A good Reserve Bank appointment

The Herald reports:

Finance Minister Nicola Willis has announced that former acting Reserve Bank Governor Grant Spencer has been appointed to the central bank’s board.

Spencer retired from the Reserve Bank (RBNZ) in 2018, having previously been deputy Governor and head of financial stability from 2007 to 2017. He was acting Governor over the six months to March 2018.

He previously told the Herald’s On the Tiles podcast that the central bank could have acted earlier when house prices began rising at the end of 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Instability in housing and moving to huge, unsustainable levels of house prices is not an appropriate strategy for monetary policy,” Spencer said in 2022.

“They should have been taking the foot off the accelerator when they saw the boom coming through in housing in late 2020 and right through 2021.”

Spencer was right. It will be good to have board members with huge experience in monetary policy.