It's outrageous that things have been allowed to get to this point. This country is doomed unless something drastic is done soon. It can surely start by Kiwis taking more responsibility for themselves and their future. Start living within their means and stop expecting to be bailed out by the Govt. We don't have a hope in hell of "closing the gap with Australia" and at this rate it will only widen.

Long-serving bureaucrat is right;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Whitehead_(New_Zealand)

Doubt he's worked a day in the real economy.

Current salary band following his $40K+ pay rise this year, somewhere in the vicinity of $550 - $560K;
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/wages-and-salaries/news/article.cfm?c_id=277&o...

And given his long-service, he'll have got into government before the Government Superannuation Fund (GSF) closed to new entrants. As pension schemes go - there is no better in the history of the nation.

And I'm certain he's got his assets locked up in a Family Trust and no doubt there will be a few rental properties in the portfolio as well.

I suspect the grandkids will be well looked after.

Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear.

I've always said that physics should be part of an economics degree, and here we are.

Crunch-time for divergent philosophies.

Work - and it is fair to say that economic activity is work - reqires energy.

It's immutable, so sorry. Kind of a law of thermodynamics sort of thingy.

So at this point, you can do no more (global average) to up the rate of work. You can have efficiencies - don't drive to the beach, put the fuel into a more essential service, eliminate waste, etc. But up the rate of work? No.

So don't bank on income streams on the backside of the Hubbert Curve, that even equate to the streams we enjoy now.

On that sinking basis, our grandchildren will have to cope with our carbon debt (because the currently-proposed fudge is totally disconnected from ACTUAL reductions) and to contend with an untenable global population. Also with our other pollution efforts - basically we will give them the rubbish, and no fuel (read, room to manoeuvre) to address it with.
In a global sense, no trees, no fish, dirty water, droughts, degradation, and nonsense infrastructure (highways and stadiums built now are a sheer waste of the remaining energy).

Whether it be by pandemic, war, starvation or thirst, and whether those paradigms are caused by climate change, degradation or physical competition, is what would be useful to investigate. Best estimates are 2 billion global population at subsistence level, maybe only one billion at our level.

Productivity gains? You've got to be kidding me, Bernard. A deckchair.

There isn't the stored fossil (think about the name) fuel left to underwrite the activity needed to service the total global 'debt' now. By a good margin. America will NEVER pull out, for instance. There havn't been the real resources to underwrite the 'wealth' numbers , for some time now.

Those of us who look at energy, have discussed for some time whether there will have to be a general debt-forgiveness, on that basis. And indeed, whether growth-based fiscal systems can morph to permanent non-growth without fatally haemorrhaging.

I'll start the debate off with a statement: no rate of exponential growth is sustainable within a finite system.
Ask any algal bloom.
The planet is a finite system. So is New Zealand. So is a river. And a farm.

So instead of growth, we need to ascertain a level of activity which is sustainable,and hand on the planet/country in no-worse-than-that state, every generation. It's called 'a going concern'. We're a mile from doing that, we're stuffing the place completely in one 200-year orgy.

Any other approach is an insult to those grandchildren, in fact I nowadays suggest that to visit a debt (not necessarily a fiscal debt) on them that they haven't signed up to, is fraud.

The last thing they'll be worried about is some irrelevant numbers electronically-stored forty years ago.

Whitehead has done one thing useful - he's started the debate. Let's just ensure it's based on truths, rather than on artificial constructs of oxymoronic hue like 'economic growth'.

Grandy, most of them live them for today and whatever that entails - don't worry about tomorrow, y'know, she'll be right. Most don't see that their actions today have consequences down the line. Short-sighted, selfish, lazy, greedy - you get the idea. There's a little bit of some or all of those things in most of us I suspect, but it takes effort to change and so most people don't change.

I'm not advocating that people don't live in the present for fear of what tomorrow might bring, just that they make allowances for it. Simply consider consequences. So few people seem to do this.

Its a clash between "slow and steady wins the race" and "better to boom and bust than never to boom at all"

"I'll start the debate off with a statement: no rate of exponential growth is sustainable within a finite system.
Ask any algal bloom.
The planet is a finite system. So is New Zealand. So is a river. And a farm.

So instead of growth, we need to ascertain a level of activity which is sustainable,and hand on the planet/country in no-worse-than-that state, every generation. It's called "˜a going concern'. We're a mile from doing that, we're stuffing the place completely in one 200-year orgy."

So true Powerdownkiwi. The orgy is coming to an end (no pun intended) I just hope we don't all end up with STD's

Sorry stevek, but the orgy is just beginning - look at house prices rising.

If younger generations want to make a stand they need to do so on property because it is likely the biggest investment someone will make. Undermine the value of a house and you undermine the ability of the older generations to continue to cream money from the system.

In addition, you become in a position to save money for your future.

If we stopped accepting wealthy older immigrants from over seas we'd further stop the housing bubble and again have jobs for our college and university graduates who'd have no problems saving for their retirement if the burden of tax and property didn't rob them of their freedom from day one.

