Incriminating evidence now points to Finance Minister Willis forcing out Governor Orr to take over the Reserve Bank of NZ on behalf of the Big Banks

What on earth has Finance Minister Willis been up to? Secret meetings. An unexplained resignation. Refusals to talk to the media regards the former Reserve Bank Governor's departure. A sudden, unexpected review of (Big) Bank Capital Requirements with the (hidden agenda) aim of loosening them, to be completed under urgency to prevent a future Governor from undoing that decision. The only way to explain Willis' erratic behavior is that she's doing the bidding of the big monopolies running rampant in NZ which are responsible for our ultra high cost of living. Rumors are swirling over former Governor Orr's departure. It may all end up in the courts on the grounds of his wrongful (constructive) dismissal by the Finance Minister. The following observations make her look as guilty as sin in our view:

= The Reserve Bank had already settled on its new regime of Bank Capital Requirements. There was no need to review them, as Willis ordered, though won't admit. They've already been reviewed. They make sense to most eminent economists in the world who I have now checked with. But the NZ Big Banks say they are restricting lending & putting up rates. What did arguably the most famous Central Bank Governor ever, Paul Volcker, say about such claims? "The banks will claim they will restrict credit and harm the economy. It’s all bullshit".

= The Big Banks have been lobbying the Finance Minister hard. Those Banks are members of the NZ Initiative, which is standing against the Capital Requirements. The Initiative writes, "The consequences of the high capital ratios deterring lending are of concern enough .. It is not just bank customers who suffer. So does the economy". Not true. As US Senator Brown & leading Stanford Finance Professor Admati note, “Absolutely nothing in these [Bank Capital Requirements] stops banks from making loans. Instead, they simply require banks to rely more on their own equity and less on borrowing to finance loans & investments".

= Finance Minister Willis was a Director of the NZ Initiative. The Prime Minister and Willis' Chief Economic Adviser was Senior Economist at the Initiative. When attending meetings there on behalf of a former member, I used to see the PM, who was CEO of Air NZ. Last year the Initiative wrote a letter to Willis alleging that Governor Orr had breached the Code of Conduct relating to his response to the Initiative's critiques about the Capital Requirements. Willis took up the Initiative's complaint with the Reserve Bank's Chair, Neil Quigley.

= Disturbingly, Bloomberg News are reporting that they have documents showing that Finance Minister Willis asked the Treasury for advice on whether she had powers to direct the Reserve Bank to change its prudential policies. Her office asked several times for a meeting which Governor Orr refused. They ultimately agreed to meet on February 24, after the Bank's Monetary Policy Statement was released and just before Orr's abrupt resignation. Willis told her press team to keep the purpose of that February meeting a secret.

= Both the Reserve Bank Chair and current Governor have a monetary conflict of interest in trying to resist Finance Minister Willis' demand that the Bank Capital Requirements be relaxed. The RBNZ Chair is asking Willis for up to 1/4 of a billion dollars and approval of a new Medical School at his University of which he is Vice Chancellor. As for the Governor, he is only temporary and needs Willis to approve his continuation to a permanent position in six months time, a promotion in terms of life-time future income and status worth millions.

= This week current Reserve Bank Governor Hawkesby stated he wanted the second review of the Bank Capital Requirements to be completed super fast before the end of the year. No doubt he wants it finished whilst his current six month term as stand-in Governor is still running so he can give the Finance Minister the answer she wants to hear, in expectation his Governor job will be renewed (and he will be granted a full five year contract).

= The Big Aussie Banks are already amongst the most profitable in the entire world, and make a dis-proportionate amount of that money out of Kiwis.

= It is impossible to draw any other conclusion that the NZ Finance Minister is acting to implement the agenda of the Big Bank lobby. What is her motivation? Her former boss, Sir John Key, was Chairman of ANZ Bank. One can only expect it may be a job that she also covets when she retires from politics.

This saga has descended into such murky depths that DownToEarth.Kiwi has withdrawn any of the support we once had for Finance Minister Willis. We've no interest in playing partisan politics. We call out foul play where we see it. The great strength of NZ was meant to be the integrity of our public officials. Anyone playing dirty games that undermine the single most important financial institution in the country, namely the Reserve Bank, for their own wrongly construed agenda - or even worse, for their own personal gain - cannot endure in politics. Nothing our Finance Minister says about economics makes sense to me. Her budgets that do nothing to address NZ's long-run fiscal problems from an ageing population. The ferries. Her lack of action on the Big Banks, Big Supermarkets, Air NZ, Big Construction firms. It only can be understood in terms of back-room deals responding to lobbying from Big Business.

In today's New Zealand, the Enigma Code would've never been cracked. Why? Because the smartest & hardest working are being shafted by dummies.

As we have often observed on this Blog, nearly the entire make-up of high-level government positions and private company Boards in New Zealand now comprises an old boys and old girls network made up of largely useless people, primarily from legal, accounting, marketing and communications backgrounds. That is why productivity is low, because our institutional (rules & enforcement) quality is objectively ranked as being one of the highest in the world. Even nearly 100 years ago in a time of great discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation & gender, the two crucial people who cracked the German enigma code were Alan Turing, who was gay, and Joan Clarke. Beating the Nazis was obviously the highest national priority. Nothing else mattered between 1938 and 1945. To achieve that aim, in 1939 Clarke was recruited into the Government Code & Cypher School by her supervisor at Cambridge University, where she gained a double first in mathematics, although was prevented from receiving a full degree, which women were denied until 1948. As the BBC reports, "As was typical for girls at the code-breaking center based at Bletchley Park (and they were referred to as "girls", not "women") Clarke was initially assigned clerical work .. Within a few days her abilities shone through & an extra table was installed for her in Hut 8 occupied by Alan Turing". As for Turing, he graduated from Cambridge with a lower ranked degree than Joan, first-class honours in maths, followed by a doctorate from Princeton University in the US. He was put in charge of Bletchley at a time when "homosexual acts" were criminal offences in England. The rest is history. The two of them significantly helped win World War II.

Would these types of people ever have been put into these positions in NZ in 2025? You must be joking. Not a single student, regardless of their ability, who has come through my doors at the University where I work has ever risen to a particularly high position in NZ. Those doors have been slammed shut by CEOs and Senior Management Teams, whether it be in the public service in Wellington, or the private sector in Auckland, comprised of an endless army of managers, lawyers, accountants, marketing, PR and communications types, distinguished only by their mediocre and ordinariness. Those types occupy the top jobs on the top pay. A country run by dummies cannot long endure. My advice to smart, hard-working young students finishing school in NZ in 2025 is, "leave the country and find a place where your talents will be rewarded". That country is no longer New Zealand. Alan Turing & Joan Clarke would've never been recruited and never put in charge of anything here. Good luck to the hoard of Kiwi managers, lawyers, accountants, marketing, PR & communication folk cracking a devilishly difficult mathematical puzzle. Good luck to them making technical breakthroughs that will fire NZ economic growth. Good luck to them becoming regarded as a founder of Artificial Intelligence, like Turing. And beware anyone from either the National or Labour Party who challenges this assertion on this Blog. Because we're compiling a long list of your mates - of appointees to the top jobs - which have gone to people on the basis of who they know, not what they know. We know who you are. You will be outed.