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Monday's Top 10 with NZ Mint: NZ's slave fishing debacle; 'The side show Bob and Tony Show'; Global Debt Jubilee anyone?; Steve Jobs book reviewed; Nanotrading; Dilberts

Monday's Top 10 with NZ Mint: NZ's slave fishing debacle; 'The side show Bob and Tony Show'; Global Debt Jubilee anyone?; Steve Jobs book reviewed; Nanotrading; Dilberts

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

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

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

My must read today is the BusinessWeek story at #1 on slave fishing. New Zealand is in trouble on this one.

1. Slave fishing - Michael Field at Fairfax has been hammering away at the issue of  virtual slave labour being employed on Foreign Charted Vessels (FCVs) fishing New Zealand's quota.

Now Bloomberg's Businessweek has picked up on it with an exposé of its own.

The details are shocking and embarrassing for Christchurch's United Fisheries and Sanford.

An Indonesian fisherman was an indentured labourer who was physically abused on the ship and paid US$1 an hour.

Talk of boycotts of New Zealand fish exports have begun.

Here's Michael Field's piece from the Sunday Star Times detailing the harassment the whistle-blowing Indonesian now faces.

America's largest importer of New Zealand fish is particularly grumpy.

Mazzetta, a $510 million Chicago operation, pioneered orange roughy fishing with Sanford.

Mazzetta spoke to Sanford's board, including chairman Jeff Todd and board member and National Party president Peter Goodfellow, saying that "to say that I am extremely disappointed would be an understatement[Allegations] of this nature are simply unacceptable and warrant revision of Sanford's oversight to continue in our existing relationship."

Mazzetta listed steps Sanford had to take. Sanford said there were no labour issues and it had observers on FCVs and would be "in on-going discussions" with Mazzetta. Anti-slavery and human trafficking laws that came into effect last month in California mean US corporates must take slavery claims seriously.

2. 'Madness to support work-shy drones' - Damien Grant has written an impassioned rant about the evil of paying taxes to anyone who doesn't work in the NZ Herald.

He focuses on the Tania Wysocki case, the the DPB beneficiary threatening to become a prostitute because her NZ$43,000 of benefits is not enough to live on.

Here's Grant:

The reason for our uncompetitive state is the mindset of Wysocki and her ilk - that the world owes her a living and that she should not have to work for her money, even if that work involves little more than lying down and thinking of England.

We face rising inequality and declining competitiveness because too many people have failed to develop productive skills, and why should they?

We will not become a richer nation nor solve rising inequality by punishing those who are working and rewarding those who are not.

3. 'Sideshow Bob' - John McCrone at The Press has written a detailed review of the history of Christchurch's mayors and CEOs. HT Hugh via email.

Here's his view on Bob Parker and Tony Marryatt:

So what went wrong? Many are eager to offer an opinion, even if few want to be quoted. The general feeling is that unlike Moore and McTurk, Parker and Marryatt are both quite isolated by nature. They have not been good at getting out and connecting.

Instead, they have fallen back too easily on the argument that Christchurch has already decided its strategy and so their job is to get on with its implementation.

Isolation can lead to bad judgments. And observers also note that Marryatt is unusual for a council boss in that he is not just a dull corporate manager. He has a strong wheeler-dealer streak to his personality, a liking for bringing propositions to the council table.

"He just loves the cut and thrust of it," says one who has known Marryatt for many years.

4. Time for a debt jubilee - Here's Australian economist Steve Keen on BBC Hardtalk recommending a 'debt jubilee' where debt is written off, banks are bankrupted and the financial system is nationalised. HT Peter via email.

5. What the world might look like in 2050 - The Atlantic has a look. The chart below tells the story.

6. Steve Jobs no hero - I read the Walter Isaacson book on Steve Jobs over the summer and came away thinking he (Jobs) was a brilliant but unlikable man.

Here's a good and thoughtful review of the book in The New Republic from Evgeny Morozov.

