Inside Money: Forgetting Muldoon, Bulletin updates capital ideas

Prime Minister Robert Muldoon in 1980. Photo / NZ Herald

Digital history begins at Vol 43, No. 1 for the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) 'Bulletin'.

"ON 19TH DECEMBER 1979, THE MINISTER OF FINANCE, THE RIGHT HON. R.D. MULDOON, announced an easing in the reserve asset ratios applied to trading banks and a reduction in the Government Security ratios applied to trustee and private savings banks," the 'Monetary Policy Measures' in Vol 43, no. 1 begins - and more or less ends.

In 1979, of course, what the RIGHT HON. 'Piggy' Muldoon said, went.

These days, the RBNZ has resorted to educating people via the Bulletin, rather than reporting the measures of our masters. For example, the March 2015 Bulletin , featuring the article 'Economic implications of high and rising household indebtedness' looks loaded with lessons.

Like most New Zealanders, I haven't read that one in full. The opening sentence was enough for me: "High and rapidly rising levels of household debt can be risky." That can't end well.

I'll put Vol 78, No. 1 off for another day. But No.3 in the same volume, published this May 2015, provides an excellent summary of how New Zealand's money markets work - or are supposed to work.

'A primer on New Zealand's capital markets' treads the fine line between dumbed-down and tricked-up. As well as including a great chart on page 10 for the 'visual learners', the article explains the lie of the land in simple, relatively jargon-free, language.

"The previous Reserve Bank Bulletin articles describing New Zealand's capital markets were published 20 years ago," the article says. "The landscape has changed dramatically since then - local capital markets have grown substantially, although remain small compared with those in many other advanced economies."

About time they got around to that, then.

The Bulletin itself has changed too since the classic Vol 43: different font, splashes of colour, the odd graph, creative use of white space.

Back in 1980 there was none of that, just a plain black font (Times New?) on a white page, featuring Muldoon rabbitting on about monetary aggregates and boasting: "I have already taken some fiscal measures..."