Mike's Minute: Adrian Orr leaving is excellent

The fact Adrian Orr is leaving is excellent. 

It shows a level of accountability and responsibility for what has been a ruinous period for the New Zealand economy. 

The receipts and reviews are in, and the story is stark. 

We have been hit harder than any other country in the OECD. 

We had three recessions while most countries, as a result of the Covid plan, had none. 

Grant Robertson carries some blame for encouraging and endorsing Orr but, more dangerously, reappointing him so close to the last election. 

The new Government could have/should have sacked Orr, although that would have set a fairly disturbing precedent given the Governor is supposed to be neutral. 

Orr made the Governor's job a household fascination. Yes, Don Brash got well known, but really only when he went political. The others came and went. 

I might have interviewed Allan Bollard a couple of times. Before Spencer Russell, who you also never heard of, the job was called the Chief Cashier. Russell was your first Governor. 

Anyway, the upside of Covid and Orr was we at last took an interest. We had a view, and we know about cash rates and inflation and quantitative easing. 

But we learned the hard way. We paid an enormous price and are in fact still paying the price. 

Orr has years to run on his contract and clearly the pressure was on. The Government is currently negotiating a budget with the bank, and I assume they were twisting arms, hard, behind the scenes. 

By the way, the bank staffing numbers have ballooned. 

Orr has come across as haughty and arrogant, unable to really express any level of regret, if in fact he has any, for all the damage he has done. 

Giving banks money for free and not putting restrictions of where that money went was the height of incompetency. 

Still handing out money when we knew a lot of what we thought would happen during Covid didn’t, was a scandal. 

The onerous banking restrictions he placed on the retailers with his “just in case” thinking was needlessly restrictive. 

The conclusion has to be that although everyone flew blind during Covid, no one flew more blind than us. 

And no one was led by a more ideologically driven, fiscal ransacker than Adrian Orr. 

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