Interesting blog bits

A short one on the reaction to the Green's ideas of QE.

1. Matt Nolan on No QE “free lunch” for NZ

   As a general rule of thumb, whenever someone offers you something for nothing they aren’t telling you the full story – and that is exactly what we have with the Greens stating the Reserve Bank should start rebuilding Christchurch themselves by printing money.

2. Eric Crampton on Paying for earthquakes

   Matt Nolan walks us through why quantitative easing to pay for the Christchurch Rebuild isn't particularly good policy. If we need a monetary push, the place to start is interest rates - and then only if RBNZ thinks we're going to be below the 1% lower inflation bound over the medium term. If we need a fiscal push, which is highly debatable, doing it through earthquake spending might not be as helpful as the Greens might like - especially as regulatory bottlenecks and regulatory capacity constraints in Christchurch seem to be holding things up at least as much as money.

3. Bill Kaye-Blake on Greens solving the wrong problem

   It looks like the Greens are trying to import the US solution to a problem we don’t have.

4. Not PC on Russel Norman wants to make bankers richer, and wage-earners poorer

   The world is full of monetary cranks. Russel Norman is one of them. If the Reserve Bank were to go out and print $2 billion of new money, as Russel Norman wants them to, are we all better off?

5. Liberty Scott on Russel Norman says "fuck the poor" with his economic illiteracy

   It's a shame really, you can rely on Russel Norman to engage in reality evasion, but his latest attempt to introduce monetary policy into the Green Party's repertoire is laughable.

6. Kiwblog on Greens literally believe money does grow on trees

   I thought this madness died with Social Credit, but Greens (and Labour may not be far behind) have said that they want the NZ Reserve Bank to effectively start printing money. They think that NZ printing more money is a good way to increase the relative value of the US dollar. We might as well start burning our savings.

7. Homepaddock on Green snake oil on sale

   The Green Party has come up with what co-leader Russel Norman calls a suite of measures to address the high value of the kiwi dollar.