I wasn’t going to write anything here today, but I couldn’t let the final question and answer from this morning’s Finance and Expenditure Committee hearing on the Monetary Policy Statement go without record and comment.

Simon Bridges, National’s FInance spokesman, asked the Governor whether the current prohibition – agreed between the Governor, the Board and the Minister – on any (external) MPC member having any active, engaged (present or future) analytical/research interest in monetary policy was not “frankly simply daft”, and did it not “ruin the ability to have thought diversity”.

He might well have added, but time was short, “and without precedent anywhere else in the advanced world” (or quite probably in most of the less-advanced world). Ben Bernanke would be disqualified, Lars Svensson would be out, and one could run a very long list of the sort of people who’ve served with distinction on the MPCs of other countries, whom Orr, Quigley and Robertson bar as a matter of determined policy.

Labour chairman Duncan Webb attempted, somewhat half-heartedly, to stop the question being asked, suggesting that it wasn’t really relevant to this Monetary Policy Statement (as if that was not also the case with several other questions, notably those from government MPs).

But in the end, the Governor did answer. He claimed first it was a matter of “legislation and government”. What he might have meant was not clear, but here is what the legislation says. The Minister makes the appointments, but can only appoint people the Board recommends, and the Board has to consult the Governor on those recommendations. These types of people are (rightly) disqualified.

People with a strong ongoing, and possible future, analytical/research interest in macroeconomics or monetary policy are not. That ban – the blackball – is pure Orr/Quigley/Robertson in concert. And none of them has ever mounted a substantive defence of this extraordinary ban, a ban without precedent.

But then Orr went on to end with a claim that the Monetary Policy Committee has a “very high level of expertise in monetary policy”.

It is worth distinguishing here between the external (non-executive) members – to whom the formal ban applies – and the executive (and majority) members.

There are three non-executive members:

• Professor Caroline Saunders, who knows quite a bit about international trade but even her RB bio does not suggest knows anything in particular about monetary policy,
• Peter Harris, former adviser in Michael Cullen’s office and former chief economist at the CTU. His RB bio also lays no claim to any particular background or expertise in monetary policy, and
• Professor Bob Buckle. Buckle is a retired academic, who also worked in The Treasury for several years. He has something of a background in macroeconomic matters, but his focus tended to be more on tax and fiscal issues. Buckle is not self-evidently unsuited for the role – although he has long tended to be a “don’t rock the boat” establishment figure – but has no particular track record on monetary policy, let alone “high level expertise”. And he has, presumably, signed on to the understanding that he will never again do any writing or research on matters associated with monetary policy or macroeconomics (that is part of the ban).

Hardly a “very high level of expertise”.

Then, of course, there are the executive members, to whom the formal ban does not apply:

I’m not going to dispute that either the Governor or the Deputy Governor has some relevant qualifications and experience (although the deputy governor’s day job is now financial regulation and supervision), but neither is what most people would call a high-level expert. That needn’t be a criticism – the central bank is more than monetary policy – but you might hope for high level expertise (even “a very high level of expertise”) somewhere on the MPC. As it happens, neither Orr nor Hawkesby has even given a serious and thoughtful speech on monetary policy in their time on the MPC.

There was, for yesterday’s decision, the outgoing chief economist Yuong Ha. But he is leaving, with no other job to go to, and in his three years on the MPC gave not a single speech, delivered not a single paper, on matters monetary or economic.

The new appointee is Karen Silk. She has been a general manager at Westpac for some years, and will have senior management responsibility for financial markets where, just possibly, her skills might be a match. But her qualifications are in marketing and accounting, and she has no work experience relevant to being a monetary policymaker, or the senior executive responsible for those functions. Hard to imagine that morale among the Bank’s remaining economists did not dip quite a bit further when her appointment was announced. It is as if they wanted to go above and beyond and apply the ban to executives too,

It is now more than three months since it was announced that Yuong Ha was leaving, and the Bank has still not been able to fill the role – a job that would once have been one of the best jobs in New Zealand for a macroeconomist with policy interests. Perhaps they will appoint the person who will be filling the vacancy on an acting basis, but we don’t know.

There are some competent people on the MPC, and as I’ve written previously I don’t believe all 7 need to be (or even should be) research economists, but there is really no one there now who – by any reasonable global standards – could be described as offering a “very high level of expertise in monetary policy”.

