Over the years and in addition to the speeches he gave in various roles, Don wrote various articles and letters to the editor, some of which are recorded below.
Here we are near the start of another year and there are a number of pretty encouraging signs. The New Zealand economy has now been officially out of recession for some months; the Australian economy is moving along reasonably briskly; indeed, most of the major economies of the world are...
Here we are near the start of another year and there are a number of pretty encouraging signs. The New Zealand economy has now been officially out of recession for some months; the Australian economy is moving along reasonably briskly; indeed, most of the major economies of the world are...
Two months ago, the 2025 Taskforce published its first report on how New Zealand could match Australia’s living standards by 2025. It evoked a wide variety of reactions. It attracted a lot of editorial support, including from The Dominion Post, and considerable support from economists and business groups.
As regular readers of FundWatch will know, after the last general election the National Party formed a coalition with the ACT Party, and as part of that deal the Government committed to raising New Zealand’s living standards to Australia’s level by 2025.
Over the last year or two, there have been several kinds of attack on inflation targeting as a way to run monetary policy.
In the last few weeks, there have been some very encouraging signs that the economy may have turned the corner. Figures for the June quarter suggest that the economy grew marginally over those months, the share market has been rising, the housing market has stabilised at levels not much below...
A few days after last year’s general election, the National Party signed a Confidence and Supply Agreement with the ACT Party and of course that was widely reported in the media. Not so widely reported were some of the features of that Agreement.
After his rollercoaster stint in politics, Don Brash has been keeping himself busy. Life’s much quieter, now that he’s traded audiences with frosty politicians and journalists for unassuming businessmen and students. He’s now on the board of five companies and after a spell at the then-Auckland Technical Institute (ATI) Foundation...
In recent weeks, there have been a few signs that things are finally beginning to look up. The price of New Zealand’s dairy exports in international markets has shown an increase for several weeks on end. The share market has shown some signs of stabilising or even turning up.
In recent months, we’ve all been treated to a steady diet of sermons from those who would have us believe that the international financial crisis is all the result of the banking industry being “free and unregulated”.
In Monday’s Herald, Bryan Gould argues that the world must learn many lessons from the current international economic crisis (“Global crisis shows need for revision of economics”). Alas, most of the “lessons” he proposes we learn are absolutely the wrong lessons.
In the 30 November issue of your paper, Finlay MacDonald urges the new government to “reform” the Reserve Bank Act by putting monetary policy back under the day to day influence of politicians. He correctly notes that the Act allows the government to determine the inflation rate which the Reserve...
It feels dangerous writing about the state of the world economy these days: just when you think you know what is going to happen in the next few days and weeks, some new and dramatic development comes along to make a nonsense of the situation.
In recent months, there has been a chorus of voices attacking inflation targeting. The most recent that I have seen was one by Joseph Stiglitz headed “Inflation targeting shown to be a dismal failure”.[1] In that article, he claimed that “today, inflation targeting is being put to the test and...
Abolishing GST on food would be a seriously stupid thing to do. Yes, I know, I was the chairman of the committee which designed New Zealand’s GST back in the mid-eighties, and so may be accused of being biased.
How does the job of the leader of a political party change during election year? Does it become harder?
About a month ago, I was prompted to write an article for the New Zealand Herald[1] by two questions asked of me by an exporter: why are New Zealand interest rates so high compared to those in the rest of the developed world, and why doesn’t the Reserve Bank reduce...
Over the last few weeks, the media have been full of stories about finance companies in trouble, with questions about what the Government is going to do about the situation. A month or two ago, the exchange rate was all the talk, and again everybody wanted to know what the...
I’ve never been an academic economist, so I’m in no position to make a proper assessment of Milton Friedman’s legacy to the development of economic theory. But for 14 years I was Governor of a central bank and for almost five years a politician.
Copyright © 2024 Don Brash.