The RBNZ Uses Taxpayer $ to buy Business Air-tickets worth over $30,000 for Ben Bernanke and company to Speak to a Private Few at the RBNZ.

Here's some background to former US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's visit to NZ this week. He is currently in Wellington attending a non-public, invitation-only conference at the Reserve Bank. I was excluded from attending due to my critiques of the Bank. Don't think NZ values free speech. When you speak out here, you're out. Ex-communicated. It costs you a lot of money since you forego the chance of any big appointments once you're viewed, like me, as a "trouble maker". Anyhow, it turns out Bernanke worked at Princeton University in the US, where I also worked for two years. He's cited my work in the American Economic Review on the costs of inflation in his speeches, including when he was Chair of the Fed. On this current trip out of NZ, the Reserve Bank bought him return Business Class Air-tickets for $15,000. They also bought the same tickets, and are paying accommodation, for another speaker. That's over $30,000 The event is private. When I've been involved with inviting out these kinds of speakers to the University it is paid for with money from a private donor, Sir Douglas Myers. Our events are open to the public, like our Dean's Distinguished Lecture Series. When we invited out Harvard Prof & world's leading urban economist Ed Glaeser under the Myers scheme to help fix housing & infrastructure, we organized for him to speak to Auckland Council, meet mayors, do radio talk shows, fly to Wellington to meet politicians & gov't departments, give public lectures & visit Canterbury University. Why, in a cost-of-living crisis, does the RBNZ throw around Business tickets for invitation-only events with a man who is extremely wealthy and keep the riff-raff public, like you and me, out?