We’ve been hearing quite a bit from the Reserve Bank recently (in addition to the OIA disclosures of the Governor’s antics last year), just not much about monetary policy, short-medium term economic developments, or financial stability and regulation.  In a few weeks the Governor will have been in office for two years, and in that time we’ve not had a single serious and thoughtful speech from him on either financial stability/regulatory issues or on monetary policy and cyclical economic issues.   It is extraordinary, and not the sort of thing we’ve seen here in the past or in other advanced countries today.  As it happens, the new MPC members have now been in office for 11 months, and we’ve not seen or heard a word from any of the external members at all.

But what of Bank management?    If they haven’t been talking about core business (that small matter of the statutory responsibilities they are funded for), they’ve been out championing other causes, including themselves.

Last Wednesday the Governor (and accompanying senior managers) turned up at Parliament for the annual Finance and Expenditure Committee financial review hearing.  The Governor’s opening statement is here.    The only bit that immediately caught my eye was this

Amendments to the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act, which came into effect on 1 April, gave responsibility for monetary policy decisions to the newly-established Monetary Policy Committee.

This framework has now been implemented and is working well, with six Official Cash Rate decisions by our new Monetary Policy Committee. The Summary Record of Meeting provides insights into how decisions are reached, and improves our stakeholders’ understanding of each Committee member’s contribution.

That final sentence, and particularly the second half of it, is at best spin, more accurately just a lie.  The Governor explicitly states that the Summary Record “improves our stakeholders’ understanding of each Committee member’s contribution”, when of course –  go and read them for yourself if you like –  that is simply false.  Not only does the Summary Record give no real sense of “how decisions are reached” but, by explicit choice and design (endorsed by the Minister of Finance), there is no reference at all to the views, arguments, analyses etc of any individual Committee member.  And –  did I mention this?  – none of the externals has been heard from in any other fora.  We have no idea whether they are making any contribution at all.   It is breathtaking that the Governor can so actively and deliberately –  in writing – lie to a parliamentary committee.  In isolation perhaps it is a small point, but if we can’t count on a very and powerful public official in the small and visible points, how do we trust him more generally.

The FEC appearance was also an opportunity for the Governor to bid for more resources –  a lot more resources we are told.  According to the Stuff account,  the Governor is bidding for a “30 per cent perhaps” increase in the Bank’s funding, claiming that (in respect of bank supervision)

The Reserve Bank’s existing resource was at the the low-end, if not “the lowest”, in the OECD

Which might sound more worrying/inappropriate were it not for the fact that New Zealand is among the smaller OECD countries and one of the poorer OECD countries, and also a country with a record of a sound financial system, and one dominated by banks already subject to serious supervision in another country that also has a long record with a sound financial system.

On several occasions over the years I’ve been willing to defend or even champion the case that the Reserve Bank is probably a little underfunded.  But it gets progressively harder to defend that view as the evidence mounts for how undisciplined the Bank is in the use of the resources it already case.  There was the million dollars for the Maori strategy, or the trips to international climate change meetings (and resources devoted domestically to such issues, for which the Bank has no particular responsibility) and there is the sense of a proliferation of staff in the communications/PR areas of the Bank.   I can’t yet formally verify that –  although I have lodged an OIA to get chapter and verse –  but I’m not the only person to note the range of new people/positions (on the bottom of press releases, emails or whatever) and my favourite anecdote was one a friend told a few months ago about being approached by a headhunting firm to consider applying for a job in something like “stakeholder relations” at the Bank,  a job my friend characterised as “having coffee with a lot of people, getting paid $180000 a year”.   I hope The Treasury and Grant Robertson will be having a close look at whether there is any sort of culture of ruthless prioritisation, frugality etc in how the Governor uses what he has, before offering up yet more public money.    There isn’t much sign of it.

Stuff also reports that National’s Finance spokesman Paul Goldsmith challenged Orr on his conduct

National Party finance spokesman Paul Goldsmith questioned Orr on the bank’s reaction to “criticism and debate” during a series of exchanges at the select committee, saying the Reserve Bank governor had “very significant independent powers” over the industries the bank regulated.

“From my point of view it is very important that we have open and robust discussion,” Goldsmith said.

“We wouldn’t want to have an independent governor with a glass jaw or a sensitivity to robust criticism,” he later added.

