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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 3]
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 >>
Fire! Fire! Today's Vestiges Of Ruthenasia And Classical Austerity
Tuesday, 16 December 2025, 4:26 pm | Keith Rankin
Four defunct economists feature in this story about Richardson, Willis, and Truss; all four associated with the first two decades of the nineteenth century: Jean-Baptiste Say, James Mill, David Ricardo, and Thomas Robert Malthus. More >>
Compound Interest In New Zealand's Last 100 Years
Friday, 28 November 2025, 3:59 pm | Keith Rankin
Speculations on AI, Bitcoin, or African gold are no more routes to financial security or future abundance than is prosaic money-losing compound interest. More >>
The Mansion As A Metaphor For Neoliberal Finance Capitalism
Friday, 14 November 2025, 4:53 pm | Keith Rankin
When inequality is high or growing, more money flows from the working classes to the top-ten percent – the ten percenters – than flows the other way; the casino grows faster than the commons. More >>
Affording And Financing Wars, With Reference To The United States
Friday, 7 November 2025, 3:24 pm | Keith Rankin
In all wars, all parties incur costs; significant costs. They are very costly, both in terms of their opportunity costs and the human misery of death, destruction of habitat and taonga, and injury More >>
Red Gold: Japan's Lesson For The World
Thursday, 30 October 2025, 3:54 pm | Keith Rankin
This red wall has been the norm for Japan, except for a brief period in the late 1980s and early 1990s when Japan had one of the world's most spectacular financial bubbles and busts. More >>
A Quarter-Century Of New Zealand's CPI Inflation
Friday, 24 October 2025, 3:23 pm | Keith Rankin
Tradable CPI inflation mainly represents the retail prices of traded goods; goods New Zealand mainly exports and goods New Zealand mainly imports. More >>
The Truth About Prices In New Zealand, In Five Charts
Wednesday, 22 October 2025, 3:08 pm | Keith Rankin
2026 and 2027 will be interesting because the longer outcome lag from high interest rates in 2024 and the shorter outcome lag from falling interest rates in 2025 suggests a wait until later in 2026 before there are marked falls in PPI-inflation. More >>
Post-Covid Immigration To New Zealand By Nationality
Tuesday, 14 October 2025, 4:28 pm | Keith Rankin
Most immigrants arrive on non-residence visas, and then have to apply for permanent residence or other long-stay visas. More >>
