If National wins ...

[Major von Tempsky]

Rubbish, Cullen ran down and ran down the Budget surplus he had inherited until in his last Budget projecting beyond the election it had become a deficit.
Illogical and intellectually dishonest opportunism EZ. You know that the deficit would be much bigger now if Labour was in power and I bet you are not willing to identify what Labour would cut to balance the Budget.

[elZorro]

Rubbish, Cullen ran down and ran down the Budget surplus he had inherited until in his last Budget projecting beyond the election it had become a deficit.
Illogical and intellectually dishonest opportunism EZ. You know that the deficit would be much bigger now if Labour was in power and I bet you are not willing to identify what Labour would cut to balance the Budget.

MVT, you forgot about this post from Sept 2012.

http://www.sharetrader.co.nz/showthread.php?8606-If-National-wins&p=382027&viewfull=1#post382027

Labour's policies would have helped keep any deficits smaller, because there would have been a bigger tax base. No reduced taxes for the well off, because they didn't need them and had other options to reduce tax, (and will try them all). There would also have been a lot more employed through this last period, also helping the domestic economy and retailers, while reducing social security costs.

If they had been left in place, the very clever R&D tax credits and similar policies would have spurred the manufacturing sector on with new exports from SMEs. We all need a bit of direction sometimes.

[POSSUM THE CAT]

Major von tempsky do not forget that the higher GST also cut into retailers because the lower incomes got F/all in compensation for the increase.

[slimwin]

Major von tempsky do not forget that the higher GST also cut into retailers because the lower incomes got F/all in compensation for the increase.

Er,hasn't retail rebounded in the last few years or am i reading the wrong countries news paper?

[elZorro]

Er,hasn't retail rebounded in the last few years or am I reading the wrong country's newspaper?

Maybe you don't know anyone who runs a retail store Slimwin, they might look busy, but generally it's a race to the bottom. 2-3 years out of date - but the trend is a bad one. These small net profits don't include owner drawings. FP would know more about this.

[JBmurc]

This is what Mark Warminger a portfolio manager at Milford Asset Managers, one of the countries best performing Kiwisaver managers had to say.............>>>>>>>>>>>>>>


The Labour and the Green Party announced plans to establish a new agency, New Zealand Power, which would act as a single buyer of wholesale electricity. The plan would cut the nation’s power bills by up to $700 million a year, lowering household power bills by up to $330 a year, and giving the economy a $450 million annual boost according to Labour and Green Party analysis. This analysis is naïve and does not take into account the full direct and indirect costs.

NZ currently has $253bn of external debt and each 0.01% movement in the cost of debt adds $25m in interest payments. The uncertainty caused by the Labour/Greens Nationaliation by stealth policy is likely to add up to 1% to the cost of debt for New Zealand, due to lenders requiring an increased return for lending to a nation with political and economic instability. The cost of capital for all New Zealand companies will rise due to the same factors. A 1% increase in debt servicing costs for New Zealand’s overseas borrowing, in time would add up to NZ $2.5bn a year to the debt bill.

In addition to higher financing costs for the economy as a whole, the Government would receive around $450m a year less in dividends from the state owned power companies. The state owned power companies would need to write down asset bases by around 30% on an asset base of $15bn. This equates to $4.5bn of capital destroyed.

Vote -Labour / Greens = 3rd world NZ ///\\\\

positives on having a far left gunament would be a much weaker NZD ....

[fungus pudding]

Er,hasn't retail rebounded in the last few years or am i reading the wrong countries news paper?

Yes it has. It's a horrible game, but recently it's been slightly less horrible, and looking to improve a lot in the near future in line with many NZ businesses.

[elZorro]

JB, that article doesn't really make sense. Why would the fact that retail NZ pricing for power could be dropped a bit, because the govt in turn takes a drop in returns, mean that the interest on overseas borrowings goes from say 4% p.a. to 5% p.a? It might do that anyway, and there would be no way of knowing what caused it.

The big picture is that the economies of the world depend on cheap energy for profits and growth, in one form or another. Here we have cheap hydro and the sun and climate for farming. And yet we are paying a lot for our home power needs, even though the hydro plant was paid off long ago. The splitting up of the energy assets and the better profits made by each generator, have created a larger asset list - but it's only real for as long as the profits stay over-high.

This is a political argument, no doubt. Should some of the assets that were paid for by the taxpayers from previous working generations be sold off in our times to some well-heeled investors for a small one-off state profit, with the risk that control moves offshore later? Or should we use these public works as they were intended, to provide a solid base for growth in our economy in perpetuity?

If the latter is applied, every NZer gets the benefits, it would be the gift that keeps giving.

Here's a small bit of extra detail that I like. NZPower will also tender for new generation. A lot like ECNZ, they used their overview to decide where best to site new power generation, for the good of NZ.

[elZorro]

Here's a taste of the results of ETS policy from National: forestry isn't the exciting investment we were hoping for.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10879544

While the Super Fund still has a lot of bigger forestry blocks, China is only interested in our raw pruned/unpruned logs. It's hard to even make a dollar growing, tending, harvesting and transporting them to a port. A long time to wait, 30 years for not much. So they've caved, China can buy some of the smaller blocks that are least profitable.

A stronger ETS policy would stop cheap ETS credits from Russia killing the market for them here. A few have made windfall profits from the ETS scheme in the past, but deforestation is the next move. What to use that land for afterwards: that's another problem. It could be farmed at a loss, that would perhaps be OK for land banking and to defray taxes, and National has made sure that no ETS applies to farmers until at least 2015.

I'm intrigued by the National party's new byline. 'Less Debt, More Jobs'. I can only assume what is meant by this, is that we need to put aside any memory of better times in the recent past. When National reduces the recent debt they organised, we'll have more jobs, perhaps that is the message. It's not a great one, is it?

If they go into the next election with that slogan, here's what we'll quite correctly see amended on all the hoardings:

[Major von Tempsky]

You're flogging a dead horse - ETS is dead, read The Economist. The price of carbon credits is down to $3 a tonne and going lower.

But the market is alive! Long live the market! Its the only efficient and long term sustainable mechanism!

It's the left wing w*nkers who try to rig the market and tax the market and regulate the market and strangle it with red tape who are the problem.