Labour's Parker talks exchange rates, capital gains tax, and how to counter Dutch disease with OECD; Banking regulation with Kiwi in London working on LIBOR fiasco

By David Parker*

Meeting with Jorgen Elmeskov OECD Deputy Chief Economist

I am travelling to the US and UK to discuss my ideas on monetary policy with some of the best economic minds in the world, including former World Bank chief economist Joseph Stiglitz, Harvard academic Jeffrey Frankel and IMF chief economist Olivier Blanchard.

Jorgen Elmeskov says: Exchange rate competition heating up globally

Over two days I’ve had a series of meetings at the OECD. This meeting is with the OECD’s Deputy Chief Economist Jorgen Elmeskov and two of his off-siders Jean-Luc Schneider and Boris Cournede.

This was an interesting discussion on the influence of measures to control inflation. The meeting started and ended with their suggestion that, faced with a prolonged current account deficit and high net international liabilities, factors like export competitiveness are proper concerns.

I was glad to see they readily conceded that increasingly governments and reserve banks are focusing on the competitiveness of exchange rates. Something I’m most concerned about.

It was also interesting to note they don’t oppose a medium-term (ie three to ten years) monetary policy “to stand against an inflated currency”.

They had interesting ideas on the effects of serial short term investors on currencies, a big issue for New Zealand. Turkey was a case in point.

By allowing a wider band both for expected exchange rates and interest rates, and expressly announcing their intention to change both the width of the bands and the place they favour within the bands without notice, they are trying to create risk for traders which will push against short term trading in their currency, reducing upward pressure.

Another option was to tax inflows of money which can put upward pressure on the exchange rate. Brazil has done this recently (with support from the Economist magazine). But they noted the politics can be difficult.

We turned to New Zealand. They were aware of our poor savings record, but were quick to say that just because traditional monetary policy settings in the last two decades have seen a blow-out in private debt, that does not mean it will happen again. That, of course, is true but is hardly a stout defence of the orthodoxy.

They agreed the lack of a capital gains tax is a fundamental reason for our overinvestment in property and inadequate savings and investment in non-property assets. They were surprised we did not have one, yet allowed tax deductibility of interest.

They proposed an interesting solution to the ‘Dutch disease’, where dominant resource-based exporting industries boost the exchange rate and lower the competitiveness of other industries.

They said where natural resource exports have currency effects, the resources used should be taxed, not as an increase in total taxation but as a tax substitute. They favour resource taxes recycled into offshore investments (as the Norwegians do) to limit the currency effects of resource extractive industries on other parts of the economy. 

An interesting discussion but their knowledge was weighted towards the larger economies that dominate world affairs, and they had few suggestions for how New Zealand’s circumstance could be improved. I did find their knowledge of New Zealand a little scant, after all we are a member of the OECD and help fund it. 

“Banking system is fraught with moral hazard,” says former Kiwi regulator

I met last week with David Mayhew, currently a London barrister working briefs regarding the scandalous manipulation of the Libor rates by Barclays. 

David was born and raised in New Zealand before embarking upon a successful career in London. You may know him as a former member of the New Zealand Securities Commission, and he was the Commissioner for Financial Advisors.

He has fascinating insights on what has gone wrong with banking in many parts of the world. 

He summed it up by saying that the authorities around the world went along with retail banks fusing with merchant banks, then gobbling up ever larger proportions of income and wealth, because they believed banks were creating value in the economy for the benefit of nations.

Events in recent years show they were not. The profits were fictitious. In the end, many of the banks managed to privatise large increases in profits and then socialise the losses which had been disguised.

He believes the current system is fraught with moral hazard, probably caused by retail banking services being subsumed by the ostensibly more profitable investment banking arms of major banks. The dominance within banks of interests loyal to the investment branch, rather than depositors, meant the fortunes of the banks were divorced from the interests of their depositors. The hazard they caused to retail depositors by investment banking practices was small beer to those who were in control of the banks.

Given that the privileges and profits enjoyed by the big banks from investment banking were allowed based upon the erroneous view that value was being added, it seems inevitable that regulators and economies will push retail banks back towards their core functions, and require them to avoid the moral hazard that bank bailouts have shown arise from highly leveraged and risky investment banking practices.

New Zealand has to date been spared the worst excesses of banking practice around the world, but the fresh look overseas at what separation there should be between retail and investment banking may translate to rules internationally that have relevance in Australasia too.  

This is yet another dent in the increasingly discredited “efficient market hypothesis” which underlies National’s economic management. They say let markets rule themselves and a thousand flowers will bloom. Sell off SOEs, deregulate the RMA and all will be okay. 

Yet the economies that have done the best in recent decades not only regulate where necessary but also use the power of the state in concert with private enterprise to ensure their economy thrives. The ‘voodoo economics’ derided by Mr Joyce have worked in economies which are now more successful than New Zealand.

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Also see: 

Labour's Parker to meet with world's top minds on exchange rate settings and monetary policy, including inflation targeting obit writer Frankel, Joseph Stiglitz & IMF's Blanchard

Labour's finance spokesman David Parker talks death of inflation targeting with Daily Telegraph's Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

* David Parker is the Labour Party finance spokesman