Yesterday the Reserve Bank kept the Official Cash Rate Unchanged. It released a statement saying, "The NZ economy continues to evolve as anticipated by the Monetary Policy Committee". What a line coming from a Governor who told Bloomberg News in the US in 2021, whilst he was busy printing $50 billion in cash, which is the primary cause of our current high inflation, that "The fear of the 70s, the 80s, stagflation, it is such a different world [now]". How unamusing, given that stagnation, recession & inflation is exactly what we are now experiencing. How unamusing that the RBNZ says our economy continues to evolve as anticipated when its forecasts could not have been proved more wrong.
It gets worse. The RBNZ marketing-Comms-PR-Spin merchants have waged a multi-year misinformation campaign saying that what NZ is experiencing is the same as elsewhere, so it can't be blamed for anything. The takeaway from its Monetary Policy Propaganda Release yesterday was, "Globally, while there are differences across regions, economic growth remains below trend & is expected to remain subdued .. Economic growth in NZ remains weak". That's such a spun, misleading line that even Orwell's Ministry of Truth would struggle to come up with it. NZ's economy cannot remotely in a billion years be currently associated with other nations "growing below trend". There are few countries on the planet presently in recession - experiencing declines in GDP & plummeting GDP per capita like us. What's with the Marketing-PR-Comms line that "Economic growth in NZ remains weak". Its not weak. There is no growth. Duh. We're shrinking - in recession - contracting. GDP per capita is falling at around negative 2%. The IMF ranks us near bottom of 168 countries on these measures. Meanwhile, countries like the US are booming. It is growing above trend - in the third quarter of 2023 Gross domestic product increased at a 4.9% annualized rate.
New Zealand is in recession as the rest of the world grows since the RBNZ Governor wanted to "engineer a recession" to get himself out of the inflationary mess he created. This Blog argued that NZ should instead try avoiding recession & engineer a soft landing which most others have successfully done. We're a worst-case outlier but you'd never know it from the Reserve Bank's Self-Promoting "We're the Best" taxpayer funded ad campaign. The RBNZ Spin Doctors are literally using the line they're a "Great Team" at the "Best Central Bank". Best Dog in Show. Do they look in the mirror & tell themselves so? The Bank has officially become, on the objective criteria of NZ's recessionary hard landing which nearly every other nation has avoided, one the world's poorest performing central banks, run by a Team who seem to religiously believe their own spin. Maybe they should get out more to experience the cost-of-living crisis they caused.
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