Here's my Top 10 links from around the Internet at 8 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.
John Clarke doing Glenn Stevens (10) made me LMAO.
1. Slow motion trainwreck - Sydney Morning Herald reports Warwick McKibbin, a director of the Reserve Bank of Australia, has said the global economy is facing a slow motion train wreck with Greece as only the first nation to be hit.
Referring to the most recent global economic crisis as a mere ''blip'', he said the coming crisis could undo the mining boom and bring on inflation of the kind not seen since the 1970s.
McKibbin is no nutter.
He is essentially saying the huge weight of the debt in the developed world is forcing money printing and inflation into the developing world.
Eventually this fast moving train of debt piles off the rails in financial markets through higher interest rates etc.
I'm not so sure about the higher interest rates, at least at the short term end of the curve. Central banks could easily suppress short term interest rates to ensure the debt doesn't implode the economy. That punishes savers at the expense of borrowers and is called financial repression.
Here's McKibbin.
Professor McKibbin told the Melbourne Institute conference dozens of European countries now had gross government debts on track to exceed 60 per cent of GDP. ''Japan is forecast to be 200 per cent of GDP, the US is forecast to be over 100 per cent of GDP,'' he said.
''At zero interest rates that can be sustained, but at 5 per cent interest rates countries have to put aside 5 per cent of their GDP every year just to service the debt. That is not sustainable.
''Already consumers aren't spending and investors aren't spending because of the tax increases that are in prospect. 'Greece, Portugal and Ireland don't just need to have their debts written off, they need to have a 30 per cent to 40 per cent depreciation of their real exchange rate,'' he told the conference.
''There are two ways to do that, either pull out of the euro and depreciate by 40 per cent, or have deflation of 40 per cent over the next 12 months. 'I do not believe any society can survive having a 40 per cent deflation that's been imposed by the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank.''
2. Australian nerves - Elizabeth Knight reports Australia is experiencing its biggest mining boom in more than century, but most of the economy feels down in the dumps.
This is important because Australia is New Zealand's largest trading partner etc. HT Daryl via email.
It's getting increasingly hard to find any constituent group in Australia that is feeling secure or confident about their short-term prospects and that of the wider economy. The results from the large and comprehensive survey of small business done quarterly by Sensis is the latest piece of negative information to surface.
If one carves out the mining industry, large tracts of the big business community are concerned about the economy. Exporters are being hit by the strong Australian dollar, most companies are wary of the effects of the carbon tax on their costs, banks are feeling the pinch from slow or no credit growth and those involved in the retail market are weighed down by falling levels of consumer confidence.
Meanwhile, the sharemarket is finding any excuse to fall while deal flow has slowed to a trickle for investment banks. There is also little reason for cheer in the retail property market - which many believe is a bubble just looking for a pin.
3. Australian house prices falling - The Sydney Morning Herald reports house prices fell 0.3% in May across the country and are down 2.7% in the first five months of 2011, which is worse than in the depths of the Global Financial Crisis in 2008.
Sydney was the only capital to notch a gain - 1 per cent - in the past 12 months. But Perth home values have slumped by 7.5 per cent, Brisbane's by 5.9 per cent and Darwin's by 3.2 per cent. The median price of houses and units in Melbourne has fallen by $21,000 from its peak in November 2010, to about $500,000. ''Melbourne has hit the brakes,'' Mr Lawless said.
This has prompted Melbourne vendors to drop prices to achieve a sale. Discounting has increased to 6.5 per cent, up from 5.7 per cent this time last year.
While investors nationally have seen strong growth in rental yields, in Melbourne they declined to 3.8 per cent from a previous high in early 2009 of 4.5 per cent.
58 Comments
McKibbin looks credible. Poor countries with currencies stronger than they warrant. His comments make so much sense.
FYI from Gary Shilling with part 5 of his scepticism on the never-ending China boom on Bloomberg
The hard landing that I foresee for China will probably prick the global commodity bubble, which is already showing signs of topping out.
The confidence that China would continue to buy huge quantities of almost all commodities has been the bedrock belief of speculators. For example, there were rumors that China was again building its emergency petroleum reserve in the first half of this year.
I’ve studied many bubbles over the years, and concentrated on predicting their demises. Commodities show every sign of being in one.
The bursting of the commodities bubble will be bad news for developing-country producers such as Brazil, which has thus far largely escaped recent global economic and financial woes but is a major exporter of iron ore and other commodities to China. Developed commodity exporters -- Canada, New Zealand and Australia -- as well as their currencies, may also suffer.
As if to confirm the above, Chinese factory output growth slowed to its weakest in more than two years...
Manufacturing growth is slowing in Asian economies from China to South Korea, creating a dilemma for central bankers considering higher interest rates to combat inflation.
The Purchasing Managers’ Index by the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing fell to the lowest level since February 2009, while a gauge by HSBC Holdings Plc and Markit Economics for India showed manufacturing in June grew at the slowest pace in nine months. South Korean exports rose the least in 20 months.
#4: Well worth watching the video of Sir Paul Callaghan talking about the economy, etc., at http://sierc.massey.ac.nz/video_full.html
#4 - well I never....
#6 - surely not:
Hey Les : As you know , one of my pet peeves is that this government and the previous one were so enamoured with big business , totally ignoring where jobs , innovation , and profits are actually created ........ in small businesses .......
... trolling through the Kauffman Foundation , I found this piece by Tim Kane ( forgive the Gummster , if you've already seen it )
www.kauffman.org/uploadedFiles/firm_formation_importance_of_startups.pdf
Thanks Roger. Not seen that one, useful read though and supports others stuff I've read, we know is true, but hey ho. The Analysis section on page 8 is good.
I think polys do know this, but just as they know many other solutions to blindingly obvious problems (I just can't get that phrase out of my head these days) they are hamstrung by the same things time and again when it comes to developing a will for change, or even if they do so, simply do not understand what is required for implementation to get the outcomes. For example, the last Labour government kicked off the so called 'Hi-Growth Project', with the laudable aim of seeing one hundred 100mio t/o firms develop in the so called 'hi-tech' sector. However, the project failed and that, I think, is because they did not understand (albeit early enough in the game) the kind of policy environment to allow such firms to 'emerge', or as Kaufman says infers, develop/grow organically. If only LAbour had taken more notice of NZMEA earlier, with the likes of R&D tax credit well bedded in, NACT wouldn't have culled it so easily, to name but one example. I don't think Labour (now) have forgotten these lessons but NACT don't even seem to be in the classroom - just look where their focus has been.
Cheers, Les.
The earthquake which shook Auckland tonight has been confirmed as a magnitude 2.9 shake but shallow at just 9km deep and centred in east Auckland just off Mission Bay
Wusses ! ....... anything under 5.4 , and us Cantabrians just kick the dog , and go back to sleep . ... . particularly so if it's after noon , and if the Crusaders are playing away ......
...... wake me up when you've got something serious to report , ..OK ?
Cheers !
Are they not mistaking it for Bernard passing wind?
Bernard passed some extraordinary hot air on Radio National this afternoon , with Jim Mora . Yet again , the Hickster attributes the blame for the GFC 100 % upon the capitalist system ....... and he totally debunked Don Brash's ideals , too .
Free market liberalism is to blame , intones the wise-one !
...... as if governments / ratings agencies / central bankers / private individuals were all innocent prawns in the fishy game of the capitalists .
Geez , Bernard ..... your credibility has sunk so low !
Gees Gummy, you just provided the first aftershock....
GBH, in your eyes only, take the blinkers off....so far I think BH is pretty accurate.....the free market, rational decisions, trickle down theories are total bunk, we've had 30 years of an experiment, we can see from the data only the top 1~5% has done well, the rest have broken even at best or actually lost.....this isnt what a fair society with equal opportunity is about...
regards
".....this isnt what a fair society with equal opportunity is about..."....
