Remember New Zealand??
New Zealand was a basket case economically due to years of mishandling of the economy by various governments - with the final nails hammered in the in the economic coffin by the National Government under Prime Minister Robert Muldoon (1975 - 1984).
Things were dire in 1984, the economic ‘cookie jar’ was empty. To stop a run on the New Zealand Dollar the NZ Reserve Bank even had to shut down Foreign exchange dealing of the NZ dollar. This kind of thing is probably where the ‘bankruptcy’ idea came from.
Luckily the incoming labor government had a certain Roger Douglas as Finance Minister, curiously, for a Labor minister he was ‘far right’ economically. He immediately set about floating the currency and bringing in a raft of measures which helped in the short and long term to stabilize the economy and set New Zealand on an upward economic path.
The years of Rogernomics however are remembered for being brutal as NZ’s economy was thrown open to the world and things got much worse for Kiwis before it got better - it is however hard to see how the social impact could have been eased without making New Zealand’s economic adjustment period longer.
Roger Douglas
I think many New Zealanders do not realize how much we owe Roger Douglas .