That isn’t good enough – and the problems are especially evident with recent macro and inflation developments – but it is a choice, by Orr, Quigley and (above all) Robertson. So I hope MPs and journalists keep asking about what possible justification there can be for this extraordinary ban on some of the potentially most talented people who might otherwise be appointed to the Committee.

I’m yielding to no one in my low view of the Reserve Bank Monetary Policy Committee. I’ve been writing about the problems – structural and personal – since the new Potemkin-village model (designed to look shiny and new, but to change little) was set up three years ago, and it was (for example) one of my Official Information Act requests that got the written confirmation that the Minister, Governor and the Bank’s Board had formally agreed that no one with ongoing expertise in monetary policy or macroeconomics, or likely future interest in researching such matters, would be appointed (as an external member) to the new Monetary Policy Committee (three relevant posts here, here, and here). It was a simply extraordinary exclusion, which reflected very poorly on all involved, but which never seemed to get the scrutiny from media or MPs that it deserved. In no other modern central bank would such an approach be adopted.

But, for all that, I thought Eric Crampton’s op-ed in the Herald today overbalanced in the opposite direction. The column is behind a paywall, so I’m not going to quote extensively, but the gist seemed to be that you need a PhD in macroeconomics AND to be actively engaged in ongoing research to serve on the MPC. Crampton and an Otago university academic then report the results of a little survey they’d run of New Zealand academic macroeconomists to find out who those people thought should be appointed to the MPC, when the terms of two of the current externals expire shortly. It wasn’t noted that the most favoured candidate – one of the incumbents, Bob Buckle – does not have a PhD in macroeconomics, and has presumably taken a self-denying ordinance not to do any relevant research or analysis now or in the future (or otherwise he’d fall foul of the exclusionary rule, see above).

I don’t want to run commentary on all the individuals reported on. One or two might well be excellent additions, one or two would probably be dreadful, but none should be disqualified in advance simply because they might keep thinking about the issues, or writing about them in future. Even if the pickings are fairly slim, that far I agree (strongly) with Crampton. Of course, at present none of it probably matters much as management enjoys a permanent majority on the MPC, and the Orr/Robertson approach has been to prevent external members from speaking in public or even having their views recorded in the minutes. Three years sightseeing aside, it is difficult to know why really able people would seek, or accept, appointment at present. Management appointees matter much more, and the most recent appointment – the new executive deputy in charge of macro and monetary policy, with not a shred of relevant experience – suggests things are heading in the wrong direction there too.

But I think the “cult of the PhD” can be carried too far, at least when it comes to policy roles (as distinct from, say, staffing the Economics Departments of our universities). Don Brash had one, but had been primarily a banker and intellectually curious as he was (and is) had no demonstrated ongoing interest or expertise in macroeconomic research. Alan Bollard had one. Graeme Wheeler didn’t. But little or nothing about how well or badly those individuals did their jobs – and reasonable people may debate each – came down to how complex an NBER paper they could each critique (let alone produce). I’ve noted several times over the years that of the Reserve Bank’s chief economists over my working life, about half had PhDs and half did not. But there was no obvious correlation between those who did (or didn’t) and effectiveness or intellectual energy. Some (one?) of the best did, some (two?) of the best didn’t, but one who did was almost surely the worst of them. In English-influenced countries even 30-40 years ago it wasn’t particularly common for even the most able people to pursue PhDs unless they wanted an academic career. A couple of the more published researchers at the Reserve Bank in the last decade or so either didn’t have a PhD, or got one only rather belatedly (having already published quite a bit).

Or we could look around the world. Alan Greenspan was an economist but didn’t have a PhD (Update: thanks to the reader who pointed out that he acquired one well into his policy career). Jay Powell was a lawyer and private equity executive. Glenn Stevens, the previous RBA Governor, seemed to do a pretty reasonable job, and had neither a PhD nor a research track record. I’m not a great Lagarde fan, but she’s a lawyer and politician. Andrew Bailey has a PhD – in history – but spent his career in banking-oriented roles at the Bank of England. On the other hand, Phil Lowe, Mark Carney, Ben Bernanke, and Stefan Ingves have economics PhDs, even if not always with much sign of ongoing research interest.

Which is by way of saying that despite my many criticisms of Adrian Orr, the fact that he doesn’t have a PhD doesn’t bother me in the slightest. And the fact that Caroline Saunders – another of the independents – has one, if in quite unrelated areas of economics, allays not in the slightest my concern about the weakness (and tokenism) of her appointment.

A parallel I sometimes draw with the MPC is with the Cabinet. As Crampton notes, the MPC makes decisions that are final. So, in many areas, does the Cabinet (and often individual ministers). Very rarely do we expect the Prime Minister or Cabinet ministers to be professional technical experts in any of the areas they are minister for, let alone with the whole ambit of policies for which Cabinet is responsible. It often isn’t even helpful to have had a health expert as Minister of Health, and I’m pretty sure that in all New Zealand’s history we’ve never had an economist as Minister of Finance (nor is it common in parliamentary systems elsewhere). That isn’t a problem. We expect there to be a distinction between professional and technically-expert advisers on the one hand, and decisionmakers on the other. When either group tries to do the job of the other, or the advisory expertise is lacking, things run into difficulty.

[UPDATE: Bill Rowling, Minister of Finance 1972-74, did have an economics degree.]

The parallel with the MPC isn’t exact. We want the Cabinet to be making intrinsically “political” calls, about preferences, priorities, values etc. But we also want them to be judicious people – not unduly swayed by the latest whizz-bang research paper or think-tank idea, or the latest data point. We want/need them to be thinking about communications, public acceptability and so on.

So I’m not suggesting an MPC made up of the first 10 names in the Wellington phone book, or a bunch of pleasant (or otherwise) political hacks. But there is a place for a balanced committee, served by a highly expert staff (research, analytical, policy, markets, operational – all quite different components of what a capable monetary policy function needs). It seems quite likely that some of those roles would these days naturally be filled by people with PhDs – key figures in the research functions, most often perhaps the Chief Economist – but technical research virtuosity (of the sort a highly productive PhD may still offer – many do, many don’t) is just one, important, part of the relevant set of skills. Even in that sort of area, a passion to make sense of what is going on, to interpret evidence and data carefully, to be open to new ideas and fresh perspectives, seem to me to be what we should be looking for. Qualifications aren’t irrelevant, but qualities matter at least as much. And in an MPC that is dominated by management (which also controls all the staff resources), the willingness to think independently and ask hard but realistic questions, to engage effectively with experiences in other times and other countries, are what are likely to add most value. Some functioning academic researchers may be able to do that well, and their particular talents and experience should add value to the Committee. But so, far example, might someone who’d spent decades at the interface of economics and financial markets, or even – and one wouldn’t want this type dominating the Committee – the sort of classic old-school corporate director who is not afraid to ask questions when things don’t make sense, and who may act as a really effective test for how well the expert arguments, analysis, and lines of reasoning may be received in wider public audiences (I can think of a couple of these types who were on the RB Board in years past). Temperament is often at least as important as virtuosity. And effective public communications – not always an academic (or bureaucratic) strength – is vital.

Of course, the bottom line at present is that almost every dimension of the Reserve Bank (and particularly its macro/monetary functions) is weak: little research, little transparency, weak senior management appointments, a Governor with the wrong temperament for the job, an MPC structured to be ineffective, and weak appointees to the MPC. The ban on people with ongoing research interests – almost laughably bad as it is – is more like a symptom of a weak institution…..and a Minister of Finance who seems just fine with all that. And not even, it seems, bothered when core inflation bursts out the top of the target range.

UPDATE: I’d been aware that several of the top figures at the Bank of England in recent decades, including Eddie George and Paul Tucker, had not had PhDs (the latter having gone on to write a very serious book about central bank governance etc), but when I wrote the post I’d been labouring under the impression that the most prominent and eminent such figure – Mervyn King – had had a PhD. A reader got in touch to point out that he hadn’t. I’ve disagreed with many of King’s views, including in posts here, but no one can doubt that he was (and is) a figure of considerable intellectual eminence and thoughtfulness, whose speeches (for example) read well and make one think. He would seem ideally suited for an MPC.

For some reason the other day I was prompted to have a look at how many research papers the Reserve Bank had published in recent years. This chart resulted.

Only one in the last two years, and that one paper – published last February – had five authors, four of whom worked for other institutions (overseas). It was really quite staggering. It wasn’t, after all, as if there had been no interesting issues, policy puzzles or the like over the last two years. It wasn’t as if universities had suddenly stepped up to the mark and were producing a superfluity of research on New Zealand macro and banking/financial regulation issues. It wasn’t even as if the Bank had suddenly been put on tight rations by a fiscally austere government – in fact, the latest Funding Agreement threw money and the Bank and staff numbers have blown out. Rather, or so it appears, management just stopped publishing research.

These research Discussion Papers are usually quite geeky pieces of work, formal research that is subjected to some external review before publication, and often written with the intention of being of a standard that might be submitted to an academic journal. The Reserve Bank had put quite an emphasis on this sort of research (mostly on macroeconomic matters) for probably 50 years, as one part of the sort of analytical work that underpins its policy, operations, and communications.

Of course, what ends up in published research papers like this isn’t all the thinking, analysis, or even research that the Bank has been doing – ever, not just now. Apart from anything else, they have a variety of other publications, including the Analytical Notes series that was started up a decade ago to fill a gap (for example, less-formal research, often with shorter turnaround times), and even the Reserve Bank Bulletin which had had a mix of types of articles, but itself appears to have been in steep decline. There are speeches from senior managers, but as I’ve pointed out previously these days these are few and rarely insightful (not much research, here or abroad, informs them). There will be other analysis and research that simply never sees the light of day – the Bank not being known for its transparency – but what appears in public is likely to be an indicator of what does (or doesn’t) lie beneath the surface. The Bank still has some staff who appear to have formal research skills – indeed a year ago they recruited one of New Zealand’s best economists apparently to work on preparations for the next review of the monetary policy Remit – but what we see is thin pickings indeed. Most of most able researchers of the last decade have left, and as far as I can see there is no one working in the research function with any long or deep experience of the New Zealand economy and financial system.

Recall that the previous Governor espoused a goal that the Bank should be not just adequate but the “best small central bank” in the world, while the current one often reminds people of his mantra “Great team, best central bank”, suggesting a vision not even constrained by the (small) size of New Zealand.

Does any of this matter? I could probably mount an argument that much of what the Bank is charged by Parliament with doing could, in principle, be done with little or no formal research (of the type that appears in Discussion Papers). In principle, a keen appetite for the products of overseas research, a climate that encouraged debate and diversity of ideas, active engagement with other central banks, and a steady flow of less-formal analysis wouldn’t necessarily lead to particularly bad outcomes. And having been around in the days when the Bank was doing some world-leading stuff (notably inflation targeting, but also some of the bank regulatory policies) it is fair to note that little or none of that drew on (or was reflected in) formal RBNZ Discussion Papers.

But it isn’t really the standard that we should expect these days, nor is there any sign that people in other countries do. It is not that a single research paper is likely to decisively change any particular policy setting (perhaps not even 5 or 10 would) and many of the papers might go nowhere much at all. But a flow of formal published research is one of the marks of an institution that thinks, that has an intellectually vibrant culture, that is open to new ideas etc etc. And on some policy calls, we really have a right to expect that the Bank – with huge amounts of policy discretion, and quite limited accountability – is doing world-standard research of its own, and/or commissioning it from others, and making that research available for challenge, scrutiny etc. One might think here of appproaches to bank capital policy, where the current Governor took a bold non-consensus decision, but where the institution has no published record of any substantive serious research. Sometimes these things might just be about trying to find frameworks that make some sense – never all of it – of what has been going on, or bringing formal evidence to bear on (for example) what the LSAP has accomplished.

But, these days, there is little sign of any of it from our central bank – and as a straw in the wind, it is at one with a record of few (and rarely good) speeches, inaccessible MPC members (themselves ruled out from doing research), and policy documents that rarely seem to reflect robust analysis.

Of course, one can expect formal research outputs to fluctuate a bit from year to year. Topics come and go, immediate management priorities come and go, particularly able and productive researchers come and go. But one paper (and that mostly co-authored) in two turbulent years isn’t a sign of an institution that any longer takes seriously generating research output, or the sort of climate that makes an institution attractive to really able people.

What about other countries? I went counting.

Much discussion in New Zealand compares us to other Anglo countries, and in central banking terms, Australia, Canada and the UK have had similar (inflation-targeting) macro policy frameworks.

Of course, each of these are much bigger countries than New Zealand (and on that basis one might think the RBA rather light on its published research) but (a) there aren’t huge economies of scale in central banking (our economic puzzles can be just as intractable as those of much larger countries), and (b) both the RBA and the Bank of Canada have a narrower range of policy responsibilities than the Reserve Bank of New Zealand.

So how does the RBNZ compare with the central banks of other small advanced countries?

