Tag: Inflation

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Investing

The Economic Impact Of Auckland’s Flooding

Human impact aside, I would like to use this short article to consider the economic impact of the recent catastrophy of Aucklands malicious weather event.

It seems clear to me that the recent flooding will put yet more pressure on the construction industry as labour will be needed to repair damaged buildings. This will push up prices for labour and materials in the sector.

With people unable to travel to work or even able to work in flooded streets and buildings, I expect this to negatively affect the supply of goods and services. This inflationary pressure will be countered by lack of demand for goods and services due to lack of foot traffic and projects being postponed. I don’t know which of these aspects will affect price most significantly, but the only thing that a supply and demand diagram can tell us for sure is that quantity bought/sold will decrease, which you would have to assume would be bad for the economy, reducing company profits in Auckland and ancillary providers to the city.

Finally, the 400+ yellow/red stickered buildings will possibly create additional demand for housing. While I don’t expect this to have an impact of any significance, it may help abate the falling house prices in a minor way in the country’s most populous city.

In summary, I think the only thing we can predict with any surety is that it will be harder to find construction related labour and materials, and these resources will be more expensive.

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Investing

Thoughts On Inflation In NZ

Where inflation is concerned, there are aspects of global inflation and domestic inflation in countries around the world. While no country can control global inflation (except perhaps those who control oil supplies), each country can make a significant impact to it’s currency, economy and citizens with the proper handling of inflationary and dis-inflationary policies.

It seems that inflation in the US and Australia is abating a little, but inflation in NZ is not. Looking at why this is, we have to understand that domestic inflation is affected by not only Reserve Bank policy (OCR), but also government policy. The problem as I see it is that the government has and continues to impose inflationary policies upon the country. Here are a few such policies:

  • Government imposed fees on car imports has increased, making cheap cars expensive to import.
  • Farmers have been punished unduely for emissions, pushing food prices up.
  • RSA workers have been stopped from entering the country so crops are upable to be harvested, pushing food prices up.
  • Oil exploration has been banned, meaning that less oil is supplied and pushing prices up.
  • Increased government spending, creating demand and giving people more money to spend.
  • Increased unproductive government jobs, giving people more money to spend.

While the government seem to have started to address some of this (cynically I would say as the election that they’re highly unlikely to win is approaching), I feel that until this current government is removed from power domestic inflation will remain strong. What’s concerning about this is that this increases the OCR further, putting strain on the economy and increasing the Risk Free Cash Rate, making valuations lower. As an investor looking for reliable retirement income rather than a trader looking to make money on asset values, I used to think that asset values (i.e. share prices) didn’t matter if they dropped below what I paid. However, this can be a problem if I’m forced to sell such an asset (perhaps due to lack of performance) because I will basically decimate my income capacity. This is particularly a problem because the current governments policies are anti-business as well as inflationary – reducing the value of investments and increasing their risk contemporaneously. Therefore I have decided that I cannot invest any more money in NZ, at least until the government is changed and a recovery is assured.

This line of thinking has made me explore other options. Firstly in Australia because there are investment opportunities there that aren’t subject to FIF Tax law (one of the goals of my investing for the past few years has been to simplify my tax returns, which is one of the things that attracts me to investing in NZ and has caused me to avoid investing abroad despite the prospect of bigger returns – much to my disappointment!). The problem with Australian securities is that they are taxed in Australia, and then again in NZ. This means that they are 33% more expensive, making valuations highly unfavourable for me.

Secondly, this has caused me to re-research the FIF Tax laws to open up investment in US stocks. The problem with this is the tax basically taxes you on the assumption that you’re getting a 5% dividend – which means that income growth stocks (required for a retirement income to stay relevant to inflation) are over taxed and therefore not viable in a retirement income portfolio such as mine. The other option is essentially paying tax on theoretical (paper) gains based on the price at the start of the tax year vs the end of the tax year. While that sounds fairer, it means that as stocks grow in value (which they must to stay ahead of inflation, to be in a retirement income portfolio), I’d pay more tax that I could possibly earn in dividends. The only way to pay such a tax would be to have a cash reserve on a term deposit (basically un-invested and losing money in real terms) or sell a portion of my shares each year (a yearly loss in terms of the percentage of the companies I invest in and my relative position in the economy – aka inflation loss, of sorts).