Orr’s response?

“What I won’t stand for is abuse of my team or myself,” he said.

He keeps claiming he and his team have been “abused” in some inappropriate or unacceptable way, but has not yet shown us a shred of evidence for those claims, suggesting that what is really at work is a powerful public figure who simply can’t cope with being challenged.  As one of his former staff put it last week “he could always dish it out, but could never take it”.

I hope Goldsmith won’t let the matter rest, especially if he should become Minister of Finance later this year.

Orr was back on the public stage on Friday with a speech, delivered to a business audience in Christchurch, under the title “Aiming for Great and Best at Te Putea Matua” (that being that Maori label the Governor has chosen to attach to the Bank).    The, perhaps rather odd, title refers to the Governor’s vision for the Reserve Bank “Great Team and the Best Central Bank”, the even more overblown goal than the one his predecessor had introduced, aiming to be the best small central bank in the world (when I asked, a few years later, what steps they’d take to benchmark themselves and measure whether they were getting close to the goal, the answer came back “nothing”).   Nothing wrong with aspiration and ambition of course –  although it is not clear that taxpayers would choose spend resources so heavily that a small, not very rich, country’s central bank would ever be best in the world.   The real problem is the delusional nature of the claims, the visions, which seem more about spin than substance.  Excellent central banks don’t have thin-skinned bosses, unable to keep their thin-skinnedness under control.  Excellent central banks have senior figures who make excellent thoughtful speeches. Excellent central banks are producing a steady stream of insightful research.  Excellent central banks underpin major policy initiatives with confidence-inspiring research and analysis, taking seriously alternative perspectives.

(Come to think of it, excellent central banks don’t just make stuff up when testifying to Parliament.)

We don’t have an excellent central bank (although it still has some good people); instead we have an organisation that has become little more than a platform for the Governor’s ambitions, whims, and political preferences, with little or no sense of boundaries, restraint, or the proprieties of public office.

I’m not going to waste a lot of time on a detailed review of the speech. Frankly, it is fairly dull although suffused with the Governor’s personal whims, especially around climate change (important issue and all, but really nothing whatever to do with the Reserve Bank).  But do notice just how the Governor operates.  There was this line

We have now made six Official Cash Rate (OCR) decisions – as a committee. We have managed robust discussion and come to consensus decisions. The nature of these discussions is published as a ‘Record of the Meeting’ for all to see. We also won this year’s Central Bank award for transparency in how we operate.

It is technically accurate, except that the transparency award they won was explicitly for one small element –  the (quite good) Handbook they’ve published on monetary policy –  not at all for anything about how the Monetary Policy Committee functions or how the ‘Record of the Meeting’ operates.  It is just dishonest.  It should be unworthy of –  beneath –  a major public institution in a sector where trust is supposed to be central.

A Stuff story appeared this morning about some more of the Governor’s comments.  I first assumed it must be referring to the (published) Christchurch speech, but the article says it is talking about a speech given in Auckland (perhaps he used much the same text?).  We get accounts of Orr as populist (also there in the published speech)

“I’m not here to talk to a few narrow specialists. I’m not here to talk to just the institutions we regulate.

“We are the central bank of everyone here in New Zealand, present and future, and we have been too narrow and too lax in our engagement with you all, and it is not going to happen again.”

The problem, of course, is that (a) few “specialists” actually have much confidence in him, (b) in all fields of life, we rely on “specialists” to help us evaluate and hold to account powerful public agencies (something Orr isn’t keen on at all), and (c) all that business about how his predecessors didn’t get out and talk to wider audiences is just so much nonsense, simply inconsistent with the facts.  Perhaps Orr has forgotten Don Brash’s in(famous) retail roadshows, or Graeme Wheeler’s repeated talk about how he and the Bank were going to talk to a wider range of people.   Some questionably, Alan Bollard even wrote a book (not inaccesible either) while in office.

And the article ends with an account of Orr’s answer to an audience question, which seems like quintessential undisciplined Or

Orr spoke about the importance of economic and social inclusion in response to a question from Jackie Clark, founder of The Aunties whanau support movement, who complained New Zealand was a low-wage economy.

“The owners of capital have been doing a great job over and above the owners of labour,” Orr said.

“It’s been extreme, unprecedented, over the last 40 or 50 years of that ongoing return to the owners of capital, and labour has become a global commodity, where production goes to the lowest common denominator.”

“We want low and stable inflation, but that does not mean we want low wages,” he said.

“We’ve been celebrating the fact that nominal and real wages have been growing recently.

“That’s how we roll. That’s how we have to roll, otherwise create yourself a gated community. Enjoy yourselves, but don’t leave.”

Would have sounded just great in a stump speech from Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez –  there is at least some evidence in support of his story in the US –  or even Marama Davidson.  But (a) this is New Zealand, and (b) you are the Governor of the Reserve Bank, with quite narrow responsibilities for monetary policy (affecting only nominal variables beyond the short-term) and regulation for prudential purposes of some classes of financial institutions.  Instead, we get a rampantly partisan/ideological answer (inappropriate in itself, but when did bounds and norms bother Orr?), but one with little or no grounding in facts.

(A prudent grounded answer to the question might have been to note that distributional issues are not an issue for the Reserve Bank, but that in the longer-term only productivity growth will support a much higher wage economy.  Both statements would be accurate and uncontentious.)

Those first two sentences in Orr’s answer seemed to be about the labour share of income.  The data are summarised in a chart in this post.  In New Zealand –  it is different in some countries –  the labour share of income rose in the 1970s, fell in the 1980s and (depending on your measure –  I show three) is now just a little higher or a little lower than it was fifty years ago.    You might personally argue for some different split of the pie, but what in the New Zealand experience justifies Orr’s flamboyant off-reservation ideological rhetoric.

Or what about how wages have been rising relative to economic capacity (say, nominal GDP per hour worked, capturing productivity and terms of trade effects).  Well, as I illustrate every so often (most recently last month), this century, wage rates in New Zealand have been rising faster than GDP per hour worked.  Perhaps Orr doesn’t know that –  it certainly doesn’t suit his ideological message – but whether he knew it or not he actively misled his audience, while working on the taxpayer’s dime.

I was going to round off this post with a fairly detailed critique of a truly dreadful speech given a week or so ago by one of Orr’s principal deputies, Christian Hawkesby, the Assistant Governor responsible for economics, monetary policy and financial markets on “The Maori World View of the Reserve Bank” but with quite a bit else –  including some atrociously bad history –  thrown in, concluding with the absurd hubristic claim that the Orr/Hawkesby Reserve Bank is “putting the New Zealand back into the Reserve Bank of New Zealand”.   You’d think they were candidates at this year’s election, not senior (supposedly non-partisan, supposedly operating within the constraints of specifc statutes) statutory public officials.  But perhaps I’ll save that speech for another day, rather than risk losing the focus on the Governor who yet again reveals himself as simply unfit for the office he holds.  And yet those paid to hold him to account sit idly by.

In yesterday’s Sunday Star-Times another article by their reporter Kate MacNamara shed further light on just how unsuited Adrian Orr is to be Governor of the Reserve Bank, exercising huge public policy and regulatory power still (in large chunks of the Bank’s responsibilities, often with crisis dimensions to them) as sole decisionmaker, with few/no effective checks and balances.  These disclosures should also raise serious questions about the judgement and diligence of the Board who were primarily responsible for Orr’s appointment and are primarily responsible for holding him to account, and of the Minister of Finance who formally appointed Orr, and is responsible now for both him and for the Board.

In this latest in her series of articles, MacNamara draws on the responses to one of several Official Information Act requests she had lodged late last year.  She had sought from the Bank copies of communications between the Governor and (a) the head of the financial sector body INFINZ and (b) Roger Beaumont the executive director of the Bankers’ Association (those responses are here), and copies of communications between Orr and the New Zealand Initiative think-tank, especially its chair Roger Partridge (responses here).    Her article draws mainly on the response re the New Zealand Initiative.