Steven....what is it all about?
A natural part of the capitalist system is the bubbles that occur ...... and the creative destruction which follows .... it isn't always pleasant , sometimes quite traumatic , but what is the alternative ...
..... steven's egalitarian socialist state would have no bubbles , everything would be state controlled ... and therefore , flat-lining .....
No bubbles , no creation , no innovation , no solutions to problems ..... keep us stuck in 2011 , or 1960 ..... yeah , that was a good time , let's go back to that ..
... why was it all black & white back then ? ... Me granny was grey then , she turned white later on !
It's not hard to debunk Brash - all you need is an IQ higher than 70, and an attention span of about five minutes.
Ideals, now that's a bit harder. He doesn't have any. He attempted to describe Climate Change in linear terms, on Checkpoint. He's been a banker - right? So either he knows enough to know he's being disingenuous (but that there are folk out there who will fall for it) or he's too stupid to get it. He called folk - doing a job that they have been asked democratically to do - as Hitlers. Described a relative who "got held up for months, even though they were in a residential area" - and reporter worth her salt should have smelled a rat and jumped on that one.
I put him in the same class as those who truck out the best global total URR (oil) ever quoted, but who fails to ascertain recovery rates, declining ERoEi, declining export rates........
Then there are those who scream about the increase in Government in the last 10 years - but fail to compare that with, say, the increase in economic activity, or, say, the increase in area of housing footprint, the increase in services complexity demanded.........in other words, who start with a preconception, then cherry-pick only the 'facts' which might support.
Surely, Brash knows why you need to regulate, it's to do with the limited ability of the environment - chemically, physically, and biologically - to absorb. He certainly knows there are a section of the populace - none too bright but plenty confident - who will soak up the horseshit, but he can't really be that stupid.
Can He?
C'mon Roger, cool it. I'd not wish same on anyone and if same happens up in Auckland, Wellington, you can guess where that will leave ChCh in terms of support - whistling dixie.
2.9 ... Les ! ...... it was probably just one of the prossies falling off her wall on Karagahape Road ..... hope the " client " paid extra for the bang .
Re 6. I have just returned from 6 weeks in China and Central Asia, specifically Shanghai to Kashgar plus Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. As we travelled around and a little west from Shanghai you were aware of the huge investment in infrastructure in China. There were constant signs of new roads, new rail lines and the skyline is crowded with the new Chinese national bird; the crane! The scene was busy and vibrant.
However, as you went further West, while there is still signs of infrastructure investment, you were aware that the building of huge appartment blocks seemed to have almost stopped at the 50% finished stage. Sure there were cranes, but they were not working. Yes, the new rail lines were visable from the roadways, but these new lines having had billions of tons of rock and gravel installed still needed 100's of bridges to be completed. Some did have piles in place for the roadway but most did not. These lines stretch for 100's of Kms alomgside existing rail lines on which very few freight or passenger trains were visable. This was especially visable from Jiayuguan Westward towards DunHuang and Urumqi. This infrastructure spending did not seem to have an economic purpose beyond simple employment and use of resources. The existing rail network was far from over utilized. The locals will never afford the cost of highspeed train services, they can only just afford the lowest class of travel on the existing services
When I looked more closely at the appartment block building process and compared the huge potential capacity of these partly finished but largely inactive sites with the surrounding small towns and the make-up of the these towns, the more inappropriate this building work became. The locals live in single story, mud brick houses with small courtyards to contain a few animals and vegatable plots. This is subsistance living as there are no other jobs except the work in the fields. These people will never afford the rent in an appartment and they can't have their animals or veg plots in these blocks. This infrastructure spending has no apparent future ecomonic value.
Much is made of China's adoption of internet technology. This is largely a myth outside of of the east Coast cities. Broad band is very unusual, WiFi is almost non-existant. Cell phones however are everywhere even down to a Buddist Monk calling for a taxi in the little town of Xiahe, at 3000 M near the Tibetan border!