Wild Bill has reiterated that this Gumnut will not even look at extending the retirement age . One of their core promises . Don't make promises you can't keep , Bill , as the child-bride reminds me daily . ( why did they " me too " to all of Labour's unaffordable " packages ". A drover's dog would've beaten Queen Helen in that election )

Why are people attacking John Whitehead ? He is giving us the transparency and honesty , that we bay for . Pity Cullen wasn't so honest over the ACC accounts . JW is able to speak out now ( MC would've derided every utterance , in his inimtable Cullen smirky smart-arse way ) . I applaud you JW . Give the Gumnut and the public the truth ( or your opinion ) with both barrels . 'Cos the future is debt ridden and scarey , if we continue on this trajectory .

20 years - two whole decades - Treasury have been warning Gumnuts and the public of our looming retirement problem . So I'm not just picking on the previous Labour Gumnut . But they did fog over our problems with political expediency . And shouted down dissenting voices ( electoral finance bill , anyone ! ) . So that was 9 years wasted . In fact our taxation system got even more warped out of balance by Cullen's " packages " , wheeled out prior to each election , for his chosen voters ( students / working families with 2 or more kiddies / etc. ) . But now the Nat's . First 100 days in office , and it was a hive of activity , guns blazing in all directions at once . And as the dust settled , nothing of real substance achieved . We get to keep our incandescent light bulbs.........Aha , anything more than that on the horizon , team ?

I feel the message is starting to filter through. Borrowing from overseas to fund your home, no action on real productivity, out of touch CEO and public sector wages.

The piper has come and is asking to be paid. If we dont do anything, right now, then aptly, your kids and grandkids will leave.

Or we open the floodgates to Asia under the quise of free trade and the party continues.

Actually, nobody is 'paying their way'.

I'm talking globally and physically. If you don't get that right, and very soon, any talk of' 'retirement' is somewhat optimistic.

Deckchairs on an ever-sloping deck.

Steven, Roger - I'm not attacking what John Whitehead might have to say - I'm holding him up as a prime example of what is at the core of the problem with Western democracy since the neo-liberal 'New Public Management' ideology was brought in. We have a system of crony capitalism - we have a system whereby government runs under a model akin to private sector management (and legitimates these excessive salaries in that way)... and all this leads to our ever widening income disparity.

Read John Whitehead's first Long Term Fiscal Statement for example. That was a similar 40-year forecast - and from my brief look over it - he forecast none of this. He doesn't mention anything about 'asset bubbles', let alone caution us about our excesses and the unsustainable inflationary credit creation of the time, or the insane gearing that was going on, or the danger of the level of related-party transactions in our financial markets. He was the Treasury Secretary who oversaw the greatest level of 'Mom and Pop' wealth depletion this country has likely ever seen. And in this maiden LTFS speech, he refers to his good mate, Mr Dangerfield the then CEO of the Ministry of Economic Development (another half million dollar man) - who was in change of the Companies Office, the regulatory body that failed in its duty to regulate and protect those investments on behalf of the investor public.

John Whitehead, like all the economists at the London School of Economics as questioned by the Queen (one of the only people I've seen actually ask this profession why it was so delinquent), similarly failed to predict this economic crisis and recessionary cycle. What is economics? It is a predictive science.

Well, like all other overpaid predictors, he got it wrong - woefully wrong. And he still has his $500K job.

@ gingerbreadman Says:
October 30th, 2009 at 8:34 am

I bloody well hope (sooner rather than later). It'll help us out of this mess....our present invertebrates in charge certainly have no idea what to do...apart go on 50k "fact finding" missions with their new birds.

It looks like those approaching retirement age are in need of every cent they can lay their hands on, according to this article on www.stuff.co.nz

"Debt levels have risen 49 per cent in three years, collection agency Baycorp says."
"People aged between 46 and 55 were responsible for the highest level of debt, sitting at $906, up 32 per cent from $686 in 2005.

The group with the biggest increase in debt was the 55 to 65-year-olds, who now owed on average $901, compared with $665 in 2005, a 35 per cent rise."

Well here we are again all these intelligent? people discussing and promoting ideas that they do not have the experience to comment on. If you know the basic rules of business then you will know that excessive overheads will kill any business,; which essentially n.z is. The public servants? you speak of do not have to make a profit to justify thier existance unlike the private sector who if they don,t do not have a job. Reduce the overheads and all will be right. To simple??? come on get your brains up to speed.

OVER THEIR HEADS......BRIAN.

Go PEC...

Treasury makes New Zealand's stark future plain, says PEC

Congratulations to John Whitehead for his characteristically candid report on the few remaining options we have unless there is radical change, says PEC spokesperson Selwyn Pellett.

"Treasury's 2009 "˜40 year outlook' report delivers a message that basically says: "grow up New Zealand, the soft options have gone". We just hope our politicians have the wisdom to read it from cover to cover and absorb the reality it portrays," says Pellett.

"What it doesn't do is talk of radical change in how we could increase our income and of course that's where exporters are so critical to our future and solving this imbalance."

