More on NZ's Changing Migration Trends

Returning Kiwis Help Lift Hope for Economy
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/immigration/news/article.cfm?c_id=231&objectid=10585848

Departures to Australia Drop Off - Good article by Alex Tarrant
http://www.interest.co.nz/ratesblog/index.php/2009/08/21/big-jump-in-net-migration-as-departures-to-australia-drop-off/

Home (NZ) is a Foreign Land
http://www.theaucklander.co.nz/local/news/home-is-a-foreign-land/3902929/

EmigrateNZ Forum - What do Kiwis who have been out of NZ for a while, make of returning home?
http://www.emigratenz.org/forum/archive/index.php/t-22912.html

Kiwi Returnees - Update

There is now a constant stream of stories about:
a) Kiwi's returning to NZ
b) fewer kiwis departing and
c) people moving to NZ from other lands.

Here are some stats courtesy of Dompost via Stuff and presumably Statistics NZ:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/2661087/Arrivals-up-as-exodus-slows

A continued influx of people is boosting New Zealand's population.

Permanent and long-term migration statistics for the year to June show a net gain of 12,500 people, more than double the year to June 2008.

Arrivals were up 4 per cent while departures were down 6 per cent, creating a large influx of new residents.

Net migration to Australia had decreased in the past five months, from the record exodus of December and January.

In the year to June, 42,200 people left for Australia while 13,600 went the other way, two-thirds of them returning Kiwis.

TD Securities senior strategist Annette Beacher said though the actual numbers were small, it was the net growth that counted.

"It doesn't matter if it is people arriving, or residents not leaving, the bottom line is increased population to spend, invest and shore up activity."

The three-month average for population growth was the highest it had been since late 2003, Ms Beacher said. "The combination of improved [housing] affordability and rising population, if it continues, are providing fodder for a solid housing recovery this time next year."

ASB economist Jane Turner said the rising net migration would help provide a floor on demand for housing and retail spending, two sectors at a particularly weak point. "We expect net migration to peak at around 25,000 people per annum over the next year."

The Reserve Bank would see migration as one positive factor for the economy and a potential source of inflationary pressure, she said.

Recessionary Crime

Links reporting rising crime

Telegraph 19 July, 2009

A teenage robbery crime wave is sweeping Britain, with the number of young muggers increasing by more than three quarters in the last decade

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/lawandorder/5796887/Teenage-robbery-crime-wave-sweeping-Britain.html

Kiwi Departees Slow - NZ Herald (21 May 2009)

Kiwis seeking greener paddocks has slowed according to Stats NZ. See link at the bottom for source.
According to NZ Herald . . .

The net outflow to Australia was 32,000 in the April 2009 year, down from the record net outflows of 35,400 in both the December 2008 and January 2009 years.

Permanent and long-term arrivals exceeded departures by 400 in April, compared with a net outflow of 1,300 in April last year. The increase was mainly due to 1,600 fewer long term departures of New Zealand citizens.

New Zealand's annual net migration balance was a gain of 9,200 in the April 2009 year, up from 4,700 in the April 2008 year.

While the number of Kiwis leaving these shores for good has fallen, the number returning home to live has only increased slightly - with 24,500 in the April 2009 year, just above the annual average of 23,400 seen for the 1979-2008 December years.

"Arrivals of New Zealand citizens tend to show little variation year-to-year," said Statistics NZ.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10573661

http://media.nzherald.co.nz/webcontent/document/pdf/internationaltravelandmigrationpdf.pdf

MEXICAN SWINE FEVER

The fact that you are reading this is a confirmation that you have "Mexican Swine Fever". This is the companion disease that accompanies Mexican Swine Flu aka Influenza Type A (variant H1N1).

In contrast with Swine Flu which is primarily a viral infection of the respiratory system, Swine Fever is a disease of the mind activated by a complex signalling process, the main vector of which is the Main Stream Media. I hesitate to call it the main stream "news" media because the word "news" carries with it connotations of impartiality, accuracy and trustworthiness. As this could be debated let me just say that the media is simply a pipeline of content, rather like a water supply (or a sewer) some of which is good to receive, some of which is poisonous and some of which is just noise.