At the moment I’ve decided to keep my debts down, holding my current course since my last strategy review. I will reassess the situation in the new tax year and as the inflation situation evolves. I’m concerned that NZ’s poor performance will force me to invest elsewhere, causing me to take my income from capital gains in US stocks taxed at a theoretical dividend rate (what the IRD calls the FDR option in the FIF Tax), at least until NZs economic and political environment become more friendly to businesses and investors.

How disappointing.

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Investing

When Will The Next Bull Start?

I’ve been thinking about when the next bull run could start, given the context of future events and how things could play out.

I should start by saying that I expect that there will be bull runs in different markets (such as the housing market) depending on things like the start of dropping of the OCR relative to the economy’s health. This article however, focuses on the alignment of events that will likely lead the world’s economy into the next prolonged bull market.

What got me thinking about this was the significant possibility that the Republicans (possibly lead by Trump) could take power in the next election (which I expect will be in 2024). A Republican win would herald a humanitarian disaster in Ukraine and triumph for Putin, given that:

  • Financial, humanitarian and military aid to the Ukraine from the USA dwarfs that of all other countries.
  • Trump supporters / Republicans don’t seem to be the sort of people to care about foreigners (they seem largely America-centric as per Trumps last campaigns) and don’t seem smart enough to understand the broader implications of foreign policy, never mind the complexity of how policies have come about and the effect of unwinding them.

That said, a Republican win in the mid terms would likely mean that Russia would be holding out for military defunding of Ukraine and a guaranteed prolonging of the war (if that’s not already his strategy anyway).

Fortunately it’s looking as though we don’t have to consider the above, as it looks like the Democrats may have seized it.

Economically speaking, I would expect that if America stopped funding Ukraine, this would result directly in a win for Putin, which would likely cause a return to normality for fuel and food inflation as the Ukraine suffered the new normal, whatever that may look like.

So it seems that despite my musings, we remain in no better position to predict future events than before. I have no answers for when the next bull market will break out. I will however suggest that the more things remain the same, the less will change.

That means more inflation to come, more OCR increases and more wage inflation until we hit a recession.

The best course of action seems to be to clear debt, invest sensibly (revise your financial models to consider inflation and personal risks, revise your goals, work out risk vs. reward requirements and investment allocations in your portfolio)… oh, and make sure you are highly employable to the labour market and not at risk where you currently work.

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Investing

More Thoughts On Inflation

I read an article from The Guardian which reported high levels of people retiring early in their 50’s, based on stats from the ONS (the UK equivalent to Stats NZ).

I can definitely see why this would be a thing. I’m age 40 and ready to retire once I’ve managed to exit my largest private holding (so I can put the money into something that can give me a reliable income).

We’ve all enjoyed over a decade of bull markets throughout the developed world and people must be flush with cash and/or assets which can be deployed into an early retirement.

Interestingly, NZ’s low unemployment figures suggest that this phenomenon isn’t happening over here. Nevertheless, anecdotal evidence suggests that this is also happening in other countries, such as America.

This has got me thinking about inflation risk. Yes, sorry, I’m taking about inflation again, but you were warned in the title of this article and it’s the most significant financial thing happening at the moment which needs to be considered, planned for, and therefore predicted… hostilities with large trading partner countries coming a close second (a brief note on this at the bottom of this article).

Anyway, I have two thoughts on this at the moment.

Firstly I think that with a mass exodus of the employment pool, there will likely be high inflation resulting from inefficiencies (including restricted growth) due to lack of staff, leading to supply and logistics issues. We all know what that means. This will put pressure on GDP, which will make these countries poorer by this measure.

