Finance Minister Robertson today confirmed a reshuffle of the Reserve Bank's Monetary Policy Committee. There was a galaxy of local talent from which to choose. It was ignored. Shame on you, Grant Robertson.
Funnily enough, I've barely ever heard of the folks who sit on the Reserve Bank's Monetary Policy Committee. By contrast, a whole bunch of the members of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee are very well known to me, from Huw Pill who I used to see during visits to Harvard Business School, to Jonathan Haskel, a former colleague at Imperial College London, to Silvana Tenreyro, at London School of Economics where I also used to work.
As for NZ, although we have similarly impressive monetary experts to Pill, Haskel & Tenreyro within our local economics community, some of them working within our Universities, others outside, not one of them known to me has ever been invited onto the Reserve Bank's Monetary Policy Committee. Several have even expressed interest, yet were shut out.
Who will be the losers? Everyday Kiwis, of course, whose livelihoods are being taken away from them by the high inflation and high house prices for which the Monetary Policy Committee bears a huge responsibility & never saw coming. There's nothing more to say.
Sources: