Wednesday's Top 10 with NZ Mint: John Hotchin's cynicism and bad spelling; Globalising the Shirtwaist tragedy of 1911; Rolls Royce's electric Phantom; Dilbert

Here's my Top 10 links from around the Internet at 10 to 3 pm 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.

Time fail. Three days in a row at 10 am was too tough. Will try again tomorrow.

1. John Hotchin reveals all, including bad spelling - William Mace reports at Stuff on the trial of the directors of Nathan Finance, Mervyn Doolan, Roger Moses and Don Young, over charges they issued a misleading prospectus.

John Hotchin (Mark's brother) has admitted the charges in a plea bargain deal and is on home detention.

The detail of an email exchange put before the court is fascinating.

As much for the spelling mistakes included, as for the attitude it reveals.

Cynical and less than transparent would be one way to describe the evidence.

And Stuff reports Mr (John) Hotchin is now living at a NZ$4 million home in Kohimarama on home detention...

Here's what was reported from court about a draft prospectus sent by the in-house lawyer to the directors which revealed NZ$79.6 million of related party loans or 46.2% of its lending.

In response, director John Hotchin emailed Mr Steytler: "I strongly urge that the risk section is changed as if this is going to market, NO cash will come in.

"This is totally none [sic] commercial and I dought [sic] that any other company give such in dephth [sic] detail as this, this is simply not commercial."

Email documents show other directors, including Gary Stevens and Roger Moses, agreed with Mr Hotchin. Mr Stevens asked Mr Steytler to check whether the disclosure of the exact figures was essential, or just a "very good to do".

Mr Steytler later indicated to the directors that he and marketing manager Marian Short had "softened" the wording. The final version of the prospectus told investors the advances made up a "significant proportion" of lending and that Nathans made "significant financial accommodations" to VTL.

And here's what Hotchin told the court on March 4 when he was sentenced.\

"I am extremely sorry for the losses suffered by Nathans' investors and would like to apologise to them," he said.

"At the time I believed that the documents were accurate, but I accept that as a director of the company I should have done more to ensure that this was the case."

Sigh.

2. The wonders of globalisation - Is globalisation simply outsourcing the disastrous conditions that were abolished a century ago when unions formed to lift wages and make workplaces safer.

100 years after 146 young women died in a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York because the exit door was locked, 29 workers died in a fire at a sweatshop in Bangladesh where clothes were made for The Gap. Here's The Consumerist.

Back in 1911, 100,000 workers marched in the funeral procession demanding changes. 400,000 people lined the streets to support them. Within 2 months automatic sprinkler systems were installed in sweat shops. Exit doors had to open outwards and not be locked.

"The middle class was built coming out of Triangle. Now we're seeing everything the American workers fought for being destroyed," says Charles Kernaghan, the executive director of the National Labor Committee in Support of Human and Worker Rights.

This video is worth watching. This is what globalisation is doing. More importantly, shows the moral vacuum at the heart at many shareholder-driven corporate cultures.

Here's what The Gap said about this fire in Bangladesh:

"We were deeply saddened by last year's tragic fire in the Hameem Group's That's It Sportswear factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh," said GAP later in a statement. "Gap Inc. is working with the other companies that have business with Hameem - including Abercrombie & Fitch, JCPenney, Target, and VF Corporation - to understand the events that led to the fire and to identify solutions to ensure that this type of tragic incident does not happen again."

Multinational corporations doing business in other countries have the power and duty to trade with suppliers who adhere to standards of ethical and responsible productions, lest we simply outsource our Triangle Shirtwaist Factory tragedies.

3. The Pacific's new banker - Michael Field at Stuff is the best reporter around on Pacific Issues. As a testament to that, Field (who is Auckland-based) has been kicked out of all the dictatorships and monarchies that now litter the Pacific.

Here's a nice piece pointing out how China is becoming the new banker for many of these failed/failing states. He refers to this Lowy Institute study titled: China in the Pacific: the new banker in town.

South Pacific nations have become alarmingly in debt to China and may have to pay a political price as Beijing uses its new power, according to a think tank study.

The Sydney based Lowy Institute report reveals that China has overtaken New Zealand and Japan to become the third largest aid donor in the region after Australia and the US. It says much of the money it put into the region came in the form of loans with a five year grace period.

Much of the grace period is up and the Pacific now has an accumulated debt to China of US$637.55 million ($827.87 million).

4. Has the world gone mad? - Rolls Royce (now owned by BMW) is building an electric-powered Phantom called the Experimental Electric (EE.)

It would cost over NZ$1 million and is 440lb heavier than the standard Phantom. The battery pack alone would cost NZ$200,000.

It takes 20 hours to recharge and has a range of 124 miles....

And this is supposed to make the occupant appear more environmentally sustainable?

Here's the video from BMW

Here's the review from The Telegraph.

As an exercise into the possible, the EE is quite brilliant.

As a practical proposition, it’s a disaster, partly because of the paltry range, but mainly because of the insanely long recharge times.

5. 78th reason why America is buggered - America has very partisan electoral system where the parties gerry-mander the boundaries on seats to ensure they all have safe seats full of 'their' people.

