40,000 manufacturing jobs gone in four years. Manufactured exports in free-fall. Tourism revenue collapsing. If that’s not a crisis, what is? Why is the government going to do? Nothing. Nothing. On Q+A, Russel Norman put forward a solid proposal: lower the OCR, new tools to stop housing booms, and quantitative easing to pay for Christchurch and rebuilding our disaster fund.
Finally, some action. Something to grab on to.
The Right will howl but what right do they have to howl? They are complete economic failures. They have prayed to their failed god while jobs are lost every day.
What the Greens are proposing is essentially what all our trading partners are doing. They’re driving their currencies down – and it’s working for them: QE stopped a depression in the US, it has held the euro together, it has made the Japanese economy surprisingly strong. And it’s worked by holding their currencies down and pushing ours up.
So, what are we going to do about it? Fight fire with fire. It’s the only way. The alternative is what National is doing – kissing goodbye to 200 manufacturing jobs and 1,000 Kiwis every week.
And putting the money into the Christchurch rebuild and the Natural Disaster Fund is smart. It lessens the inflationary impact and it means we are covered for both the current rebuild and the next disaster. (National’s ‘plan’ is to have the Natural Disaster Fund, which pays for your EQC claims back to $6 billion in 2041! $6 billion wasn’t enough in 2011, and what happens if Wellington goes in five years?)
I look forward to John Key, when he gets back from fellating Mickey Mouse, explaining why the best path for New Zealand is losing 200 manufacturing jobs a week and leaving our disaster fund empty so that money traders can make a profit off us.
[Update: On Q+A, James Cameron is saying that John Key, having promised us that he wasn’t going to offer more money to Hollywood did just that. Instead of lowering the dollar, like the Greens would do, Key’s plan is to give Hollywood more taxpayer money to compensate them for the high dollar.]
[Update: This piece from Bernard Hickey is relevant. r0b]
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