In the Chemistry lab a small inert chip of glass is often used to help solutions in test-tubes boil evenly. This chip provides an irregular surface for liquids to vapourize against and thus boil off without making a mess. The outbreak of Swine Flu in Mexico is the bumping granule around which much activity is boiling - and most of what is given off is Swine Fever. The Fever has in turn raised the temperature of the environment and is concentrating attention away from the financial collapse, which must be a welcome relief to the banking industry.

The reason that this relatively small outbreak has generated such a lot of concern is simply that the test-tube in which the flu has been incubated (or liberated*) has been growing increasingly hotter, having been cooked under the sequential bunsen burners of SARS, Avian Flu and earlier, AIDS, Ebola etc.

It is too early to tell whether this is the "Big One" or whether this will simply be a trial run for the systems and procedures put in place in airports, hospitals and Pandemic Emergency Manuals around the world. Regardless of whether the Swine Flu is a real or a virtual emergency the seeds have been sown for a harvest at least of income via "Big Pharma", if not in a harvest of lives.

If feeling the affects of Swine Fever it might be a good time to check how well prepared you are for the real thing. Do you have stocks of the basic essentials - food, water and toilet paper.

* Dr Leonard Horowitz claims Mexican swine flu is not only a deliberately engineered disease but one which is race specific - see http://www.sott.net/articles/show/183179-Horowitz-Swine-Flu-Is-Genocide-For-Profit

KIWI RETURNEES

Flocks of seagulls sitting on the rugby field is a classic storm-sign. What is happening when Kiwis return to "Godzone Country" in larger numbers than previously? Here's a collection of stories on this theme. The Cultural Revolution has definitely started.

Kiwis Decide Home's Best Source: The Press - 22 April, 2009
New Zealand could be heading for a population blip as thousands of Kiwis stay home instead of trying their luck overseas. Net migration numbers arriving in New Zealand compared with those leaving last month was the highest for 2 1/2 years at 1720.

Migration won't affect housing market til 2010 Source: National Business Review – 22 April, 2009
“This economic cycle is also different. It’s a deep global downturn. New Zealand is suffering, but looks better than most, particularly those in the northern hemisphere. Hence, it is possible that migration will hold up better than it has in the past.”

Returning kiwis are eagerly looking for somewhere to rent Source: NZ Herald - 6 October, 2008
The article in today’s NZ Herald highlights an increase in enquiry from London based kiwis seeking employment opportunities in NZ as the credit crisis wreaks its toll on the Finance and Banking sector in the UK.

At Least 10,000 Kiwis Returning as Recession Sours OE Dreams Source: TVNZ – 17 March, 2009
More New Zealanders are turning their back on the great OE, as the tradition becomes one of the casualties of the recession. Up to 10,000 expatriates are expected to come home this year because they are struggling to find jobs and make ends meet overseas.

New Zealand Herald - 12 April, 2009
The local housing market is benefiting from tough economic conditions abroad, says John Wills of Custom Residential.

Questions to Kiwis Source - Chris Martenson Forums Hi all Kiwis! - Some questions I have regarding NZ and its situation in the coming crisis:

ChrisMartenson Forums
I was trying to start a discussion of this in another forum, but I'm eyeing NZ as an interesting place to run to. Why? Well, because you seem to have still certain advantages. Namely, NZ is far away from anywhere making it less likely to get attacked once things start to crash and secondly with a strong agriculture you'll be able to feed yourself even if cut off from the rest of the world. In terms of worst case scenario - total breakdown of the current system - those are really important advantages. Provided of course NZ society won't break down under strain these events will put on it. How do you think?

Move your Money Out Of America And Soon Source - Whiskey & Gunpowder
“It might sound counterintuitive after the sub-prime debacle, but real estate is a sound option for moving money outside of the United States; there are zero reporting requirements. It’s your business where you own property, and (so far) no one else’s. You can purchase property in a private way by setting up a corporate structure to hold the assets so that they’re not in your name (Panama is an excellent jurisdiction to set this up), and although there are many places with depressed real estate markets, there are also many with good growth potential: in Latin America, we would recommend Panama, Colombia, Uruguay, and Chile. In Europe: Slovakia, Albania, and Poland. In the rest of the world: Lebanon, Hainan Island (China), the Philippines, Cambodia, and New Zealand.

Time is of the essence – start looking for your safe haven now.”