This map of Chicago's electorate boundaries produced by the Swing State Project shows how the politicians who dominate the system for drawing electoral maps come up with these patchwork quilt of electorates.

It basically means the two main parties don't bother or need to appeal to swing voters. All they need to do is be extreme enough to keep their base happy.

And swing voters become disillusioned with politics because there is no one in the middle to vote for.

This sort of thing explains why the US government could very well be shut down this coming weekend by a dispute in Congress about providing funds for the government.

6. Good news for Fonterra - The Telegraph reported that China announced over the weekend that nearly half of the nation's dairy companies had been shut down to improve safety standards.

Fonterra has set up its own farms there to control the production process from end to end in the wake of the Melamine scandal.

No wonder Natural Dairy is continuing on with its plan to build a UHT packing plant in Tauranga to export Kiwi milk to China, even though it has missed out on the Crafar Farms.

The General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, says of over 1,100 dairies inspected, 426 failed to pass the licensing renewal test. Another 107 were ordered to suspend production until they improved operations.

Fearing many dairy owners will ignore the production ban and secretly resume operations, officials also issued a warning. "Production without a licence will be strictly punished according to the law," the agency said. Like other parts of China's food sector, the dairy industry has been riddled with poisoning and toxin scandals that have repeatedly shaken consumer confidence.

7. Australia's Dutch Disease - The Economist looks at Australia's historic commodity price boom and asks if it will fall prey to the 'Dutch disease'.

As Australia rushes to make hay, some worry that it will forget how to make everything else—an antipodean version of “Dutch disease”, in which a natural-resources boom boosts currencies and hurts manufacturing exports.

In March the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union launched “Manufacturing: Australia’s Future”, a campaign demanding R&D incentives, more apprenticeships, and “buy Australian” requirements for government projects.

In a February survey of manufacturing chief executives, 93% said their exports cannot compete when the Australian dollar buys more than $1. On March 31st, it bought $1.033.

8. Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% - Nobel Prize winning Economist Joseph Stiglitz writes in Vanity Fair about the growing inequality in America. This is today's must read.

In recent weeks we have watched people taking to the streets by the millions to protest political, economic, and social conditions in the oppressive societies they inhabit. Governments have been toppled in Egypt and Tunisia. Protests have erupted in Libya, Yemen, and Bahrain. The ruling families elsewhere in the region look on nervously from their air-conditioned penthouses—will they be next? They are right to worry. These are societies where a minuscule fraction of the population—less than 1 percent—controls the lion’s share of the wealth; where wealth is a main determinant of power; where entrenched corruption of one sort or another is a way of life; and where the wealthiest often stand actively in the way of policies that would improve life for people in general.

As we gaze out at the popular fervor in the streets, one question to ask ourselves is this: When will it come to America? In important ways, our own country has become like one of these distant, troubled places.

Alexis de Tocqueville once described what he saw as a chief part of the peculiar genius of American society—something he called “self-interest properly understood.” The last two words were the key. Everyone possesses self-interest in a narrow sense: I want what’s good for me right now! Self-interest “properly understood” is different. It means appreciating that paying attention to everyone else’s self-interest—in other words, the common welfare—is in fact a precondition for one’s own ultimate well-being. Tocqueville was not suggesting that there was anything noble or idealistic about this outlook—in fact, he was suggesting the opposite. It was a mark of American pragmatism. Those canny Americans understood a basic fact: looking out for the other guy isn’t just good for the soul—it’s good for business.

The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late.

9. 'Tax the rich' - Former US Labor Secretary Robert Reich writes that it's time to increase tax rates on the richest. Not new, but topical as the rich's lackeys prepare to shut down the American government later this week.

Revenge is a dish best served cold, although I doubt this President or the political establishment in America will change a thing.

The American system of government and 'democracy' is deeply plutocratic and ultimately self-destructive.

Here’s the truth: The only way America can reduce the long-term budget deficit, maintain vital services, protect Social Security and Medicare, invest more in education and infrastructure, and not raise taxes on the working middle class is by raising taxes on the super rich.

Even if we got rid of corporate welfare subsidies for big oil, big agriculture, and big Pharma – even if we cut back on our bloated defense budget – it wouldn’t be nearly enough.

The top 1 percent’s share of national income has doubled over the past three decades (from 10 percent in 1981 to well over 20 percent now). The richest one-tenth of 1 percent’s share has tripled. And they’re doing better than ever. According to a new analysis by the Wall Street Journal, total compensation and benefits at publicly-traded Wall Street banks and securities firms hit a record in 2010 — $135 billion. That’s up 5.7 percent from 2009.

Yet, remarkably, taxes on the top have plummeted. From the 1940s until 1980, the top tax income tax rate on the highest earners in America was at least 70 percent. In the 1950s, it was 91 percent. Now it’s 35 percent. Even if you include deductions and credits, the rich are now paying a far lower share of their incomes in taxes than at any time since World War II.

10. Totally watchable video of Charlie Rose's interview with Inside Job director Charles Ferguson.

11. Totally Jon Stewart video - The media is not allowed to attend the meeting where President Obama receives an award for transparency.