The Reserve Bank is playing a major role in the Covid economy. Photo/ 123RF
The Reserve Bank is playing a major role in the Covid economy. Photo/ 123RF
COMMENT:
This should be the most exciting election ever. The stakes could not be higher - how to respond to the pandemic, how to restore the economy.
Instead it is the most boring election ever. It is more like a coronation. There is no choice. Four of the parliamentary partiesare Labour-like. They have the same approach to Covid-19. They are all advocating a Government-led recovery funded by borrowing.
The sole reason Act has gone from near zero to being the largest third party is because Act is offering an alternative to borrow and hope.
There is something fundamentally undemocratic about an election when we are not given choices. Every party's Covid strategy is to eliminate the virus and hunker down and wait for a vaccine.
The Government's own pandemic plan advocates suppression. At some point the strategy was changed to elimination. No other country in the world is attempting eradication. No other country would lockdown Auckland for so few cases. Polls say 68 percent of us support elimination. The other 38 percent who think the economic and education cost of lockdowns is too high has no horse in this race.
The Covid epidemic will pass but the massive debt will outlive us all.
No party will acknowledge that there is a very risky experiment underway. The Reserve Bank is printing $100 hundred billion dollars. Interest rates will soon be negative. It is social credit. If it fails New Zealand will be another Argentina.
This Quantitative Easing is making the rich richer. It is funding the share and housing market boom. There is no evidence anywhere that printing money does restore an economy.
Richard Prebble. Photo / Stephen Parker
The Reserve Bank cannot be confident that this social credit experiment will work or the Governor would not have got you to guarantee the $100 billion dollar debt on the bank's books. While you were worrying about Covid on August 6 Finance Minister Grant Robertson gave the bank a taxpayer indemnity for any losses.
Instead of questioning the wisdom of digitally creating billions of dollars, the four Labour-like parties are competing to spend it.
Those of us who think it is a train wreck waiting to happen who do we vote for? Walter Nash famously observed "If Social Credit works no one else needs to."
If National were to pledge to lift the lockdown and sack the Reserve Bank board this election would suddenly become exciting.
