Top 10 at 10: 'Name and shame directors'; Ohio sues rating agencies; Funky Gibbons;

Here are my Top 10 links from around the Internet at 10am. I welcome your additions and comments below or please email your suggestions for Tuesday's Top 10 at 10 to bernard.hickey@interest.co.nz 1. Name and shame them - A member of NZX's sub-listing committee, Chris Swasbrook, has called for directors of failed finance companies to be banned from being directors in listed companies, Rob Stock reports in the Sunday Star Times. Fair enough. It's curious that Greg Muir's website bio at Pumpkin Patch doesn't mention his chairmanship of Hanover Finance.

In a letter to investors in his Elevation Capital fund this month, he said: "It is my view and I have conveyed this to the NZX "“ that any director association with a finance company/fund failure that saw investors suffer permanent capital losses while they were a director of the entity should mean that those directors are not eligible for NZX listed company directorships." He also accused some listed company directors of airbrushing their pasts. "I have been dismayed recently to see that it seems those who have been on the board of finance companies which have seen investors suffer `permanent capital loss' feel that they can omit such important details from their CV. "I personally question why a company that was seeking outside investor capital would want a director that had any (present or former) association with finance companies given in a large majority of cases they were nothing more than Ponzi schemes "“ but I guess it reflects on what one can only describe as a dire lack of talent."

2. 100%? - Allied Farmers' CEO (and major shareholder) Rob Alloway reckons Hanover Finance debenture holders might get back their 100% if they accept the debt for equity swap he is offering up, the Sunday Star Times reported. I wonder if that promise/suggestion/hint will remain in the prospectus? And if it isn't what will the Securities Commission make of such comments.

Rob Alloway, chief executive of Allied Farmers, says the proposed deal for the NZX-listed finance and rural services company to buy the troubled loan book of Hanover offers the only realistic means of Hanover investors getting back 100 cents in the dollar. The last time Hanover investors were told something similar was when Hanover was trying to get debenture holders to vote for a moratorium in December last year, though last week they were told that 70 cents was the most they could expect after Hanover confessed to writing off $137 million of bad debts.

3. Just wait - Brian Gaynor says in his NZHerald column that Hanover Finance investors should wait for the details of Allied Farmer's bid. He concludes Mark Hotchin and Hanover are toast.

Hanover Finance investors are in an awkward position because they made the wrong decision last year. At present they are in the hands of Hotchin and Watson, their management team and Hanover's independent directors. This is not a great place to be and it is likely that the projected moratorium payout of 70 cents will be reduced further. The question they have to ask is whether Alloway will do a better job in recovering the loans than Hotchin and, if he does, will this be reflected in Allied Farmers' share price. Hanover investors should keep an open mind on this issue and wait until the notice of meeting documents are available. This is not a sweet deal for Hotchin and Watson even though they will avoid the $20 million support guarantee. They will still lose $10 million plus interest, which is held in a solicitor's trust account and will be paid to Allied Farmers. They will have to meet all Hanover's liabilities, including any legal action, although they will receive between $5 million and $10 million from Allied Farmers to meet these. Hotchin and Watson's business reputations have been severely damaged and Hanover has no future.

4. 'Prepare for global collapse' - Ambrose Evans Pritchard at The Daily Telegraph has picked up on a cracking research report from Societe Generale that outlines its worst case scenario for the global economy.

In a report entitled "Worst-case debt scenario", the bank's asset team said state rescue packages over the last year have merely transferred private liabilities onto sagging sovereign shoulders, creating a fresh set of problems. Overall debt is still far too high in almost all rich economies as a share of GDP (350pc in the US), whether public or private. It must be reduced by the hard slog of "deleveraging", for years. "As yet, nobody can say with any certainty whether we have in fact escaped the prospect of a global economic collapse," said the 68-page report, headed by asset chief Daniel Fermon. The underlying debt burden is greater than it was after the Second World War, when nominal levels looked similar. Ageing populations will make it harder to erode debt through growth. "High public debt looks entirely unsustainable in the long run. We have almost reached a point of no return for government debt," it said. Inflating debt away might be seen by some governments as a lesser of evils. The bank said the current crisis displays "compelling similarities" with Japan during its Lost Decade (or two), with a big difference: Japan was able to stay afloat by exporting into a robust global economy and by letting the yen fall. It is not possible for half the world to pursue this strategy at the same time.

5. Dead Men Walking - Eric Sprott and David Franklin at Sprott Asset Management have written a paper on how Western governments are essentially insolvent a day of reckoning is coming.