Secondly, due to affluent newly retirees with all that extra time to spend their permanent holiday money, this could put additional demand on economies.

In other words, I foresee additional pressure on both sides of the supply and demand diagram, which leads to higher prices and less supply. To rephrase that into non school of economics speak, on average people will have less money because things will cost more and people will have less things over time because less stuff is being made. In other words, we could be looking at really big inflation over a number of years.

This change of GDP profile also adds to my theory that the trading / industrial profile of such countries will change. For example, those countries whose GDP is mostly made up of financial products might change to be mostly made up of manufacturing products. Such a change would be very disruptive to employees being made redundant, retraining and taking lower wages as novices in their new fields in lower earning companies with less money to pay people. Foreign consultants with newly required skill sets could become the flavour of the day… though this will take along time to play out.

Finally, it’s worth a quick note to say that I will be reducing my exposure to business that rely on trade with countries that could potentially become hostile and are not politically well aligned.

I feel like the coming years will be very difficult to pick long term investments in, due to the volatility, with lots of opportunities for mistakes. I suspect agile investors could be in a position to make a lot of money. This does not bode well for my aim to have minimal effort managing my portfolio and tax.

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Investing

Is Now The Right Time To Invest In Property?

Those who know me will know that I sold up my rental properties a few years ago, when it became apparent that basically the whole of NZ saw landlords as evil.

Renters were envious of landlords because they incorrectly saw them as the reason they couldn’t afford property. The media also saw them as evil and enjoyed whipping up a frenzy with renters, but more importantly the government saw them as evil and a good scapegoat for their failing policies (such as kiwibuild).

It wasn’t good business sense to be in a business that the government was trying to damage and the threat of nutty policies removing landlords basic rights made this less appealing. A history of having a couple of bad tenants also helped make my decision.

That said, being in the position I am in, with access to more property data than just about everyone in NZ, coupled with the falling property market, I find myself reconsidering whether now is the right time to buy property again.

Property doesn’t quite fit into my retirement portfolio because without considering capital gains, it has a net zero ROI after taking out amortized costs. But it could be an option as part of Plan B (if my impending company sale doesn’t happen) or post Plan A to reduce my retirement inflation risk.

Aside from the social and legal risks of owning property, I think it’s clear that a short/medium term property play could fit into my portfolio. The next question to ask is whether it’s a good time to buy property right now.

For me, I think it’s not the right time to buy property, but it could become the right time soon. The reason I say this is because my most recent analysis of current risks suggests that there’s probably more inflation to come, which means higher OCR, less affordability and therefore potentially lower property prices to come next year. There’s too much risk at the moment.

In terms of yield, rents could drop as more houses are built and immigration remains low. As houses become less affordable, more people could end up renting, but I really wouldn’t know how net demand would look when considering factors such as zero immigration, people choosing to live with family, etc. One thing that’s worth noting is that we have seen a proportional relationship between home buying and rental price, as people living in their own homes tend to reduce supply of housing due to creating fewer inhabitants per household vs. Renter households. It’s difficult to know which factors will prevail over rental prices. My gut feeling is that there will be downward pressure in rental prices over the coming year. We shall see.

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Investing

A Review Of Current Risks Part 3

In my last review of current risks, I identified a number of risks and hypothesized that inflation would tick along until attitudes towards COVID change. I think that attitudes to COVID are changing, albeit at different rates around the world, which infers that workforce efficiency could improve.

Although notably, China is maintaining it’s Zero Covid policy, which means that workforce efficiency will remain low for trades relating to China.

Addendum

Another contributing factor to this will be higher global OCR rates that will increase people’s dependence on their employment. Coupled with the fact that rates have been increased at such a fast rate that it’ll be difficult to see the effect of the volume of change, it’s entirely possible that the rate changes alone will push the world into recession early-mid 2023. All these factors will likely kill off the high demand for labour and quash wage inflation.

