Wow. Can you believe it? Not only is the American economy emerging from the ruins, so is the New Zealand economy! Another miracle, brothers and sisters!
Raise your hands in the air believer and praise the Treasury Gods for they bring good news of neoliberal Heaven!
Yes, according to the Treasury officials - who get paid a lot of money for writing reports -the recession 'may' be over and unemployment figures 'may' not reach the levels initially expected. Well, that will be good news for the thousand New Zealanders a week who are presently losing their jobs.
Treasury's delusions are based largely on an unfounded optimism of an international 'economy recovery' and a rise in something Treasury likes to call 'business confidence'.
Yesterday I wrote about the disastrous state of the American economy - a crucial driver of the world economy - and in other posts I have noted the work of economists Barry Eichengreen and Kevin O'Rourke.
To quote them: ' globally we are tracking or doing even worse than the Great Depression, whether the metric is industrial production, exports or equity valuations...The “Great Recession” label may turn out to be too optimistic. This is a Depression-sized event.'
They say that the world economy remains in a tailspin. The best that can be said is that the plunge downwards has slowed a little.
As for business confidence, this is nothing more than a survey of what people think. So if enough business suits 'think' there's an 'economic recovery' then it must be so.
It's nothing more than quackery from the neoliberal Treasury officials.
The collapse in the confidence followed the collapse in the world economy - not the other way round. You cannot 'think' an economic recovery into existence.
In reality there is no concrete evidence to say that the New Zealand economy is coming out of recession. The Treasury is simply clutching at straws.
Don't believe the hype!
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Comments are moderated.