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Media Release
09 September 2004

Growing Interest Rates Strangling Economy

Rt Hon Winston Peters says the Reserve Bank’s continually rising interest rates are totally unnecessary and will strangle the economy.

The bank has just increased benchmark interest rates from 6 percent to 6.25 percent, after increasing its rates in July from 5.75 percent to 6 percent.

“New Zealand has the highest bank rate in the developed world.

“Dr Cullen’s claims that the Official Cash Rate increase reflected strong economic growth for the country are hard to accept when so much money is being swallowed by overseas investors,” said Mr Peters.

“Exporters, businesspeople and young New Zealanders will be hit hard by this latest increase.

“The Government needs to end its obsession with inflation, and concentrate on making life easier for people with mortgages and for thousands of businesses around the country,” concluded Mr Peters.

ENDS

© 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>>