We also have Putin who will likely be becoming more desperate as despots who lose wars usually lose their power (excuse the pun). I feel that he will be unlikely to use nuclear weapons because everyone fairly unanimously views using nukes as bad for people who choose to live on Earth. While this won’t deter Putin personally, even his allies would struggle to defend his actions, which would give NATO the freedom to turn the full power of their technologically superior arsenal directly on Russia to set them back to the stone age and remove any possibility of future threat.

In summary, I predict that 2023 is lining up for:

  • Recession.
  • Wage deflation.
  • Continued high inflation for energy due to a continued stalemate between Russia and civilized society.
  • Medium-to-low* Medium-to-high inflation for necessary goods that depend on energy / logistics (food), though these will feel expensive because of the wage deflation.
  • Low* Medium inflation for luxury goods due to increased costs because of energy/logistics, but tempered by the lack of demand from the recession.
  • There are many countries with unconventional economic policies from unconventional leaders, such as England, Turkey, etc. Who have lead their country into a dire economic situation. I don’t know how this will affect the balance of global trade when it settles, but there could be some industries that are no longer viable in particular countries and other industries that are new to those countries due to currency values changing – this will lead to inefficiency, paucity and lower wages.
  • Property will likely continue to fall as recession hits demand, OCR reduces affordability and population growth remains lackluster.

* Revisions made due to the above addendum relating to China’s Covid issues.

It’s hard to know where best to put the money to preserve it in line with inflation, never mind investing for growth. That said, my personal financial strategy remains to cover my risk of exposure to debt by reducing liquid holdings and claw back what I can of my illiquid holdings.

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Investing

A Review Of Current Risks

I had hoped to hold onto my NZX and ASX listed stocks for years to come and ride out any dips in the markets, with the view that my stocks were of such quality and a good balance that I could just get a nice dividend return to cover my retirement.

Also, the planned exit from one of my private equity holdings would be significant enough to cover any losses and secure my position. However as inflation unfolds around the world, with some countries experiencing hyper inflation and comments from the BoE saying that they’re not going to shy away from generating a recession to curb inflation, I had a moment of panic yesterday and sold some stocks. Specifically my panic was that as my private equity exit isn’t happening as early as planned (and I might end up holding for more years to come), if the RBNZ were to put rates up this could mean that I am unable to service my mortgage in future and my stocks could become so undervalued that I would be bankrupt with a negative equity situation on my home.

As I’m feeling a bit calmer today, I decided to reconsider things with a goal of holding on to as many of my stocks as possible, particularly the more resilient ones, while diminishing the possibility of bankruptcy from my future.

The first thing to consider is a summary of what’s currently going on that might affect me, so I made a list:

  • Inflation for all goods due to monetary policy and COVID related supply issues
  • Inflation of food and fuel throughout the world due to war related supply issues
  • Inflation of wages in NZ due to lack of labour supply
  • Wealth destruction from NZ housing policy
  • Wealth destruction from falling share market due to all of the above
  • … and it’s going to be a contentious one, but I’m going to add an incompetent NZ government to this list, too.

Looking at how this might play out, it seems that COVID is here to stay for a few more years; and while the war in the Ukraine is a bit of a wild card, from my research into Russia’s military losses vs stock, when considering the time it takes to resupply their losses, it seems that Russia can keep up their invasion indefinitely if they choose to do so. This means that consumer price inflation is likely to stay for a while – certainly at least as long as the war and sanctions persist.

From what I can see (with the limited research I’ve done), the media’s reporting of house price falls lags significantly (about a month). The superior data that I’m fortunate enough to have access to suggests that things might be a lot worse than reported, with houses similar to mine having fallen by 23% where I live (based on a limited dataset – I should probably do more research on the other data). What’s worrying about this, is that it’s likely common consensus that the housing market is in a downward trend, which becomes a self fulfilling prophecy, pushing prices down further. The same can be said for losses in the stock market, though this is forward looking in a different way.

Wage inflation is in my opinion, the only thing that’s allaying a recession. Here’s why I say that and why I was panicked yesterday.