"Farming exports can't double and yet our need for foreign currency and tax revenue will. We need a paradigm shift as a country in how we invest in technology as that's the only way we can bridge the growing gap between income and expenditure," says Pellett.

"We are a small, smart and nimble country and we are being forced to play by big, dumb and clumsy rules. That's not a winning formula and so mums and dads need to think hard about how much debt they wish to inflict on their children," he says.

"The better alternative is to start investing in Nation building activities instead of this perpetual focus on consumption. We can ensure our children have better options left to them than has been left by the self indulgent baby boomers around the world."

"We need to build a generation that aspires to be socially responsible capitalists. Where business grows up supporting the people in its community and the community grows up knowing that the business success is their success," says Pellett.

"We have never seen this equitable balance and without it our chances of significantly changing our future are slim."

"The reality is that one generation must pay the price of fixing the previous generation's folly. Unless they stand to benefit from the outcome it's a hard sell for any political party. Going without now for no gain in the future doesn't wash, but go without now for a better future for your children and grandchildren just might," says Pellett.

@ Les, that last sentence of your quote rings absolutely true for me. I don't even have kids but I'd be happy to sacrifice some things now for the sake of future generations. Surely even Blind Freddy can see that the road we're currently on is not sustainable and is just going to lead to a bigger mess down the line. I'm perfectly capable of living within my means and not being a burden on the state (never received a benefit or payout of any description) and am happy to continue doing so. Without decent education and healthcare future generations are not off to the best start. Though having said that, I also believe that a lot of that begins at home through attentive parenting, good nutrition, good work ethics etc.

I also believe that we should have some sort of compulsory super and WAY more than a 2% minimum contribution level. Teach people to take responsibility for themselves. If Australia can do a 9% contribution surely that's what we should be aiming for? You can't tell me they get paid 4.5 times what we get paid! Most people need to get real and stop expecting the Govt to come to their rescue.

Brian - the basic rules of business? Spare me.

I'll try and make the message simpler - you can'r eat or breathe dollars.

And if you think the free market will fix everything, why join in the conversation?

Yeah right -give me a sunburnt country.......oops no water.

Lack of vision and leadership have resulted in a country that acts like companies run by accountants. Accountants know how to cut costs till their is no company at all, but few have any idea how to grow the top line and thats what we need now.

I agree with you on virtually nothing Selwyn but I agree with you on this.

However, the vision you look for, entrepreneurship, is without argument best engendered by and in a free market: by advocating against a free market, as you do, you are handing over the economy (and your life) to a bunch of vision-less accountant types in Wellington. They are precisely the ones in the way, siphoning off their salaries, while issuing their moribund rules on rules on rules ...

No point making shovels in NZ Walter: you're not allowed to dig anything with them. Or rather, you make one shovel, and two bureaucrats are hired by Local Government, under the appropriate enacting Central Government legislation, to consent, or often not, the use of that shovel. And then of course there's OSH to make sure the person using the shovel has a written plan for how he's not going to hurt himself with the shovel, and then ACC, for just in case he does. That shovel, it's going to cost us lots, and is a net move backwards for the productive sector.

Especially important:
To make our economy going again: In stead of stupid throwing dead rabbits, why not some st.., deaf politicians ?

Mark, is Selwyn advocating against a fre market.

I interpret his vision as being a free market in the trade of tangible goods and tangible labour ... one in which fiat currency trading is neither.

Kate we are for "Productivity" all the way. One size (solutions) dont fit all problems as we know.

We are happy to borrow ideas from the left, right and center to get the ideas that best solve the problems we face. Have we as a nation lost our problem solving ability

This is not a religious based discussion where we have to believe or get excluded, its logic and while some solutions will be better than others all should be considered.

The problem is we have made neo-liberalism a "god" that can't be challenged! Well I'm challenging it and I'm hard out on that point.

We need to stop the unproductive excesses of the free market and that includes banks and FX traders screwing up economies just for short term profits.

Our dollars volatility is the single biggest obstacle to long term investment in our productivity and until that's fixed we can't even start on the job of Nation building.

We can fix it but not while we are swallowing the religion of neo-liberalism. Throw it out and start from first principles

Selwyn,

The NZD has experienced only a relatively short period of significant instability, due to underlying imbalances in the global economy. This instability is in fact a symptom of corrective free market forces at play.

Regulation of markets (in whatever form) ultimately leads to inefficiency. Inefficient markets leave us all poorer.

Of course given your chosen role as that of an exporter your desire for fx control is no great surprise.

Mitch says: Regulation of markets (in whatever form) ultimately leads to inefficiency. Inefficient markets leave us all poorer.

Mitch are we talking fact or Neo Liberalism religion here?. If it's religion than you win as that's the commonly stated view and well swallowed.

But if we are talking fact "¦..in the first 20 odd days of this month and after we had announced a possible 0.2% increase in GDP our exchange rate increased by 4.5% (from memory). Singapore after announcing a 15% increase in GDP went up around a 1/3rd of that. Strange that.