As Isaacson makes clear, Jobs was not a particularly nice man, nor did he want to be one. The more diplomatic of Apple’s followers might say that Steve Jobs—bloodthirsty vegetarian, combative Buddhist—lived a life of paradoxes. A less generous assessment would be that he was an unprincipled opportunist-a brilliant but restless chameleon. For Jobs, consistency was truly the hobgoblin of little minds (he saw little minds everywhere he looked) and he did his best to prove Emerson’s maxim in his own life. He hung a pirate flag on the top of his team’s building, proclaiming that “it is better to be a pirate than to join the Navy,” only to condemn Internet piracy as theft several decades later.

He waxed lyrical about his love for calligraphy, only to destroy the stylus as an input device. He talked up the virtues of contemplation and meditation, but did everything he could to shorten the time it takes to boot an Apple computer. (For a Buddhist, what’s the rush?) He sought to liberate individual users from the thrall of big businesses such as IBM, and then partnered with IBM and expressed his desire to work only with “corporate America.”

A simplifier with ascetic tendencies, he demanded that Apple’s board give him a personal jet so that he could take his family to Hawaii. He claimed he was not in it for the money and asked for a salary of just $1, but he got into trouble with the Securities and Exchange Commission for having his stock options—in a move that gave him millions—backdated. He tried to convince his girlfriend that “it was important to avoid attachment to material objects,” but he built a company that created a fetish out of material objects. He considered going to a monastery in Japan, but declared that, were it not for computers, he would be a poet in the exceedingly unmonastic city of Paris.

7. The story behind the Olympus scandal - Here's the BusinessWeek version. A fascinating insight into Japanese corporate life.

8. The reformed broker - Here Advisor One interviews Joshua Brown, a former stock broker who writes a blog called The Reformed Broker.

The 35-year-old financial advisor, whose Reformed Broker blog has brought him wide acclaim in recent years, has just written a book meant to uncover the perfidy of Wall Street. Backstage Wall Street is part plea, part mea culpa, part screed. Brown unmasks the financial industry for all to see, revealing the less-than-honest sales tactics of boiler-room brokers and dressing down investment banks for running away with fees and riches while Mom and Pop retail investors are left holding the bag.

Brown makes some startling claims: wirehouse brokerage firms will be gone in 10 years, as will the “suitability” standard governing broker-dealers. Mutual funds? They’ll be gone too, replaced by their fast-rising cousins, ETFs.

9. Nano-trading - Wired has an excellent article on the dangers of micro-trading, where algorithms trade stocks with each other at microsecond intervals.

Here's a taste:

The programs are designed to trade enormous volumes of stocks, bonds and other financial instruments at superfast speeds, taking advantage of second-to-second fractional price shifts and market trends. It’s now estimated that high-frequency computer trading accounts for 70 percent of all equity trades. While some activity does occur at speeds with which humans can interact, much of it falls beyond the limits of human response time.

(One new computer chip built specifically for high-frequency trading can prepare trades in .000000074 seconds; a proposed $300 million transatlantic cable is being built just to shave 0.006 seconds off transaction times between New York City and London.)

In the early years of computer trading, algorithms were profitable and concerns rare. Designers and investors took their money and didn’t think much about what Johnson and co-authors call “ultrafast machine ecology.” After the 2010 flash crash, however, mainstream economists wondered if high-frequency trading systems might sometimes get weird and unpredictable. A $4.1 billion automated sale was ultimately blamed for triggering that crash, and economists started asking questions about the new, hazy relationships between machines and markets.

“We are certainly witnessing one of the major transitions in the history of financial markets,” said automated trading researcher John Cartlidge of the University of Bristol, who was not involved in new study. “Economic theory has always lagged behind economic reality, but now the speed of technological change is widening that gap at an exponential rate.  The scary result of this is that we now live in a world dominated by a global financial market of which we have virtually no sound theoretical understanding.”

10. Totally Stephen Colbert on an integrated 'sponsortunity' for Wheat Thins? Should we do 'sponsortunities' too?

 

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33 Comments

FYI Here's UBS economist Robin Clements calling for Govt to act urgently to get the #eqnz rebuild going http://bit.ly/xkofmU

Good on him

 

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IT'S TOO LATE.