The context here is Orr’s (then) proposal to dramatically increase the volume of capital locally-incorporated banks would have to have to fund their existing loan books in New Zealand, disclosed in December 2018.    A wide range of commentators locally were critical of the Bank and many drew attention to the rather threadbare nature (at least initially) of the supporting material (it took three waves of releases over several months before we finally got the full extent of the Bank’s –  still-underwhelming –  case).   There had been no technical work preparing the ground, even though Orr was to be prosecutor and judge in his own case.  There was no serious cost-benefit analysis for what Orr was proposing, no serious benchmarking against capital requirements in other countries (notably Australia), no serious analysis of the nature of financial crises, and a strong sense that Orr wanted to compel us to pay for an insurance policy that simply wasn’t worth the price.    All this from an organisation where a recent careful stakeholder survey –  conducted by the New Zealand Initiative before Orr took office –  had highlighted very serious concerns about the Bank’s financial regulatory functions.    Meanwhile, Orr was already underway with his open attempts to cast anyone who disagreed with him as a “vested interest”, somehow “bought and paid for”.

Various people made public comments.  Among them was Roger Partridge, chair of the New Zealand Initiative, who had a column in NBR in early May critical of what was being proposed, and the processes used (at the time the Initiative was finalising its submission to the formal Bank consultation).    In my contact with Roger, he always seems much more interested in the substance and process of any issue.   But in a single decisionmaker model, it is a single person in focus.  [UPDATE: Here is a link to the “offending” column.]

Anyway, the Governor did not like Roger’s column at all.  Normal people who disagree might either let things wash over them (being in public life, exercising great power, not only does but should, bring scrutiny, challenge, and criticism).  Or perhaps you might even ring the author and have an amiable chat.  But not Orr.

The OIA release begins with Partridge emailing Orr after learning that Orr had rung the Executive Director of the Initiative had been “upset” by Partridge’s column.  This is a bit of a problem for the Initiative, as Orr is scheduled to speak at a private lunch for their members the next day, so Partridge offers up one of those semi-apologies (“if I crossed the line I apologise, but don’t resile from the criticisms of the policy process”), and even goes so far as to send Orr a copy of the remarks he intends to use to introduce Orr the next day (typical gush).

But that is not nearly enough for our thin-skinned Governor who replies to Partridge with a page and a half email.  All this after Orr had already talked to Hartwich both before and after a flight to Auckland they had both been on.   Just a slight loss of perspective and focus you might wonder?

And so we read (of his conversation with Hartwich)

I talked of the personal abuse I receive in this role. I also talked of the vested-interest driven articles that are prevalent and portrayed as analysis.

and

I do not accept your apology as it provides no reflection on your:
1. Stating I have a gambling problem.
2. Mocking our use of a Maori mythology to connect with a wider NZ audience – something we have been tasked by the public and stakeholders to do (I noted to Oliver this is a common thread of online abuse I receive from other purported banking/economic experts that go even further in ethnic/religious/personal comment).
3. Claiming below that you aimed to provide a robust critique of the proposal. You do not. You quote selective work of purported experts. You also pull only selected components of our submission process (which has stretched nearly 2 years).

From context, I understand that Partridge had said something along the lines that Orr was doing little more than gambling with his ill-supported capital proposal.  If so that seemed (and seems) fair to me, and would not to any reasonable person, with any sense of perspective, suggest they thought the Governor had a gambling problem.

I guess we are expected to just believe the lines about “online abuse” (and, who knows, perhaps I’m one of the people he is alluding to).

It goes on, before ending this weird way

I do not see your article as a robust critique. What I do see is ongoing character assassination, an undertone of dislike of the RBNZ, and a clear bias in economic and ethnic preference.

At the Bank we are open minded and working on behalf of all New Zealand and do so in a transparent manner.

See you tomorrow. The introduction looks fine. I will be professional and courteous towards your members.

Adrian

The person

But, of course, he is calm, open-minded, and –  apparently unlike any of his critics – only focused on the national interest.  And what to make of that “The person”?     If any upset junior staffer sent such an email to his/her boss, you might seek to get them some support and counselling.  But this was the most powerful unelected person in New Zealand, responding to a private citizen who happened to disagree with him.

(Of course, I can well understand why they didn’t do so, but in some respects it is a shame the Initiative didn’t disclose this correspondence at the time, so poorly does it reflect on a leading public official, making major policy decisions while clearly not coping.  I hope at least they referred the matter to the Minister and the chair of the Bank’s Board.)

Partridge sent another placatory email to the Governor, only to get yet another page-long missive

The behaviours displayed by your institution make it appear that it is a low chance that a well informed discussion where all parties come out better off could be ever achieved. We Remain open minded.

ending

See you later today. I will be professional and respect your members. I do not gamble.

