The Hole in the Reserve Bank

This entry was posted in Listener, Macroeconomics & Money on 22nd April 1991 by Brian Easton.

Listener 22 April, 1991. This is the first of a sequence of four columns written in the early 1990s about monetary policy, which continue to be significant today. They are
The Hole in the Reserve Bank
What the Reserve Bank Believes
Who Controls the Exchange Rate?
The Meaning of Influence

Keywords Macroeconomics & Money

When I left New Zealand in the mid-1960s there was a large hole where the Reserve Bank building was to be constructed. When I returned in the early 1970s the hole was still there. Apparently, a mistake had been made in the building’s foundations, which had to be ripped out; no easy task with the walls of a money vault. Reserve Bank foundations are like that, whether they are vault walls or the credibility of the bank’s policies.

The Personal Responsibility Of an Economist

This entry was posted in History of Ideas, Methodology, Philosophy on 1st April 1991 by Brian Easton.

Towards a Just Economy edited by Raymond Pelly, published by the Combined Chaplaincies, VUW, 1991. p.11-20. (Revised version of a lecture given April 1991)

Keywords History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy

Just over a year ago, on my birthday, I visited Majdanek, near the Polish City of Lublin, 160 kilometres south east of Warsaw and 80 kilometres from the Soviet border. Majdanek was a concentration camp. Its dead from starvation, infection, and execution – included 150,000 Poles, 125,000 jews, 70,000 Russians, plus those of other nationalities, a total of 360,000 souls – the population of today’s Christchurch or greater Wellington. The main memorial at the camp is a giant urn containing 7.5 tonnes of human ashes. The inscription reads “Los Nasz Dla Was Przesthorga” – our fate is a warning to you.