Having received an offer of settlement on 6 substantial properties, we are in the process of taking the replacement offer on properties in Auckland (was in Auckland this morning).  If there's $20b in insurance coming for the rebuild then we alone contribute to another 0.03% (1/3333) of that not being spent in the city.

 

There is too much risk to comtemplate rebuying let alone building in ChCh.

 

We've also indefinitely cancelled all of the new build projects we have in ChCh.

 

CERA is definitely to blame.  And today I get a letter from them demanding a full engineering report on a essentially undamaged single level timber framed warehouse I own in Addington, all while unreinforced 2 storey brick buildings next door are being used as retail!!

 

Until the stupidity is at an end ChCh will not recover.

 

Criminals and vandals are taking over the abandoned properties leaving our city even harder to recover from (2 incidents on our properties in the last week).

 

Recovery is now unlikely without real change.  Christchurch and therefore NZ is buggered.

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It's simply too late Hugh, Christchurch has no momentum and will not get any.

 

All sorts of ordinary people are just fed up with what's going on and talking with their feet.  Of the people I spoke with while on the flights (random people sitting next to and waiting in line with) out of the 3 from ChCh 2 were in the process of relocating to Auckland (not actually moving yet, just organising).  While in Auckland, I looked at a property in Remuera with the same real estate agent I had looked at ChCh properties last year!

 

Very little can be done to turn things around now - it's going too far and taken too long.

 

Most people either have little insurance - in which case they can't afford to rebuild, or they have full replacement - in which case the best option (and in most cases the only option) is to take replacement in an alternate location.

 

My estimate (from anecdotal evidence only) is that so far 80% of settlements are either heading out of the city or going to buy existing property from people leaving the city.

 

Look at all the subdivisions - sections are languishing, houses are not being built.  Developers are just deluded if they think there will be a rush.  Blue/green sections in good areas are selling for about 50% of their pre quake value.  Dozens are still languishing on the market.

 

Unfortunately some red zoners are being talked into buying unrealistically priced sections but all of those people should hold off as prices will fall rather than increase.

 

I heard last week of some offers floating around on CBD land at well below 30% of realistic pre-earthquake value that were being seriously considered.

 

Every single thing done by Sutton and Brownlee has stalled ChCh.

 

It's not just Parker that needs to go.  They all are to blame.

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The latest StatsNZ household labour force survey shows that Canterbury is down 30 odd thousand working age persons.

 

The ChCh phone book (a few months old) suggests 10,000 fewer households than pre Sept 2010.

 

My gut feeling is population is currently down 35-40,000 (about 10%).  I have no idea on what the ongoing loss would be, but if big aftershocks continue 6 monthly as has been the case for the past 18 months, then the rate of loss could grow significantly.

 

Just anecdotally, we still have a good number of rentals in the city, and recent advertisements for smaller homes in nice condition having not obtained much response, with reletting being acheived in weeks rather than days and really no ability to choose tenants (ie taking the first suitable tenants rather than being able to pick them - that is lots of dud applicants but few good ones).

 

My estimate is that there is now literally 20,000 houses and flats unoccuppied since 2010.   We have 9 out of 30 unoccuppiable [some need rebuilt but are occupied] (several of those unoccuppied are multi-flats so it's actually 15 units of about 37 empty and that'd be even a higher proportion if you count the flatettes individually).

 

I will end with my catch phrase - recovery is virtually impossible with progress as it is now!

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Hugh, the old adage about it being a recession when your neighbour loses his job and a depression when you lose your own can be translated into the exodus as well.

 

I don't have to look too hard to find real estate agents now in Auckland who were long time ChCh residents.  I think I could name 200 people I know who have left without even blinking.

 

The StatsNZ HLFS is not a particularly accurate measure but it's numbers feel much more accurate than talk of under 10,000.

