Mike's Minute: There's no "silver bullet" solution to bringing in more banks

The Mike Hosking Breakfast

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15d ago 1:58

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"MP's struggle to identify silver bullet solutions".

That was the headline Friday as Jenee Tibshraeny detailed a years worth of work by the Finance and Expenditure Committee that has come up with zip.

Oh they have made recommendations, don’t get me wrong.

Imagine what it would look like if they had been toiling away for a year and came up with a blank piece of paper.

But without telling you I told you so... I told you so.

Here is the difference between us and them.

They entered this particular exercise with an ideological or conspiratorial bent.

The opposition and their ideas involve public ownership, Māori banking theories and all sorts of psychobabble that has nothing to do with competition.

The Government has the Nicola Willis idea that this is all a scam, the banks are crooks and they are ripping us off.

I have argued there is no scam, there is plenty of competition and I have become increasingly convinced the issue really lies in the Reserve Bank and their desire for retail banks to hold gargantuan amounts of money in reserve "just in case".

Labour buys into this thinking, which is why they appointed Adrian Orr, who introduced the rules in the first place.

The evidence is all around us.

Is there choice? Do people swap banks a lot? Do banks openly compete for customers? Can you do deals through brokers, or directly? Yes, yes, yes and yes.

Would more banks help? Probably, but there is nothing stopping them opening.

So, the committee has no silver bullet. Do you know why? Because there isn't one.

Because guess what - the system isn't broken.

No, it's not perfect. It's what happens with limited markets and small populations.

As I have said to Nicola Willis all along, if you've got an answer, do it. Pull the trigger, show us your trick and wave your wand.

But one year of searching tells you one thing. If you look at things with an open mind, you wouldn’t have gone down the rabbit hole.

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