Top 10 at 10: MFS ugliness; Gaynor on SCF; Sydney house prices 'exhausted'; Dilbert

Here are my Top 10 links from around the Internet at 10 to 12. I welcome your additions and comments below or please send suggestions for Wednesday's Top 10 at 10 to bernard.hickey@interest.co.nz 1. Remember MFS Pacific/Octaviar? - This was one of the nastiest finance company failures in New Zealand. It had an Australian twist given it was controlled by MFS in Australia. We're now seeing details emerging of what was going on behind the scenes at the beginning of 2008 when it went pear shaped. It's ugly. Here's Kate Lahey from The Age reporting on comments from a former Octaviar Chief Operating Officer, David Kennedy. HT Gareth Vaughan via IM

On the first day of liquidators' examinations into MFS, later known as Octaviar, which collapsed in 2008 owing more than $2 billion, David John Kennedy described uncontrolled spending of MFS executives, ''Mickey Mouse'' approval processes and a hostile culture in which the company's chairman, former Liberal leader Andrew Peacock, screamed at staff. ''I sent an email to the then chief executive Craig White about some concerns I had about the way some of the directors were doing their job, doing their duties,'' Mr Kennedy said. ''I was considering whether I should be bringing any action against them.'' The next morning, ''Craig called me and told me I should go home,'' he said.

2. Here we go - Peter Martin at BusinessDay reports Sydney's overheated property market is running out of puff. Just as Steve Keen begins his walk up Mt Kosciuscko. The timing is perfect. HT Rob Pharazyn via email.

BUYERS are deserting the Sydney property market at the rate of 1000 a month, causing real estate professionals to predict an ''exhausted market'' with prices plateauing for the rest of the year. High auction clearance rates and record prices notwithstanding, official figures show the number of loans to buy houses in NSW slipped from 19,600 in September to just 14,300 in February after sliding in each of the past five months. The NSW slide of 27 per cent is worse than in all states but South Australia. Housing loans in Victoria slid the least, by a seasonally-adjusted 12 per cent. ''This will lead to a slowing of price growth, no question about it,'' the national president of the Real Estate Institute, David Airey, said. ''The housing market moves slowly. Unlike the stockmarket it doesn't jump around on a daily or even weekly basis. ''These things take six to nine months to filter through, but we will look back on the March quarter and say it was pretty buoyant, we will look back on June and say it was more normal, and we will look back on September and December and see the combined effects of interest rates and simply an exhausted market.''

3. Cap and Trade not dead yet - The New York Times has a nice backgrounder on why the business of carbon credit trading is far from dead despite all sorts of scandals: governments need the money.

Profiteering, tax fraud, theft and dubious claims of emissions reductions are just some of the problems plaguing carbon trading.That litany of woes has helped prompt many commentators to proclaim that carbon trading is imminently headed for the scrap heap of history. Such predictions are almost certainly wrong. Carbon trading, also known as cap and trade, is on the cusp of generating mammoth amounts of money for governments — money that could start flowing just in time to help nations emerge from the worst financial crisis in a generation.

4. Totally irrelevant story to make you cross your legs - The buy who discovered PSA testing for prostate cancer now says it's all a waste of time and money in this New York Times opinion piece. HT Andrew via email.

Prostate-specific antigen testing does have a place. After treatment for prostate cancer, for instance, a rapidly rising score indicates a return of the disease. And men with a family history of prostate cancer should probably get tested regularly. If their score starts skyrocketing, it could mean cancer. But these uses are limited. Testing should absolutely not be deployed to screen the entire population of men over the age of 50, the outcome pushed by those who stand to profit. I never dreamed that my discovery four decades ago would lead to such a profit-driven public health disaster. The medical community must confront reality and stop the inappropriate use of P.S.A. screening. Doing so would save billions of dollars and rescue millions of men from unnecessary, debilitating treatments.

5. Willie Nelson a protectionist (who hates New Zealand exporters) - I'm sure he wouldn't say it like that, but the famous country singer is a big fan of subsidies for American dairy farmers. He even came out on his Facebook page saying so. HT Jeremy via Facebook.

Between this difficult economy and record low prices for dairy, too many of them just can't keep up. And once America's family dairy farmers are gone, they're most likely not coming back.I just joined Farm Aid in telling the USDA to set a fair price for dairy so that family farmers can survive and stay on their land. Will you join me? Take action now!

6. Not a done deal - Ambrose Evans Pritchard points out that the Greek rescue deal done over the weekend is far from a done deal, even though the markets have celebrated it as such. HT Andrew via email.

“The German government buckled,” said Karl Heinz Däke, head of the German taxpayers association. The headlines have switched from Iron Chancellor to Frau Mouse. She will not like that. Direct loans to Greece will require the endorsement of Bundestag, Holland’s Tweede Kamer, and the Irish Dail — which will have to vote for fresh debt of €450m under Ireland’s burden-sharing quota that it can ill afford . This will be no cake-walk. The rescue has not yet been activated. It has become firmer, but remains talk. The moment it is activated, it is likely to face a court challenge from the eurosceptic professors in Germany for breaching the `no-bailout’ clause of Article 125 of the EU Treaties. Germany’s man at the European Central Bank, Jurgen Stark, has already paved the way for this by stating that Greece does not qualify for an emergency waiver of this clause because the country spent itself recklessly into its current predicament.

7. 'Please read the prospectus' - Commentator Brian Gaynor has unloaded on South Canterbury Finance in this NZI Business interview on TVNZ this morning. He pleads with savers to read the prospectus fully and warns that: "The government guarantee doesn't apply for people putting money on deposits". Technically that is true for deposits, but that's only a small portion of the amounts invested in South Canterbury. The vast majority are in debentures. The key section is on Page 35 of the prospectus. Debenture investors will be guaranteed until the end of next year. 8. Basle III brewing - The FT.com's Patrick Jenkins and Brooke Masters have a useful piece on what's going on behind the scenes with the Basle III international bank regulation reforms and whether the banks can fight off tougher rules on capital and leverage. This is a key area to watch as the pressure of de-leveraging works through the global banking system into lending and interest rates for homebuyers and businesses. A tough Basle III means higher interest rates and low lending growth.

Banks’ return on equity levels would be cut by at least a half, according to many bankers and analysts, to as little as 5 per cent. They argue that the industry would find it impossible to attract new investors, in competition with more profitable sectors.

Diddums. And this is just plain shocking.

The planned ban on most deferred tax assets – counting prior-year losses as capital on account of its potential boost to after-tax earnings – is particularly sensitive in Tokyo, where in some years they have accounted for the majority of bank capital, according to estimates.

9. Lurching along - Simon Johnson and Peter Boone explain at Baseline Scenario just how little has been solved with the Greek Bailout in this piece about 'Who's next?'.

Surely the eurozone will bail Portugal out also – but where would it stop after that? The stronger Europeans, by coming to Greece’s rescue at this time with little conditionality, are effectively showing all the weaker nations that they too can get a package. This will undoubtedly reduce the resolve for needed fiscal reforms across the European periphery. We are still lurching from crisis to crisis in Europe.

10. Totally irrelevant video about a guy who likes to fly a plane with the engines shut off. He also pours tea while doing all this. HT RolfeWinkler at Reuters. They don't breed em like they used to.