Morning roundup

The morning's worthies. 

R₀ on tabs is high. 

• Matt Nolan provides a coherent critique of the government's unemployment insurance scheme from the left. Simon Chapple suggests leveraging off KiwiSaver for short-term consumption smoothing.


• The MoH advice was to end MIQ back in November. I would have disagreed with that advice. But it's interesting because those of us pitching ways of strengthening safety while enabling more travel were always cast as death merchants by those wanting to canonise Bloomfield.


• They told us that there are no slippery slopes. Now they want a new advertising code of ethics "to end the promotion of high-carbon lifestyles and products." It is barking mad, and it has Julie Anne Genter's support. 


• Against genetic denialism


• The odds of an inflation disaster are rising.


• The negative supply shock worsens.


• Richard Prebble is right. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand cannot be trusted under its current mandate.


• Oregon's legalisation of psilocybin therapy ... it's going to be an expensive trip.


• Fairly large investment in solar generation coming for NZ. Remember that NZ's able to make this work without subsidising solar. Just taxes on carbon and a so-far clean electricity market. 


• Last week, David Clark was threatening the supermarkets. This week, Grant Robertson did at the post-Cabinet briefing - check the 16:30 mark where he notes they're still considering going further than the ComCom recommendations - like "separation of some of the entities involved". Robertson wanted inflation, or didn't care about stopping it. And now he needs a scapegoat. 


• ProdComm put out a report last week encouraging fixing NZ's dumb bans on genetic engineering. Reporting has been positive (RNZ, Newsroom, BusinessDesk). Fingers crossed. 


• Thomas Coughlan works through the timeline on MoH "consolidating" RATs.


• The new Transmission Pricing Methodology aims to remove first-mover disadvantage by only charging a transmission customer for the capital cost of the capacity that they need, not the full capacity that gets built when a new bigger line is put in. Effectively that will mean that the lines company bears the risk if it overestimates follow-on demand. They're probably better placed to bear that risk. 


• Peter Griffin on fintech developments in NZ. I'm going to have to catch up on this stuff.