All sorts of items of public spending have attracted attention since March 2020 when the Covid-related spending really began. Some of the things money has been spent on – the wage subsidy for example – were large but necessary and appropriate. Some things, often quite small in scale, were pure waste. Others were dressed up under a Covid label but were really just poor-quality (but quite large scale) spending.
One of the items that has had almost no attention is the huge losses that have resulted from the Reserve Bank’s Large Scale Asset Purchase (LSAP) programme. I guess it is a bit harder to report, since neither the Bank nor the government puts out press releases boasting of losing $4bn or so.
The government has, with no parliamentary authorisation or scrutiny, agreed to idemnify the Reserve Bank for any losses it incurs on the LSAP. That, at least, has the…
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