Tuesday's Top 10 with NZ Mint: How GE pays no US tax; Dutch revolt stops ING bonus;'De-centralise Japan'; 'Crikey it's a property slump'; 'De-dolarising Latin America; Dilbert

Here's my Top 10 links from around the Internet at 10 to 12 pm in association with NZ Mint.

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

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

We are a dual core site...

1. The Canadian bubble - We tend not to watch Canada too closely, but it's a major economy and where Canada goes Australia will go, given they are structured in a similar way.

Both are reliant on the rampant Chinese appetite for resources.

Both have strong dollars.

Both have unfeasibly strong housing markets.

Now a New Zealand-born economist working in Toronto, David Madani, has blown the whistle on the Canadian bubble, as reported in Macleans.ca.

He says the boom in commodities is due for a reversal. More importantly, Canada’s red-hot housing market has soared into the danger zone.

By his estimates, house prices are set to plunge at least 25 per cent, and will drag the economy down with them.

“Housing has gotten crazy, it’s a bubble,” he says. “These things always have an unhappy ending, and Canada is not going to be any different.”

2. Slave nation - US academic Michelle Alexander has written that there are more black Americans in prison now than were slaves in 1850 before the Civil War. She has written a book called 'The New Jim Crow'

America is broken. We shouldn't be trying to connect more directly to this dying and corrupt empire through a Trans Pacific Partnership.

At some stage the massive undercaste in America will revolt and/or America will default.

Growing crime rates over the past 30 years don’t explain the skyrocketing numbers of black — and increasingly brown — men caught in America’s prison system, according to Alexander, who clerked for Supreme Court Justice  Harry Blackmun after attending Stanford Law.

“In fact, crime rates have fluctuated over the years and are now at historical lows.”

“Most of that increase is due to the War on Drugs, a war waged almost exclusively in poor communities of color,” she said, even though studies have shown that whites use and sell illegal drugs at rates equal to or above blacks. In some black inner-city communities, four of five black youth can expect to be caught up in the criminal justice system during their lifetimes.

3. Fake Jake - News.com.au reports Chinese wine exporters (yum yum) are faking labels of Jacob's Creek wine and slapping them on their own version of gut rot before selling them to Britain.

Are we confident our fine wines aren't being copied?

The thing to look for is obvious spelling mistakes on the label. Cluody Bay. Wother Hills. Oyster Boy.

This takes intellectual property theft to a whole new level.

4. 'De-dolarising Latin America - One region of the world that is most dependent on the US dollar is Latin America. Now Bloomberg reports the Inter-American Development Bank plans to help the region 'de-dolarise' the region by lending more in local currencies.

Latin America is feeling the pain of a weakening US dollar, thanks to the Fed's frantic money printing. Their export sectors are being slammed.

Surging foreign investment and faster economic growth are leading to stronger currencies in countries such as Chile, Brazil and Mexico. The region accounted for twice as much of global capital inflows in 2009 as it did in 2006, Moreno said.

“That is having a huge impact on our exchange rates, on the tradable sector,” Moreno, 56, said. “All countries are worrying about the impact of overheating.”

To offset the currency gains and to develop capital markets across the region, the Washington-based lender plans to increase borrowing in local currencies, while allowing more borrowers in the region to convert their IDB loans from U.S. dollars.

5. Dutch peasants revolt online - Finally it's happening somewhere. The Guardian reports a furious reaction online by Dutch people has forced ING to cancel a bonus for the CEO. And politicians have voted for a 100% retrospective tax on these bonuses. Now that's a reaction.

ING/ANZ customers were similarly active in New Zealand and will be just as pleased.

ING customers mobilised on Twitter and other social networks to protest at bonuses paid to bosses at the bank, one of the biggest in the country. The threat of direct action raised the spectre of a partial run on ING, terrifying the Dutch establishment. Fred Polhout, union organiser at the bank, says: "People were outraged. We heard about the bloated sums being paid again in the City and in New York; but suddenly the issue exploded on our own front door."

Compared with the packages awarded to bankers in the US and UK, the Dutch bonuses were small potatoes. Jan Hommen, ING's chief executive, was due to receive a £1m bonus – a pittance when you consider that Stephen Hester, head of state-controlled RBS in the UK, is in line for up to £7.7m, Bob Diamond of Barclays is to collect as much as £6.5m, and some senior bankers at Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan are looking at windfalls of about £40m each.