Central banks of very small countries (in this case, Iceland and Slovenia) have tended not to publish much formal research – although still more than the RBNZ in the last couple of years – and one might wonder at the budgetary priorities of the central bank of Lithuania (just under three million people and without a monetary policy of its own), but even before this decade the flow of formal research from our central bank looks to have been at low end of what one might expect given (a) our population, (b) the wider range of issues the RB is responsible for, and (c) the idiosyncratic nature of some aspects of our economy. There is no single right or wrong volume of formal research, but next-to-no published research simply looks like a dereliction of duty. (One might have hoped that a Board chaired by a university vice-chancellor – one with a reputation of getting research metrics looking good – might have raised questions, but…….this is the mostly-useless Reserve Bank Board.)

Again, does it matter? In my more cynical moments over the years I used to observe that perhaps the main difference inventing inflation targeting made was that we subsequently got invited to a better class of international conference. It might not sound much, but it is a straw in the wind for something that really does matter – the connectedness of the institution, the exposure to ideas, the ability to get leading people to take an interest and visit etc etc. We used to have that. Not all the conferences were useful, not all the visitors were useful, and so on, but becoming known as a central bank that (a) rules out from its MPC anyone with ongoing expertise in monetary policy, (b) publishes hardly any serious research, and (c) where senior management, if they speak at all (recall that the chief economist gave not a single published speech), make only the lightest-weight speeches isn’t a recipe for keeping engaged with the world, or the flow of ideas or research. When you are all already small, remote, idiosyncratic, and not as rich as Croesus (we can’t just throw money at potential visitors) it is a poor lookout.

These outcomes must have been the result of deliberate decisions. They need not be forever. Capability can be rebuilt, although doing so in an enduring way takes time and leadership. Who Orr appoints to the current key vacancies is likely to reveal quite a bit as to whether the Governor has any interest in creating a research-informed Reserve Bank, across the range of key policy areas he is responsible for. If not – and most likely not – it will be another sign of a deeply troubled institution, taking a similar path of decline to too many other New Zealand institutions in recent years. Responsibility for that rests not just with individual officials, but with a government (and Minister of Finance in particular) who seems not to care.

Yesterday morning’s news was an NBR headline – story accessible only to those with a subscription – in which the Reserve Bank appeared to have confirmed to this single media outlet that Deputy Governor, Geoff Bascand (a statutory appointee, and member of the Monetary Policy Committee) had left his job early, after speaking without authorisation to a third party about the Bank’s management restructuring. Later in the day, we got more accessible versions of this astonishing development (including this interest.co.nz account).

Bascand had been a public servant for a period spanning 40 years, starting in The Treasury in the 80s, and including stints as head of the Labour Market Policy Group (at the old Department of Labour), Government Statistician, and (since 2013) as Reserve Bank Deputy Governor. His public sector career had had its ups and downs, and he never quite reached the very top levels, but what a way to end it. In many ways, he was a classic public servant – most people seemed to like him, quite a few respected him, he wasn’t (it seemed) flamboyant or reckless. He went along. He wasn’t an intellectual leader, but he got things done. He didn’t seem to stand on titles etc – I was quite impressed that he was willing to take the step back from a CEO role at SNZ to (initially) the third-ranked position at the Reserve Bank (even as I assumed at the time that he saw it as a stepping stone back into the policy-institution mainstream, perhaps with aspirations to be Governor or Secretary to the Treasury). And in 2017 he was quite (unusually) open (to media) that he’d applied for the Governor’s role, knowing (presumably) that even as incumbent (but new) deputy chief executive he probably had no better than a 50/50 chance. In the first three years of the Monetary Policy Committee, he had been by far the least-unimpressive of the members, and gave speeches that were sometimes almost worthy of a member of a powerful independent policymaking committee in an advanced country.

I first met Geoff 35 years ago, but had only had off and on contact with him until he came to the Bank. We then sat on many of the same committees, but I left the Bank a couple of years later, and my main dealings with Geoff were actually over the last 8 years when we were both trustees of the troubled Reserve Bank staff pension scheme and spent too many hours locked in long meetings. We had our differences there – sometimes quite stark, sometimes on quite important issues – but in recent years in particular we seemed to have got on well, and even together crafted a resolution to one of the lesser issues the scheme was dealing with. I say this mostly as context. I don’t wish Geoff any ill at all.

