“You have catastrophes in the natural world — hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes. There are no catastrophes in the economic world. Every economic disaster is man-made.” — Jared Dillian
Let’s name it plainly.
We are not in a normal economic cycle. This is not 2008 (a financial system failure that got bailed out). It’s not 2020 (a temporary shock that bounced back). It’s not even 1986 (a sharemarket crash with a recovery timeline).
What’s happening right now is multiple disruptions converging at the same time:
The immediate economic pressure:
- Fuel prices driven by geopolitical conflict (Iran, Middle East instability, supply disruption)
- Cost-push inflation — not demand-pull. People aren’t spending too much. Everything costs more to make and move
- Interest rate increases that are supposed to counter inflation — except you can’t fix a supply-side problem with demand-side tools. Raising rates when the problem is fuel costs doesn’t reduce fuel costs. It just makes it harder for people who already have no money to service their debt. But here we are
- Real wages falling. Spending power shrinking. Consumer confidence collapsing
- New Zealand’s small, open economy means we feel global shocks faster and harder than most
The technological disruption underneath it:
- AI is eliminating and transforming jobs faster than any technology in history
- Entire categories of white-collar work are being automated — not in 10 years, now. Most companies are using AI to cut labour costs. That’s the rookie mistake. The real opportunity is expanding what each worker can do — turning one person into a team of five. The businesses that figure this out will run circles around the ones still counting how many heads they can cut
- The companies and individuals who figure out how to use AI effectively will pull away from those who don’t. This gap is already opening
- Every industry is affected. Not just tech. Accounting, legal, marketing, healthcare, trades admin, retail — all of it
The structural shift nobody’s talking about:
- Energy is becoming the foundational economic asset — not just fuel for cars, but power for AI, data centres, and the infrastructure of the next economy. The countries that control energy production and storage will control wealth creation. That’s a fundamental rewiring of the global economic order
- Capital markets are being restructured by tokenisation, cryptocurrency, and decentralised finance
- The nature of work itself is changing. What you get paid for in 2030 will look very different from what you get paid for today
- Governments are behind the curve on all of this. The policies being implemented are based on economic models that assume a world that no longer exists
The honest truth: We are likely in the early stages of the biggest economic and technological transition since the Industrial Revolution. Except this one is happening in years, not decades. And unlike every previous disruption, this one is hitting every sector simultaneously.
If you hear anyone say “green shoots” — run. This is not a recession that bounces back. This is an earthquake. And you don’t want to be standing on the shakiest ground when it hits full force.