On the subject of NZ, I read a disgraceful article by Bernard...

On the subject of NZ, I read a disgraceful article by Bernard Hickey on Stuff, basically blaming successive governments for ‘inaction’ on housing. I think he must a dupe for the property industry: they are always braying for more housing stock to sell. The worst part of the article was him absolving the Reserve Bank of all responsibility, basically saying they are doing a bang up job & could be going even harder on the money printing!!

You go to Auckland and there are huge new suburbs sprawling out across the East, and Pokeno - which used to be a tiny village in North Waikato - is now a suburb of Auckland in its own right.
The reality is that no matter how many houses they build it could never be enoug: they just keep importing more people & speculators keep hoovering up anything that becomes available.

The formula for the insatiable property industry is -
1/ Keep importing huge numbers of people.
2/ Keep building more houses.
3/ Keep lobbying for more deposit grant money (subsidies) to be paid by the government (taxpayers / Reserve Bank money printing) to first home buyers.
4/ Never mention the effect of historic low interest rates on house prices.
5/ Always blame the affordability crisis on a lack of housing stock.

The OCR is at 0.25% but let’s all pretend that the lowest interest rates in history are not driving the frenzy.

Grant and Cindy will keep upping the amount of money paid out in deposit grants, and the taxpayer, future generations, and savers will keep getting ripped off.