Inflation results in high interest rates (aimed to reduce spending) which results in less spending by consumers. This results in less company revenue and then poor company outlook, which results in less company investment. When companies invest less money, they hire fewer people, resulting in less demand for labour and fewer jobs. This results in less money in the hands of the public, which results in less spending by consumers (which loops back to the start, causing a downward economic spiral that is difficult to manage. Even if this is managed well by our current government (I say government rather than RBNZ because there are problems in supply that cannot be fixed by monetary policy alone), this difficult challenge will have to be handled well by more than most governments of the world to avoid global contagion of financial issues.

To compound the problem, the above also results in lower house prices, due to less buyer capacity. Lower house prices are a particular problem for NZ because a lot of wealth is held in houses. The loss of the wealth effect from people having value in their houses looks like this:

House prices go down, which means that people have less borrowing power (think: LVR). This results in less spending which is the cause for the downward economic spiral I mentioned in the former paragraph.

As I mentioned before, wage inflation is the only thing that can allay a recession because it enables people to keep spending, and gives them enough money to pay more for goods and services, which means that companies can pass on their costs, keep their profits up and therefore keep investing, which means more people hired… etc. In other words, it breaks the downward spiral.

Because of this, I am keeping a sharp eye on retail stats which I believe are a bellwether for wage inflation. Unfortunately, even though I have things like Paymark stats that can give indicators, I can’t tell if costs are being fully passed on to consumers until retail stocks publish their NPAT figures. I believe that a fall in consumer spend reported by Paymark is an early recession indicator, but a flatline or below CPI increase is an indicator of a possible recession.

In terms of my strategy (without discussing the specifics), I will:

  • Assume my exit from the private equity will not eventuate
  • Assume that my 6 figure shareholder loan will be paid back at the start of next year
  • Use that money and other money from yesterday’s fire sale to reduce my mortgage as terms allow
  • Consider locking in a multi year term for my mortgages that come off fixed rates
  • Continue to hold onto my high quality stocks for the long term – which includes a retail stock that will likely struggle, but has a history of always paying a dividend
  • Not bother selling the remaining handful of lower quality stocks whose value is sufficiently low that it’s wouldn’t change my financial position to sell anyway (The value of which is about $4,000)

In the event that I lose my job during a particularly bleak recession, I will use the value in my listed stocks, savings and hopefully shareholder loan, to try to outlast the recession.

Risks to my strategy are:

  • I lose my job AND (the shareholder loan defaults OR stocks drop in value by >60% from their current position and I can’t get another job for 6 months)
  • Interest rates go crazy after next year when my largest mortgage expires and I don’t get pay rises. The level of “crazy” depends on what other failures happen in my investments that prevent me from paying down my mortgage.
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Investing

Thoughts On OCR Increases And Inflation In 2022

I’m feeling bearish about the economic impact of the RBNZ’s position on increasing the OCR.

The OCR is typically increased to reduce the economy’s propensity to spend money (AKA reduce demand) to cool an overheated economy, but also to put the central bank in a position where they can drop the OCR to stimulate demand in future, as required.

Inflation is a key indicator (and cause for concern) of an overheated economy; hence the RBNZ has started on the path of OCR increases to cool the inflation before it creates instability in the economy.

However I do not believe that OCR increases are the right tool to reduce inflation in this case, and I believe that OCR increases may actually harm the economy.

I say this because while increasing the OCR is a great way to keep price increases in check that result from a flourishing economy, that’s not what’s happening here. Instead we have a performant economy that is threatened by high prices due to supply issues.

The difference is subtle until you consider a supply and demand diagram.

If we consider a supply and demand diagram, we can see that as an economy performs well, participants have an increased propensity to buy (increased demand) and this pushes up prices. In this scenario, increasing the OCR is a great way to keep demand in check by presenting buyers with a more preferable alternative of a higher ROI for their money in the bank and reducing their debt levels. The below supply and demand diagram illustrates an increase in demand due to a flourishing economy.