At the same time, the existing roads in the area are collapsing under the weight of the trucks carrying the rock and concrete for these white elephants. Our avearge speed over a 500Km drive from Hotan to Kashgar was about 40Km such was the parlous state of the road surface. This is what is killing development in Western China and rail services will not solve the problems.
By contrast, there are some very impressive and one assumes economic investments such as the wind farms across the deserts which stretch for over 30Km at a time with turbines tightly packed and perhaps20+ deep. RMA does not apply here!!
So is there ever growing growth in China to support Australia for raw materials or deliver a domestic ecomony to sustain a shift from exports to internal consumption? I think not without many serious economic hiccups on the way. Our 6000Km journey over 3 weeks in China brought us close to many locals and the long hours on the roads and trains gave us an insight. Great people but a huge challenge which the curent spending is doing little to fix.
Beware Black Swans or perhaps predictable disasters.
VG report, John H, which I can endorse, having recently spent a week in Yunnan and Sechuan. ( I live in HK ) The rail development was simply stunning, the roads appalling and those completed excessive. Just across the border in Guangzhou city are mammoth apartment blocks where construction has come to a dead halt. The wind farms I saw were either at a standstill with no wind or broken down. I've heard there are completed installations unconnected to the grid. The SCMP has been running full page prospectuses for wind farms. A fool and his money is easily parted.
I concur - good points.
I am no expert but - windfarms in the desert tightly packed, may not be economic as they are better installed on ridges with good spacing to maximise their "capacity factor" i.e the amount of electricity they produce.
Windpower is expensive (in a number of ways) relative to other generation options, even in the best of cases.
John H, when you were at Dunhuang, did you manage to visit the Jade Gate? It must have been quite something, centuries ago, as the caravans on the Silk road emerged out of the desert, to be greeted by this imposing Chinese frontier pass that stood at the very edge of civilisation, the middle kingdom and all its fabulous wealth.
Kind of ironic then isn't it that the more things change the more things stay the same!
Re: 2
I'm in Aus on business. It feels prosperous still here - more so than NZ. I was in Melbourne now Adelaide. House prices here in Adelaide seem very competitive compared to Auck (same size pop). Its a nice place too...tempting....
BTW, has Tony Alexander been relegated away from the front page of the BNZ website - struggled to find his commentary today. One thing doesn't change though- he's still talking up the housing shortages and spruiking housing:
"But for our purposes in this section the key thing to take away from the consent numbers is this. Another month has gone by with unadjusted consent issuance of 1,073 dwellings rather than the near 2.100 needed to meet normal population growth. The housing shortage is roughly another 1,000 worse and that will bring increasing rental pressure especially in Auckland, discussion of shortages, and then hand wringing about newly declining housing affordability as house prices trend up again and then interest rates start moving from probably the end of the year."
He's really sounding desperate now. Someone should tell the guy that there is not a causal relationship between increasing population and house prices, although there is obviously an association. The US's population has been growing the last few years yet its house prices have been dropping. Ditto UK. Just maybe the strength or otherwise of the economy influencing demand is a major factor....??????
Yeah we knew Greenspan was a flaw from the get go...but Parky you are pushing for pollies taking charge of the money....and you refuse to explain how your wish could operate in NZ...you totally avoid the world level....so how about today you tell us the "how" and the "who"...we are waiting!....
Which of the following would you put in charge Parky: Key,Cunliffe,English,Hone,Winston,Brash.....?
But why do you trust the present system, the banks Wolly?
Whether Iain is right or wrong, what's your suggestion to make what he is saying actually work?
I don't Les.....!.....I am trying to get Parky to see that the reason the banking bosses, are allowed to carry on with the credit selling property porking game, the reason the whole system is a stinking corruption wrapped in bullshit and endless lying....is because the voters elect fools who procede to work for the banksters.....now to suggest there could be some magical new system where the creation of credit and the management of the countries money would be in the hands of "upright and honest" citizens.....is silly.