There had been no mention of the “gambling” thing in Partridge’s email Orr was here replying to.

The rest of that OIA release is fairly uncontroversial stuff from 2018 on the release of the Initiative’s report that dealt with the Bank’s financial regulatory functions (the one the Governor claimed at the time to take seriously and welcome, although also the one he was rubbishing by late last year.)

What about the other OIAs?  It is mostly less egregious stuff.  But we have this odd example from a letter to the Executive Direction of INFINZ on 24 May 2019

For closure sake as promised, I mentioned to you at the event that I was disappointed with the process that you adopted in the preparation of a submission to our bank capital proposals. I did so as I want to be open and frank consistent with the ‘relationship charter’ we recently established with our regulated banks I read about your views first in your published op-ed and then via a newsletter you sent to INFINZ members. It was some time after that you met with RBNZ staff. The process created a perception of a predetermined outcome for the submission.

How shocking.  A private sector industry group first published its views in an op-ed and a newsletter and didn’t first talk to RB staff.      Quite who does the Governor think he is in objecting to that?

Even odder was this

In the spirit of the ‘#me too’ commentary promoted at your awards evening, I have received personal written and verbal abuse from within the industry during this consultation process. For New Zealand’s capital markets to have the ‘social license’ to operate – another theme at your event – I believe the industry’s culture needs ongoing improvement.

As a reminder to the Governor, we don’t have lese-majeste laws in New Zealand, and certainly not for central bank Governors.   And as for this weird appropriation of the “#me too”  movement – mostly about the mistreatment of women by men in positions of power over them –  to apply to criticisms of a very powerful public figure…..well, weird is just the best term for it.

It wasn’t the only time he’d tried this line.  In a column late last year, Hamish Rutherford told us he’d even used it at a parliamentary committee

Being in position of power, Orr’s complaints brought forward this response from the INFINZ Executive Director

We are concerned and disappointed that you have received verbal and written abuse from within the industry during the consultation process – bullying is not acceptable and we agree that all discussions should be both professional and respectful.

Quite how anyone in the industry –  or anywhere else for that matter –  could have “bullied” the Governor (who single-handedly wields all the power that mattered on the bank capital issues) is beyond me, but I guess INFINZ didn’t want to jeopardise their ability to get the Governor as a speaker etc.

The final set of OIA responses cover the Executive Director of the Banker’s Association.

The first was a Saturday morning email to Beaumont and the chairs of the four main banks in April.     It isn’t offensive and thin-skinned as he later became, but while the submissions are still open, he is clearly trying to put pressure on them

FYI only as I am eager you understand the effort we are going to in order that the Bank is open and listening.
This was not the impression you all conveyed to me over the last couple of weeks in our individual one-to-one meetings.

Only there is nothing in the rest of the letter to give anyone any reassurance.

In late May there is a letter (presumably emailed) from Beaumont to the Governor, copied to the Minister of Finance, about the “independent experts” the Governor had selected to help make his case.    The letter isn’t aggressive in tone but noted that none of the independent experts had New Zealand specific knowledge and suggest a couple of locals they could work with.

But this sparks a petulant email back from Orr, also copied to Grant Robertson

Dear Roger,
Your letter is unsigned. Can you confirm it is legitimate please? Apologies, one must be careful.

and

I do not understand the reason you have copied the Minister of Finance in to this dialogue. Is there something specific you are looking for from the Minister’s office that I need to understand?

Minister of Finance? Well, you mean the elected person with overall responsibility for economic policy, the person who has formal responsibility for your performance etc etc?

Recall, that all the stuff covered in the material that came to light yesterday is really just another glimpse at what was apparently a pattern of quite inappropriate behaviour.    From one of Kate MacNamara’s earlier articles

But other observers were not surprised. Details of [Victoria banking academic Martien] Lubberink’s experience were already circulating in Wellington and industry sources say they match a pattern of hectoring by Orr of those who question the Reserve Bank’s plan.

“There is a pattern of [Orr] publicly belittling and berating people who disagree with him, at conferences, on the sidelines of financial industry events,” said one source who’s been involved in making submissions to the Reserve Bank on the capital proposal.

There have also been angry weekend phone calls made by Orr to submitters he doesn’t agree with.

