Here we have it, our annual ‘Interesties Awards’ - a light-hearted summary of the political economy in 2021.
We’ve shared the love and had a go at pretty much everyone. Enjoy, and have a great holiday!
Maersk Award: The Reserve Bank for turning the monetary policy ship while contending with a supply chain crisis.
Thoughts and Prayers Award: Those partial to takeaways and imprudent numbers of TV/music/news service subscriptions, seeking debt under the bolstered Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act.
Impermeability Award: Grant Robertson, for consistently repelling attacks from the media, the political right (who believe he’s spending too much), and left (who believe he’s spending too little) by delivering solid headline economic figures. Never mind lifting the hood to expose some serious structural problems and pockets of people doing it tough…
Community Clairvoyants’ Association Award: Economic forecasters.
Who’s That? Award: Caralee McLiesh - Chief Executive and Secretary to the Treasury, AKA one of the most powerful people in the public sector - eloquent, but rarely seen or heard.
New Evangelists Award: Tied first place: Cryptocurrency traders and modern monetary theorists. Both believe quantitative easing (figurative money printing) will help them attract more followers - crypto folks, because they fear central banks are devaluing fiat currency, and MMTers, because high levels of government debt are becoming normalised.
Stayin’ Alive Award: Simon Bridges, for ending up with a top job as National’s Finance spokesperson, after being taken out as leader by Team Muller and surviving an attempted knifing by Judith Collins.
Haere Ra Award: Bright young things, who don’t have access to the ‘bank of mum and dad’.
Where’s the Valium? Award: Recent homebuyers, with massive mortgages, facing higher interest rates.
Quit While You’re Ahead Award: Highly-leveraged property investors.
Energiser Bunny Award: Christopher Luxon, who quickly seized the opportunity to become National’s leader, and (importantly for someone gunning to be prime minister) walks fast, reportedly doesn’t need much sleep, and isn’t in need of a holiday. Although the Energiser Bunny needed new batteries the day he hired someone to drive him in a Mercedes from his apartment across the road to Parliament.
Enough is Enough Award: The Greek alphabet.
Best Friends (For Now) Award: Monetary and fiscal policy, which have supported each other while financial conditions have been loosened during the pandemic. Let’s see how well their mandates will align, as the Reserve Bank tries to tighten conditions to cool inflation, while the Government wants to keep spending to plug infrastructure deficits and carry out reforms.
Light Relief Award: Chris “spread your legs” Hipkins.
Armchair Epidemiologist Award: Bronze: Most of the Team of Five Million at some point. Silver: The good folk of Twitter. Gold: The breed of successful businessmen, who also claim to know everything about everything.
Surprise, Property Investors! Award: David Parker, for driving both the removal of interest deductibility, which will see residential property owners pay more tax, and a tweak to the Resource Management Act to allow for more housing intensification. The sweeping changes caught everyone off guard and are being enacted quickly.
Honest Banker Award: ANZ NZ CEO Antonia Watson for acknowledging, “The people that are really hurting [financially from Covid-19] - we haven’t lent money to.”
Gift to the Opposition Award: Inflation and omicron.
WTF Award: Treasury, for pushing research that shows house price inflation doesn't increase inequality on aggregate. It argues that because the majority of people own houses, and most rich people have their wealth tied up in non-property assets, the narrowing of the gap between the middle-class and seriously wealthy that occurs when house prices rise, actually reduces overall inequality.
Don't Envy You Award: Runner up: Chris Bishop, for doing the thankless job of holding the Government to account on Covid-19. Winners: Jacinda Ardern, Chris Hipkins, Ashley Bloomfield and their colleagues for making tough calls that have contributed to keeping so many of us healthy.
Too Hard Basket Award: The Government, for putting a number of frameworks in place to address climate change, but delaying publication of the crucial Emissions Reduction Plan until May 2022. We still don't know who needs to do/pay what to reduce our carbon footprint.
Best Worst Politician Award: David Seymour, for being rewarded at the polls for being a sharp and effective de facto leader of the opposition, who also made a terrible call: publicly releasing a priority access code for Māori to book appointments to get vaccinated. Only 78% of eligible Māori are fully vaxxed.
Antiques Roadshow Award: The free market.
Insurance Salesperson of the Year Award: The State, for deciding EQC will play a greater role insuring buildings in the event of a disaster, and creating up to three new insurance schemes: 1. For if your bank or other deposit-taker collapses; 2. for if you lose your job; 3. for if your insurer collapses. The first is definitely happening, the second likely, and the third maybe.
Blink and You’ll Miss It Award: Sub 2% mortgage rates.