You want a change. You will not get any. There is no way to make Parky's pipedream any better than what we endure.
The new financial policeman and his team of eager beavers are knee deep in the filth and determined to restore the public faith in the financial sector ( was there ever any to start with )...but notice how he is not to poke his nose or his team into the banking playground...that is forbidden...WHY?
Parky not only refuses to accept this truth about the nature of mankind, but he also refuses to see the demand for credit as one of the causes of the systemic failure of the money system. He has a mortgage. That was his contribution to the bubble. Why didn't he save up what he needed to buy his property?
And knowing that the explosion of credit is the heart of the problem, do we see a govt and its lacky the RBNZ acting to throttle the credit...not bloody likely...the opposite is happening.
It's not difficult to agree with you Wolly, on many aspects. The challenge is developing a framework, a way that removes as much of the moral hazard as possible. Difficult. One possible way, I think, is partial implementation, eg. funding stuff we have no choice but to fund with debt+interest, eg. ChCh rebuild* and capped to X, after that, back to debt+interest. Following on from that, another possible way, partial funding of deficit to formula controlled by RB. (Am guessing what ypu'll say on the RB idea ....) No matter what though I'd want to see better non-tradeables inflation control than we have now.
* Assuming with either approach the increased (inflated) money supply is matched by requisite good and services, given the rebuild is going to happen anyway, it would yield less inflation if interest is not part of the equation.
I do see where you are coming from Les but the inflation caused by any interest charge on any credit used to pay for the work would be peanuts compared to the deliberate jacking of prices.
There is no "framework" Les....there is just endless lying, obfuscation, BS and spin....
The best course of action is to scream at the full moon....far more productive way to waste time and relieve stress Les.
"deliberate jacking of prices", well not difficult to imagine that Wolly! One way might be to run a competitive tender process to select one enitity for a fixed price contract - tongue firmly in cheek as I read your sentence ending, " ... endless lying, obfuscation, BS and spin..." and considere what has gone on. Again, difficult to disagree with you. If there was integrity it'd not be such a problem.
And, don't mention full moon in these parts.
Cheers, Les.
Here's a solution to one part of any build Les...
.http://www.hebel.co.nz/technical/brochures/Hebel_Supercrete_Block_Construction_Brochure.pdf
Even with the freight cost, you end up better off because the finished product is far better than almost everything else...
By the way..do you know what the usual trade discount on building supplies is...?
Looks tidy Wolly. The vertical through ties.
Trade discounts, depends on the trade, 15% - 20% for standard contruction materials where there is more competition; for sparks stuff up tp 60%. Then think about the ticket clips through the supply-chain. Then think who is ours? Can see why certain stock is heading north. Equals inflation. Maybe need a Min.Works like PM working through a fixed margin basis? (Am not suggesting full blown Min.Works, just the PM dimension.)
"Auckland was hit by an earthquake at 9.09 last night, and residents reported shaking across the city." herald
A tiny jolt....the sort of thing you get when the lava deep beneath begins to move into a higher chamber.....!
"...the U.S. Fed and Treasury have become increasingly desperate to make their lies about low inflation believable and provide cover for their increasing monetary debasement by attacking and rigging the most visible, go-to alternatives to failing fiat currency"...
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article29005.html
"The USFed balance sheet is almost totally ruined, without hope of repair. The clumsy oaf professor posing as USFed Chairman actually admitted in public that he is confused why the USEconomy remains moribund, unresponsive to all the special treatment administered so thoroughly. Bernanke admits his incompetence"
za-zing , ZYNGA has filed for an IPO ! ...... lucky us . The online games maker seeks to raise $US 1.5 to 2.0 billion . The company is estimated to achieve a market capitalisation of $US 15 billion after the float , give or take $US 5 billion .
....... unlike other recent internet stocks debuting on the NASDAQ , Zynga actually does make a profit from it's business . And top-line revenue is picked to surge to $US 1500 million in Year 2011 , from $US 850 million in 2010 .
