Utopia, you are standing in it!

That whistling   sound out  of  Wellington  has  come  from the Establishment  as  it  witnesses  a powerful attack   on  the  Reserve Bank. 

One volley has been fired by senior economist Matt Burgess in a research note for the  Wellington-based think-tank,  the  NZ  Initiative.  In Climate of fear: How the Reserve Bank is overstepping its mandate, he documents what he maintains are serious breaches of the RBNZ’s responsibilities as regulator of the financial system, including one instance of misconduct, as it becomes unduly preoccupied with climate change.

A second volley was fired by the NZ Initiative’s chief economist, Eric Crampton, in an article posted by Newsroom.  He raises questions about the RBNZ’s independence from political interference. 

A third has been fired by an experienced business journalist, Jenny Ruth, in an article for Business Desk.  She has questioned the bank governor’s credibility. 

All three refer to the RBNZ’s recent Climate Changed

Were I writing yesterday’s post now I would word some things differently. Yesterday afternoon the Productivity Commission drew my attention to their supplementary paper called “The wider wellbeing effects of immigration” which – despite the title – turns out to be mainly about core economic dimensions of the issue, including a substantive discussion of some of the macroeconomic arguments I have been making. Strangely, there had been no cross-referencing to this document in the parts of the body of the main report where, as discussed yesterday, these issues were briefly discussed. I had seen an earlier draft of the macroeconomic bit of this supplementary paper and had provided some comments on it to the Commission.

Awareness of that supplementary paper does not change my main concern about the overall draft report. There is still little or no compelling analysis or insight on any of wider economic issues, no arguments or…

Richard Nixon resigned the presidency 36 years ago today–the only American president to have done so.

He left the White House on August 9, 1974, to avoid certain impeachment and conviction. By then it had become clear that Nixon had ordered senior aides to cover up the Watergate scandal’s signal crime, the burglary in June 1972 at Democratic national headquarters.

As I write in Getting It Wrong, my new book about media-driven myths, forcing Nixon’s resignation “required the collective if not always the coordinated forces of special prosecutors, federal judges, both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court, as well as the Justice Department and the FBI.”

But in the years since 1974, the dominant popular narrative of the Watergate scandal has become the heroic-journalist meme, the widely held notion that the investigative reporting of two young, tireless reporters for the Washington Postled the way in bringing down

Edward VII (Albert Edward; November 9, 1841 – May 6, 1910) was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India from January 22, 1901 until his death in 1910.

Edward was born at 10:48 in the morning on November 9, 1841 in Buckingham Palace. He was the eldest son and second child of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and her husband, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. He was christened Albert Edward at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, on January 25, 1842.

He was named Albert after his father and Edward after his maternal grandfather, Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn. He was known as Bertie to the royal family throughout his life. He was related to royalty throughout Europe.

As the eldest son of the British sovereign, he was automatically Duke of Cornwall and Duke of Rothesay…