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Healthy Money Healthy Planet - library.uniteddiversity.coop

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10<br />

Household loans (1978-2000)<br />

90<br />

80<br />

70<br />

other household loans<br />

mortgages<br />

60<br />

50<br />

40<br />

NZ$ 30 billions<br />

20<br />

10<br />

0<br />

1978 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000<br />

Source: Bun Ung, Reserve Bank of New Zealand, via email to the author 18 March 2002.<br />

Government Debt<br />

If personal debt is increasing, what is happening to the public debt? Government debt<br />

comes in two forms. First, there is the debt owed to New Zealanders (called NZ$<br />

government debt), which is the money our government borrows from our pension funds<br />

or from individuals. The other form of government debt is overseas debt. Since we have to<br />

pay the latter in US dollars, euros or Japanese yen, it uses up our precious foreign<br />

exchange reserves.<br />

As discussed in Chapter 1, the main way government raises its money is from<br />

taxes. This money has been created and is circulating round the economy. But the second<br />

way it raises money is by borrowing it through the sale of government bonds. The<br />

government prints these bonds and sells them mainly to the banks, but it may also sell<br />

them to overseas buyers. As at June 2000, the total NZ$ debt (mostly in the form of bonds)

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