Two interesting views, one measured, one strong on mockery (not surprising, given its source):

http://www.bis.org/review/r990707b.pdf
and
http://nzinitiative.org.nz/site/nzinitiative/files/articles/Economic%20Lunacy%20Avoided.pdf

Would that we could see the Act that preceded the 1989 one.

Inflation is always a result of government policy, not increasing wages or prices which are symptoms but the creation of excess money in relation to the underlying assets which is the cause. Money creation in our system is gifted to the private banks who then proceed to profit from the interest earned.
Perversely the Reserve Bank then tries to control the creation of money by manipulating interest rates.
This whole charade could be avoided by nationalising the banks, or some of them, with the added benefit that the interest earned could be used to benefit the country or community .
See Web of debt blog http://webofdebt.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/flyer-state-owned-bank-12-09.pdf

@iankiddle "Inflation is always a result of government policy," Yes. 2% inflation is seen as infinitely better than 2% deflation. So inflation is designed to happen to prevent deflation.

"This whole charade could be avoided by nationalising the banks, or some of them, with the added benefit that the interest earned could be used to benefit the country or community ."

Banks send about $10,000 per Kiwi household to Australia as profits. Banks suck about $20,000 per Kiwi household out of the economy (for the above mentioned profit, as well as operating expenses).

Nationalizing banks is one option.

Another is to require that they all run as credit unions.

Another is to make every household a bank. If I need $200,000 for a house, I could "raise" it through crowd funding, paying back the 10,000 "investors" at a rate better than they get for their money being in a savings account, and I pay less than a regular mortgage. And the RBNZ can "invest" in the banks, as they do today, to control the money supply, to deal with inflation and such without much change over today.

There are lots of problems with banks. We should tackle them. There's a lot of money lost from NZ by the banks.

Another option is a parallel currency for domestic use, interest free (a huge incentive). Refer to my discussion on renewable energy as an interest free currency and universal bonus income (UBI). There are parallels to this and making each household a credit union, as the renewable energy 'income' proposed is perhaps 15% of the energy output forecast for the year, and must be spent or forfeitted. Transfereing it between households and around the domestic economy (but not overseas) is good for New Zealanders (liquid market theory) and goes a long way to address social and fiscal inequality. It makes us think of things in terms of the energy used to acquire, maintain and recycle them, has an environmental imperative, and stops horse trading, if combined with an energy ombudsman who provides transparent appraisal of energy use and abuse, keeping the 'prices' and value consistant which is one of the largest problems we have with the price system under fiat currency and current monetary policy rewarding bad behaviours and stifling innovation.