A Presidential Energy Policy

http://www.rubiconworks.com/announcement.html

Long awaited
Coming out 1 May, 2009

PIRATIZATION

Catherine Austin-Fitts posted a penetrating article titled “Financial Coup d’Etat” about a time in 2001 when she attended a private investment conference in London. The stories that emerged at the conference made it apparent that the 1990’s de-regulation and privatization was nothing less than an international financial coup against nations including US itself. Catherine recalls that a relatively small group of Bankers, corporations and investors with their coterie of accountants and lawyers (Washington-Wall St partnership) presided over the destruction of many economies. She describes this “piracy”. . .

“a Washington-Wall Street partnership that had:

- Engineered a fraudulent housing and debt bubble;

- Illegally shifted vast amounts of capital out of the U.S.;

- Used “privatization” as a form or piracy - a pretext to move government assets to private investors at below-market prices and then shift private liabilities back to government at no cost to the private liability holder.”

The next phase of the piracy is probably the re-sale of essential power, energy and transportation infrastructure back to the states that sold them off after having substantially run down the asset. This “King’s ransom” will be the second bite, not of the cherry, but of the carotid artery on the other side of the throat. This all boils together in the catch-phrase – Privatize the profits and publicise the costs.

Piratze the assets then ransom them back.

WHAT CAN WE KNOW ABOUT THE FUTURE?

PART ONE – THE NATURAL

There are many question marks hanging over 2009. The end of 2008 had a significantly different tone from the beginning of the year. Warning lights came on with sudden increases in the values of commodities in particular oil and cereals. Then alarm bells started ringing as the American housing market was ripped open exposing a multi-headed cancer, with tentacles clearly originating in the organs of credit – the international industrial banking complex. While some of the largest and most trusted banking institutions were lying, not just on their backs in theatre attended by treasury surgeons, the sirens were crying from many corners, emergency meetings were convened and packets of blood were called for – truckloads. “What will we face in 2009?” has become a nagging question in many people’s minds. The question also begets another more abstract and more useful question – “What can we know about the future?”

The difference between the two questions is that the former invites an answer about how the external world will impact on us, whereas the latter shifts the focus onto a subject we all find interesting – ourselves. And we all have a stake in the future. The first thing to understand is that the future, like knowledge, is a concept. The words future and knowledge embody significant multi-layered meanings about our relationship with the world around us (and inside us) about which there is much common agreement. Whilst there may be many shades of meaning between individuals, there is a strong consensus about the central idea about what the future is and is not.

Knowledge and future are both high order ideas, that is, they are ideas which enclose and contain other ideas. The future is an aspect of a higher order idea again, the idea of time. On the one hand the future, like eternity, is a very long time, on the other it could be a brief moment. An astro-physicist and an atomic-particle physicist use different scales for measuring time’s multiple depths. The utility of higher order concepts such as knowledge and the future are their malleability. Like a piece of string (theory) the future can be expanded or contracted to whatever frame is most useful at the time. The mathematical association of time with energy and what it might mean about the nature of the cosmos is a pre-occupation for those with a mind for such things. For the majority of ordinary mortals however the first thing that we can know about an infinitely long period of time, to which we have very little access, is that the vast bulk of it does not concern us. Accepting our limitations, narrows our focus and our energies to the things that matter the most, which are generally prosaic. Where are we heading and are we heading in roughly the right direction? What is around the corner? Can we improve our situation?

From an ordinary human perspective the future is conjoined to the past through the present. The present like the future is an arbitrary elastic measure of time over which things can be known, but are not changing[i]. As soon as a change is detected, the present of a former moment, has become the past. The change has made it so. When things do not change, or we do not notice change, then our present moment expands and our experience of the passage of time may assume greater prominence – time drags and we get bored. Conversely if we notice many changes our focus shifts and we feel that time has sped up.

People’s experience of the past, present and future differs, depending on the individual’s ability to detect change. Those who cannot detect change, such as those in a coma, live in a continuous present which is expanded and a future which is collapsed. Those who don’t detect change, perhaps as a result of choice or circumstance are better off to the extent that their consciousness allows them. Their ability to respond to change is increased. A person, who is sensitive to changes around him is more aware still. If he has time and inclination he may discover patterns that change may indicate. He might then discern the significance of the change, consider the options and prepare a response. The response might be one which simply mitigates damage, or one which uses the change to uncover an opportunity.

Memory is critical to detection of change. If we have a failing memory our experience of change is impaired and our operations become enfeebled and clumsy. For memory to be accessed we also need time and space to remember. Without this our depth of focus is reduced to immediate concerns and we become blind to longer term concerns. We might have been too preoccupied getting the right meal in the dining carriage to realise that we have passed our stop.

