He said in June he’d backed down on his plan to print money, but Russel Norman is still a limbless man in a pile of paper dollars. Only now he wants to cheapen your money not by printing millions of paper dollars, but by having them borrowed into existence at an ever greater rate by having the Reserve Bank Governor slash the “official” interest rate.
“By keeping the Official Cash Rate higher than it needed to be to manage actual inflation, the Reserve Bank Governor has kept the dollar higher hurting exporters and export-led growth,” the Ginger Whinger said this morning. “The Bank had additional scope to cut the Official Cash Rate,” he said. “The New Zealand dollar was overvalued and needed to come down,” he said…
What does that mean in plain English? It means he still wants to make the country richer by making you poorer. Somehow. That he still wants to make bankers richer by making your money less valuable. Any how. And above all he still wants to drive down the NZ dollar to make imports more expensive, which means (given that so much of what you and I buy both locally and imported is priced in terms of overseas buyers) he wants to see real wages drop. By means, it seems, of of any artifice necessary.
This man still wants to be finance minister in the next Government.
Can some vigilant journalist please ask David Cunliffe, Shane Jones and Grant Robertson if they would rule that out. Pretty please?
1 comment:
One of the great oddities about New Zealand is that you can take all manner of things which are facts - which are absolutes - and bet your bottom dollar that Kiwis genuinely believe the 180 degree opposite to be the case.
99% of New Zealanders could take lie detector tests which confirm they truly believe a falsehood to be the god's honest truth - and get quite bolshie when you point out they are wrong.
An example of this is the value of the currency.
In Britain, America and elsewhere they have a long history of handwringing and national disgrace when their currency falls.
In New Zealand people get all handwringing when the currency rises!
This gives those of us in the 1% (as I said earlier only 99% of Kiwis are morons) enormous amounts of hilarity - and further confirmation of our superiority over "ordinary folk" - and the ignorance about the damage a devaluation does to a country and its people is simply breathtaking.
Be under no illusions about the intelligence involved here - a dollar worth 10 cents (or whatever) is seen as a sign of wealth by NZers.
Truly. Seriously.
It is taught in schools and Universities (yes, really!) and is conventional wisdom at Government and Reserve Bank level - which is rather concerning.
Were anyone (me, for instance) to suggest that we should be trying to get the dollar up to around $1-20 US/$1-30 AUD it would be greeted with ignorant horror by ordinary folk - and genuine fears of an impoverished nation being the result - instead of the considerably richer nation which would 'actually' result.
One of the great myths ever invented is the concept of an "overvalued currency" - like a trade deficit it does not exist.
If the NZD is 85 Australian cents it is neither under or over valued; at $1-30 AUD it is also neither under or over valued - it is what it is.
As someone who spends 1 week per month in Sydney on business I would like nothing better than to be spending my $1-30 Australian dollars! hahaha! (much better than my 85 cent dollars as at the moment)
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