As respected market commentator David Rosenberg recently wrote, "the stock market is divorced from economic reality". It's time for another surreality check, but this time it isn't the publicly traded companies that deserve attention, it's the governments that have saved them. Make no mistake "“ the dead men are still walking "“ they're just a lot bigger now than they were two years ago, and they don't generate earnings "“ they print money and tax their citizens. The United States Government is on a trajectory to default on their obligations. In its current financial condition, it will not be able to fund its forecasted budget deficits and unfunded Social Security and Medicare promises on top of its current debt obligations. This isn't official yet, and we don't know when the market will react to it, but there is no longer any doubt about the extent of their trajectory. There simply isn't enough taxing power, value creation or outside capital willing to support its egregious spending. Hemingway wrote that a man goes broke "slowly, then all at once". We believe the same sentiment can be applied to governments. If fiscal abuses continue unabated, confidence eventually erodes until investors just stop lending. It happened famously to Lehman in September 2008, and it is happening now to the US government. The Q2 Flow of Funds Report published by the Federal Reserve revealed that the Federal Reserve purchased as much as half of the newly issued treasuries in the second quarter. This means that the Federal Reserve isn't merely supporting the market for US treasuries"¦ it is the market for US treasuries. Printing new dollars to support an almost $9 trillion dollar budget deficit that stretches out over the next ten years puts the US on the road to ruin, and the major governments of the world have noticed and are taking action. We believe the US government's current trajectory presents one of the greatest macro-economic risks at play today. The Federal Reserve and the US government have assumed the toxic financial trash that brought the banking system to its knees a year ago. By monetizing debt to support their budget deficit and "˜save the system', both entities have chosen to walk a well worn path traveled by so many governments before them. Like dead men walking, the US government is merely biding its time until the moment of truth. Unlike Fannie Mae, General Motors or Citigroup, however, there is no one left to grant a reprieve.

6. Are Americans revolting? - I've been asking for months now when regular Americans will finally revolt against the bailouts of the 'Too Big To Fail' banks who are now paying themselves record bonuses made from money printed for them by the US Federal Reserve. 'George Washington' at Zerohedge pulls together a bunch of articles showing a revolt starting to pop up in various areas, including a debtors' revolt, a Congressional revolt and protests directly to banks. HT Gertraud. 7. AAA rated law suit - Now the US state of Ohio is suing Standard and Poor's, Moody's and Fitch, the New York Times reported. Our Reserve Bank has given them an official mandate to rate our financial institutions from March next year. Good idea?

Already facing a spate of private lawsuits, the legal troubles of the country's largest credit rating agencies deepened on Friday when the attorney general of Ohio sued Moody's Investors Service, Standard & Poor's and Fitch, claiming that they had cost state retirement and pension funds some $457 million by approving high-risk Wall Street securities that went bust in the financial collapse. The case could test whether the agencies' ratings are constitutionally protected as a form of free speech. The lawsuit asserts that Moody's, Standard & Poor's and Fitch were in league with the banks and other issuers, helping to create an assortment of exotic financial instruments that led to a disastrous bubble in the housing market. "We believe that the credit rating agencies, in exchange for fees, departed from their objective, neutral role as arbiters," the attorney general, Richard Cordray, said at a news conference. "At minimum, they were aiding and abetting misconduct by issuers." He accused the companies of selling their integrity to the highest bidder.

8. Dubai turmoil - Dubai's leading Sheikh has sacked a bunch of the people behind Dubai's mad property boom that loaded it with US$80 billion of debt, Bloomberg reported. Know of any other problems in Dubai?

Sheikh Mohammed on Nov. 20 sacked the governor of the Dubai International Financial Centre, Omar Bin Sulaiman, who had led efforts to transform Dubai into a Middle East finance hub. A day earlier, he dropped Mohammad al-Gergawi, Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem and Mohammed Ali Alabbar from the board of Dubai's main holding company, the Investment Corporation of Dubai. The three were at the forefront of a construction drive that began in 2002 and collapsed last year after the global financial turmoil engulfed Dubai. The moves herald greater consolidation of so-called Dubai Inc., the web of competing, state-owned companies that Sheikh Mohammed used to accelerate diversification of the second- largest member of the United Arab Emirates away from oil. Dubai is struggling under $80 billion of debt amassed in the process.

9. Some people are dumb - Some jokes aren't stupid enough. A financial writer invented some insanely risky Exchange Traded Funds with ludicrous names and was deluged with people wanting to buy them... John Carney at BusinessInsider has the story. HT Felix Salmon. Last Friday, he posted a satirical article called First 100x Leveraged ETFs. It made fun of the trend toward higher leverage among ETF products. He used the bogus symbols SOAR and SINK for the two fake ETFs mentioned, the former following the index at 100x and the latter following the inverse of the index at 100x. Soon after he published the piece he was deluged with emails. Many people got the joke. But a full 65% expressed interest in some form or another in owning SOAR and SINK. 10. Completely irrelevant Video - Goody goody yum yum with the Funky Gibbons. This is for all of you of a certain age who have a soft spot for the Goodies and secretly hanker after a good long sideburn.