Monday's Top 10 with NZ Mint: Appalling lending decisions at National, Westpac and BNZ; Westpac's NZ CEO commuting from Sydney; Europe's anarchists rising up; Dilbert

Here's my Top 10 links from around the Internet at 11.30 am  in association with NZ Mint.

I'll pop the extras into the comment stream. See all previous Top 10s here.

I welcome your additions in the comments below or via email to bernard.hickey@interest.co.nz.

Great crop of cartoons below today.

1. What on earth was going on inside BNZ, National and Westpac? - Rob Stock's excellent feature in the Sunday Star Times on a mortgage tragedy in South Auckland is a must read.

It's offline for now. It's well worth the price of the paper if you can find it. I'm told it will be put online tomorrow. Here is a link to a sidebar on how Auckland rugby player Curtis Haiu is tied up in the mess.

Rob reports how property trader Glenn William Cooper flicked on a bunch of over-priced motel units in Taupo to a group of hapless Cook Island families in South Auckland connected to a church.

It is painful reading. Cooper looks to be a Mark Bryers type of property pumper and dumper who hooked himself into a particularly naive church community.

Somehow these loans were approved by Westpac, Bank of New Zealand and National bank in mid to late 2009.

This is astonishing. How on earth were these loans approved?

Rob reports loan applications were incomplete and inaccurate. They were often signed without being read in cafes and McDonalds branches without being read.

One application showed a family did not eat or use power...

This is a must read for the regulator at the Reserve Bank responsible for this.

We have heard in recent months of a lot more 95% LVR deals being done.

Yet the Reserve Bank appeared pretty relaxed at last week's financial stability report.

Remember, these banks are highly leveraged and effectively government guaranteed.

Here's the Haiu angle:

Cooper has caused fury in Mangere after a number of property deals left families there facing big losses, and, in some cases, bank loans they cannot hope to repay.

He met the Sunday Star-Times on Friday sporting a black eye and swollen face. He told the Star-Times he had been hit by an "Island guy" on the doorstep of his isolated Pukekohe home, but said it was not Haiu who had hit him.

2, 16 year lows - PerthNow reports volumes in Perth's property market hit 16 year lows in April despite record high commodity prices. HT Hugh.

Bubble bursting perhaps?

3. What the scientists think - Science Media Centre has pulled together the responses of scientests to the government's water policy statement last week. They're not confident.

Angus McIntosh – Professor and Mackenzie Foundation Chair in Freshwater Ecology, University of Canterbury, comments:

“The need to halt declines in freshwater biodiversity values is critical. The current situation is really quite grim. In a recent survey of small waterways on the Canterbury Plains we have found over 80% are either moderately or severely polluted

Professor Jenny Webster-Brown, Director, The Waterways Centre for Freshwater Management University of Canterbury & Lincoln University, comments:

The RMA has not prevented widespread degradation of water quality in New Zealand, so a better approach is certainly needed if we are even to maintain current water conditions, let alone seek an improvement.

Dr Mike Joy, Director of the Centre for Freshwater Ecosystem Management and Modeling at Massey University comments:

“It’s hard to see how this long overdue freshwater NPS will make any difference to the state of NZs waterways when it contains no national standards and farming intensification arguably the biggest issue for freshwater quality and quantity is not addressed.

“Despite the RMA being labelled ‘effects based’ it failed to address the main impact on freshwater quality, that is, diffuse nutrient pollution. The only nutrient inputs to freshwaters that are presently controlled or indeed will be controlled under this NPS are from point sources (out of pipes). On dairy farms this is the waste from the relatively short time that cows spend in the shed. For towns and industry it’s the wastewater discharged out of pipes into rivers.

4. Exxon Mobil's tax rate - This will become one of the big issues of the post-Global Financial Crisis era.

How do we get tax-avoiding companies and individuals to pay their fair share of tax?

Valeri Vasquez at Center for American Progress looks at Exxon Mobil.

The company’s large 2010 profits allowed them to lead Fortune 500’s annual ranking of the nations’ most profitable firms for the eighth time in a row. But the oil giant’s average effective tax rates are roughly half the 35 percent tax rate that currently stands as the high-water mark for American corporations. Meanwhile, Exxon Mobil and other big oil companies continue to exploit tax loopholes for nearly $4 billion in subsidies each year. These subsidies include write-offs for drilling costs and a deduction for domestic production that was intended for manufacturers, not big oil producers.

Exxon Mobil registered an average 17.6 percent federal effective corporate tax rate on its annual earnings in the three years spanning 2008 to 2010.

5. Americans under water - Dylan Ratigan's progamme at MSNBC finds 3 in 10 Americans homeowners are underwater with their mortgages. It's worth watching to get a flavour of what's going on. It's tragic. I still don't understand why there haven't been riots in America.
 