Zynga admits that the lions share of it's revenue comes from computer geeks ..... now we know where Hickey slopes off to ! ......... 89 % of users get free content only . 10 % dabble a little on their products . Just 1 % of users are full-on games junkies ..... the company's cash machine .
"Money money money.....it's a council dream"
"A Marlborough grape grower has warned that a $900 bill from the Marlborough District Council awaits any farmer who wants to change how they use their water.
The council says the charge covers the cost of administering the changes, which are needed to keep water records up to date so the council knows how water, a public resource, is being used.
He grew crops such as apples and pears at his 30-hectare Selmes Rd farm before switching to grapes in 1992.
He did not change his water permit which was for "processed crops and orchards", not grapes.
The council told him in April that he needed to change his water permit after they saw his vines from aerial photographs"
http://www.stuff.co.nz/marlborough-express/rural/5220200/Grower-shocked-at-consent-cost
Grapes are a crop that get processed...but there's no money in that...hence the new interpretation of what grapes are.
"Council resource consents manager Anna Eatherley said the breakdown of costs was $138 in disbursement costs, such as photocopying and postage(?), and $763 for a council case manager to process the application. The case manager spent 4 1/2 hours working on the report, Ms Eatherley said.( $169.55 per hour)"
Yes you are wondering why a change of use makes any difference...funny that!
"The council says the charge covers the cost of administering the changes, which are needed to keep water records up to date so the council knows how water, a public resource, is being used."
And there's no income for council by having users drop in to update records or heaven forbid to have them able to update use online....no income at all.....
The viticulturist is lucky that the council didn't bill him for the cost of the helicopter , which took council officials and a photographer on the spying mission of their rate-payers !
Google Earth Gummy......the secret is not to invest in anything that uses water...otherwise you face being farmed by councils...what has Brash called them...?
And from our " I really do believe this , it isn't the drugs making me talk bull-shit " department we have this little gem from ...... where else , but America !
Dr. Richard Hollinger , Criminology Professor at Florida University proposes that the economy , and particularly the retail industry , is in a healthy recovery ...... because theft by employees is surging . ..
..Yassss , how good it is now , that retail theft surged to $US 37.1 billion in 2010 , from only $US 33.5 billion in 2009 .
The good Prof. says that 43.7 % of retail theft and fraud is conducted by the firm's own employees . And that during 2007 , shop-lfting fell significantly as employees resisted the temptation to half-inch the bosses inventory , for fear of losing their jobs .
....... clearly those fears have subsided now , and the gang are having a merry old time , stealing again ....
... Ahhhhhh , we all feel so much better knowing that , .... crime does pay .
".....and if one green bottle should accidently fall...."
"The mainstream press predominantly focuses on the bottom line numbers of by how much are each countries banks exposed to Greek government debt, without fully understanding the total exposure is about 100 times greater as a function of the $600trillion+ derivatives market that gambling prone British banks are more exposed to in terms of per capita then virtually any other nation on the planet.
Forget the official UK statistics of £1 trillion of public sector debt, total actual debt and liabilities are in excess of £11 trillion and the fools in Coalition Government are now contemplating Britain borrowing money in the name of UK tax payers to throw into the Greek black hole!
For instance the mainstream broadcast press smugly declares that British banks exposure the Greek government debt is just £2.5 billion. However throw in the derivatives exposure that also includes Portugal and Ireland and then the figure jumps to at least £350 billion with a figure approaching £800 billion or about 60% of GDP as the default contagion would not stop with Portugal as soon Spain and Italy would also follow their PIIGS brethren over the cliff, which would be enough to trigger a collapse of the global banking system as the earlier article ( Nov 2010 - Global Sovereign Debt Default Bankruptcy Bailout and Contagion Risk Analysis) illustrated the risk each country on its own posed to the global financial system if one were to default on their debts."
