COMMENT: Like any building with concrete cancer, trust in a big idea can seem very solid right up until the moment of collapse.

COMMENT: As much as we'd like his wall to block off the Trump-effect from the rest of the world, no one is immune in the still globalised world.

COMMENT: If Trump carries out his trade and defence threats, NZ would face the risk of slower global economic growth, higher interest rates and fewer capital flows.

COMMENT: This week's jobs figures look fantastic, but they disguise flat real GDP per hour worked and an essentially stagnant economy.

COMMENT: A look at this week's new population projections should give Phil Goff and his council a sobering reminder of the massive task ahead of them.

COMMENT: Two apparently unrelated things happened in the first week of October that say so much about New Zealand these days.

COMMENT: Three news items this week highlighted some of the risks and opportunities posed by New Zealand's current migration settings.

COMMENT: New Zealand has changed an awful lot over the past 30 years. Mostly for the good, but not for everyone.

COMMENT: If everything goes according to the Unitary and Govt plans, Auckland is about to embark on an apartment building spree like it has never seen.

COMMENT: It's hard to know how to react to the news Auckland's average house value rose over $1 million in August.

COMMENT: John Key and Nick Smith have in recent weeks taken to trumpeting Auckland's current building boom as the biggest in New Zealand history.

COMMENT: Which politicians will be brave and honest enough to propose taxes to stop land banking?

COMMENT: Allowing a flood of low-skilled migrants is frustrating that market mechanism with the short-term aim of keeping wages low for employers.

COMMENT: The Reserve Bank may be missing its target, but we shouldn't give up so easily just because it is hard to hit.

COMMENT: Normally the banks would just pass on the Cash Rate cut to mortgage borrowers and term-deposit savers, but this time is likely to be different.

Nasa's budget had tripled in one year to US$5.4 billion ($7.6b) and the space programme went on to cost US$34b.

The Government has wrapped its entire supply-led strategy for dealing with Auckland's housing crisis/challenge into the Auckland Unitary Plan.

COMMENT: Why are politicians of all colours so afraid? And whose interests are they protecting when they say such falls are "crazy"?

COMMENT: John Key is more worried about the short-term fates of leveraged-up speculators and developers than the long-term fate of Generation Rent.

COMMENT: Imagine how productive and wealthy our economies would be with a President Trump and a Prime Minister Peters.

COMMENT: The Government's actions have been begrudging, delayed and lacking conviction.

COMMENT: The figures confirmed the Auckland housing market is running hot through the winter and the heat from that "halo" is spreading around the country.

COMMENT: In all the hullaballoo this week about New Zealand's record high migration, a strange fact has emerged.

COMMENT: Auckland feels like a boom town. Its shortage of houses, hotels, roads, schoolrooms and tradies dominates the conversations.

Auckland Council made it perfectly clear last week it could not pay for the $17b of roading, water and other infrastructure needed to build all the extra houses.

COMMENT: If council issued infrastructure bonds and tied them to rates targeted to residents of developments it could kill a couple of birds with one stone.

Everyone who cares about the future of the economy, interest rates and house prices needs to circle two dates in their calendars this year.

COMMENT: A generation seems not to have the work skills, aptitude and life skills to work for the wages employers are able to pay, writes Bernard Hickey.

COMMENT: Now that the Prime Minister has let the land tax genie out of the bottle we should all have a good close look to see which version suits us best.

COMMENT: The Reserve Bank is back in a familiar place - between those two rocks of very low CPI inflation and very high house price inflation.

COMMENT: It's easy to assess the value of an asset in a liquid and rising market, but the future liabilities are not so easy to see.

Did you know your money in a bank term deposit is not guaranteed by the Government?

COMMENT: How do New Zealanders get richer? It seems an obvious question, but it's one we seem to be ignoring, writes Bernard Hickey.

COMMENT: The idea of a Guaranteed Minimum Income deserves a lot more thought and debate than the dismissal it got from the Prime Minister.

COMMENT: The irony is banks have helped Reserve Bank avoid the feared side effect of the rate cut of adding more fuel on Auckland property price fires.

COMMENT: How about you borrow $30 billion to invest in something that produces a commodity that swings in price by more than 50% over a 2 year cycle?

Just imagine that one day the Reserve Bank deposited $1000 in your account, and that of every other citizen in New Zealand, writes Bernard Hickey.

Auckland Council is reverting to its Unitary Plan proposal, which will provide for just over 80,000 new homes by 2040, writes Bernard Hickey.