When it was announced a few months ago that Bascand was leaving the Bank at the start of 2022, it wasn’t entirely clear what was going on. One plausible story was that at his age (60ish), unlikely now to ever become Governor, he’d simply opted for a slower pace of life – golf, grandkids, and some directorships/consultancies etc. Another was that he had become so frustrated with the Orr approach that he simply wanted out. The two weren’t incompatible necessarily, but if you are part of a project you are totally at one with, it isn’t usual to simply walk away – in good health, and not that old. But the new governance structure for the Bank was coming in mid-2022, and he might also have thought someone needed to be willing to commit several years to bedding in the new model. There was always the possibility Orr wanted him out, but as holder of a statutory office appointed by the Minister there was no direct way of effecting that, despite the reputation Orr had long had for churn among his senior staff. The speed with which Bascand’s replacement was announced – with no advertisement etc process – did tend to reinforce suspicions.

The concerns about top-level departures started to step up in November when it was announced that the Bank’s Chief Economist was leaving after less than three years in the job – having been appointed by Orr, it was quickly apparent he was being restructured out by Orr (Orr having restructured out the previous Chief Economist). Questions started to be raised, including at Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Committee. With inflation rising sharply, and unease (justified and not) about the Bank’s handling of monetary policy through the Covid period, the Governor’s position was becoming somewhat exposed.

But there was more to come. The management restructuring was ongoing and now claimed the two senior managers responsible for banking regulation and supervision, who had been direct reports of Geoff Bascand’s (as deputy governor and head of financial stability). We still don’t know the details of the restructuring – the Bank is playing OIA obstruction – but both Andy Wood and Toby Fiennes decided to leave, their own previous jobs presumably having disappeared (Fiennes already having been effectively demoted in an earlier Orr restructuring). That might prove quite uncomfortable for the Governor, with annual select committee hearing coming up on 15 December (this time the annual Financial Review, focused on the year to 30 June, but allowing a very wide range of issues to be raised).

And so, it seems (Orr did not deny it when questioned on it at FEC), the Bank decided to keep this news secret (from staff and the public) until after the FEC hearing was over.

And yet the news got out, with a story from Business Desk’s Jenny Ruth late the previous afternoon (and a statement from the Bank confirming the departures). Orr faced repeated questions at FEC the following day (I wrote about it here), and some of the answers from him and his team proved to be quite misleading. There was a lot of bluster, and the Governor did not emerge well.

There were a couple of straws in the wind – no more – that week that suggested that the Bascand situation was less than happy. Watch the FEC hearing (accessible on the FEC Facebook page) and you will see that Bascand was there – Orr even mentions it at one point – but in the back seats with the large group the Bank brought along. That was odd. Bascand was at this point still the incumbent Deputy Governor, and the hearing was formally focused on the 2020/21 financial year. It wasn’t that there wasn’t room at the top table – Orr was joined there by the incoming Deputy Governor and one of the his many more-obscure Assistant Governors. Not having Bascand up front – and several MPs have made generous comments about Bascand – looked not quite right.

And then on the Friday of that week, Bascand simply did not turn up for a long and important meeting of the superannuation scheme trustees, a meeting that had been scheduled explicitly to draw on his expertise and experience before his scheduled departure in the first week of January. His replacement had already been appointed (from 5 Jan) and invited to attend the meeting as a silent observer. Initially not suspecting anything – other than idly wondering what financial stability drama there might be on 17 December – I asked the chair if Geoff had then nominated the replacement as his (legal) alternate, which would enable that person to participate fully. It would have been a natural thing to have done if something had come up and Geoff was simply too busy. But all we got was a rather flustered “no”.

But none of that took one anywhere, at least until yesterday’s story.

The story did not tell us what Bascand had told to whom, only that he had had unauthorised discussions with an outsider, had confessed and apologised, and had left the Bank on 17 December, several weeks before his scheduled (early Jan) departure date.

So it is hardly a stretch to suppose that he was the ultimate source of the 14 December story about the further senior management departures – since it (a) involved people who had directly worked for him for several years, and (b) came out late on 14 December, and while he was still there (FEC) on the early morning of the 15th he was gone by the 17th. Most probably Bascand didn’t directly communicate with the journalist who broke the story – although even had he done so, the journalist would have needed independent confirmation to help provide cover to her source – but may well have told someone with the explicit intention that the news get to a journalist with a reputation for taking RB issues seriously. (It is quite clear, on the other hand, that these unauthorised discussions weren’t, say, a passing mention to his wife – the consequences, confirmed by the Bank yesterday, tell us it was much more serious than that.)