Singapore doesn't listen to Neo Liberalism and guess that's why they can now buy and sell us. Efficient"¦oh yes I think so. By the way Mitch do you think the global collapse we have just been through was efficient. Any ideas as to who caused it and who is coming out of it the fastest. We have to protect our economic sovereignty in the same way as Singapore has.

Hi Bernard

Could you please do an investigation where the 9b surplus gone? I believe many people want to know that.

Someone mentioned Singapore and how well they do. Don't forget Singapore has (almost) an open door migration policy since the 80s and will take all skilled imigrants. Here in NZ, I know so many qualified people came to NZ and ended up doing odd job because no-body will give them a decent job. Most employers are using the excuse "you haven't any new Zealand experience" - who do we think we are? A country with 4 mil people and huge anount of debt!

Mark, so the Mises way would see the abolishment of central banking and the reintroduction of a gold standard;
http://mises.org/story/2882

But of course this cannot be decided or accomplished locally here in NZ, can it?

I think Selwyn is looking for something we can do locally.

Free markets are only retroactive. I prefer my society to be intelligently governed, and "“ until the fiscal system falls over "“ the public service should outperform the private by the margin of profit.

The reasons for the chains of state that bind me are evidenced in this dreadful sentence. How can someone in a free country (ostensibly) write something as ludicrous as this? It defeats me utterly.

Go back thirty years, powerdown - and you got that right, there's nothing there - take a plane, (warning, it won't be a safe one because it was made in a command economy), to Soviet Russia, and there, right there, you'll have everything you just asked for in that sentence of yours.

Kate, I need a biblical curse, you know the one ....

Andy M, that sounds like an incentive and a half! It doesn't disadvantage those that choose (or have no choice due to ill health etc) to take it at 65, and rewards those that can and will defer taking it. I haven't thought it out much past that yet, there are bound to be pitfalls, but a great idea on the face of it.

And what do we say to the young trying to get on the job ladder, Andy M?
"Sorry, there's no job as there's a log jam at the far end...". I appreciate the sentiment, but at some stage we have to give everyone a shot at a job, and if you haven't made enough, or saved enough, by 65-odd, why penalise those who might?
The current generation are caught between 'what they were promised', when they started work ( agree with it or not) and being able to do something about it at a stage that's, for some, probably too late.

Stupid edit function! I can't go back and insert words I missed out.......it lets me go in, but not save.

Mark - you live in a temporary paradise, and make the mistake of assuming it to be permanent.

And don't equate what happened in Russia with the kind of leadership we need now - it was an extractive (therefore temporary) regime too.

We are currently chewing through the resources of the planet at threee times the sustainable rate. You can turn that around, and say that there are three times too many of us here.

That - allied with exponential growth - ensures that 'business as usual;' is not a permanent option.

You can advocate hitting that wall in dog-eat-dog fashion if you want (but most folk like you tend to have reasons - vested interests or current leverage - for not acknowledging that there is a wall at all) or we can be a mature society, and address it in mature fashion.

It's a biggie. Other societies have been this way before, with 100% failure rate. This is the first time we have run the experiment on a global scale - no precedent and no planB.

So far, I haven't heard many intelligent suggestions as to how to address the limits to growth, or any constructive suggestions as to how our species uses it's knowledge to avoid overshoot (too late) and collapse (close).

By the way, who bailed the free market out recently? The taxpayers of the world, via their governments, seems to me. Except that it was a waste of time - the debt can't be repaid.

You should read Nevile Shute's 'Slide Rule' (he was an engineer with Barnes Wallis before he was a writer) on the diffo between public and private. Both depend on intelligence, and both fail without it. Note he only made money (from Airspeed) when the Govt bought it.

Let me guess, you think growth can go forever, that wealth is not related to the physical planet, that we can tech our way out of any problem, climate change is a hoax, and that getting the poor wealthy is the answer - and is do-able?

How did I go?

powerdown, we are not growing at three times our resources. Prove it.

Also, I said nothing about leadership, I said the type of society/system you described in your sentence was a controlled, command economy (and all controlled economies can only work via control of the people.)

So:

a) You believe in the Big State, actually, the Huge State, public service doing everything, command economy, and:

b) Now I see your thinking in the above post is that 'there are three times too many' people.

Have to say, it's starting to sound a bit ominous. Your stated preference is for the very type of society in which that supposed over-population problem can be remedied. I wouldn't want to be living there. Humanity has been to the dark place you would wish to take us: it was a disaster.

Mark - don't assume. I said nothing about an'economy', despite you mentioning it thrice.

As we type, oil (the most energy-dense, most transportable of stored energies - and they're ALL stored solar energy) is being pumped produced and burnt at the rate of 1000 barrels a second. Nuclear only does electricity, and is another finite resource.

Good luck feeding 9 billion in 2050 - oh, of course, you can do it on lignite. With an ERoEI of what? 6.5 at mine mouth? Good luck...

Sum sums required, methinks...

Yes, it will be a dark place for humanity. We've squandered the time we could have addressed to problem. War, pandemic and starvation are the obvious probabilities, but I still reckon it's worth giving it a 'heave'. Nothing to lose, and I've gone a long way down the track demonstrating how.

