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Thursday, February 29, 2024

Professor Robert MacCulloch:


The RBNZ just went & broke National, ACT & NZ First's new law requiring it to focus only on cutting inflation

This blog isn't about whether you agree or not with the RBNZ's decision to keep the Official Cash Rate (OCR) at the same level today - its about whether the Bank has any regard for the new law that it is now meant to obey.

The National-ACT-NZ First coalition made it very clear to the Bank when it changed the law that its sole focus should now be on price stability, certainly not some combination of low inflation & high employment, as existed before. Under the old law that was recently revoked, sometimes called "the dual mandate", the case for keeping the OCR unchanged today was strong - since doing so would help keep unemployment low. But under the new "single mandate", which requires the Bank to focus solely on inflation, it's a no-brainer that interest rates should have been increased, even at a cost to pushing unemployment (and mortgage rates) up. The entire ANZ Bank economics team, based on their own sophisticated forecasts of inflation, worked out, and made public statements, that the OCR would have to rise to get inflation back on target, given it is still close to 5%. By hey, what does the RBNZ care about the law?

National, ACT & NZ First stated in no uncertain terms that a new Sheriff is in town and the RBNZ should no longer weight employment in its decisions. The Bank has chosen to ignore the Sheriff. So, yes its true - crime is on the rise - not just on the streets, but also amongst the well-heeled folks working next to the Beehive in the Reserve Bank building at 2 the Terrace. They're going about their business pretending the law governing how monetary policy is to be conducted was never changed. So much for Willis, Seymour, the new coalition & majority of the NZ public. Just pretend they never happened. Some people are above the law.

Professor Robert MacCulloch holds the Matthew S. Abel Chair of Macroeconomics at Auckland University. He has previously worked at the Reserve Bank, Oxford University, and the London School of Economics. He runs the blog Down to Earth Kiwi from where this article was sourced.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Adrain Orr, the man who said on camera and which was seen around the world, “Central banking is a funny business. You print money (currency) and people believe it”.

The truth about privately owned central banks is this:

CONTROL OF THE WORLD LIES NOT IN THE HANDS OF KINGS, QUEENS, DICTATORS, PRESIDENTS, OR MONARCHS. CONTROL OF THE WORLD LIES IN THE HANDS OF CENTRAL BANKS WHO COLLECTIVELY CONTROL THE WORLD ECONOMY, THE FINANCIAL MARKETS, AND THEREFORE THE ENTIRE FINANCIAL SYSTEM. MOREOVER, THEY NOW CONTROL THE NARRATIVE AND THEREFORE THE FLOW OF INFORMATION.

robert Arthur said...

Anonymous above explains why property values are so inflated. Money now is only printed or stored figures.

it intrigues me that with now such a simple goal the Reserve bank requires such a vast very highly paid stff. Task seems made for AI. I dont know if still conducted but decades ago the Reserve Bank ran an annual competition for secondary schools. They had to present a typical speech as accompanies the bank rate announcements. The bank did not seem to realise that the speeches were in effect a send up of the contrived glib fudge speak of each announcement. I was incredulous that the RBNZ should expose its homilies to such oblique ridicule. (Incidentally my son's team, with no input from me, came 2nd...the winners were a female group, who with their characteristic forever rehearsed verbal skills make formidable opponents.) With hindsight it would have been more career useful if he had devoted his spare time to learning te reo.

N B H said...

Banks have been bringing interest rates down since before Xmas and still are so why would the Reserve Bank put them up, it doesn't make sense.