OPINION
Bob Jones
Shambles is a self-employed economist, frequently quoted in the press stating what we already know. With his latest utterance headed “food prices up”, Shambles then astutely pointed out “…the same basket of food might take a bigger share of your weekly budget”. By God, who’d have worked that out? The man’s a genius.
But Shambles should do himself a favour and never mention house prices. Why?
Because he will be forever remembered in the annals of wrong economic forecasting (in fairness it’s a crowded field) for advising the media a decade or so back that he’d sold his Auckland home and was shifting to Wellington as Auckland house prices were about to collapse. As we know, Auckland house prices then underwent the greatest price boom in history.
A week ago Shambles was quoted saying only about half of New Zealanders own their own home. Fact; 65% do. Stay away from housing Shambles.
All of that said, he comes across as quite a nice chap. Who else would confess to laziness, as he does on his website?
Shambles is one of a booming field of self-described consultants whose output essentially amounts to stating the obvious. It’s a burgeoning industry throughout the Western world, its market being local and central government agencies covering their backs by saying they’ve had a consultant’s report.
The cost is enormous and the only winners are the so-called consultants, plus, I confess me, many being lessees in my buildings.
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