But discussing whether we'll still get 'the super' at 65, is a deckchair. Put it down to cognitive dissonance.

powerdownkiwi said: "By the way, who bailed the free market out recently? The taxpayers of the world, via their governments, seems to me. Except that it was a waste of time "“ the debt can't be repaid".

powerdownkiwi - manifestly a 'free market' was not bailed out recently. What occurred was that a gerrymandered - essentially socialist/fascist system - was given a further lien on the earnings of ordinary Americans, Poms, Kiwis etc. As Friedrich von Hayek was at pains to point out fascism is the logical, and inevitable, endpoint of socialism - which begins benignly enough - but ultimately morphs into the sort of 'corporate statism' we see today.

The true capitalists and libertarians would never have allowed things to get to the ridiculous state that required the bailout. Why, because they would have insisted on sound money - whose supply could not be expanded at whim by those 'high priests of corporate welfare' the bankers. Moreover, in capitalist and libertarian circumstances - were an inevitably smaller banking system to behave without due prudence - the capitalist/libertarian axis would have allowed the offending financial institutions to go bust and respective shareholders to be wiped out.

The great irony of the whole bailout is that it occurred - not because of an excess of free market zeal - but because of a disgraceful lack thereof.

The most intelligent way to limit growth is to eliminate the spending of income that has yet to be earned. The way to do this is via a restoration of the classical gold standard - which will prevent bankers creating vast quantities of 'debt money' that then sets off in pursuit of houses, cars, energy etc. People, and nations, would be forced to 'cut their cloth' according to their circumstances, instead of creating a lien on future generations income via irredeemable debt, created for the benefit of - yes you've guessed it - the bankers. Of course, this also relates to resource/climate change debate and we should remember that the (socialist) political elites that talk most piously on this issue comprise the very hypocrites who simultaneously urge us to consume, consume, consume! This is a key reason why I am intensely suspicious of the whole man-made climate change argument. I would not buy a used car from the politicians involved so why would I buy their claims of climate change?

Winston Churchill, when commenting on the British and Commonwealth pilots who fought so stoically during the Battle of Britain famously noted: "never, in the field of human conflict, has so much been owed by so many to so few".

Perhaps, as a Pom, I might borrow from Winnie and offer an observation on the socialists/fascists who have fought so stoically on behalf of the bankers: "never, in the field of human usury, has so much been owed by so few to so many".

# gingerbreadman Says:
October 30th, 2009 at 1:56 pm

Someone mentioned Singapore and how well they do. Don't forget Singapore has (almost) an open door migration policy since the 80s and will take all skilled imigrants. Here in NZ, I know so many qualified people came to NZ and ended up doing odd job because no-body will give them a decent job. Most employers are using the excuse "you haven't any new Zealand experience"

The way we kiwis do things are different. There is no way immigrants can fit in without kiwi experience, no matter how well qualified. In any case, their qualifications and foreign experience are inferior compared to us kiwis.

Malcolm - I'd go with that, if I was convinced it were so. I still think the last 'doubling time' would catch you out, but relating 'wealth' to 'reality' would be a fantastic thing.

Wally - I had a word for today - Growth:

growth domethtic product.

Very clear now isn't it....the Beehive plan involves waiting until the screams for change drown out the pigs at the trough and only then will we hear something like..."look if that's what the voters are demanding, then who are we to stand in the way"...by which time the party property speculators will have slipped the net and it will be all gain/no pain. Don't ya just love them.

Is it just me or is this powerdown joker talking to himself? Troll alert

The predatory lending privately owned international banking network that lend the nations of the world more created credit than they have the means to create payment, in order to drive public necessities into the hands of their subsidiary corporations, would be clapping their hands in glee at the prospect of generation blaming generation, Black blaming White, Muslim blaming Christian etc, anything but anyone turning their attention to the Money Masters, those that loaned us a basketball size of created credit when there is only enough natural resources to create a tennis ball size for repayment. The repeated ethos of spreading the debt over generations has only seen generations lumbered with debt crisis and forced to sell assets until repeated cycles of this scam have seen much of the necessities of life concentrated in the hands of the privately owned international banking network and their transnational corporate subsidiaries.
Please, dont make it so easy for them, they will be having a great laugh in private, behind the diplomatic curtain, with John Key, their man down here on sabatical.

@Wally: The Govn will sell off yet more assets to pay down debt it cant otherwise paydown and it will get our "blessing" as we wont want any other pain....I see that as a fact...its the only option left....then of course our balance of payments goes to custard as foreign companies export the profits....and we the consumer pay "global" rates for everything on NZ wages....so instead of increasing tax today we fork out more tomorrow, net we are worse off....but for some reason the voter/consumer cant see that.

@steven - Nick Smith is an engineer - however he conveniently went straight into politics so has no actual experience. Just a couple of days ago someone made the comment that it's very telling he's never had any responsibility in areas related to his actual training - his incompetence would be even more grating otherwise.

