Labour's former Ministers and appointees are on a roll. Grant Robertson has returned to Otago University, where he spent much of his student days playing politics at the Union, but is now the Boss. Meanwhile Ms. Ardern is lecturing the world how to do pandemics. Harvard University characterizes her as follows, "She drew widespread praise [in NZ] for her leadership style .. she faced some protests against her vaccine policy during the COVID pandemic, but earned broad support for strict lockdown & public health policies". Its a good (brand) line, ".. some protests". These days, Harvard won't let a good "narrative" get in the way of truth. The Occupation of Parliament Grounds - never happened.
Now its RBNZ Governor Orr's turn. He's given a lecture in Washington this week on how to do monetary policy during pandemics. Mr Orr pulled off an amazing feat. How do we know? He told us so - saying “we're now in a situation where we can provide the perspective of an economy returning to low & stable inflation, interest rates becoming less restrictive, and economic activity being revitalized. But that is just the most recent navigational plot on the ocean chart". In Orr's Central Bank Fiefdom where he sits as King Frog, his preferred male comparison is Demi God Maui. Its just no-one in NZ knows our "economic activity is being revitalized" - we're one of the worst performing economies in the world, according to the IMF (which he's visiting). Our GDP is stagnant; GDP per capita is falling. As for interest rates, they're still high. As for how the RBNZ navigates oceans, this is what Orr told Bloomberg in 2021, before inflation took off in 2022, 2023 and 2024, as reported on DownToEath.Kiwi:
"Inflation is a very different beast today than it was in the 1970s, giving central banks the confidence to look through a short-term spike in prices .. The fear of the 70s, the 80s, stagflation, it is such a different world . There is a single global price for so many of the raw materials, the intermediate inputs and the final consumer goods. We google that, we are prepared to wait .. Central banks today are therefore prepared to wait longer because they're more confident that we have stable inflation expectations, we have a much more flexible set of pricing, we have less of that generalized inflation.
In 2021, according to Governor Orr, there would only be a short term "spike in prices" - no high "generalized inflation" after the pandemic. And though unemployment is surging in NZ, he assured us no such occurrence should be feared, since "Its a different world now". Stagflation no longer exists, apparently. Good luck to Mr. Orr with his lectures at the IMF .. and to Ardern with her lectures about how she unites, not divides .. and to Robertson as he does on-the-job-training as to how to be a VC. And good luck to Hipkins as he plots his political come-back by erasing memories.
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