done about it (such as what Rachel Reeves – Chancellor of the ... <a title="Keith Rankin Analysis – Public Debt, Japan, and Wilful Blindness" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2025/07/10/keith-rankin-analysis-public-debt-japan-and-wilful-blindness/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Analysis – Public Debt, Japan, and Wilful Blindness">Read more</a>