John Whitehead is a "careful and dry mandarin"? Really? He's always struck me as an easily excitable right-wing zealot. Beside, if he has the slightest clue what the New Zealand economy will look like in 2050 then I'll eat his beard.

Iain Parker said: "I ask again, are we already under some form of receivership statutory management? Can you please ask for a "please explain" Bernard?"

Iain, as always, your analysis is impressive and compelling! I have also mentioned, in conversations with people recently, my suspicion that 'liquidation terms' are currently being advanced for New Zealand. This would tie in with plans for mining the National Parks because it would facilitate cheap resources for external interests, and it would provide the concomitant 'humiliation' that the usurer loves to impose by assaulting the New Zealand psyche. My view is that the only thing we should contemplate extracting from National Parks is gold and silver - because these are once and future 'money' which, if used wisely, could help restore our capital and national independence. No doubt we would disagree on this point, but one of the things that truly alarms me is if we get to the 'endgame' where the 'banksters' ultimately force a situation in which debt can only be redeemed with precious metals. This would be the Pièce de résistance of all previous heists, with the world's 'capital' effectively sequestered by the banking elite and debt for the average person - and country - perpetually irredeemable.

The only point where I really diverge from your 'receivership statutory management' hypothesis is in the suggestion that another - even more disturbing reason for unfolding events - may exist. It is a matter that may be entirely explicable - but it certainly requires examination and, if time allows, this will be covered at www.nzgold.org in the next week. At least I think it will stimulate debate!

Very good comments on water. Kiwi beware, because this is the perfect 'hyper-gear' as councils are encouraged to borrow to install expensive infrastructure - with a lien on your future earnings via rates, from which a burgeoning share will go to the 'banksters' as tribute. It will be fascinating, 10 years from now, to see how much of your rates goes to providing services - and how much to servicing debt.

Speaking with my Pommy hat on: "New Zealand has been done like a dogs dinner"!

"Servicing debt"...the Kiwi way of life for sure.

Actually Mark, your denail is only a denial of the 'little picture'.

Think about it. There was a period called the Carboniferous. Now why would it ever have been called that?

The period unfortunately was unsuitable for us as a species - no matter how rich or self-important, we would have been dead.

Trees and photosynthetic organisms thrived, died, and gradually became the stored carbon of today - coal and oil.

If we dig them all up and release the carbon, we re-create the Carboniferous period, and we all die.

How much the planet is or isn't warming one particular year, is irrelevant. As I said, cognitive dissonance. Malcolm put it better, above.

Our obligation - our only obligation - is to hand on the planet in as-found condition every generation. I don't care if you make a billion or a dollar, stay within that yardstick and it's fine by me.

The trouble is that people like you don't want to stay within that confine, and then argue for your position from your slewed outlook. You just want to mine some more areas, dam a few more rivers, chop a little bush.... eating your way with increasing speed through a finite block of chocolate.

You're not alone, but you.......

Gotta be wrong.

Suggest you google: Prof Albert Bartlett / Mankind's biggest failure .....(the exponential function)

Then get up to speed with: The Hubbert Curve / Hubbert linearisation / depletion / finite resources.

A good google graph is: Campbell 2004 scenario

Note the green band - the USA has followed the Hubbert prediction for decades.

Finally, to matriculate, check out ERoEI - Energy return on energy invested.

Sorry, but arguing big-picture from ascertained physics, chemistry, history and maths, is a far better way to go that to set out to defend a desired way of life.

But you'll likely just hold grimly onto that deckchair....notice the tilt?

Isn't the irony that the greatest examples of environmental degradation in history have invariably occurred under left-wing auspices? Could this be because, in his derangement and conceit, the socialist perceives himself as master of all he surveys. Indeed, so absolute is his power that he apparently can even control the climate on Earth. Then how long before his omnipotence means he controls the climate in the solar system - and then the universe.

This is what I have always found with those 'on the left'. They can never accept they are just transient and momentary players in the great mysteries of life. No! They are unique in all of history. They must be consumed with guilt for the past and the future - not because they really care - but because their colossal egos demand omnipotence and omnipresence.

Don't wanna rain on your parade , Wally , but I thought that gathering wood and sea-weeds off the beaches had been banned . Something about preserving niche environments for insects and the like . Correct me if I'm wrong ............. .Bizarre era we live in . There are just so many " I know best " fools in this world , dictating what we can and cannot do . Recall Rodney Hide telling Helen Clark that it would be simpler if she banned everything , then drew up a small list of the things she deemed were legal for us to do .

It's a laugh Roger.

To be fair, this link below is to put an American perspective on rorts and snouts in the trough and blatant reward for shafting.

I like to have a balanced view....have a look at the right hand DOW/NASDAQ

They must be FED-UP too.

Some of the comments below the article are as wacky as some here, mine included.

Some are very apt.

Wonder if anyone we know went??.

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/10/30/fed-holds-its-meetings-at-posh-re...

Anyway some people are not losing out there in the good ole USA .... either.

Wonder why, wonder how.

Must be Bernankes version of fiddling while the TAXPAYER burns.

