Articles by Mykeljon Winckel

New Zealand likes to see itself as a principled nation — small, independent, and willing to stand up for public safety even when powerful interests object. We banned nuclear weapons when others told us it would be economically reckless. We rejected certain trade pressures when they conflicted with national values. We pride ourselves on sovereignty. Yet when it comes to COVID-19 and the unprecedented deployment of mRNA technology, New Zealand…

For ordinary households, the “energy crisis” is no longer a headline—it’s a permanent line item. The price shock that began during the COVID era and intensified after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has not cleanly reversed. In many Western countries, energy costs have settled into a new, higher plateau—one that acts like a stealth tax on families, small businesses, and national competitiveness. Some will argue this is merely the unavoidable price…

History leaves patterns. When money creation is examined not as an abstract theory but as a mechanism of power, a consistent record emerges — one rarely discussed in mainstream economics. Nations that attempt to reclaim monetary sovereignty, restrain debt-based banking, or challenge reserve-currency privilege tend not to be debated on their merits. They are pressured, isolated, destabilised, or destroyed. Neo-Piracy Preface — Part 3: When…

For more than five decades, New Zealand has been trapped in a quiet, grinding decline. Productivity has flat-lined. Living standards have slipped down the OECD rankings. Wealth has concentrated upward while poverty has spread downward. Our young and capable leave in record numbers, chasing wages and opportunity elsewhere. Those who remain are told this is normal, inevitable, and global. · It isn’t. · And it doesn’t have to be this way. At Davos…

If the first step is exposing neo-piracy, the second is asking a harder question: what replaces it? Critics of the current monetary order are routinely dismissed with the same lazy retort — “fine, but what’s the alternative?” The implication is that debt-based, privately issued money is the only system possible, and any deviation would mean chaos. That is simply false. In Part One of this series, Neo-Piracy, we traced how modern financial…

The most revealing moments in Christopher Luxon’s “State of the Nation” address were not the confident passages on growth, exports, or geopolitics. They were the subjects never mentioned at all. · Across more than forty minutes, the Prime Minister offered a fluent defence of fiscal restraint, export-led recovery, global engagement, and security alignment. But on two foundational questions facing New Zealand—money creation and energy…

The release of the United States’ 2025 National Security Strategy under President Trump is more than a geopolitical reset — it is a brutal mirror held up to countries that dismantled their own economic sovereignty while assuming globalisation would protect them. View the U.S. 2025 National Security Strategy here · For New Zealand, that mirror is unforgiving. · Once ranked 3 in the OECD in the 1960s, New Zealand now hovers closer to 40, with…

The image we are taught is romantic and obsolete: ragged men, black flags, cannon smoke, plunder taken at sea. That version of piracy was crude, inefficient, and ultimately unsustainable. What replaced it was far more sophisticated—and far more destructive. The modern pirate does not board ships. He boards balance sheets, parliaments, and central banks. · To understand neo-piracy, we must begin where it was perfected: the British East India…

New Zealand is walking headlong into an energy and monetary trap of its own making — and neither major political bloc is willing to name it, let alone fix it. When the Ardern-led Labour Government shut down Marsden Point — New Zealand’s one and only oil refinery — it wasn’t just an industrial decision. It was a strategic surrender. Overnight, the country went from having sovereign fuel-processing capability to being entirely dependent on…

For years, global markets have been lulled into believing that paper promises are as good as physical reality. That illusion is now breaking — and silver is where the fracture is showing first. The current spike in silver prices is not speculation. It is a supply crisis colliding with a leverage crisis. Major global banks and metals brokers have written paper claims on silver that dwarf real-world production. At the same time, industrial demand…