Good riddance to Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand: A wokester progressive learns that trashing an economy through high inflation and letting crime go wild is no formula for re-election

One of the most obnoxious wokester players on the world stage surprised everyone Wednesday by saying she was calling it quits.

According to The Guardian:

New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, has said she is resigning, in an unexpected announcement that came as she confirmed a national election for October.
At the party’s first caucus meeting of the year on Thursday, Ardern said she “no longer had enough in the tank” to do the job. “It’s time,” she added.
“I’m leaving, because with such a privileged role comes responsibility – the responsibility to know when you are the right person to lead and also when you are not. I know what this job takes. And I know that I no longer have enough in the tank to do it justice. It’s that simple,” she said.
Her term as prime minister will conclude no later than 7 February but she will continue as an MP until the election this year.

It couldn't have come soon enough.

She was a wokester fanatic whose gun-grabbing, China-kowtowing, sneeriness at conservatives, softness on crime, and draconian COVID lockdowns ran New Zealand's economy into the ground and it all just caught up to her.

Despite the international plaudits that brought from the international left, the reason she got out was that she was loathed at home, and wouldn't have been able to win re-election in the general election in October. She didn't want her name attached to the loss to her entire party that was coming. In the last month, her popularity fell to a stunning 29%, from an initial high of 70%.

What was the reason?

Most news accounts say the voters were fed up with her based on the what she made of New Zealand's economy,

The greatest propellant of Ardern’s slide sits mostly outside her control: a set of economic waves that will probably keep pummelling voters well into election year. New Zealand’s reserve bank, staring down an inflation rate of 7.2%, has announced its plans to engineer a “shallow recession” in 2023 to try to jolt the country out of the inflationary cycle. Already, the bank has hiked the official cash rate, driving up homeowners’ mortgage payments. Petrol prices started spiking mid-year, and grocery costs are up 10.7% annually.

Kind of funny how this inflation stuff happens in all blue-run countries where free-spending expansion of government triggers lots of money-printing.

Inflation, of course, is a monetary phenomenon, not a "global" issue, except in the sense that monkey-see, monkey-do seems to be the pattern with leftist leaders around the globe. They all turn on their money presses when they see the others doing the same, and COVID provided the perfect excuse.

Here's a lagniappe to that -- not only did she wreck her economy, she didn't seem interested in fixing what she broke. She got the nation out of its COVID lockdown only so she could get spending again

According to the Guardian:

“Ardern emerged from Covid restrictions with a backlog of policy projects delayed by the intensity of pandemic governance. A packed 2022 schedule included complex reform projects to address greenhouse gas emissions, resource management, water governance, a proposed merger of public broadcasters, and ailing health and criminal justice systems.”

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I don’t see any economy there.

Like Joe Biden, it’s all about the greenie agenda so favored by the global billionaire class. She trashed the economy and despite her protestations later on that she would focus on the economy, she didn’t do anything to fix it. When you don’t care about an economy, why would you ‘waste time’ fixing it?

There is evidence that money printing does NOT create inflation.

There is broad belief that it does.

I point out the magnitude of Japan’s bond buying from the 1990s onward. QE began in Japan. Trillions upon trillions upon trillions of yen.

Yet inflation in Japan since 2000 has been generally zero with two rather brief upticks than never reached even 4%.

The US began it’s trillions of QE in 2008/9, and sub 2% inflation until last year.

Do not think economists have any basis for theories. How can they have any theories about a substance, money, that is created whimsically from thin air by central banks. Why would people think anything about such a substance must obey any sort of “laws of economics”?

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