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Founding Fathers 45, Tyrants 0
Another person has held the highest office in the US without
becoming a tyrant. It’s an extraordinary record. Trump thought himself
bigger than the system, but the Founding Fathers broke him. America’s
founders knew English and French kings, so they sought to make laws
nobody could rise above.
The New President
Biden and his party would like to increase the size and scope of
the American state. There’s a lot about him to oppose, but it’s better
to be opposed within a framework of the rule of law and democracy.
Even if you agree with Trump’s tweets, you have to ask: what is the
end game of democracy in 280 character missiles?
The US
Re-Engages
A world without America is a very scary place for a small
democracy. We believe the Biden election is a geopolitical positive
for New Zealand. Free Press recommends Biden in his
own words: “The most effective way to meet that challenge is to
build a united front of US allies and partners to confront China’s
abusive behaviours and human rights violations, even as we seek to
cooperate with Beijing on issues where our interests
converge.”
Back To The Future
If there has to be a world police officer, it might as well be a
democratic one, but will Biden be a more effective sheriff than Bush,
Clinton and Obama? Second, the US is hasn’t been the home of free
enterprise for a long time. New Zealand regularly outranks the US for
adopting free market policies. Biden must avoid the return of a
sclerotic economy with an over-extended empire.
The
Other Big Winner
Some people think Labour won our election. They just got the most
votes. Winning means getting your policies implemented. The clear
winner of the 2020 election in New Zealand is therefore Social Credit.
Each announcement by Adrian Orr, the Reserve Bank Governor, is more
otherworldly than the last.
Sound Money
It’s been a while since monetary policy was politically sexy.
Adrian Orr could change all that. The Bank is apparently a Kauri tree,
the God of the financial forest. Now the Bank has a job fighting
climate change. There is no plausible way that monetary policy can
affect the climate (we suppose hyperinflation helped destroy the
Venezuelan oil industry), but that hasn’t stopped
Orr.
$100 Billion
Most of Orr’s antics are just amusing or tiresome, depending on
your mood. His decision to print $100 billion puts New Zealand at the
forefront of Covid-19 money-printing. His entrepreneurial approach to
new ways of creating New Zealand dollars, such as Funding for Lending,
following on from Large Scale Asset Purchases, is frankly terrifying.
We face a massively inflated housing market and what amounts to
enormous redistribution from workers to owners of
capital.
Under Which Government?
A Labour Government has seen the largest redistribution of wealth
from workers to owners in the history of our country. Property owners
and shareholders are busy salting Orr’s wash of cash into the walls of
their homes and bottom lines of their portfolios while the working
class can only look on. Social Credit won the election, the poor lost.
Labour probably doesn’t know what’s going on.
What’s
The Answer?
Free Press predicts that monetary policy will become a
major issue in this term of Parliament. Without sound money, you
cannot plan your future. When the future does unfold, it’s arbitrary
and unfair. Political unrest, populism, and instability follow. Maybe
not like the 1930s, but it doesn’t need to be that
bad.
ACT Leads The Debate
As David Seymour is reported saying in an article titled ‘Judith
Collins flirts with ACT's Reserve Bank house price policy’: “At
present the Reserve Bank is focused on keeping the price of frozen
chickens, haircuts and petrol stable, they even consider the price of
cigarettes, but they don’t consider stable prices for assets.”
Indeed.
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