Phil Goff’s decision to seek a more equitable monetary policy is welcomed by the Productive Economy Council.

It’s good to finally see a politician stand up and say we have got it wrong with our monetary policy and it’s time to fix it.

But Labour’s shift in position is only the first step in what promises to be a bitter fight about the future of our economy. The business community is clearly divided into two camps; those that make their money from exports, creating jobs and earning the country’s foreign exchange and who are thus heavily penalized by our volatile dollar and tax regime, and those who profit from the current system, exploiting the tax system and shifting exchange rate to their advantage and the county’s detriment.

While exporters and farmers will welcome Labour’s new focus on getting the fundamentals of our economy right, those in favour of the status quo represent a powerful lobby group both numerically and in terms of funding ability.

They have benefited from our dysfunctional economy for so long, that they appear to have mistaken what is good for them as being what is good for the country as a whole, even when there is a mountain of solid evidence to the contrary. read more »

John Key’s comments this morning about New Zealand having best practice in monetary policy is clearly untrue. The facts don’t support John Key and as an ex-Foreign Currency trader himself he must surely know that. Singapore is currently No 9 in GDP per capita in the world and we are no 46. Mr Key needs to explain if we do have best practice why so many countries that don’t have our monetary policy rank at the top twenty in Global GDP per capita rankings. In 1965 Singapore was No 42 in GDP/Capita and New Zealand was No 11. If we have best practice where are the results Mr Key exactly where are the results?

Mr Key looks and sounds nervous on this issue and throw away lines like “If Labour want to increase petrol prices etc we won’t have anything to do with it” are designed to scare the public and derail the debate. As people have said, if politicians where paid in US dollars this problem would have been solved 20 years ago.

In a speech to Federated Farmers today Labour leader Phil Goff  has indicated that at least one of the major political parties appears to be getting the message, saying:

“… our Reserve Bank policy targets are not well designed to produce a stable and competitive exchange rate, nor to keep interest rates as low as possible. In fact, it often operates the other way round. When there is a surge in domestic demand, the policy response is to increase interest rates. Ironically, higher interest rates attract even more inflows of foreign capital, which then gets lent out and sometimes causes even stronger domestic demand. So New Zealand’s overseas debt increases inexorably, while monetary policy punishes our most productive businesses and first home-buyers – just about the two sectors that we least want to affect.”

The full text of his speech is available here.

“Alan Bollard deserves to be congratulated for quietly leading the world’s central banks towards a new tool for monetary policy that might help New Zealand avoid the tyranny of a high official cash rate (OCR) killing our export sector.”

From The NZ Herald

“Statistical evidence produced to the inquiry showed that while most interest rates had fallen since the global financial crisis began late last year, major banks had not passed on the full impact of OCR cuts into short-term interest rates charged to customers,” says Labour finance spokesperson David Cunliffe of the results of the parliamentary banking inquiry by Labour, the Progressives and the Greens.

Which just goes to show that Dr Bollard is probably wasting his time trying to give the Banks advice on how to run their businesses. They know what they’re doing. They’re making money.

“We would encourage the banks to avoid any return to riskier mortgage lending practices,” says Dr Bollard. Well, we all know how well the Banks take that type of encouragement and advice, so let’s not hold our breath.

“New Zealand has had a recession, and the pick-up is slower and more vulnerable – a difference financial markets do not appear to appreciate.

“This is particularly evident in the relatively stable cross-rate on foreign exchange markets. If financial markets can’t see the differences, they will eventually lose money, and it will hurt the New Zealand economy.”

So says Alan Bollard today. So it’s official. The only thing Reserve Bank Governor Alan Bollard can do to stabilise the exchange rate is to plead with Forex dealers, asking them essentially to leave us alone.

So that’s our monetary policy in a nutshell: we beg people not to mess up our economy.

Congratulations to John Whitehead for his characteristically candid report on the few remaining options we have unless there is radical change, says PEC spokesperson Selwyn Pellett.

“Treasury’s 2009 ‘40 year outlook’ report delivers a message that basically says: “grow up New Zealand, the soft options have gone”. We just hope our politicians have the wisdom to read it from cover to cover and absorb the reality it portrays,” says Pellett.

“What it doesn’t do is talk of radical change in how we could increase our income and of course that’s where exporters are so critical to our future and solving this imbalance.” read more »

“If productivity growth were to improve by 2 per cent a year, labour force participation was 3 percentage points higher than it is today, and new migrants added 15,000 to national population annually instead of the 10,000 forecast, net debt would rise to 146 per cent of GDP by 2050. “This is still an unsustainable fiscal position,” the report says.”

Treasury paints a picture of a Third-World future for New Zealand.

From The NZ Herald

“Another plunge into global recession in 2010 or 2011 is being tipped by expatriate New Zealand economist Robert Wade – unless governments tackle the underlying causes of the past year’s crisis.”

From The NZ Herald