Pundit

Pundit is a New Zealand-based online platform dedicated to current events and culture, providing insightful perspectives on important issues both locally and globally. The website was co-founded in late 2007 by Tim Watkin, who has a rich background as the former deputy editor of the Listener and has worked with the Guardian in the UK as well as producing shows like Q+A, The Vote, and The Nation. He currently serves as the Executive Producer of Podcasts at RNZ. His partner, Eleanor Black, has also made her mark as the former deputy editor at Next, an associate editor for California magazine, and as the Entertainment and Lifestyle Editor at Stuff. With the support of broadcaster Ian Fraser, Pundit officially launched in 2009.

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Countervailing Trumpian Sense — Pundit

2 weeks ago | pundit.co.nz | Brian Easton

A modest attempt to analyse Donald Trump’s tariff policies. Alfred Marshall, whose text book was still in use 40 years after he died wrote ‘every short statement about economics is misleading with the possible exception of my present one.’ (The text book is 719 pages.) It’s a timely reminder that any short analysis of Trump’s tariff initiatives is likely to be misleading and any long one will be so riddled with caveats that it will be impenetrable.
Resource Management and Property Rights — Pundit

3 weeks ago | pundit.co.nz | Brian Easton

While there have been decades of complaints – from all sides – about the workings of the Resource Management Act (RMA), replacing is proving difficult. The Coalition Government is making another attempt.
Public-Private-Partnerships? - Pundit

4 weeks ago | pundit.co.nz | Brian Easton

New Zealand’s economic development has always been a partnership between the public and private sectors. Public-Private-Partnerships (PPPs) have become fashionable again, partly because of the government’s ambitions to accelerate infrastructural development. There is, of course, an ideological element too, while some of the opposition to them is also ideological. PPPs come in so many different forms that it is tedious to characterise them all. Some of those forms have been used in the past.
Why Do Cryptocurrencies Appear to Be So Valuable? — Pundit

1 month ago | pundit.co.nz | Brian Easton

It is said that economists know the price of everything and the value of nothing. That may be an exaggeration but an even better response is to point out economists do know the difference. They did not at first. Classical economics thought that the price of something reflected the objective cost of producing it – as in the ‘labour theory of value’. (Note the word ‘value’ which was for long interchangeable with ‘price’.
Is the New Zealand Healthcare System Doing Badly? — Pundit

1 month ago | pundit.co.nz | Brian Easton

By international standards the New Zealand healthcare system appears satisfactory – certainly no worse generally than average. Yet it is undergoing another redisorganisation. While doing some unrelated work, I came across some international data on the healthcare sector which seemed to contradict my – and the conventional wisdom’s – view of the healthcare sector. Broadly, the sector seems to be performing relatively well and does not seem underfunded compared to other OECD healthcare systems.
Can We Ignore the Environment? — Pundit

1 month ago | pundit.co.nz | Brian Easton

Peter Frankopan’s The Earth Transformed: An Untold History is a compelling account of the interaction between humans and the environment. We would be unwise to ignore it. The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Oxford professor of history Peter Frankopan was initially widely admired. But critics point out that the book exaggerated the significance of the land connection between Europe and East Asia.
Trump's UN vote a defining act that points to day of reckoning for NZ — Pundit

1 month ago | pundit.co.nz | Tim Watkin

Of all the headline-making, world-reshaping actions of the second Trump administration thus far, perhaps the most defining is the United States’ vote against the resolution condemning Moscow’s invasion and supporting Ukraine’s territorial authority.
The Cult of Generic Management — Pundit

1 month ago | pundit.co.nz | Brian Easton

As Lady Bracknell almost said, ‘to lose one may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness.’ And so a second Government Statistician has made a hasty exit, The official reason in each case was the management of the population census but the cult of generic management is the underlying failure Generic management is the notion that managers need know little about what they are managing so they can run any organisation despite without appreciating the particularities of the...
Trumping Tariffs — Pundit

2 months ago | pundit.co.nz | Brian Easton

A Bully in a China Shop? It is a mystery what Donald Trump learned when he did his BA in economics at the University of Pennsylvania in the mid-1960s. The Ivy League college has a good economics reputation, but even had Trump been a top student – unlikely or he would trumpet it – his training in international economics would have been primitive by today’s standards (and it was only at bachelor level).
Preparing for the Next Financial Earthquake — Pundit

2 months ago | pundit.co.nz | Brian Easton

Severe geological and financial earthquakes are inevitable. We just don’t know how soon and how they will play out. Are we putting the right effort into preparing for them? Every decade or so the international economy has a major financial crisis. We cannot predict exactly when or exactly how it will happen.