His quote...

Still, given the backlash over lavish spending by financial institutions, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke told ABC News that the Fed should take a look at what it's doing and issue guidelines for future meetings to avoid such controversies in the future.

Powerdownkiwi - when you view the world through the eyes of a NZ objectivist there is precious little to the right of you - ergo most everyone else must be a leftist.

Hence Mark Hubbard's strident declamation of AGW, resource depletion and peakoil. Such phenomena threaten the objectivists world view (which is in effect laissez faire on steroids) and so all must be leftist plots. I'm afraid all you get out of MH on such subjects is vague pronouncements on as yet undreamed of technology coming to our rescue etc.

Objectivism and science are two travellers who are not destined to meet on any highway I am aware of..........

Powerdownkiwi - you are not entirely right to conlude "you can't inject enough to redress the currently-held debt, it can never be repaid".

Certainly, in terms of currently valued dollars, pounds, Euros, Kiwis etc - the instruments of debt money - that have driven so much of the 'economic growth' and concomitant resource consumption you lament - our liabilities can never be repaid. Yet wasn't this always the 'banksters' objective, enslavement of the many, in an affront to human dignity, that would not have been possible without his socialist/fascist supplicants that have infested government and civil services for decades. So now we must either directly default, which will destroy demand for resources, or we must 'quasi -default' via the printing press - in order to repay the debts with worthless currency. This would explode the nominal - but not the real price of resources - because the underlying deflationary financial pathology would remain. Either way a massive 'living standard disappointment' lays ahead and the ruling elite can handle this one of two ways - admit the fraud, or persuade Joe Public that he must now embrace a 'sackcloth and ashes' impoverishment in order to save the world. Within this won't climate change do nicely?

The chorus line of interventionists need to reflect. The socialist/fascist 'axis' has already delivered you to conditions of effectively irredeemable debt - via an illusion of prosperity - that has created artificial demand for the resources that you claim to worry over. They have robbed you of so many of your civil liberties, and the underpinnings of a civil society. They have forced countries, like New Zealand, into a situation where we may even have to plunder our national parks for resources (sold at a potentially derisory price) to meet the nation's liquidation terms.

As a frequent visitor to the Philippines , I heartily endorse Mark Hubbard's view that the Catholic Church ought to be banned ! The great and greedy manipulator of lives , oppressor of women , hider of paedophiles , impoverisher of poor nations , needs to be seen for the enormous evil it perpetrates . The head , el Poppa , is a former Hitler Youth Movement member . And that kind of sums up these utter fools and thieves . We have endured their nonsense for centuries . Time to say " no more " .

This coming from a middle aged man who frequently visits the Phillippines....

What are you saying , Shorts . Thin ice , pal !!!

Wally, A literary man, with literally a good idea.

However, I think he needs Spurs, though he would probably want to watch em play at home.

A JON-KEY on a JUNKET...you might say, but I could possibly not.

What a farce. What does he need for a MAN-DATE for a change.

He could go to the UN so to speak.

They need one too. It would be so simple. But simple people cannot see the obvious.

United we Stand, divided we FALL.

And not that damn UNITED. JOHN......we need to watch and play at HOME.

Hi

A couple of thoughts:

1. Make saving for retirement more attractive, for example allow any pension contributions to be deductible against income tax. But to cap any contributions that that can be made to a percentage of income. but allow this percentage to increase with age.

2. Introduce Capital Gains Tax on "second homes" the growth of which is largely due to the tax advantages these provide, being seen by many as a reliable and tax effective way of saving for retirement.

3. Increase over a period of 30 years the retirement age from 65 to 70, to say 67 after 10 years, to 69 after 20 and to 70 after the full 30 year period.

Bernard has a column in today's NZ Herald . A 10 point plan . Good stuff , but this Gumnut is too gutless to take it on . As ideas at 30? above , no shortage of things Wild Bill and Jelly Key ought to start on . No backbone in this crop of Nats. , sadly .

Roger - what convinced you that CGT is, "Good stuff" ??

Les : Well.......9 out of 10 points were " good stuff " . CGT stinks .

Jimmy : el Poppa told African nations , a hot-bed of Catholicsm and AIDS , that condoms would remain verbotem ......... Idiot ! ( him , not you )

Bernard: I heard from a friend tonight who told me the prisons were going to be contracted to a private company out of OZ. Have you heard anything?

But thats an aside, peak oil is going to kill lots of ppl first

Really, kill people? What, are they going to fall in the stuff and drown.

Show me your science on peak oil?

I've put up links to peer reviewed scientific articles before that question AGW, if I get time I'll do so tonight, though I've got a busy week. But in the meantime, give me your thoughts, Steven on Physicist Howard Hayden's one letter disproof of global warming:

http://www.stephankinsella.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/HaydenToJackso...

Do you support an ETS on New Zealand production? Even when the Green Party on their own Frogblog admit it has nothing other than a 'symbolic' meaning, it won't affect anything.

@Mark H. Ive read it...one more kook....There is more than enough links to AGWers and Deniers sites....

