Here's my Top 10 links from around the Internet at 10 am 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.
Bit hectic yesterday. Fresh one here now.
1. MED gets a cyber-shellacking from a Naked Capitalist - An apparently anonymous correspondent on Yves Smith' Naked Capitalism (one of my favourite reads) takes a swipe at the New Zealand Ministry of Economic Development's protections against global scam artists and fraudsters using New Zealand's light touch to do fancy things.
I have no way to know if it's accurate.
But it doesn't look good.
Perhaps the newly muscular FMA could have a look.
HT quite a few correspondents.
Here's anonymous Naked:
Quite possibly, actual bad people don’t care a bit about the legal penalties for putting dodgy entries on the NZ company registrar (1993 Companies Act). There may be a whole bunch of them doing it already! Or maybe just one guy out in cyberspace somewhere. You just can’t tell.
If I were the NZ police, with no travel budget, and searching for the chimerical Rod Alvar, I’d now be very curious about the denizens of 9/22 Curran Street, and all of the people who’ve left their digital fingerprints on NEW ZEALAND INTERNATIONAL SAVINGS & LOAN LIMITED. And of course, any other company on the register with associations to any of these bods or that address, is tainted.
Happy searching. There will, I suspect, be plenty to find.
2. Long term damage - PIMCO's Mohamed El Irian writes in the Washington Post about the problems with the game of chicken playing out in Washington.
The very vocal and visible recent bickering is causing more than transitory damage to U.S. growth and employment prospects. Remember, this debt crisis is not the result of an inability to pay; nor is it being forced on the United States by hesitant creditors. Rather, political posturing on what had been a relatively obscure and non-threatening legislative requirement — Congress gets to control the nation’s spending and taxes through other means each year — the debate on the debt ceiling has managed to bring forward in a very dramatic and disorderly manner fiscal challenges that lie down the road.
In this political mess, already-weak business and consumer confidence is being dealt a further blow. Companies with massive cash holdings now have yet another excuse to stay on the sidelines. Foreigners have been stunned by the political dysfunctionality of the country in which they have placed factories, whose financial instruments they buy with their savings and whose money serves as the global reserve currency.
3. Here's Gareth Morgan talking about how America's debt problems will affect New Zealand.
4. The new Murdoch? - Yves Smith wonders whether Standard and Poor's has become the new Rupert Murdoch and is throwing its weight around in Congress.
Standard and Poors is evidently meeting with high-stakes gamblers and letting them know where to place their bets as they manipulate the global economy.
But they are also playing a much more sinister game. Like a cat toying with a mouse, they are also inserting themselves in the political process and setting themselves up to be kingmaker in the 2012 election.
5. Pretty (ugly) charts - This is a fantastic interactive chart over at WSJ that allows you to compare public debt/gdp ratios between countries, including New Zealand.
6. Yes it is a problem - The US Treasury has warned it will struggle to pay its bills from August 2. Some have suggested America could last a week or two.
Treasury said tax receipts were in line with expectations after Wall Street analysts suggested that stronger-than-expected tax income meant that the United States would not default on its obligations until mid-August.
"Tax receipts were as expected for June and July. The fact remains that the U.S. will exhaust borrowing authority on August 2 and after that date there is no way to guarantee we will be able to meet all of the nation's obligations," a Treasury spokeswoman said in a statement.
7. One in 5 young New Zealanders thinking of leaving - Here's a Fairfax poll showing how young New Zealanders are protesting and voting with their feet.
8. 'Get your 'a** into line' - CNN reports That's what Republican House Speaker John Boehner said to Tea Party colleagues opposed to his plans.
9. And the Chinese are appalled - Morgan Stanley's Stephen Roach told Bloomberg's Paul Panckhurst (a former NZ Herald reporter) the Chinese government is privately appalled about the situation in America.
“Coming so shortly on the heels of the subprime crisis, the debate over the debt ceiling and the budget deficit is the last straw” for China, New York-based Roach, 65, said in an e- mailed note today. He said his assessment was based on visits to Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing and Hong Kong.
In another sign of concern within the nation that is the biggest foreign owner of Treasuries, the official China Securities Journal said today that the U.S. stand-off signals long-term dollar weakness that will push up commodity prices and pose inflation risks for the world. In Mumbai yesterday, a former central bank adviser, Yu Yongding, repeated his call for China to reduce its Treasury holdings, adding that a default would be “disastrous.”
Roach cited an unnamed Chinese policy maker as saying in mid-July that “we understand politics, but your government’s continued recklessness is astonishing.” In the past, the economist has met with officials including central bank Governor Zhou Xiaochuan.
10. Totally Clarke and Dawe on the Carbon Tax in Australia. Wayne Swan is on the nose, as they say in Australia
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