As NZ Finance Minister Willis Orders the RBNZ to Cut ANZ's Capital Reserve Requirements, Australia's Authorities Order ANZ to Increase them.

This Blog has lost faith in Finance Minister Willis. We don't trust her anymore. Her speeches are designed to mislead, and waffle. She says she has a plan to return the Budget to surplus but she doesn't. Her own Treasury and the IMF have clearly stated that, given NZ's current policy settings, public debt is blowing out now, and will more rapidly blow out from 2030 onward due to the ageing population. What's concerning to us is a suspicion that has now turned into a straight-up lack of trust in Willis regarding her being in bed with the Big Monopolies now controlling NZ. She ordered the Reserve Bank to loosen its capital requirements for our Big Banks, but tells the media she did not. Embarrassingly for Willis, Reuters yesterday ran the story headed, "Australian regulator increases ANZ's capital add-on, criticizes bank's risk culture - the regulator again increased the cash ANZ must hold in reserve, as it criticized the lender's failure to address wide-ranging problems with its non-financial risk management [including] suspected .. misconduct at its bond trading unit. [ANZ] overstated the value of government bonds it traded by more than A$50 billion .. The watchdog accepted a court enforceable undertaking from the lender". Is Willis' deal that ANZ can keep making truckloads of money out of lax NZ rules she wants pushed through here whilst the Bank's profits come under pressure in Australia due to scrutiny there?

More troubling, why did Finance Minister Willis agree to National trying to ram through a retrospectively-acting Bill that strips ANZ & ASB's customers of their constitutional right to sue those banks for breaking the law as part of a class-action law suit currently underway? The Finance Minister is also the government's representative for its 51% ownership stake in Air New Zealand. Why's she allowing Air NZ to engage in predatory monopoly pricing on its domestic routes? How can she pretend she's anti-monopoly, when she personally sat on the Board of the NZ Initiative, which counts as members Big Oligopoly Banks ANZ, ASB, BNZ and Westpac; Oligopoly Supermarkets Foodstuffs & Woolworths; Monopoly Auckland Airport; Oligopoly Fletcher Building; Oligopoly Energy Suppliers Meridien, Mercury & Genesis; and Big Tobacco? Do they like chatting with Michelle Boag, former National Party President, who's also a member? What game is our Finance Minister playing, taking credit for bringing inflation & interest rates down (which has been the only reduction in the cost-of-living this past year) when those cuts are due to the Reserve Bank? Contrary to Willis' line, her highest-in-the-developed world fiscal deficits have made rate cuts harder, not easier, for the Reserve Bank to do, which she dishonestly keeps misrepresenting. NZ has one of the lowest rates of economic growth in the world, yet Willis is Minister of Economic Growth. She is Bill English Mark II. Her economic adviser is his economic adviser. They are out of date. She symbolizes the lack of imagination that now defines the National Party. She symbolizes Wellington's inbred culture, where she grew up, studied at University and still lives, aside from a brief interlude at Auckland's Establishment Kings College.