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I\'m sorry, but if you listened to this programme for any period of time the headline you saw in the NZ Herald would make you scratch your head.

The headline read "shock as GDP falls 0.3%".

What shock? Just yesterday we had Westpac who saw a fall of 0.1%, we have said consistently this country is in recession, and by that I mean the Q3 number confirmed yesterday and the state we are currently in, in Q4.

My only reservation is around immigration and whether its heft holds us up enough at the moment to avoid a true recession when we get the Q4 numbers next year.

But immigration was booming in July, August and September, and it didn\\u2019t save us then, and the mix of funk and reality has well and truly set in since then.

Yes, we have a change of Government and with it comes hope.

But you can\'t hide from the reality that the Reserve Bank, having pumped the place with cash, has now whacked the brakes on so hard the mortgage will kill you, if you sell stuff offshore your returns are down in volume and price, tourism is way too slow on the bounce back - once again because of the Labour border policy and students aren\'t back, which is the same story.

The debt is crippling us, the current account is a joke and the Auditor-General\'s report into the billions in waste exposes the calamitous mess Labour got us into.

What part of this story have you not heard numerous times on this programme?

This is not to bag the economists and forecasters. But I said the same thing during Covid - you can be too expert, too microscopic, you can have too many spreadsheets and overthink stuff.

Try the real world for a while. Go to a supermarket, talk to a few trades people, some kids looking to make their way in the world. You soon see and feel what\'s really going on.

I have also told you about inflation. We are stuck. Yes, it may, may, be falling slightly. But not enough.

We will have less than zero growth and we will be in recession with elevated interest rates all of next year. We are in deep trouble.

Shock? It\'s been a freight train of fiscal ineptitude coming down the track for the past two years.

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