Science on peak oil,

There is one fact that is indesputable, we are on a finite planet, therefore oil cannot be infinite...this isnt science its maths.

Second Fact, Peak oil discovery was in 1964 (or there abouts), today oil discoveries are miniscule and what they find are expensive to extract.

Third fact: We now consume significanlty more than we find...

So, anybody should be able to determin from these three facts that at some point a maximum extract rate per day of crude oil has to occur, ie peak oil....the Q is when...

Looking at the released data for crude oil that was 2005~2008...since 2005 (ish) the small growth has been from condensates and alternatives and non-conventionals...

The maths, engineering and geology of oil are all well understood and well picked over. The oil industry has been very proftable, so they have invested heavily back in as it gave good returns...

ETS has some good points...it may not be the best method but putting an economic price on poisioning our back yard so we dont do it maybe the only workable way.

Mark, to my mind you are totally fanatical to the point of blindness to anything that does not meet your view...so what are you trying to achieve here? convince 99% of the population that you are right? The first thing to recognise is, there is no "right" People chose the society they live in, 99% of NZ broadly has a society they want...ie a mixture of socialism/capitalism. Its being corrupted certainly by those out for their own gain, and that needs fixing...but this is broadly what ppl want...

regards

regards

...old age tax, working age tax, youth tax. I don't think increasing taxes on the future is a solution - it just buys more misguided time to waste.

We already have a Child Tax - it's called GST.

The ETS as promulgated is a rort. Taxpayes fund big businesses. Nothing to do with reducing emissions -which is the fundamental problem.

Steven - you're probably right - it smacks of unthinking fundamentalism, people like him ran the Inquisition and the Salem witch-hunts. All backed by 'good science', no doubt !

What he doesn't realise is that there isn't the carbon sink on the planet to sink the carbon - short of leaving it in situ - so his precious "the economy" is stuffed anyway.

Remind me again about the bit where someone with a social concience threw the money-lenders out of the temple........

Here, if you follow the 'Shop' link you can buy a copy of Cultural Amnesia. Excellent book, and an excellent, humanist based site:

http://www.clivejames.com/

Steven said: "We've had the free market experiment, its failed, in fact it might yet fail so badly that we'll all be in a bad way".

Steven, one of the greatest cons that has been visited upon Joe Public - decade after decade - is to convince him that we have had a 'free market'. For the socialist/fascist axis this is the vehicle for a new oppressive order because - having erroneously blamed the 'free market' for all our ills, Joe Public will foolishly accept the hypothesis and beg for authoritarianism. He will then go on to meekly accept his own impoverishment.

As a refugee from Nazi Germany, at the London School of Economics in 1944, Friedrich von Hayek published his masterpiece "The Road to Serfdom". In that classic he reminded us, that even back then, there were few people alive who could remember genuine 'free markets' and genuine liberty for, even by 1944, these things had largely passed into history. I don't agree with everything Mark Hubbard says, but he is absolutely right that a fair, free, and prosperous society has to be reposed on the basis of individual liberty. When I consider this whole global warming hysteria I am drawn to the infamous words of my countryman - the politician Enoch Powell: "those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad". Look at Britain, where the government subsidizes mass immigration (and baby production) - and then vilifies the existing population for 'the nation's growing carbon footprint'. Politicians were told in the 1970s that the probable optimum population was around some thirty millions. So why did they decide to literally overwhelm the place - with huge 'carbon footprint implications'. Simple (as has recently been acknowledged) they wanted the mass importation of people who would vote for the re-distributive left, rather than the ideas of individualism and liberty upon which the British nation had long reposed.

An important point from Wally. The socialists/marxists (I prefer socialists/fascists) and the so called 'Nationalists' share a commonality of purpose. That is why voting Labour, or voting National, makes no real difference. With Labour there is simply more emphasis on social welfare, whilst with National more emphasis on corporate welfare. A destructive 'pincer' between which the middle class, the small business owners, the believers in personal responsibility, and financially thrifty are crushed.

Goodness, what's this powereddown and Steven, the ice isn't melting - could there be no global warming. Indeed, this is starting to confirm the depth of the current cooling:

http://www.weatherwatch.co.nz/content/ice-melt-easing

Quote:

Apparently last summer, the ice melt in Antartica was at a 30 year low...

Where are the headlines? Where are the press releases? Where is all the attention?
The ice melt across during the Antarctic summer (October-January) of 2008-2009 was the lowest ever recorded in the satellite history.
Such was the finding reported 3 weeks ago by Marco Tedesco and Andrew Monaghan in the journal Geophysical Research Letters:

A 30-year minimum Antarctic snowmelt record occurred during austral summer 2008"“2009 according to spaceborne microwave observations for 1980"“2009. Strong positive phases of both the El-Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Southern Hemisphere Annular Mode (SAM) were recorded during the months leading up to and including the 2008"“2009 melt season.

And take a look at that graph. Hope those life rafts of yours work as ice breakers.

I recommend they read El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha and discover the joy of finding out what 4 inches of stick will do to a Jonkey!