This “Recession” Is Contrived

Here’s what’s really going on… and the news is all good.

Just to throw in a teaser to your worries about war in Ukraine, Putin manipulating a grain shortage so everyone starves, China cosying up to our cousins (how do they even land that jet in Honiara??), your loved Honda Civic sticking out of a dairy ramraid, and now Adrian Orr tries to trigger a recession.

Well, he says he’s not but he is.

At least we know.

All my career in business (since the age of 20)… perspective has been the hardest thing to grasp.

Assaulted by information on all sides to the point we SEE a volcano while it’s exploding, not read about its effects months later, you need someone like me to keep you sane.

Here’s what’s going on…and the news is all good.

In 2021, just before Covid struck, the Reserve Bank Governor, Adrian Orr, informed the Government that we were down to 20% debt to GDP and that was low enough. Orr advised Grant Robertson, Minister of Finance, to go out and spend. And that’s a phenomenon that hasn’t happened in my lifetime.

What he meant was “invest”, like in mental health care, stopping the truancy contagion, teaching kids to add without a mobile phone… but in the hysteria it sounded like “spend” to Grant.

Anyway, Covid struck.

We had just completed a 2019 ACTUAL $5.4b surplus and NZIER predicted the following ongoing surpluses: 2020: $5.5b
2021: $6.0b
2022: $8.3b

…all of which was stargazing to a burntout salesman like me who had lived a life of austere Muldoon inspired deficits.

Well, that didn’t happen.

All the surpluses evaporated with Covid, along with our entire hospitality industry, tourism and education.

As Sir John Key did when the Global Financial Collapse hit in 2007, Roberston spent with glee, pushing us from 20% debt to GDP to 50%. But we are now plummeting back to 30%, maybe surplus in 2023, and real prosperity again.

The tax flowed in throughout this nightmare to the point it embarrassed Treasury. They were forced to constantly rewrite their gloom into a headscratching, uneasy semblance of positivity.

The economy, thanks to the farmers, has actually diversified into myriad sustainable positives like we have never seen.

Right now the Reserve Bank is going to crank interest rates to something like 7% but Orr is self-effacing enough to actually tell us what he’s doing and that this deliberately contrived hike is temporary. After we’ve all had 8 strokes of the rattan and suffered enough, he’s gonna bring it back down again.

With the Government breathing down his neck in election mode, quickly, is my bet.

Would RIGHT NOW (no… not Christmas) be the exact right time to call Martin?

Of 19 investment properties seen last weekend there are 12 absolute pearlers I want to help you buy.

Very good rental properties that would have asked $900,000 are now asking low $700s, which means we might buy with a 6 in front.

That just doesn’t happen, and you need to find $100,000 fast.

Ask for my STEPLADDER brochure.

So now, getting back to perspective… you know its time.