“I’m worried about what he’s doing.”

The source said some companies have “withheld submissions,” for fear of being targeted by Orr.

“They’re absolutely scared of repercussions. It’s genuinely disturbing,” he said.

We can only wonder what he was like inside the Bank or around his own Board table.

Does any of it matter, or is this simply the degraded state of public life we now have to get used to?  Age of Trump, age of Orr etc.

It should be utterly unacceptable, in any public figure, but perhaps especially so when that one public figure is (a) unelected, and (b) wields such huge discretionary power on far-reaching policy matters, with few/no checks and balances.   I was tempted to suggest that the individuals in receipt of these particular Orr missives are big enough to stand up for themselves, except that evidently they aren’t really –  Partridge, Hartwich, and McElwain find themselves rushing around the placate Orr.  That’s costly and uncomfortable: much easier just to pull your punches and offer less challenge or scrutiny next time the bully (for on his revealed behaviour it is him not his critics who better fits that description) wants to push through some half-baked costly idea.

The banks themselves will long since have gotten the message –  it was Orr’s predecessor who heavied the BNZ to shutdown Stephen Toplis when he wrote a critical commentary on some aspect of Wheeler’s monetary policy –  but the experience last year will only have reinforced that extreme caution.  Recall that Orr wields direct power over them in all sorts of way, visible and less so, and clearly does not cope with being challenged or criticised (no matter how many times he claims to be “open-minded”.   It is great that Kate MacNamara has kept up the scrutiny, but that will presumably mean no access: much easier for her fellow journalists to keep their heads down and not ask hard questions of the Governor and Bank (who –  news though it may be –  are not infallible).

And what about people inside the organisation?  Recall that on regulatory matters the Governor is still the sole decisionmaker, and on monetary policy he has –  in effect –  most of the clout, all of voice, and no real transparency.  It is vital that the Governor’s priors, whims, and even well-considered ideas are seriously scrutinised –  and even that the Bank sticks to its statutory roles –  but seeing the Governor treats outsiders, how are people inside the Reserve Bank likely to respond.  All but the most brave or reckless will be strongly incentivised to keep quiet, go along, join the cheerleaders etc.  In any public agency that should be grossly unacceptable, but particularly so in one as powerful as the Bank.  Orr has grossly abused his office, and looks increasingly unfit to hold it.

And if Orr gets away with it what message does it send to other thin-skinned bullies elsewhere in the upper ranks for our public sector, let alone to those who work for them.

And yet it looks as lot like Orr will get away with it.  Perhaps there was some quiet word in the hallowed halls of the Bank’s Board room, but these are the same people who selected the Governor less than two years previously. They are invested in his success, and they and their predecessors have a long track record of providing cover and defence for the Governor, not serious scrutiny and accountability on behalf of the public. This behaviour occurred in 2018/19 and there is no hint of concern in the Board’s published Annual Report.

If any of this bothered Grant Robertson, it can’t have been much.  You’ll recall that response I had late last year from Robertson, when I wrote to highlight his formal responsibilities for the egregious conduct highlighted in earlier MacNamara articles.  He then expressed his full confidence in the Board and suggested he was satisfied with the Governor too.     In the great tradition of “lets look after each other” Robertson has just appointed the Board chairman to a further two year term, even as he walked by such appalling conduct by the person he is paid to oversee.

(It is sad to reflect that much of the material covered here relates to events in May 2019.  That was the same month the then Secretary to the Treasury was also going rogue, grossly mishandling –  and then refusing to apologise for –  his handling of the “Budget leak” episode.    Doesn’t exactly instill confidence in the top tier of our leading economic agencies –  or the Minister responsible for both –  does it?)

Perhaps it is all in the past now.  Perhaps having got through the year, made his final decisions etc, Orr has returned to some sort of stable equilibrium and is operating effectively, rigorously, and deeply to provide leadership in difficult times.  Perhaps.  But even if that were so –  and that sort of Orr was not on display last Wednesday –  no one who can lose all perspective as badly as Orr clearly did last year, who simply cannot cope with serious criticism and scrutiny, simply should not hold high office here or anywhere else.  It is risky for New Zealand, it is dreadful for the reputation of the Bank, bad for the reputation of the New Zealand public sector, and reflects pretty poorly on our political leaders –  in government and Opposition –  who simply walk by, at least in public, such egregiously unacceptable conduct from such a powerful public servant (one who doesn’t even have the redeeming quality of being consistently rigorous, excellent and right to perhaps compensate in some small measure for his grossly unacceptable).