Revolving Door Award: The Reserve Bank, for effectively losing 10/26 of its most senior staff in six months, all the while being kicked around by politicians with interests in housing, climate change and inflation.
Blank Cheque Award: Consultants, working on various government reforms.
Missed Media Opportunity of the Decade Award: Interest.co.nz, for not launching a business dedicated to creating stock images that represent rising house prices.
Taking One for the Team Award: Aucklanders, people split from loved ones overseas, renters, business owners, parents turned teachers, the elderly, students, essential workers, the list goes on… Cheers, everyone!
49 Comments
Aw, shucks, Foxy. Sorry for the late ack, too much fishing, and ran the ISP outta data plan, dredging around Spotify. Will repent on the little excavator next fine day or three, doing a site scrape of topsoil, shared with neighbours to build up credit in the black economy.....
Enough is Enough Award: The Greek alphabet.
Well now they've messed it up by going non-sequential to avoid Nu and Xi, we might as well call the next variant 'Omicron Prime' and precede down the transformers naming line for all the sense any naming convention would make. After all there is no way we'll use Pi, Sigma or Omega either. Remarkably poor foresight.
Equally however you have to give a lifetime non-achievment award to every bank economist that has been predicting the end of the housing boom for the last five years.
At this point I struggle to think of anybody who has been in the role for any length of time that hasn't failed multiple times with this forcast. It is the temptation economists just can't resist or learn from.
"" who also made a terrible call: publicly releasing a priority access code for Māori to book appointments to get vaccinated. "" - I don't agree. It was a most effective advertising of the benefits of vaccination.
Throughout the world vaccination rates are reflecting trust in govt (not necessarily liking). For the last week the UK has had a ratio of Covid death to infection of ~0.1% while Russia with its people distrustful of govt recommended vaccination that ratio is ~4% (factor of 40 worse). If Māori are distrustful then they will not get vaccinated and as per dozens of epidemics since the arrival of Europeans 200 years ago they will have a far higher death rate.
This is one case where priority for Māori is justified. Priority is not achieved by a secret code. Seymour's action made it clear. Not one Māori was turned back because a Pakeha had taken his vaccination spot. After his action Māori vaccination rates improved. Who knows how many Māori lives he has saved.
And to you too Te Kooti. I've started a new role where Te Reo is used extensively and it's blimmin cool. I've always had a smattering of a few words and now I learn new words and phrases each week. Meri Kirihimete ki a koe me te whanau ~ Merry Christmas to you and your family.
QE = printing money = increasing govt debt = MMT gets my dumbest take of the year award!
QE... is not 'printing money' (it does not change Govt debt for a start). Commentators use the 'printing money' term to generate a response, or because they simply do not understand Treasury and central bank operations (probably both). Anyone who wants to know what QE is can read left wing MMT economists like Bill Mitchell or ex-RBNZ right-wing libetarians like Michael Reddell; QE is probably the one thing they agree on because, despite their wildly different politics, they both understand monetary operations.
MMT economists do not advocate 'increasing Govt debt'. They:
- recognise the major drawbacks of managing economies using neoclassical monetarist models - i.e. persistent nonfrictional unemployment, inequalities, and financial instability
- tend to advocate a shift of domestic resources to public purpose - recognising the role of Govt money as a means to this end
- focus on budget / investment planning that factors in domestic resource availability and the inflationary risks posed by bottlenecks, rising import prices, and exchange rate depreciation (among others)
- propose alternative inflation control and automatic stabiliser mechanisms to replace the abhorrent notion that we need hundreds of thousands of people on welfare to keep wages and prices down, and smooth out the business cycle
No not rbnz, they did their job with their hands tied. In what was an unpredictable environment and an unworkable set of criteria mandated by Robbi and Cindy. The priority being maximum employment.
xxx xxxx does not refer to one person/commenter. Refers to all who this year (and last) banged on about the coming market crash. They are worse off in my opinion.
Too Hard Basket Award: The Government, for putting a number of frameworks in place to address climate change, but delaying publication of the crucial Emissions Reduction Plan until May 2022. We still don't know who needs to do/pay what to reduce our carbon footprint."
UNBELIEVABLE hot air spouted by this govt.
Worth his weight in CO2 credits award - Keith Woodford. Hands down my favourite on this site.
Silence of the lambs award - Whoever disabled comments on the Pravda-like COVID articles.
More bias than the bowls on Saturday mornings at the Khandallah bowling club - Whoever thought that Ardern wasn’t fit to feature in this list.
All you armchair epidemiologists and virologists on here might enjoy the Royal institute christmas lectures this year... (might need a vpn. They start on dec 28th)
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