Somebody accused Labour of "Walking backwards into the future on the crutch of a new tax" - Must of been one of the other members of their "Tag Team" National who are currently in the ring doing nothing but walking backwards into the future in a wheelchair of new Public Service cuts and the sale of State Assets".
While New Zealand's political theatre plays the same old show, the rest of the world is seriously looking at something new - A Financial Transaction Tax, aka Tobin Tax, aka Robin Hood Tax.
New Zealand's Central Reserve Bank is STATE owned. Despite that, instead of being used for the benefit of its owners, the people of New Zealand, successive Governments have: Allowed the foreign-owned trading banks to create and issue nearly all of the nation's money supply and claim it as their own. Notes and coins make up less than three percent of the money in circulation. Ninety seven percent of our money supply is on loan to us at interest from those banks. Actively encouraged banks to charge "rental" for this money at some of the highest interest rates in the developed world. Used high interest rates as a blunt lever to control inflation, while agreeing to exclude the resultant costs from the Price Index, so that their cost-inflationary effects do not allow pensions and awards to compensate for these. Deliberately used interest rate fluctuations to maintain an unemployed "pool" of about four percent of the workforce in order to hold down wage rates. Fa...
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