Blogotariat

Independent Planning Commission rejects controversial plan to burn wood for power in shuttered coal fired power station.

Owners of Forest Wind project say they had been cut out of discussions with the government ahead of its controversial decision to cancel legislation allowing it.

I reported last week how New Zealand is facing an employment crisis. The official Q2 labour force survey from Stats NZ showed that New Zealand’s unemployment rate increased to 5.2% in the second quarter of 2025, up from 4.7% in Q2 2024. The underutilisation rate also rose by 3.5% over the year to 12.8%. As

The post Reserve Bank recession indicator flashes red appeared first on MacroBusiness.

Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.

I’m now using Substack as a blogging platform, and for my monthly email newsletter. For the moment, I’ll post both at this blog and on Substack. You can also follow me on Mastodon here.

The latest benchmark revision from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, covering data up to March of this year, revealed that the U.S. economy created 911,000 fewer jobs than initially measured. While a downward revision was widely tipped by analysts, with the consensus estimate of 600,000 fewer jobs being created, the actual figure surprised significantly

The post Is Trump’s America heading for recession? appeared first on MacroBusiness.

Shortly before Britain went to the polls for the 2010 General Election, then Opposition Leader David Cameron released the Conservative Party’s manifesto, pledging to cut net migration into the U.K. from 200,000 people per year to “tens of thousands of people per year”. At the time, polling showed that immigration was the second most important

The post Britain’s migration consensus crushed appeared first on MacroBusiness.

Data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) last week showed that the combined recurrent spending of the federal and state governments rose by 7.7% in 2024-25, to $1.02 trillion. In contrast, government revenue increased by just 4% during the financial year. The increase in recurrent spending was driven by a number of factors.

The latest polling shows that support for the Susan Ley-led Coalition has collapsed. Newspoll shows that the Coalition’s primary vote has bombed to just 27%, well below Labor’s 36%. This marked the worst primary vote in Newspoll history. The Coalition’s two-party preferred vote has also plummeted to just 42%, down significantly from the 44.8% two-party

The post The Coalition will not succeed by being Labor-lite appeared first on MacroBusiness.

From the Market Ear: Comfortably numb The S&P 500 officially hits 6,600 for the first time in history, now up +36% since its April 2025 bottom. Nasdaq is up ~50% off the April lows. This marks one of the best 5-month stock market rallies in US history. At the same time the exuberant sentiment that

The post Stock valuations uncomfortably numb appeared first on MacroBusiness.

This month’s Australian Financial Review property summit contained the usual bluster on the need to lift Australia’s housing supply to meet demand. NSW planning minister Paul Scully accused anti-development residents in wealthy suburbs of NIMBYism and trying to lock future generations out of housing. Mike Zorbas, chief executive of the Property Council of Australia, heaped

The post More bad news for Australian renters appeared first on MacroBusiness.

It seems likely that our prime minister will meet Donald Trump at the United Nations General Assembly later this month.

AUKUS submarines will cost five times the entire annual defence budget. We can’t fund both AUKUS and a self reliant defence capability. We must choose self reliance.

John Menadue