A flourishing economy results in an increase in demand, causing prices to increase. This can be remedied by increasing OCR to decrease demand to a more desirable level.

Unfortunately our economy isn’t suffering from increasing prices due to increased demand (much). By far the greatest pressure on prices is due to a lack of supply caused by COVID related logistics issues and other supply constraints (lack of lorry drivers, shipping queues at ports, labour shortages, semiconductor shortages, etc.). This is represented in the below demand and supply diagram, which depicts the effects of a reduction in supply.

A reduction is supply causes increased prices and lower quantities of sales.

Let’s have a look at what happens when the OCR is increased to reduce demand along with the already reduced supply.

Reduced supply causes less to be bought and increases price. Reducing demand reduces the price, but at the cost of reducing quantities bought. Reducing demand to drop prices back to levels seen before a decrease in supply causes a massive reduction in quantity traded.

As we can see from the above diagram, when the OCR is used to tackle price increases from a reduction in supply, one of two things can happen:

  • The demand isn’t reduced enough, resulting in high prices and lower quantities traded
  • The demand is reduced (at least) enough to match prices before supply decreases, resulting in larger drop in quantities traded

In both scenarios we see a drop in trade and most likely this won’t fix the inflation problem (at least not without significantly damaging the economy). A drop in trade means a poor economy, job losses, business closures / contractions, etc.

I would argue that as the economy isn’t overheating and is performant, that minimal interference is appropriate. Also, as a lack of supply is causing price increases and the government can’t fix the lack of supply (I won’t discuss policies that could help remedy this situation right now), we’ll just have to try to cope with the increases in prices for now and suffer the consequences (which could mean permanently higher prices in some industries).

Finally, I will leave you with a definition of poverty, where poverty is described as people not having things (lack of supply) and not being able to afford things (high prices).

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How Will US Inflation Affect NZ Companies?

Inflation seems to be kicking off in the USA, according to the news. I expect that this will cause the Fed to increase interest rates, which will cause the USD to increase in value as currency traders flock to benefit. This could be good for companies selling to the USA and converting their currency back to NZDs, and other companies that benefit from a strong USD.

Of course that’s not to say that any company that trades in USDs will automatically be a good investment or that it will be correctly priced for a purchase.

Can you think of any companies on the ASX or NZX that could benefit from a strong USD? Please mention them in the comments below.

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Inflation Risk In NZ

As I approach retirement, inflation (which was formerly my friend) is becoming my foe. While saving for retirement I’ve used cheap debt (mortgages) to fund various investments which have returned higher rates than the cost of the debt. Essentially I’ve leveraged the bank’s money to profit, rather than my own (comparatively pitiful) savings. This has had a two-fold benefit over the years. Firstly it has enabled me to get rich from someone else’s money, and secondly inflation has made the cost of my debt lower as time goes by. For example, a $240k mortgage to buy a $300k house 10 years ago isn’t much when the house is now worth $1m and my salary is double what it was.

Unfortunately inflation is the enemy of the retired. The value of the savings a retiree has are eroded by inflation. So as a “young” retiree (I’ll be nearly 40 when I retire next year) my retirement strategy will have to consider inflation. Whilst my strategy does consider inflation (I plan to have a component of my income to cover my costs and another component to grow), recently proposed political policies have made me concerned. Specifically I’m concerned that inflation may not be evenly spread across all asset classes, which creates risk to business (and therefore potentially my investments) and risk to my future living costs / lifestyle choices. I’m also concerned that inflation may be greater than the growth on my income.

It’s important to be aware of inflation whether you’re retired, planning retirement or currently investing because it will probably affect your strategy / opportunities.