Central banks in the Euro zone - Sweden, Japan, Denmark and Switzerland - now have negative interest rates on the money deposited with them by banks.

Performance reviews are never fun and they're often more complicated than they should be, writes Bernard Hickey.

Making a movie about collateralised debt obligations and credit default swaps that is both compelling and accurate is quite some achievement.

Bernard Hickey: This has been a big year for the NZ economy, ranging from an extended slump for the dairy payout to a big boom for tourism and Auckland house prices.

This week's move to remove criminal sanctions for cartel behaviour from a bill already before Parliament should have been bigger news, writes Bernard Hickey.

This week's Salvation Army report into housing baby-boomers in retirement exposed the deepest fault-line in NZ society and its economy - home ownership.

Just imagine if someone told you the ratepayers of Auckland and the taxpayers of New Zealand were giving billions of dollars to the wealthiest property owners.

In 1992 banks and borrowers were as risk-averse, writes Bernard Hickey. Fast forward to 2015 and the mathematics are on another planet.

Wheeler has blamed the failure of inflation to rise back into the forecast range of 1-3 per cent on the slump in dairy and oil prices and the surprise rise in the New Zealand dollar.

The Productivity Commission report this week into land use for housing used a surprising word to describe what was needed to solve Auckland's housing crisis: credibility.

House-price inflation averaged more than 7 per cent a year in Auckland for the past decade and average wage growth has averaged just over 2 per cent.

The TPP was much more about winning a few tariff reductions, writes Bernard Hickey.

Imagine what an election debate in 2029 might look like.

The words "double Grammar zone" plastered across a real estate billboard is enough to make any red-blooded agent salivate, writes Bernard Hickey.

If Kiwis had been honest about finding a flag that reflected the national character, it would have been an open-home flag, writes Bernard Hickey.

Bernard Hickey writes: Just how long will governments and central banks be able to use public balance sheets to turn the tides of markets?

If you could take out a mortgage fixed for 12 years at 4.01 per cent to invest in an asset that lasts decades, would you?

The fall in the New Zealand dollar to US65c from US85c a year ago has been a blessing and a curse, writes Bernard Hickey.

The 'global savings glut theory' has been around since 2005 when US central banker Ben Bernanke started talking about it, writes Bernard Hickey.

Net migration is increasing our population by more than 1 per cent a year and that's not counting natural population growth, writes Bernard Hickey.

It's encouraging to see the govt is entertaining the idea for "Special Economic Zones" in an attempt to deal with our so-called zombie towns, writes Bernard Hickey.

Labour lit the fuse on a jury-rigged device and threw it into a shopping mall of opinions, with sadly predictable results, writes Bernard Hickey. But it needn't have been this way.

Imagine if you could invest $14.1 million up front and get a return over the next 50 years of $3.3 billion. Would you do it?

What should be done with KiwiSaver pots once they're free to be dipped into at 65? This issue is rapidly creeping up on KiwiSavers and the Govt, writes Bernard Hickey.

This week's news from Auckland's housing market must have terrified first-home buyers and delighted property owners.

This week's Productivity Commission report on housing reveals how Auckland's land prices have spiralled over the past decade and the toll that is taking on NZ's economy, writes Bernard Hickey.

Auckland needs to grow "up" and it needs political leadership to convince those on the isthmus to embrace that growth, writes Bernard Hickey.

The elephant in the room of Auckland's property debate is whether some of the money pouring into Auckland is money laundering of ill-gotten funds, writes Bernard Hickey.

The latest episode in our non-debate about superannuation has been like watching a car crash in slow motion, writes Bernard Hickey.

Budget 2015 is one of the most counter-intuitive of the seven that Bill English has delivered as Finance Minister, writes Bernard Hickey.

Watching the Reserve Bank grapple with the housing market has been like watching someone blowing up a long party balloon and trying to twist it into one of those sausage dogs.

The business of raising capital and borrowing money through the 'crowd in the cloud' is off to a flying start.

Why should Aucklanders pay a rates hike 9 times greater than inflation because the Govt could not or would not control an unprecedented net migration surge?

As the Govt ploughs on with its supply approach to Auckland's housing shortage, it faces tough choices about how far it can push ahead without stumping up serious money, writes Bernard Hickey.

Land tax might be one of the answers to reducing tax incentives for rental property investors, writes Bernard Hickey.

At what point does Generation Rent start using its votes to change those politicians, Bernard Hickey asks.