Year: 2019

As the Reserve Bank takes on fiscal functions, its political neutrality and commitment to monetary stability, as well as maximum sustainable employment, need to be re-emphasised.

Let us celebrate the relative civility of our domestic politics and defend robust and constructive debates.

There is one difference between a classic tragedy and Mody’s EuroTragedy. Usually tragedies do not come in nine acts, but do end with some sort of catharsis. That solution ideally also would offer some moral cleansing. In Mody’s EuroTragedy, there can be no such end point.

Unless you have a mortgage or you are the Minister of Finance, it is a world you would not want to inhabit. But for millions of Europeans, that may soon be reality. We can only hope that even after the RBNZ’s next cut, New Zealanders will not contemplate going into the topsy-turvy world the Germans are about to enter.

Given the past and current closeness of Treasury and the Reserve Bank, should not a monitoring agent be more removed from the object it is supervising?

He famously claimed his chances of becoming Prime Minister were “about as good as the chances of finding Elvis on Mars, or my being reincarnated as an olive”. It probably means Boris Johnson will be a pizza topping in his next life.

All’s well that ends well. There is a temptation to sum up the resolution of the European Union’s personnel-finding troubles in such a Shakespearean way.

Whatever Denmark does, it can only do so because it is backed by impressive productivity. If New Zealand wants to improve its wellbeing, it needs to lift its abysmally low productivity first.