Here are some numbers buried in the Reserve Bank's "Money and Credit Aggregates", as measured by "M1", which is the amount of cash held by the public, as well as in cheque accounts used to finance transactions:
Narrow Money Supply (M1) March - 2020
TOTAL $ 91,128 million
Currency held by the public $ 6,697 m
Transaction deposits $ 84,430 m
Narrow Money Supply (M1) March - 2022
TOTAL $ 140,155 million
Currency held by the public $ 8,361 m
Transaction deposits $ 131,794 m
Crikey dick, looks like the amount of money floating around out there which is fueling our high inflation rate increased from $90 billion in March 2020 to $ 140 billion in March 2022.
Gosh, that's a $50 billion increase! Wouldn't have anything to do with the RBNZ's $50 billion Quantitative Easing Program & keeping the OCR near to 0 over this period, would it? Can't say any of it ended up in my pocket, by the way.
Now if you believe the Grant & Adrian Show, then the extra $50 billion has nothing to do with high inflation in NZ. They're even in denial that there is $50 billion more cash out there. They're both pretending QE never even happened. It is being air-brushed from our history.
Grant & Adrian have told the public that our inflation is due to "supply chain issues" and is Putin's fault. The National Business Review even reported the RBNZ Chief Economist as saying today "many of its challenges dealing with inflation would be resolved if Russia withdrew from Ukraine ... "!? Yes, Mr Putin gets the blame for everything these days, even for the high cost of a coffee in Wellington.
But was it Mr Putin who printed 50 billion Kiwi dollars?
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