So how does the housing boom end?

It’s an old adage that a speculative market collapses not when prices get crazy but when the last person who insists prices are crazy gives up in despair.  

Worth bearing in mind when London’s Financial Times tells us that the pandemic has fuelled “the broadest global house price boom in two decades”, even bigger than the one which preceded and helped trigger the 2008 global financial crisis, and which is understandably reviving concerns about financial stability.

Private schools could be on to a Shaw thing – but maybe they need “Green” in their name to secure millions

Did we miss it?  Or was it posted on the Beehive website after we had recorded the Government’s August 26 announcements?

Whatever happened, we are chagrined to have missed the official posting of the declaration that Green Party co-leader James Shaw has bypassed the strictures of his party’s policy to announce:   Taranaki school construction project to create jobs.

The statement didn’t seem untoward, in the Covid-19 era of massive borrowing to pump billions into infrastructural work and employment.

More than 200 construction jobs will be secured in Taranaki through Government funding for a school expansion project, the Associate Minister of Finance, James Shaw said today.

Green School New Zealand will be supported with $11.7 million from the $3 billion set aside by the Government for infrastructure in the COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund.

The ‘shovel-ready’ project would enable the school to expand its student roll from 120 students to 250.

But the announcement subjected Shaw and his party to widespread criticism – indeed, ridicule – because of something the press statement did not mention. Green School is a private school which charges up to $24,000 a year for New Zealand students and $43,000 a year for international students.

We are talking Green hypocrisy here, because:

Infrastructure grumbles: Govt is chided for ignoring climate change, neglecting the poor and being too slow

Several Ministers were given an opportunity yesterday to bray about infrastructure spending and try to persuade voters what a splendid job they were doing.

National brayed, too, that the government was implementing its investment programme while quibbling about a two-years pause.

Oh – and Chris Bishop took credit for having some of the government’s spending being directed to the Melling interchange.

The flood of press statements started with a grand announcement from the PM and two of her ministerial colleagues (here), followed by statements from Infrastructure and Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones (here ),   Finance Minister Grant Robertson (here), Deputy PM and State Owned Enterprises Minister Winston Peters (here), Education Minister Chris Hipkins (here),  Climate Change Minister James Shaw (here),  Health Minister David Clark and Associate Health Minister Julie Anne Genter (here), and Transport Minister Phil Twyford (here).

A  quick costing for households from the Taxpayers Union found

“Grant Robertson just spent nearly $7,000 per Kiwi household in a single announcement.