PMNZ September newsletter: good engagement with a number of mayors and Google prosecution points the way for the Commerce Commission.
Welcome to the September 2024 newsletter. Here is a link to previous newsletters.
Good engagement with Bay of Plenty mayors
We did a presentation to the Bay of Plenty Mayoral Forum during August on our funding model for water infrastructure. The mayors from Tauranga, Western Bay of Plenty, Rotorua, Kawerau and Whakatane were present with some good, intelligent questions asked, which leads us to believe our proposal was well understood.
Our presentation was recorded and starts at the 35 min:27 sec mark and finishes at the 44 Min 28 sec mark with a further 20 minutes of questions.
In the week leading up to our presentation, the Government announced it was unlocking finance for local water done well, allowing the Local Government Funding Agency (LGFA) to provide borrowing up to 500% of total income for Councils.
Tim Cadogan, the Central Otago Mayor said the previous LGFA debt level limits were set so that councils did not get into too much debt and now the limits had been doubled. He said 500% from his rating base would be too much debt for his council to carry and we agree with him.
Finally, our Prime Minister said that politics needed to be taken out of infrastructure. "That's the way in which we get a long-term pipeline of projects well defined." We agree, and suggest the intelligent use of inexpensive public money, as outlined in funding model is one way of achieving this.
Google Prosecution points the way for the Commerce Commission
Kent Duston, convener of the New Zealand Banking Reform Coalition, wrote the following article..
During August the unimaginable happened: Google was convicted of being a monopolist by a US court. The judge found it had been using its market power to unfairly restrict competition, which made profits it wasn’t entitled to. The case was taken by the antitrust division of the Department of Justice.
Here, the Commerce Commission fills the same role as the antitrust division of the DOJ: It is meant to break up monopolies, make sure markets work effectively, and defend consumers from the depredations of predatory corporations. It’s an important role, but one which Dunstan says the commission has all but abandoned.
During August we also
posted a 30-minute Radio New Zealand item on Central Bank Digital Currency.
posted an item by Stuart Henderson titled Official Cash Rate: Are central banks good doctors? Comparing RBNZ and US inflation strategies. Unfortunately, it is behind a paywall-
posted items by Susan Edmunds, Money Correspondent for RNZ titled Can't the government give 2% home loans and a follow up item titled What happened when the government gave cheap home loans? It is good to see the questions are being asked, although the answers left a lot to be desired.
Nga mihi
Don Richards