The quality of New Zealand bank assets looks reasonably good, even in the face of some fairly demanding stress tests. But we will need to keep watching that situation closely, especially if incomes continue to lag behind what was expected when much of the debt was taken on.
In other words, there is much we can still do to reverse the aggregate productivity slowdown and dispel pessimism about our future. 1 Gordon, R. (2016), The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The US Standard of Living since the Civil  War, Princeton University Press. 2 See Fernald, J.