Greens dump printing money plan – for now!

Vernon Small reports:

The Greens have dumped their call for quantitative easing – or printing money – after it became an electoral liability for the party and a future Labour-led government.

Green co-leader Russel Norman yesterday confirmed the u-turn after Monday’s release of the joint Labour-Green-NZ First-Mana report into manufacturing left the policy out of the mix.

Prime Minister John Key and other Government ministers have latched on to the plan to ‘‘print money’’ to paint the Opposition as economically radical.

Norman said it was never Green policy but was included in a discussion paper, issued last October.

This suggests they were not advocating it. This is far from the reality. Russel Norman was constantly tweeting that we should be printing money, and providing examples of other countries that were doing so. There is no doubt that the Green’s proposed Finance Minister thinks we should be printing money. The only thing that has changed is they have agreed to stop talking about it in public.

But if a Labour/Green Government got into office, and couldn’t get the books to balance, what do you think is more likely – that they’ll cut spending or print money?

And enjoy Clark and Dawe as they explain what the Greens mean by quantitative easing!