 

The reality is that the population that has left is easily quantified.  Count the number of vacant houses, subtract the number of occuppied new ones.  The result is easily a loss of 10,000 occuppied homes and I reckon closer to 20,000.

 

You are simply deluding yourself (as many in charge are) if you believe population has fallen by less than 3%. 

 

Everywhere I go, I run into ChCh refugees.  In Timaru we have a property behind a couple of ownership units, both have been occuppied by newly ex ChCh people (one rented, the other purchased).  Thousands who lived in the CBD are now gone, thousands from wrecked hill homes, thousands from red zones, thousands from wrecked houses all across the city and thousands who have upped and left perfectly good homes.

 

Obviously a large number who have sold since last Feb have not rebought (given the still low sales volumes despite the huge number of replacement insuranced up buyers).

 

ChCh is very nearly beyond recovery.

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Not anecdotal at all Hugh.

 

Check the Stats NZ household labour force survey for Dec 2011 (can get on this page - excel tables):

 

http://www.stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/income-and-work/employment_an…

 

Look in the data Table 6 (continued 3) under Canterbury.  Since the EQs the estimated working age population has fallen from around 510k to about 480k.

 

Remember:

1)  That's working age population, so add in retirees (like those not much older than you Hugh!) and kids, then we are potentially talking 40,000 down in Canterbury. 

2)  Then consider the thousands relocated to Ashburton, Timaru, Rolleston, Rangiora etc etc and you see that the reduction in ChCh I'm talking about is not too high at all.

 

Stats NZ get these figures directly from surveys.

 

A lot of the other data is just rubbish and propaganda collated specifically to make it look like the earthquake did not have too big an impact!

 

We have been fed rubbish from officials who could calculate the number of shoes they had on today.

 

Go out and do your own reconaissonce Hugh.  Have you been around eastern ChCh?  Have you seen the vacancy rate in the green zones?

 

Christchurch is in dire straits.

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Hugh, just re rentals.

 

Yes there is demand for 4 bedroom modern homes in the west of the city at $450pw!!

 

Yes there are fewer advertised on trademe (down from about 1200 to below 700), but a lot of the reduction is the loss of all the surplus unlettable houses that sat on trademe for months on end at $260-350pw.  The market is probably not disimiliar to before except that there is huge demand for temporary rentals while repairs are done and for higher end homes.

 

As repairs are done and more people move out of town the shortage will ease.

 

There is definitely no shortage in the smaller 2 and 3 bdrm markets.

 

Too much hype and not enough facts.

 

Did you ever find out the reduction in the number of homes connected to power companies?  Those kinds of hard facts tell the truth.

 

People who spend their days in Riccarton and Avonhead just don't understand what has happened to ChCh.

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On a daily base we have visitors from Christchurch here in Kaikoura, just to get away from stress and misery for a few days. Their spirit/ mentality have completely changed from before the earthquakes.

 

I think in general, the severity of people’s tragedy – the shock and the losing spirit isn’t enough recognised among the population and politicians.

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The earthquake issue is the main issue - don't confuse Hugh!

 

Shifting capital to Auckland (to primarily crystalise insurance payouts) is not a leap into the fire.

 

Auckland real estate at the mid upper end on a like for like basis is not significantly more expensive than ChCh pre earthquake - a $1.2-1.5m property in Remuera is probably about the same as a $1m-1.5m Fendalton or Merivale property.  Mid range quality homes in Auckland ($900-1.2m) might be a couple of hundred more like for like and certainly lower end homes in good areas are much higher (at least 50-75% more) but it's all relative and despite some areas being overheated there is still value their too.

 

Many properties are not much more than replacement value in Auckland (not to the same extent as it was in ChCh or Dunedin though) so I don't see much scope for large falls unless we go into a deep recession (in which case nothing gets built and booms follow anyway).

 

Until the next volcanic eruption, supply of Central Auckland land isn't growing.

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WYSOCKI should be handing it out for free to thank us taxpayers for our handouts.

No dreaming of england either.

