Young on Little’s interest rate threat

Audrey Young writes:

But Little also exposed his own weakness: thinking aloud.

He shocked almost everyone yesterday when he raised the prospect of Labour legislating for interest rates in government if the banks weren’t as responsive as he thought they should be.

The only person not shocked was Winston Peters who said Labour was pinching his policy.

But tweeting National MP Chris Bishop said it was “heading back to the 70s” and “trashing” Labour’s proud record on monetary policy.

Respected economist Shamubeel Eaqub on Radio NZ described it as “terrifying” and he was made the case for banks building up more capital for possible bad times ahead.

Terrifying is a good word for it.

Maybe Andrew could tell us exactly which interest rates he plans to legislate to set. This page shows there are at least 100 products in the market. Will he decide the rates for all of them or just some of them?

Interesting that when you can now get a mortgage for 5% or less interest, Labour says government legislation is needed. Yet when interest rates were over 10% under Labour, that was fine.