Wolly, something you, GBH, PDK and Steven may all get something from - Charles Hugh Smith on peak government. Two extracts:
In my analysis, there is a third dynamic that causes societies to cycle through growth, stasis and decline: an unremarked cycle of rising dependency on the Central State for direction, distraction and the essentials of life.
One example of this is the Roman Empire, which experienced an atrophying of enterprise and innovation as the Empire increased taxation on its remaining productive enterprises to fund the Empire’s high cost structure. To quell dissent, the Empire pursued a dual strategy of increased political oppression and placating the increasingly dependent lower classes with "bread and circuses," literally distributing free bread and free entertainment to roughly 40% of the population of Rome. Both of these strategies required additional expenditures of treasure, even as they suppressed the dissent and adaptation (i.e. the information in variation) that might have led to a successful “ratchet down” transition to a much less costly and sustainable decentralized structure.
This "Savior State" also creates a third pernicious dynamic: as dependence on the Central State rises, self-confidence and self-reliance both decline, sapping the populace of the confidence and drive needed to meet the challenges of diminishing returns and higher energy costs.
On this 4th of July, the idea that the Savior State could slip into irrelevancy is far-fetched indeed, as the Central State is currently at Peak Government: intrusive, invasive, all-controlling, even as it plays the role of benign Sugar Daddy issuing trillion-dollar bailouts to banks, trillion-dollar props to the stock market, food stamps and Section 8 to the poor, Medicare and Medicaid to the sickcare cartels, Social Security to tens of millions of retirees, unlimited funding to the National Security State and its Global Empire, and all the other programs funded with its $4 trillion budget ($3.8 trillion officially, but don't forget the hundreds of billions in off-budget "supplemental appropriations") and its $1.6 trillion annual deficit, fully 11% of the nation's GDP.
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogjuly11/dependency-self-reliance6-11.html
That is a timely reminder just how far the US and other developed countries have strayed from the free market mechanism . Crony capitalism is rampant .
.........A little study of historic civilsations which rose , and eventually withered away reveals a triumvirate of culprits : the rulers / the priests / the military . Any one or any combination of these three has always lead to disaster for the populence .
Power corrupts .
Does this reflect a government/government department(s) you know? Another extract:
Put another way, the institutions that were intended to solve society’s big problems slip into self-preservation, and thus end up adding to costs and problems alike.
The Sir Humphrey Appleby effect !
...... that civil service " self-preservation " nerve was re-ignited by the previous government in NZ ... Plus a few extra non-productive quangos were added on .
Interesting to see that civil servants not only have the benefit of tenure , but that their base salaries and bonuses continue to grow faster than the nation's GDP growth rate ....... and far faster than comparable jobs in to private sector .
Quite literally , the government in NZ is eating the economy !
Bullshit.
..... not by any chance in the public " service " are we , Andrew R ? ....
... sucking on the government's teats ...... being a parasite upon the productive endeavours of Kiwis in private enterprise , who work hard for a wage , or to keep a business in profit ?
Own up , buddy , we're all friends here . Come clean , we'll understand , no one is beyond redemption ..... well , no one except for steven that is .......
Hell, GBH - you're onto it. He could be a policeman, or maybe a teacher, or one of those freeloading surgeons.
Yup, sooner we're rid of them, the better - not.
The sad cases are actually those who think they're 'working hard'. They aren't. They are using a compact source of energy to do their work for them. A temporary state of affairs.
After 1999 , the government added around 1000 policemen to the pay-roll , fair enough , gotta keep Winston on board ........ Where did the other 9000 jobs go to .... hmmmm ?
....... now Gummy is fullsome with praise for those on the front lines : nurses / police / teachers ..... OK !
GBH gets really ratty at public serpents on $ 500 000 salaries ........ particularly with $ 800 000 news-readers on TV1 .......
... separate " essential " services , from bloated bureaucracies , and jobs-for-mates , shall we .
Yep, you got it in one.
So I know your tenure stuff claim is bullshit and your increasing public pay claim is bullshit.
