ninme

WSJ – You Can’t Spend Your Way Out of the Crisis New Zealand’s prime minister wants to give his country a competitive advantage instead.

These days, you have to travel far to find a national leader who is talking about market-based approaches to the global recession. All the way to the other side of the world.

“We don’t tell New Zealanders we can stop the global recession, because we can’t,” says Prime Minister John Key, leaning forward in his armchair at his office in the Beehive, the executive wing of New Zealand’s parliament. “What we do tell them is we can use this time to transform the economy to make us stronger so that when the world starts growing again we can be running faster than other countries we compete with.”

That idea — growing a nation out of recession by improving productivity — puts Mr. Key and his conservative National Party at odds with Washington, Tokyo and Canberra. Those capitals are rolling out billions of dollars in stimulus packages — with taxpayers’ money — to try to prop up growth. That’s “risky,” Mr. Key says. “You’ve saddled future generations with an enormous amount of debt that then they have to repay,” he explains. “There is actually a limit to what governments can do.”

ninme beams

Does New Zealand’s model hold lessons for the Obama administration? Mr. Key says that might be “presumptive.” But he does outline a few general lessons: “Your citizens are entitled to expect you to be realistic . . . to be specific about what it is you’re going to do, what you can or can’t do. And finally, I think, to be confident that you can get through it. Now there’s plenty of doom and gloom merchants out there. But the single biggest risk is that everyone believes them and stops doing anything. I can’t see how that helps us.” What did he learn in his former trade? “It taught me not to panic.”

Read the whole thing. Plus:

The Times – Knights and Dames titles to return to New Zealand

New Zealand is to restore the titles of knights and dames to its honours system, Prime Minister John Key announced today.

The titles, linked to the British honours system, were dropped in 2000 by then Prime Minister Helen Clark’s Labour government in a controversial move that opponents condemned as a move toward a republic.

They were replaced with the titles of Principal and Distinguished Companion of the order which were instituted in May 2000.

Mr Key said he was pleased to return to titles that would recognise service to New Zealand. The move had the approval of Queen Elizabeth II, he said.

I approve as well.

While the move appears to take a step away from republicanism, Mr Key believes it is inevitable that the country will become a republic. Before ousting long time Prime Minister Helen Clark at last year’s election, he told The Times: “There’s an acceptance that it will happen one day, although Australia will move more rapidly toward republicanism.”

Noooo!