Top economists on what was wrong with the economic response to Covid-19
An interesting article at the Herald where ten top economists are asked to critique the Covid-19 economic response. Some common themes were:
- People hate inflation
- Monetary policy eventually works
- quantitative easing and long-term committed lending operations were especially bad
- Temporary fiscal expansion was appropriate but not long-term fiscal expansion
- New Zealand policymakers got it wrong with both the Government and RBNZ sharing in some of the blame
- the quality of fiscal decisions is more important than the quantity
- excessive provision of free money ends up causing inflation
- Actions by both the Reserve Bank and Finance Minister over the pandemic were ultimately failures
- Covid became an excuse to do anything as opposed to targeted Covid relief, AKA a slush fund