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Keith Rankin
Political Economist, Scoop Columnist
Keith Rankin taught economics at Unitec in Mt Albert since 1999. An economic historian by training, his research has included an analysis of labour supply in the Great Depression of the 1930s, and has included estimates of New Zealand's GNP going back to the 1850s.
Keith believes that many of the economic issues that beguile us cannot be understood by relying on the orthodox interpretations of our social science disciplines. Keith favours a critical approach that emphasises new perspectives rather than simply opposing those practices and policies that we don't like.
Keith retired in 2020 and lives with his family in Glen Eden, Auckland.
Keith Rankin - Latest News [Page 2]
Frozen Vegetables, Food Security, And The New Zealand Dollar
Tuesday, 31 March 2026, 4:38 pm | Keith Rankin
New Zealand's present circumstances depend on – in addition to the maintenance of trans-oceanic transport – both the continuance of global economic growth and an overvalued exchange rate. More >>
The Enigma Of The Iranian President
Friday, 27 March 2026, 3:12 pm | Keith Rankin
To glean a semblance of truth in contentious times, you often have to hear what is not being said, and see what is not being shown. You have to look out for softly spoken messages; looking past caricatures & scapegoats, & looking past CAPITAL LETTERS More >>
USS Tripoli: What's In A Name?
Thursday, 26 March 2026, 4:58 pm | Keith Rankin
The context of the 1785-1795 war was that Great Britain, piqued by the loss of its American colonies, refused the United States the 'protection' of the British Navy. More >>
Has New Zealand Just Signed Up For World War Three?
Tuesday, 24 March 2026, 3:54 pm | Keith Rankin
Why, on Earth, would New Zealand want to be a part of that? Why would we want to be a party to both ecocide and economic suicide? And why would we want to become a target in a nuclear war? Is that egregiously stupid? More >>
1956, 1967, 1973, 1979 And All That: Shipping, Oil, And Inflation
Friday, 20 March 2026, 3:48 pm | Keith Rankin
Most wars start with a pretext, an event manufactured or exploited by the true belligerent to justify its aggression. More >>
Turkmenistan: The Hermit Autocracy In The Centre Of Eurasia
Tuesday, 17 March 2026, 4:34 pm | Keith Rankin
Turkmenistan, on the southeastern side of the Caspian Sea, has an ancient history in terms of trade along the Silk Road; it was indeed a land of transit in the times of caravans and camels. More >>
Israel, Epstein, And Big Money
Friday, 13 March 2026, 10:16 am | Keith Rankin
This opinion piece discusses Israel's duplicity regarding Hamas, its strong alliance with the UAE, and its strategy to divide and rule the Middle East. More >>
UAE, Israel, And The Hexagon Alliance
Tuesday, 10 March 2026, 2:17 pm | Keith Rankin
This present division of civil-war-sponsorship is compounded by the diverging relationships of these three Arab states – Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE – with Israel. More >>
The Greater Evil
Monday, 2 March 2026, 3:28 pm | Keith Rankin
The greater evil is clearly the philosophy and aggression of the Judeo-Christian techno-supremacists. Further, the appeasement of this greater evil is itself a most unsavoury thing to behold; almost as bad as the greater evil itself. More >>
New Zealand's Fiscal Crisis
Friday, 27 February 2026, 4:40 pm | Keith Rankin
What will happen when those record-high export receipts fall-off? Tooze tells us: "a classic Keynesian downward spiral". More >>
Vagrants And A Very Basic Universal Income
Wednesday, 25 February 2026, 2:32 pm | Keith Rankin
New Zealand, like most countries, has a long history of vagrancy, and of mean-spirited laws to deal with it. New Zealand, however, in 1938 introduced a universal welfare state; a political contract which gained broad bipartisan support until 1984. More >>
Milano-Cortina, Pandemic Central
Friday, 20 February 2026, 4:40 pm | Keith Rankin
Milan and environs became a hotspot for witting and unwitting coronavirus refugees – affluent exiteers – just at the time Europe's ten-percenters were heading to and from the ski resorts. More >>
Parliamentary Term Length; Is New Zealand Really An Outlier?
Thursday, 19 February 2026, 11:02 am | Keith Rankin
We note that in countries with flexible electoral terms, which is all of these except United States, it is commonly only the more unpopular governments which go full-term. More >>
The Politics And Reality Of Pandemic Monetary And Fiscal Policy
Tuesday, 17 February 2026, 3:09 pm | Keith Rankin
It is consistently the countries with the most 'hawkish' monetary policies which have had the most problematic cost-of-living crises. More >>
The New Alchemy: Democracy, And The Church Of Money
Friday, 13 February 2026, 3:03 pm | Keith Rankin
In the earlier days of central banking, central bankers were more likely to have been well-connected bankers. Nowadays they are more likely to have been economists, specialising in monetary economics and finance. More >>
Bad Economist, Clayton Weatherston
Tuesday, 10 February 2026, 3:15 pm | Keith Rankin
Despite – or, more likely, because of – his claims of mitigating circumstances, Weatherston was certainly a bad economist; an economist who did such a bad thing as to be adjudged a 'bad person'. More >>
Carrington Precinct, Aka Unitec
Thursday, 5 February 2026, 3:44 pm | Keith Rankin
Unitec has now formally merged with Manukau Institute of Technology. It is reputedly going to become a site for city edge tenement housing; some of it, but not all, 'social housing'. More >>
Carrington: A Site For Sore Eyes
Wednesday, 4 February 2026, 3:37 pm | Keith Rankin
A campus with histories that are being erased. More >>
A Black Sheep To Rule Them All
Monday, 2 February 2026, 7:43 pm | Keith Rankin
Edward Arthur Wilson restyled himself as Brother XII. He created the Aquarian Foundation in 1927, in the context of radical theosophy. More >>
Greenland: National Politics Versus Geopolitics
Wednesday, 21 January 2026, 11:52 am | Keith Rankin
While current American-led geopolitics poses a deeply problematic story for resource-rich and low-populated territories, the expert-led official story of international politics is problematic too. The status-quo is not necessarily the best solution. More >>
