It can be a sobering experience to see ourselves as others see us.
An article in the Berliner Zeitung newspaper said New Zealand had long been hailed as a model of neo-liberal reform, but its current "crisis" was a blow for advocates of that agenda, such as the International Monetary Fund, and an object lesson for reformers in Europe.
The economic evidence cited of crisis was the plummeting exchange rate and the yawning current account gap.
You might say that the euro is also in the doghouse, and the United States has a growing current account problem.
No such glib excuses come to mind, however, for the social indicators the Berliner Zeitung quotes: rising crime, a wave of youth suicide and every third child living in poverty (presumably a reference to the number of children in households relying on a benefit).
All in all, it is a somewhat different image to the one Finance Minister Michael Cullen was peddling to a Frankfurt investors' lunch yesterday.
Dr Cullen stressed the Government's fiscal conservatism and monetary policy orthodoxy, its "open and facilitative" inward investment regime and its active support of the move to a knowledge economy.
As far as that last item is concerned, he may have somewhat spoiled the effect by quantifying the Government's derisory increase in research and development spending.
But the need for a finance minister to beat the drum for foreign investment has never been greater, as the June current account deficit, due on Friday, will attest.
It will be a reminder that we need to attract billions of dollars a year of foreign capital and credit (around $8.5 billion for the latest year) to meet the difference between what we spend overseas and what we earn.
Or, as Dr Cullen put it to his German audience: "We have a legacy of over-dependence on domestic consumption as the engine of economic growth."
At present, it is possible to argue that the feeble state of the exchange rate is part of a global phenomenon in which the euro and the Australian dollar are also being dumped, their strong economies notwithstanding, because investors have eyes only for the United States.
The test will come when the euro and the Aussie recover, as they will. To what extent will the New Zealand dollar follow suit?
Who knows. But it is at least possible that by letting the kiwi languish, the markets will push us willy-nilly to the structural adjustments that the current account suggests need to occur.
Those adjustments require investment in the export sector, a subdued domestic economy and a substantial shift in the split between spending and saving towards more saving.
So far, the parlous state of the external accounts does not appear to have raised the risk premium built into interest rates.
The spread between New Zealand and US 10-year bond yields is below its average for the past five years.
A possible explanation, suggest Deutsche Bank economists, is that the exchange rate has already so overshot its long-run level that investors are happy to accept relatively low interest rates because they expect to make currency gains when the exchange rate recovers.
If so, as that recovery occurs and the upside potential in the exchange rate diminishes, interest rates may have to rise to continue to be attractive to investors.
The economists' alternative explanation is that the economy is so weak that investors do not expect a sustained increase in short-term interest rates, even with a weak New Zealand dollar.
Either way, we have little to cheer about.
<i>Between the lines:</i> Home truths from abroad
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