Panic Move By Reserve Bank Says Peters

Rt Hon Winston Peters says the Reserve Bank governor is panicking needlessly over inflation by raising interest rates.

This follows the announcement this morning that the Reserve Bank has decided to increase the Official Cash Rate from 5.5 to 5.75 percent.

“New Zealand already had the highest interest rates in the developed world and the latest hike will simply make life harder for people with mortgages and thousands of businesses.

“The governor’s warning that interest rates will rise further in the year ahead signals another increase in the exchange rate and more problems for our international trade.

“We appear to be heading back to the bad old days when Don Brash was governor, strangling the life blood out of the economy,” said Mr Peters.

© 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>>