Then again I am not near the top of the public service pile. Maybe it is different in such rarified atmosphere. I hear for example that the Director General of Health gets paid more than his/her UK counterpart. Just following the example of their private sector counterparts perhap?
"AUSTRALIA'S first foreign bribery prosecution will accuse two Reserve Bank currency firms and six of their former senior managers of funnelling multi-million-dollar bribes to high-ranking government officials in Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam to win bank-note deals."
http://www.smh.com.au/national/bank-bribes-more-arrests-imminent-20110701-1gv6q.html
And the aussie taxpayer doesn't yet realise they will be paying the multi million dollar damages bill that will likely result from law suits filed by international companies that missed out on the deals.
Hook line and sinker...gottcha!
Lazy buggers......
"PRODUCTIVITY in Tasmania is on a downward slide, just as federal Treasury Secretary Martin Parkinson warns that Australians face a decline in living standards if they do not work harder."
http://www.themercury.com.au/article/2011/07/02/242331_tasmania-news.html
Holds very much for some other countries countries too, including Greece and New Zealand.
Hong Kong workers to enjoy minimum wage for first time Critics say the minimum wage is a departure from Hong Kong's free-market roots
Hong Kong has introduced a minimum wage that is expected to benefit 270,000 low-paid workers, or around 10% of the working population.
Workers will now earn a minimum of HK$28 ($3.60; £2.18) per hour.
Thats $4.34 NZ and Labour proposes a minimum wage of $15
It is the thin edge of the wedge , when government begins to decree how they think the market-place should work .
..... one year from now , how many of those 270 000 will actually be out of a job , because of this legislation .
Germany doesn't have a minimum wage . And they're the powerhouse economy of Europe . Italy , Denmark , Finland , Sweden , Norway , Switzerland ....... no minimum wage !
I see that both sides of Thailand politics ( general election today ! ) are promising to boost the minimum wage , the goal being 1000 Thai Baht per worker per day , by 2015 . $NZ 40 per day isn't alot here , but it's an enormous amount to the locals , there . Such populist vote buying policies will result in more jobs beng lost to Indonesia and Vietnam .
Labour in NZ remain utterly clueless as to the unforessen consequences of their policies . Witness the incredible rise in youth unemployment , since Helen clark scrapped the Youth Pay rate . And what a boon it is for the nation's letterboxes , to have groups of alcopop fueled unemployed youngsters roaming our streets at night .
Actually, there are a lot of clueless folk around. Those who treat a secondary mechanism (money) as if it were the primary, I categorise thus.
Colin Riden points to the fall of the Roman Empire. They, too, attempted to deal with it fiscally. this excerpt:
to meet the challenges of diminishing returns and higher energy costs.
says it all. The writer sees it all in terms of money. It's not a matter of 'higher energy costs', it's a matter of increasing energy scarcity. That means - whether you have a Left or Right Govt, that you'll be doing less work. The Romans failed to identify what was strangling them:
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/50025
They're not the only ones.
Yes,
Money should be thought of as a temp medium of exchange.
Its an IOU for future energy, so its a debt, and we are in a credit crisis there is no guarantee its exchangable.
There probably isnt enough energy left to pay the IOUs by a considerable margin.
Some countires sort of get it I think, example, the Japansese found that they were having difficulty buying rice when India, Thailand etc stopped exporting it....for all their money they could buy what was essential, later Japanese Govn commented it only grew 36% of its food, it had to get to 43%.....
I see that the Govns and treasuries are now looking for a new way to measure a country's worth...GDP is "inadequate" all of a sudden it seems.....so some of us are not the only ones that think this recession is here for a long while....or even GDP might shock horror, shrink.....need to keep the ppl happy that they are well off of course, so invent a new metric.
You are right on right and left, but actually I think all of them. Even the Green's seem to be saying a transition to Green energy is the way to go, with lots of new jobs....hahaha, lots of unemployment and unemployable, so there will be a big pool of potential workers....I guess polling is showing telling potential voters we are all f**ked and had better start building communs doesnt gain many votes...
regards
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