There can’t have been many people at the Bank who knew (on say 13 Dec) that Wood and Fiennes were going. The Governor, the incoming deputy (who would soon be responsible for financial stability), perhaps the Assistant Governor responsible for HR, perhaps the respective PAs, Wood and Fiennes themselves, and Bascand. Bascand either because he was still incumbent Deputy Governor or because either or both of Wood and Fiennes would most likely have talked to Bascand – their boss for several years, but not now the person driving decisionmaking – before making their final decisions. Only disgruntled people had an incentive to leak, which would have quickly narrowed the field, and Bascand apparently confessed, apologised, and agreed to go early. It could reasonably have been seen as a sacking offence but (a) no doubt the Bank wanted to keep this quiet, and (b) getting rid of a statutory officeholder isn’t quite like dismissing an ordinary staff member.

Why would Bascand have done it? Presumably the motive was pure and simple to put Orr on the spot at FEC, perhaps driven by frustration at how his loyal and capable senior staff had been treated. But it was still a strange step for someone like Bascand – the mostly fairly buttoned-down bureaucrat – to have taken. After all, although the FEC hearing became more of a spectacle, and more uncomfortable for Orr, it wasn’t as if this was really whistleblowing – the FEC hearing itself was never going to be decisive (of anything), and the Bank would have announced the departures a day or two later anyway. If – as I think there are – there are serious questions to be asked about Orr’s stewardship, a couple of days wasn’t going to make much difference in the scheme of things. Perhaps Geoff was just at the end of his tether?

If this is the story – and while it seems likely we can’t be certain – did he suppose he’d not be found out? Perhaps, but why take the risk? Perhaps he thought there weren’t really any downsides for him? But if so, he was wrong. Leaving two weeks early a job you’d resigned from anyway isn’t the cost. But yesterday’s story is. I guess that story wasn’t guaranteed to leak out, but….Wellington is a small place, and who knows what story staff were told as to why Geoff wasn’t around for his scheduled last few days.

It is simply a really bad look. Even real whistleblowers – of information about (a) misbehaviour that (b) would never otherwise come out – rarely prosper (even though society needs such people). But this wasn’t whistleblowing – Orr was within his rights to restructure, and the news was going to come out anyway – and just looks rather petulant and undisciplined. And whatever you think of Orr’s stewardship of the Bank, a senior figure behaving this way – breaching his obligations (moral and otherwise) is unlikely to endear himself to people (government or private sector) considering Geoff for future directorships and consultancies. If he had real concerns about Orr’s stewardship – and he should have – a detailed letter to the Minister of Finance, after he had left the Bank, might have been in order. Perhaps even a serious interview with a major media outlet a few months down the track (Orr is up for reappointment early next year), although in cosy Wellington even that would have raised eyebrows. But not leaking to the media – with a high probability of being found out – simply for some short-term additional embarrassment for the boss. (And it is not as if Geoff in the past has not expressed firm views on anyone speaking out in a way that might embarrass him or those he supports.)

I was glad the news of those further senior management departures got out in time for FEC, was glad to see National and ACT MPs asking hard questions of Orr – and hope they now follow up further – but what Bascand (who had obligations to the Bank) appears to have done was quite inappropriate and unacceptable, and it is good that that news has belatedly come out. It is a sad way to end a long public service career.

But what a mess an important and powerful public agency is clearly in. So many key people going or gone, so little analytical, operational or policy excellence, so little banking or regulatory experience at the top of a major banking regulatory agency, and so on. Meanwhile, the Board chair who presided while all this went on has been given another term, and all indications are that none of this much bothers the person with the ultimate responsibility, the Minister of Finance. It should. We need to end, and reverse, the degradation of major New Zealand public institutions.

UPDATE: Continuing to mull over this business, I’m still a bit inclined to wonder if there is more to the story. Is there a possibility that Bascand took the fall, covering for someone else (for whom the consequences of discovery might have been greater)? I guess we’ll never know, and perhaps it is just that I don’t want to believe that someone like Geoff could have acted this way, even tired, even frustrated. There is something particularly treacherous about a deputy deliberately undercutting his boss in a way implied by the story told in this post. But probably only a couple of people know the truth of the matter, and they won’t be saying.