We have heard it said that “if we could predict the future we wouldn’t be living in this house/doing this job, reading this blog, etc”. The assumption being that we would be able to utilize particular facts about the future, pick the right horse etc, buy and sell at the right time to our advantage. The deeper argument is that the future cannot be predicted with sufficient accuracy to make a difference, therefore we needn’t bother trying. This is fool’s wisdom. In everyday life we plan our holidays, apportion budgets and embark on projects into varying depths of our futures, some of which proceed according to plan and others require adjustment along the way. There is actually plenty that we can know about the future. Firstly we can know that there will be a future - that Monday will follow Sunday. We can also know that the moon will be full on a certain date and with it a high tide. That the sea temperature is likely to be within a certain range, that it will be more or les likely to rain at that time of year. There is much that we can predict with reasonable accuracy that occurs on a seasonal or cyclical basis.

Related to cycles are patterns of growth and decline in human endeavour as well as in nature. There are also patterns of increasing order and disorder within societies and populations. Much has been written on “mega-trends”, those trends which drive change and are predictive of stresses/forces within society. Typically these include population demographics, resource availability, technological break-throughs, and changes in values as goods and materials become more abundant or scarce or as conditions change. These trends can be plotted and predicted also with varying accuracy by analysts who earn their living by doing so. This information is becoming more widely available and debated openly. One only has to pick a good stream and drink from it.

We also determine our future. By getting on a particular train we arrive at a particular destination. We construct our future by participating in it, by analyzing our own trend-lines, our aspirations and plotting our course. To what degree have we invested or acquiesced in our own future. Does what we invest in relate to what is happening in the world? Will we swim with the current, across it or against it? The choice is ours including the lazy choice to do nothing, in which case the future simply becomes a fabric with us in it. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the future will be constructed for us by those who have the means and determination to do so. Those who lead us and those who govern us.

Our leaders, those to whom we have delegated responsibility and power and resources to do their job of leading are given the means to affect change. They are also subject to pressures within their constituency and from other/external constituencies to implement particular changes. They are also bound by the rules of their office, which they might or might not adjust along the way. Some of our future is in the hands of those we want to lead us to the degree that we have collectively placed it. Who are our leaders and to what do they aspire? Who is seeking to influence them? How strongly they are positioned to resist or direct and how deftly can they actually lead in the thick of the always pressurised cooker of leadership? How healthy is the leadership framework, the social contract between leaders and followers?

Those who govern us, like those who lead, exercise power and authority. The subtle distinction is that one who governs exercises power they have acquired but not necessarily been given through a social contract. This might include tyrants such as Robert Mugabe, but it might also include directors of multi-national corporations who are equally untouchable. It might also include other more diffuse powers such as the media or influential lobby groups with the ability to catalyse and implement change against our wishes. Who are the Lords and Governors of our world and what means do they use to govern? What truths are being with-held and what justifications (half-truths/lies) are being presented and what and how much have we acquiesced? Such questions are difficult and ponderous but to avoid asking them would leave us with critical blindspots.

The broad shape of the future can be deduced to some degree if one has modelled the past sufficiently carefully and as long as massive unforeseeable events such as an asteroid colliding with the earth does not also collide with present trends. Such discontinuities as the asteroid, the alien invasion, accidental thermo-nuclear war or a pole flip, by their very nature cannot be known ahead of time. They can however be guessed at and assessed and managed as risks. The probabilities of them occurring are usually so remote that they are considered and put to one side. We cannot waste time and resources on every possibility otherwise our future will simply be a state of gibbering paranoia. We must accept that discontinuities will always be blank patches on the map.

Detecting change, memory, observation of seasonal/cyclical behaviour, pattern recognition, trend watching, understanding leaders, governors and most importantly ourselves can bring a lot of clues about where we are headed. These pieces of the puzzle can be marshalled and pieced together to sketch a map of the near future. This map can be adjusted as time marches on. Those with the best maps are usually those with the grey hairs of experience and the scars of past mistakes.

In Part Two the focus moves beyond the natural. What else might assist us in knowing about the future.

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[i] A mathematicians concept of the present is unhelpful because it reduces the present to an infinitesimally small period of time, so small that in fact it cannot exist.