I’m presuming Stuff’s Kate MacNamara won’t be very welcome at the Reserve Bank for quite some time.

She was the author of the double-page spread in last week’s Sunday Star-Times about the Governor (“Portrait of the Governor as a strongman” – note that is one word, not two, and the difference is quite important).  I wrote about that earlier in the week.  As a reminder of some of that article, it included this

The video of the conference remains on the Reserve Bank’s website. Some reporters said they were stunned Orr would air his anger so publicly and called it bullying.

But other observers were not surprised. Details of Lubberink’s experience were already circulating in Wellington and industry sources say they match a pattern of hectoring by Orr of those who question the Reserve Bank’s plan.

“There is a pattern of [Orr] publicly belittling and berating people who disagree with him, at conferences, on the sidelines of financial industry events,” said one source who’s been involved in making submissions to the Reserve Bank on the capital proposal.

There have also been angry weekend phone calls made by Orr to submitters he doesn’t agree with.

“I’m worried about what he’s doing.”

The source said some companies have “withheld submissions,” for fear of being targeted by Orr.

“They’re absolutely scared of repercussions. It’s genuinely disturbing,” he said.

and this, re the Governor’s approach around the bank capital debate

In the cut and thrust of the debate, Orr’s jokey style and everyman charisma fell away. In recent months he’s dogmatically insisted the cost of his plan would be minimal and has picked personally at critics in the media, academia, and the financial services industry.

He’s been variously described as defensive, bullying, and perilously close to abusing his power.

“He’s in danger of bringing scorn on his office,” said long-time industry watcher David Tripe, professor of banking at Massey University. “I used to know him well. I no longer feel so confident.”

The Governor was reported to have refused any comment when approached for that story.

MacNamara followed her story up with a detailed piece on the Bank’s staffing and the loss of a succession of highly-qualified and experienced researchers over this year.  Names were named –  people who probably hoped never to see their  names in the general media –  and specific information was clearly provided to the journalist from insiders and people still very well-connected to the Bank’s Economics Department.  The story listed the departure of seven capable researchers who had left in the last year or so (and, at that, missed another name).  Those are large numbers.   In my time at the Bank it would have been rare to have had more than perhaps 10 researchers across the (then) Research and Modelling teams.

MacNamara’s sources were clearly keen on promoting a narrative of a hugely important and influential research function.  One might perhaps say, if only.  I have a high regard for several of the people in the list of the departed.     But the Bank’s key policy initiatives in recent years, whether in monetary policy or financial regulation, didn’t stem from, and were rarely directly supported by, good quality research generated by Bank researchers (there was some good work done, but often fairly tangential to the Bank’s immediate interests/needs).   The sources were also apparently keen on recently departed, having been effectively demoted, former chief economist John McDermott.  I have been on record as believing that Orr’s decision re McDermott was one of the better he has made, and as senior manager in charge of the research function McDermott has to take responsibility for the limited relevance of the research function over the last decade.    Even the Bank’s macroeconomic analysis was pretty underwhelming over much of that period.  All that was under previous Governors.   I’m critical of Adrian Orr for many things, but he can’t be blamed for that (whatever mix of factors played a part in the individual choices of the researchers to leave – and several of those who left were foreigners who had probably never seen their long-term future being in New Zealand).

The Bank must have been taken aback by MacNamara’s forthcoming story

A Reserve Bank spokeswoman said she could not answer quickly questions about staff departures and replacements.

She was unable to say how many staff with graduate degrees in economics or finance have departed in the last 18 months.

Neither could she tally immediately how many staff have joined in that time with similar academic credentials.

Pretty bad staff work, given that they must have known this issue was a point of vulnerability –  even the Annual Report had included a table showing high total staff turnover –  for which they should have been prepared.    Since the Bank publishes a page with details of their Economics Department research and analysis staff, it only took me a few minutes to run down the list and find several new PhD staff the Bank had hired relatively recently (albeit, by the look of it, only one with any knowledge of New Zealand).   It shouldn’t have been hard for the Bank to have got that information to the journalist.

