A retrospective look at the ‘mind-blowing’ economic experiment of 2020

As 2020 draws to a close, Michael Andrew asks the economists what they made of a year of dire forecasts, record spikes, lockdowns, recessions and resilience. It’s April 2020, New Zealand is in the middle of the nationwide level four lockdown, and I’m on the phone with my old university lecturer, Professor Paul Hansen – … Read more

The recession will be hard, but old family businesses have been there before

The true economic turmoil of the Covid-19 downturn is yet to be felt. However, some family operations are old enough to have endured – and survived – many of these types of shocks before. Every once in a while, at Gemmell’s shoe and bag repairer on central Auckland’s Symonds St, a customer brings in a … Read more

The Single Object: the water fountain that measures money

The Single Object is a series exploring our material culture, examining the meaning and influence of objects that surround us in everyday life. In the second piece in the series, Danyl Mclauchlan visits the Reserve Bank to inspect Bill Phillip’s MONIAC. It looks like an artifact from an alternate timeline. MONIAC is about two metres … Read more