Depression: read all about it

Photo / Mark Mitchell.

With riveting article titles like 'Anchoring fiscal expectations' and 'Quality of bank capital in New Zealand' it's unlikely that the September issue of the Reserve Bank Bulletin captured the public imagination. My guess is that not one issue in the 71.75 volumes of the Reserve Bank Bulletin published to date has ever captured the public imagination.

And that's a shame because, from what I understand, the Reserve Bank is a powerful institution that has a significant influence on the direction of our economic and social lives. It could be useful for the public to become familiar with the ideas and people who flow through the Reserve Bank and occasionally pop up in the Bulletin.

I've certainly enjoyed flicking through the Bulletin in the last year or so but it's obvious the content can't compete with the more pressing mainstream media issues like disasters, sport, weather and celebrity gossip.

Hence the lack of ads, which for someone like me who operates in a more commercial medium is truly shocking. Really, there was a bit of fat in Matthew Wright's piece 'Mordacious years': socio-economic aspects and outcomes of New Zealand's experience in the Great Depression' that might have been better filled with a quarter-page vertical (Prozac? Viagra?).

From the bits I skimmed it seemed Wright is arguing that the Great Depression in New Zealand wasn't as bad as people thought it was at the time - or as he puts it there was "a disconnection between social effects and the economic experience".

He even quotes John Mulgan, who I only know as the author of 'Man alone', the Depression novel we were forced to read in college. I don't recall anything of the plot but I do remember the dreary, oppressive sense the book induced in me at the time. The man knew about depression - Mulgan died after ingesting an overdose of morphine on Anzac Day 1945.

'Financial crises, sound policies and sound institutions: an interview with Michael Bordo', however, adds a cheerier note to the September Bulletin.

It has the funniest line in the entire issue. Recalling his first ever published academic paper Bordo says: "I'd put in a ton of work - it was one of the best papers I ever wrote. Only a handful of people remember it."

You may be able to track Bordo's masterpiece down in a back issue of the academic journal 'History of political economy'.

 


David Chaplin

 

 

Pictured: A display at the Reserve Bank building in Wellington.  Photo / Mark Mitchell.