NZ First Supports Overdue Currency Move

New Zealand First Leader Rt Hon Winston Peters has welcomed the Government’s positive response to the Reserve Bank’s request for more power to intervene to influence the value of the New Zealand dollar.

The Reserve Bank wants its current policy of intervening when the foreign exchange market becomes “disorderly” expanded to include when the dollar becomes exceptionally and unjustifiably high or low.

Mr Peters has repeatedly pledged to support any “reasonable” government action needed to bring the dollar down and ease the current strain on exporters.

“It is a pity it has taken the bank and the minister so long to realise the harm the high dollar has caused to exporters and the economy.

“New Zealand is too exposed to currency fluctuations under the current system where the Reserve Bank is concerned solely with low inflation. The bank must be given the authority to intervene when the highs are too high and the troughs are too low.

“A hands off policy simply does not work and it is important that both the Reserve Bank and the Finance Minister have belatedly recognised this simple fact of economic life.”

Mr Peters said he would be pleased to discuss the issue with Dr Cullen “in the near future”.

© Scoop Media

Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>