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

6. Crikey he's young - A 21 year old MP asks about Labor's record of running budget deficits in Australia. Sort of fun. The answer from Wayne Swan is pathetic. HT Paul via email.

7. One heck of a commute - It seems Westpac NZ CEO George Frazis, known now as the NZ$6 million man for his salary, is commuting from Australia to do his job in New Zealand. The Herald on Sunday has this little snippet on a report about a tenancy tribunal clash involving Frazis and property tycoon James Kirkpatrick over a Paritai Drive property Frazis rented. It seems Frazis' family has returned to Sydney and he is now commuting, which caused him to pull out of the tenancy early.

Details here in the NZHerald story.

In a letter to Kirkpatrick, dated November 10, 2010, bank general counsel Mariette van Ryn advised that the Frazis family was returning home to Sydney and would be moving out on December 28.

Kirkpatrick at first insisted on rent being paid through to April this year - until he discovered, according to a subsequent letter, that Frazis himself would continue to work for Westpac in Auckland, commuting from Sydney. Kirkpatrick filed a claim with the Tenancy Tribunal saying Frazis had abandoned the property and was required to pay the outstanding rent of $134,057, through to January 2012.

Frazis denied the claim, and his lawyers advised the tribunal that Kirkpatrick could see that Frazis' personal belongings remained in the house; that only Frazis' wife and children had returned to Sydney. Sources told the Herald on Sunday that George and Amanda Frazis had separated.

8. Endless boom a shakey theory - Now the Australians are beginning to worry about the end of the endless Chinese boom, The Australian reports.

HT Chris.

A MEMBER of the Coalition's leadership team says China's economy will stall in the next year and the resulting commodity price plunge will push the budget deficit back to $30 billion or more.

The Coalition will be elected in a landslide and have to make the spending cuts avoided in last week's budget.

9. Here come the anarchists - The Washington Post reports on the breakdown of law and order and the rise of the anarchist movement in Greece.

It also talks about the rise of anarchist movements in Britain and Italy.

So where is New Zealand's Anarchist movement? How long before young New Zealanders simply say 'I won't pay'.

Or is it cheaper for them to simply buy a one-way ticket to Australia?

Already struggling to avoid a debt default that could seal Greece’s fate as a financial pariah, this Mediterranean nation is also scrambling to contain another threat — a breakdown in the rule of law. Thousands have joined an “I Won’t Pay” movement, refusing to cover highway tolls, bus fares, even fees at public hospitals.

To block a landfill project, an entire town south of Athens has risen up against the government, burning earth-moving equipment and destroying part of a main access road.Perhaps most alarming, analysts here say, has been the resurgence of an anarchist movement, one with a long history in Europe.

While militants have been disrupting life in Greece for years, authorities say that anger against the government has now given rise to dozens of new “amateur anarchist” groups, whose tactics include planting of gas canisters in mailboxes and destroying bank ATMs.Though unions and political movements have always used tough tactics in Europe, observers are particularly noting a surge in lower-grade militancy among a “lost generation” of young Europeans who have come of age in the aftermath of the global economic crisis.

For most — like the Italian students who draped the Leaning Tower of Pisa and Rome’s Coliseum in anti-austerity slogans last November — protests have become a cathartic outlet to express genuine discontent. For others, they have become an invitation for more radical acts.

In Britain, for instance, 10 activists formed the UK Uncut group in a North London pub late last year, spawning a national wave of civil disobedience against spending cuts, bankers’ bonuses and tax evasion by the rich. During a March protest, they used Twitter and text messages to organize a “flash mob” that saw hundreds occupy and vandalize London’s famous Fortnum & Mason’s food store.

In recent months, other actions have forced at least 100 bank branches across Britain to temporarily close. Last week, officials in the western city of Bristol said they uncovered a plot by violent demonstrators to throw Molotov cocktails at a supermarket and arrested 30 protesters after a pitched battle with riot police.

“There is a sense of general injustice, that the government bailed out capitalism and the citizens are footing the bill while the capitalist system is running like nothing ever happened,” said Bart Cammaerts, an expert in anarchist movements at the London School of Economics. “And yet, things have happened. There are more taxes, less services, and anger is emerging from that tension.”

Here's a totally gratuitous video with one of my favourite songs to go with the piece on Anarchy. It's the Sex Pistols with Anarchy in the UK.

John Lydon's laugh is one of the great moments in popular music. The video of him snarling and prowling around the studio is well worth it.

10. Totally Muppets go mad video. It's watchable and funny for about 20 seconds. Fast forward to the last 5 seconds for the punchline.

It made me laugh out loud.

I'm a Muppets fan.