Lewis Hurst

Let’s look at the inflation risks that are present in the current economic and political environment (existing policies put in place by the current government are in darker text, while policies proposed in the recent Climate Change Report are accented in a lighter colour. As I’m an opinionated fellow, I couldn’t help adding my opinion of the policy, but I’ve put this in italic so you’re free to ignore the italic text if you wish):

  • Increased minimum wage. This should cause general inflation as people have more money to spend, which creates increased demand and an ability to pay more for any particular goods or services. It has been hypothesized by economists that distributing more money amongst the poorest of the populace is the best way to spur an economy as all the extra money gets spent, vs. more affluent people who may save some of the additional money.
    At the time I thought this was a bad policy because the inflation would cancel the some of the gains, and therefore there are better ways to achieve what the policy set out to achieve. Additionally the policy was risky because it could put many businesses out of business. The policy also came at a really bad time with COVID19. However, after the policy was implemented, most businesses seemed to be able to handle the new costs, so it was probably the right thing to do (although I think there was a lot of luck in the success of this policy).
  • Quantitative Easing (QE, AKA Printing Money). There is currently a massive amount of QE going on in NZ and around the world. Both QE and increasing the minimum wage are policies that create general inflation.
    I believe that Western countries around the world have been using QE in a battle to reduce the value of their currency, in order to make themselves more competitive exporters and at the same time deflating their debt with the inflation that goes along with QE.
  • Banning oil exploration. This policy is inflationary because it reduces supply of oil, which therefore pushes the price up.
    I believe that this is another of Labour’s policies that does the opposite of what was intended because it doesn’t reduce demand, so demand will just be fulfilled from oil imports – which will create more strain on the environment as extra fuel is used to import the fuel. The argument for the policy was to create strain on the market to produce motors that use alternative fuel sources, but as NZ has no such motor industry, will import the fuel anyway, and is too small to influence foreign motor industries, I believe that no such technology will emerge from this change. Again, there are better ways to achieve what this policy set out to achieve.
  • KiwiBuild. This policy is inflationary because builders were attracted away from the NZ private sector (who would have otherwise been building houses) to build houses for the government. This inflates the price of builders as it creates extra demand, while at the same time not increasing supply as those builders would have otherwise been fulfilling private demand for housing. Increasing the cost of builders makes new housing more expensive.
    Additionally the government bought houses from the private sector for political reasons, so they could tout the success of the failing build rate of the KiwiBuild policy. This temporarily inflates the price of housing because it creates temporary extra demand as the private sector bids for housing against the government.
    Another Labour policy that did the opposite of what it was intended to do, whilst at the same time adding inefficiency into the market in terms of admin cost, and in the case of houses that were built as part of the KiwiBuild policy, placing houses where people didn’t want them – further increasing house prices due to an effective reduction of supply due to lack of housing in areas that required it.
  • Reducing the amount of dairy cows to reduce methane emissions. This will reduce the supply of meat, which will inflate the price.
    I imagine it would be better to put restrictions on the thing they are trying to regulate (the emissions) rather than the thing creating the emissions. That way the free market can find the best way to reduce emissions, leaving the reduction of herds as a last resort.
    There is talk suggesting that NZ dairy farms have lower emissions than foreign farms. If this is true, this will be another Labour policy that does the opposite of what it intends, because demand for dairy will not decrease, so foreign supply will fill the gap, resulting in an over all increase in emissions.
  • Phasing out natural gas. This will decrease the supply of energy, increasing the demand on other sources such as green electricity. Probably a good thing, but this will cause inflation in the price of alternative sources as supply decreases.
  • Ban the importing of cars with combustion engines. Again, reducing supply increases prices.

Regardless of political views, these policies are inflationary. Having a quick look at the list, it seems that existing policies are generally inflationary, with a leaning towards inflating transport and housing; while proposed policies could cause inflation in food, energy and transport.

To summarize my position, as I intend to get part of my income from rental income, NZX.SUM, NZX.SCL and gentailers, I only have transport costs to worry about. Still, with all this additional inflation, I may need to ensure that the growth rate of my income is more heavily weighted. This means that I may need more money to be able to retire safely. As usual, I’ll be playing it by ear, and evolving my strategy to my situation as it changes.

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