This is a Budget that needs to be familiar and reassuring, writes Liam Dann. National will be banking on English reminding middle NZ that we've survived the GFC in good shape.

A hopelessly one-sided conflict will be renewed in Ruakaka, Northland, on Thursday.

The contrary view to Labour's plan for monetary policy and savings goes broadly like this: It is a cute idea but it won't work, writes Brian Fallow.

Fran O'Sullivan asks, "What pushed Key to the point where he applied the choke chain to the Cabinet's Rottweiler? Pity Key didn't yank the chain earlier."

There's a lot of debate about a silver bullet solution for New Zealand's high dollar, writes Liam Dann. The good news is there is one. The bad news is that we have no control over it.

Labour’s proposal to transform KiwiSaver into a direct instrument of monetary policy has generated acres of comment.

What we got from Labour's finance spokesman David Parker on Tuesday was a much broader economic policy than that would imply, writes Brian Fallow.

New Zealand is well positioned to capitalise on the largely favourable global trends.

By age 67 I will, according to a digitally-imagined version of my future self look equal parts ex-coalminer and chimpanzee.

Australia is on track to notch what experts are calling an "Asia Inc" trade trifecta.

In Australia, where contributing to superannuation is compulsory, there is an option for DIY super funds, ie you manage it yourself.

Blended families are common in New Zealand.

Fonterra has come to a compelling realisation it will need to develop "Chinese feet".

Is big end of China town's NZ investment a political issue, asks Fran O'Sullivan.

The United States tech sector has taken a hammering and investor sentiment has turned against so-called "growth" stocks, writes Liam Dann.

The latest report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change makes glum reading.

To date, technology has failed miserably to reduce the costs of finance to end consumers.

A fundamental reason New Zealand interest rates and exchange rates are systematically higher than we might wish is that collectively we do not save enough.

Prices and who controls them is already an issue for this year's election, writes Fran O'Sullivan. The "market rules OK?" is not the kind of slogan that opposition parties are chanting.

Women should think again about directorships, for far from trailing men, it's greatly to their credit that so few are debasing themselves in this way, writes Bob Jones.

I originally joined KiwiSaver when it started as I was told the plan was that the money was for retirement but would also be available for your first house and/or first business.

The new age of finance has arrived in the shape of the Financial Markets Conduct Act (FMC), which sets down rules for the fashionable technology-enabled activities of ‘crowd-funding’ and ‘peer-to-peer lending’.

John Key won't be thanking the IMF for taking a little bit of the shine off his new joint goal for bilateral trade between NZ and China to reach $30 billion by 2020, writes Fran O'Sullivan.

According to a list I compiled earlier, 11 KiwiSaver providers volunteered for default duty but only nine were approved by the government last week.

So what's the difference between KiwiSaver and the Government's Superannuation Fund and is Kiwisaver backed by the Government?

Watch closely. We are about to find out if we have learned anything from the financial crisis, writes Liam Dann.