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Damien grant, it should be made clear, is not a journalist. He is a corporate liquidator. He is entitled to his opinion but Granny Herald should make it clear where this guy is coming from.

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Lol great link. Most lunatic article I've read in the Herald since Don Brash blamed the GFC on poor, black Americans.

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#9 Follow up - using GPS spoofing for HFT fraud:
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-02/22/gps-spoofing
 

#5 World 2050 - hmmm, and the energy/resource inputs required for that growth are where exactly, the moon? Is this why Gingrich wants a moonbase?

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Fishing.   So not only are we immoral commercially.  But incompetent dreamers when it comes to dealing with the nasty side of commercial business.

Given these crimes, the associated destruction of resource, and that there is absolutely no benefit to New Zealand in this industry, we should leave the fish in the sea until somebody comes up with something better than this.

Shut this part of the fishery down for a least a decade. 

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Hah, Amerika has anti slave laws?  Ever heard of Foxxcon?

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Foxxocn isnt in America, but more importantly when you look at what a typical foxxconn worker earns and the equiv outside its actually decent wages and conditions....its a relative game....

regards

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So foxxcon emplyess should be happy slaves, I can't understand why they would rather kill themselves then make another iPad, neither can their owners.

Steve Jobs, Apple, Sanford are slave owning sociopaths, the sad truth is that they are not uncommon.  This is capitalism in action, profits and stock markets reward this behaviour.

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If you wish to get a handle on where the insanity of rampant and stupid socialism can take a country...then have a read of this..

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9107504/Benefits-families-could-pay-off-1m-mortgage.html

And don't think it's any less insane in NZ.

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A solution?

I received this email recently.  I've been saying the same thing for years.

"The problems we face today are there because the people who work for a
living are outnumbered by those who vote for a living"

This was written by a 21 yr old female who gets it. It's her future she's
worried about and this is how she feels about the social welfare system that
she's being forced to live in! These solutions are just common sense in her
opinion.
 
Nov 18, 2011

Put me in charge . .. .

Put me in charge of WINZ food grants. I'd get rid of  cash for potato chips
or chocolate, just money for 50kg bags of rice and beans, blocks of cheese
and all the powdered milk you can haul away. If you want steak and frozen
pizza, then get a job.

Put me in charge of Healthcare. The first thing I'd do is to get women
Norplant birth control implants or tubal ligations. Then, we'll test
recipients for drugs, alcohol, and nicotine and document all tattoos and
piercings. If you want to reproduce or use drugs, alcohol, smoke or get tats
and piercings, then get a job.

Put me in charge of government housing. Ever live in a military barracks?
You will maintain our property in a clean and good state of repair. Your
"home" will be subject to inspections anytime and possessions will be
inventoried. If you want a plasma TV or Xbox 360, then get a job and your
own place.

Put me in charge of compulsory job search. In addition, you will either
present a check stub from a job each week or you will report to a
"government" job. It may be cleaning the roadways of trash, painting and
repairing public housing, whatever we find for you. We will sell your 22
inch rims and low profile tires and your blasting stereo and speakers and
put that money toward the "common good.."

Before you write that I've violated someone's rights, realize that all of
the above is voluntary. If you want our money, accept our rules.. Before you
say that this would be "demeaning" and ruin their "self esteem," consider
that it wasn't that long ago that taking someone else's money for doing
absolutely nothing was demeaning and lowered self esteem.

If we are expected to pay for other people's mistakes we should at least
attempt to make them learn from their bad choices. The current system
rewards them for continuing to make bad choices.

AND While you are on Gov't subsistence, you no longer can VOTE! Yes that is
correct. For you to vote would be a conflict of interest.....You will vote
for a 'welfare' Govt. You will voluntarily remove yourself from voting
while you are receiving a Gov't welfare check. If you want to vote, then get
a job.

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and what about OAPs? they are on a govn cheque as well....lets cancel votes for 65+

or public employees? lets cancel those as well....

This is where it becomes complete nonsense......it also assumes everyone on WINZ wants to be on and stay there....this isnt the case.

