"Economic drift is like cement. At first, it’s slow moving. The business down the road closes. Your favourite cafe is shuttered. Then the concrete hardens and you accept it as normal. There is a way out of the concrete we are in, but the right has to stop borrowing for tax cuts we will have to pay for later. The left is not calling for fiscal discipline, but saying the tax cuts we can’t afford should instead be spent on Te Whatu Ora, Oranga Tamariki, Kāinga Ora, Te Pūkenga, and Waka Kotahi."

Josie's Post column calls for fiscal discipline as the first step to brining down interests rates, growing the economy and funding services.

Josie joined Trish Sherson and Andrew Dickens on Newstalk ZB to discuss the Greens' decision to give Darleen Tana 21 days to resign from Parliament before they vote to invoke the waka-jumping legislation.

A man in brightly coloured budgie smugglers became an unlikely hero at the Olympics after he dove in to retrieve an American swimmer’s cap.

And the Government's tax cuts are set to kick in this Wednesday.

Josie joined Trish Sherson and Heather du Plessis Allan on Newstalk ZB to discuss Joe Biden withdrawing from the presidential election. Is the Warehouse struggling? and concern about stricter controls on the packaging of infant formula and the sale of it.

The most interesting thing about Trump is that huge numbers of solid, heart-of-gold people support him knowing what kind of person he is.

Look closely at his choice of J D Vance to run as his candidate for vice president. Where Trump is impulsive, His book, Hillbilly Elegy, describes communities that are abandoned by middle classes, forgotten, condescended to, or despised by “the liberal elites and the free traders of the Wall Street Journal”.

This feels like 1938 must have felt. Europe then was threatened by violent and expansionary nationalists. The international order was based on the powerful getting their way, not a rules based system. Back then, another Ohio senator, Robert Taft, was a powerful opponent of the Democrat’s New Deal (or “Inflation Reduction Act” if you need a parallel). An isolationist who opposed American entry into World War II, he opposed the formation of Nato after it. Trump and Vance will end US support for the people of Ukraine. They will weaken Nato. Vance was the lone senator who opposed a Nato-backed no-fly zone in Ukraine. “He would capitulate to Russia and sacrifice the freedom of our allies in Ukraine,” Republican Liz Cheney said on X. Trump will plan to return from a summit - might it be in Munich? - declaring, as Chamberlain did, that peace has been achieved through appeasement.

Trump and the billionaire backers like Elon Musk and Bill Ackman admire Putin because they want a world run by kleptocrats and plutocrats. The greatest threat to them is a rules-based system, in which no one is above the law.

Our problems do not come from global institutions that are too strong, or global laws of trade, human rights and sovereignty. The real problem is the opposite, says David Miliband. Global institutions that are too weak, global laws and norms that are not enforced, global justice that is denied. “Our flammable world is full of tinder and full of arsonists; some of them are in power; so we need fire fighters, preventing fire and fighting fire with bravery, with insight, with innovation.”

Josie's Post column is here.

Josie was in Atlanta for President Biden's debate with Donald Trump.

Democracts need to learn, and start by telling Joe Biden the sad truth: he is in no condition to do another four years. One Democratic operative described the Biden situation as “the hardest case of taking the keys away from dad — ever”.It’s not just Biden who needs to hand over his keys. It’s the spin doctors and surrogates who think they are defeating Trump by telling us we didn’t see what we saw on debate night.

Read her Post column here.