6. Decentralise Japan - Bloomberg reports on how Japan is now re-evaluating the entire structure on the country based around Tokyo, given its vulnerability to another 1923-style event that destroyed the city.

A new adviser to the current Prime Minister has told him to de-centralise Japan.

Two days before Japan suffered its record earthquake and a devastating tsunami on March 11, Prime Minister Naoto Kanappointed Igarashi as a Cabinet adviser on coping with Japan’s population decline and rural-region decay. Igarashi says the disaster has made clear the nation must reduce the role of its capital city to avert an even greater catastrophe.

“I told the prime minister that nationwide dispersal is the first thing we need to do as we rebuild,” Igarashi, a professor at Hosei University in Tokyo, said in an interview after meeting with Kan last week. “We have no idea when the big one’s going to hit Tokyo, but when it does, it’s going to annihilate the entire country because everything is here.”

7. 'Crikey it's a property slump!' - The Courier Mail reports even Steve Irwin's widow is struggling in the downturn that has hit Queensland's property market. HT Paul via email.

8. 'Tell us the truth' - Prosperity Chief Economist Liam Halligan writes passionately here at The Telegraph that the UK government needs to be much more honest about the seriousness of the UK fiscal crisis.

He rightly makes the point that Britain's problems have only just started.

When will voters actually start calling for default?

HT Kokila.

What matters to the finances of any household is the size of the outstanding mortgage, the on-going costs of financing that mortgage, and the prospects of paying it off. Only an economically illiterate fool would claim the family finances will soon be "under-control" because sacrifices will be made and lifestyles reined-in to such an extent that, hopefully, if everything goes to plan, having re-mortgaged every year between now and 2015, that family will then enjoy a single year in which it won't need to re-mortgage.

That's the battle cry – "In five years' time, we may not need to re-mortgage!" These are the ludicrous terms under which the UK's fiscal debate is being conducted. What will our children and grandchildren think of us?

In 2009, the UK spent £31bn – around 6pc of total tax receipts – on debt interest payments. That's money down the drain. By 2015, we won't have reached, in Churchill's words, some "broad sunlit upland". After four more years of deficits, debt services costs, according to last week's Budget, will by then be £67bn a year – or almost 10pc of total tax receipts. These shocking numbers are also likely to be under-estimates, given the UK's massive "off-balance-sheet" liabilities and the Treasury's benign assumption of future gilt rates.

9. America's biggest company pays no tax - The New York Times reports that General Electric paid no tax last year on world-wide profits of US$14.2 billion...

Do Americans not realise what is happening...

The details are shocking. Today's must read.

This can't end well. HT Cosmic via email.

By the way, Fonterra only paid NZ$7 million tax in the first half of this year on revenues of NZ$9.4 billion and operating profit of NZ$300 mln, giving an effective tax rate of 2.3%... See my earlier article here.

Here's the New York Times on GE.

Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of US$3.2 billion.

That may be hard to fathom for the millions of American business owners and households now preparing their own returns, but low taxes are nothing new for G.E. The company has been cutting the percentage of its American profits paid to the Internal Revenue Service for years, resulting in a far lower rate than at most multinational companies.

Its extraordinary success is based on an aggressive strategy that mixes fierce lobbying for tax breaks and innovative accounting that enables it to concentrate its profits offshore. G.E.’s giant tax department, led by a bow-tied former Treasury official named John Samuels, is often referred to as the world’s best tax law firm. Indeed, the company’s slogan “Imagination at Work” fits this department well. The team includes former officials not just from the Treasury, but also from the I.R.S. and virtually all the tax-writing committees in Congress.

While General Electric is one of the most skilled at reducing its tax burden, many other companies have become better at this as well. Although the top corporate tax rate in the United States is 35 percent, one of the highest in the world, companies have been increasingly using a maze of shelters, tax credits and subsidies to pay far less.

10. Totally scary video of the Tsunami from a camera phone.

This is easily the most terrifying footage I have seen so far. The power of this thing is extraordinary. HT Gertraud via email.

New Shocking Video Of The Japanese Tsunami by timbarracuda