Cheese and milk, enough information coming out now suggests these are bad for you....

So its utter rubbish, end to end.

regards

 

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quote: "put that money toward the "common good.." sounds like Communism to me with a sprinkle of Fascism
 

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Sounds like you see communists and facists in your breakfast cereal.

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This 21 year old is clueless.

Why is she not aware that we are in the middle of an economic collapse unprecedented since the Great Depression?

 

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She's correct on all counts.There doesn't seem to be a feeling of embarrassment amongst beneficiaries. That's the problem. 

 

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clueless - one only has to look at the employment charts on this site to see that people actually do get a job when they are available to them - try telling the upcoming redundancies at Air New Zealand they're an embarassment.
It's debased attitudes like this that's the problem

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Hardly, (not yet, not here at least) anyway you're in a situation where beneficiaries can bring home more cash then 50% of all workers.  I am happy to pay tax to keep the poor in a reasonable standard of living, but I do expect something back.  "You gotta give a little, to get a little." 

I don't agree with everything there, but I can understand the angst.

 

Now I understand there aren't jobs out there for everyone, and economists want a bit of unemployment to keep wage price inflation down, and all that.  If 50% of govt revenues are going toward providing for the poor, isn't it fair to expect something in return?

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What about those welfare recipients who drive Rolls Royces, wear expensive suits and want the taxpayer to subsidise their holiday highways? They're the real bludgers.

Re: the '21 year old': it sounds a bit like the famous "How Taxes Work" e-mail as featured on Snopes.com. Seriously though, be careful what you wish for... with the taxes saved you'll then have enough money to apply for a 'E'-class gun licence, a good supply of razor wire and your very own Blackwater merc division, should today's beneficiaries become tomorrow's Shining Path.

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Computers have been price setting for the last few years now.  ZH has been banging on about since they started, here is one of their first articles.

The 4 or 5 computers that were trading with each other today all executed perfectly according to the "regress to VWAP" program. If you were a human (presumably, since only a few East Setauket machines do serious OCRing here), and you thought you had any edge trading this market, you were a fool. Play again though, and better luck tomorrow.

VWAP Reversion Programs Win The Day

 As program trading computers pretend to care about such fundamental things as continuing jobless claims, a peculiar trend emerges.

The Doubling Of Unemployment "Paychecks"

Nowdays the "algos" scan internet headlines in realtime, including tweets.  Last week gold dropped $10 in a few minutes following a ZH tweet about "margin hike rumors". 

Gold just slid by almost $10 in the span of a few minutes. Curious why? Here is what took it down.

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Relax everyone  ...

Lets just go on borrowing 9 % of GDP every 90 days as we did in the latest Sept quarter .

The bond market will sort all this crap out  when interest rates on our $ 270 Bilion external debt rise back to normal  levels.

Every 1% on this level of debt means we have to create an extra 3 Kiwifruit industries to service the increased interest costs.

A nation living on borrowed money on borrowed time.

Fun while it lasts.

 

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On the contrary, this 21 year old is right on path.

 

Greece is what it is now because they did not do what she wanted to do......The Greek society and economy is so badly screwed because of what we are also doing here especially with our "entitlements".....Will we become Greek ? Yes if we don't get a handle on things "entitled" to everybody. 

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#4

Never happen.....You would have to nationalize EVERY single piece of private and bank owned property, then........somehow divy it up again fairly somehow.......NEVER work, no chance in hell.

We must just accept the evitable collapse of civilization, world wide violence and destruction coming our way as a usual human failing that will cycle from time to time like all previous human empires and civilizations that create corrupt 1% of winners at the 99% of losers expense systems

Keen is a total plonker!

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And Damien Grant's been in the news for the wrong reasons before... (requires an NBR sub tho)

http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/crackdown-liquidators-snags-herald-columni…

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Goodness me Deepred,

You got me.

Aren’t you clever.

Brave little soul hiding in the shadows, eh, pointing out the flaws of those who walk onto the stage.

Good on you.

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