(The article is mostly focused on the Economics Department, and although the journalist attempts to draw connections to the Bank’s poor performance around the bank capital proposals that is a bit unfair to the Governor – only rarely have Economics Department research staff had anything much to do with financial regulatory issues. Maybe it would be better if they did –  I used to argue for a broader focus (ie some actual research around the regulatory functions –  but the choice not to also long pre-dates Orr.  The absence of these particular researchers will have made little or no effective difference to how the bank capital proposals were made and marketed –  those choices were the Governor’s.

The sources who spoke to MacNamara were clearly also keen on PhD qualified staff.  The story highlights that there is no PhD held by anyone in the top-tier of the Bank (first time since 1988 I think), and repeats the contrast between the qualifications of McDermott and his replacements (new chief economist, new Assistant Governor).    Personally, I think this issue in considerably overdone.   Qualifications are not without value, of course, but research qualifications only take you so far in managing and leading a public sector policy organisation.  As I’ve pointed out, over the last 40 years the Bank has had 10 chief economists, only four of whom had PhDs, and at least on my reckoning both the best and worst of them had PhDs.   During the period when the Reserve Bank of Australia was widely-regarded as one of the best central banks in the world, it was led by people with much the same sort of academic qualifications as, say, Adrian Orr.  The presence or absence of a PhD at the top table is not what gave us a rushed, over-reaching, capital proposal with no ex ante cost-benefit analysis.  That is much more about the temperament and character of the Governor (and his right hand people who clearly weren’t willing or able to insist on something better).  In fact, the chair of the Bank’s Board not only has a PhD but is a university vice-chancellor no less, and he claims (in the recent Annual Report) that all is just fine at the Bank.

In many respects I don’t disagree with Eric Crampton’s concluding comment in the article

Eric Crampton, chief economist at the public policy think tank The New Zealand Initiative, said it mattered more in a small country like New Zealand that the Reserve Bank has internal research depth.

“There are very few academic macroeconomists and monetary theorists who pay much attention at all to New Zealand policy. There are, at most, a small handful who do.

“That means that having some of that serious firepower in the Bank matters more,” Crampton said.

Except that, in reality and in other countries, research depth inside and outside the central bank tend to be complements rather than substitutes.  And there is little point in having much of a research capability if it isn’t used to support robust policymaking and analysis. It hasn’t been for some time at the Bank, and that is mostly a reflection on a succession of senior managers and Governors (now including Orr), not on the staff involved.

The real prompt for this post was when, by chance, I noticed a statement from the Bank on its website, apparently released with no fanfare yesterday.  Here is the whole thing.

Get the sense Orr is feeling a bit embattled?

But instead of fronting up to, say, Kate MacNamara we get bluster and distraction (and this common confusion –  often found among senior public servants these days –  about the name of the country).

No one criticised their individual staff.  If there are criticisms to make they are of the leadership itself, mostly that of the Governor –  both because he is chief executive, and because he has a long track record of surrounding himself with people who will do his bidding and not challenge him.

See how the Governor suggests that the Bank somehow has a higher capacity for identifying what is good for New Zealand (yesterday, today and forever) than others, or even that they have a mandate to do so (they don’t).

See his claim that he holds “informed and mature conversations”, and contrast that with, for example, the rushed way they put out the bank capital proposals, the backfilling they had to do as the year went on, the refusal to engage on the substance of any concerns/challenges, the attempts to slur critics and regulated institutions alike, and those descriptions above of Orr’s “angry weekend phone calls” and the like.  This is the same Governor who has not given a single substantive speech on either of his core areas of policy responsibility in over 18 months in office.  It would be unheard of in any other other advanced democracy.

It is past time the Minister of Finance took the situation in hand. He is the one actually accountable to the public for the Reserve Bank.  He needs to be asking the Board chair and the Governor just what is going on, and why they are content for bluster to substitute for serious analysis and considered engagement –  not from staff, but from the Governor himself.   The problems at the Bank are at the top –  Board, Governor, and a weak senior management team –  not among the staff.   The Governor’s statement is an attempt at distraction, trying to suggest he is sticking up for staff (who don’t need it) when the problems start with him (and those paid to hold him to account).

Bluster shouldn’t be able to substitute for serious accountability.