Afternoon roundup

Sure doesn't take long for the tabs to pile up after summer break.

Some worthies:

• CPI y/y now at 4.7%, q/q 0.5%. Remember that the y/y figures will be comparing current CPI, where fuel has full excise, with Dec quarter 2022, when fuel had a substantial excise discount. Treasury had figured that removing excise had meant something like a half percentage point effect on y/y CPI figures when Labour put in the discount; should be roughly the same in reverse currently. So y/y is overstated relative to actual inflation. It's still over the top of the target band. But the quarterly result is encouraging: annualising 0.5% gets you a titch over 2%. 
• While talking about CPI, remember that normal drill has annual inflation adjustments to tobacco excise from the accumulated prior-year inflation. And that would feed through into the subsequent year CPI figures. RNZ says the government may pause the CPI increases to tobacco excise. If you think that tobacco excise is set at a level commensurate with social cost, then you'd want the real value of excise to not be affected by inflation. If you, like me, think that excise is multiples of actual social cost while incredibly punitive for lower-income smoking households, then you'd be happy with holding it and happier with reducing it explicitly. 
• The Government Economics Network is surveying government-employed economists and non-economists about what training they might be needing. I think they need a lot more background in what the mainstream consensus actually is, rather than a pile of heterodox conference keynotes. There's an important place for heterodox thinking: in the academic economics departments, which then sort out which bits have to be incorporated into the academic mainstream. 
• GEN's survey of Ministry chief economists was interesting though. They note difficulty in matching market rates for economists, which can't be good for the quality of economic policy advice. I liked this bit: "Economics is not the only area where the prize for being good at something is to be promoted to another job with less of the thing one was promoted for and more meetings. Nevertheless, respondents said that this seemed to be more apparent in economics than general policy roles."
• Farmers Weekly on some of the issues for NZ with the pirates/terrorists having closed the Red Sea. BusinessDesk notes a $1600/container surcharge because of it. That NZ has sent six (6) NZDF staff to help reopen that route has melted some peoples' brains. 
• Walking around town, I notice a whole lot of leaks that were around before we left on summer holiday are still there, some worsening. The one on Tinakore Road outside the daycare is going to wreck the road where it's been bubbling out for months. Wellington Water is also not proving itself particularly competent: a pressure valve installation led to a new leak, repeatedly reported by residents, culminating in an explosion with trees knocked over and footpath wrecked. Wellington's power lines are owned by a private company; they're fine....
• I hadn't seen this before. App that traces out how people commute to and from various suburbs, from Census 2018. 
• We live in an age of wonders.
• I endorse every one of the City for People's recommendations for the Wellington district plan. Would go further, but each of these is good.