Here's my Top 10 links from around the Internet at 7.30 am in association with NZ Mint.
I welcome your additions in the comments below or via email tobernard.hickey@interest.co.nz.
I'll pop the extras into the comment stream. See all previous Top 10s here.
The video at #10 today is riveting. And please don't buy me a Porsche Cayenne for Christmas.
1. The Cayenne Crisis - Don't get me started on the Porsche Cayenne.
It is the ultimate symbol of the naughty oughties.
The Cayenne is a wasteful and boastful boat of a car that is all style and no substance, or more correctly, way too much substance (weight and fuel) and too little style (ugliest car on the planet).
Our offices are in Herne Bay so I see an awful lot of these monstrosities tootling around from the cafe to the school and back to the multi-million dollar mansion/villa.
Mark Hotchin has one.
They are often bought with borrowed money to impress the neighbours.
They're also symbolic in Europe, given the Germans made and exported them to Southern Europe, who bought them with money borrowed from Germany.
One of the most famous factoids of the Greek crisis is there are more registered owners of Porsche Cayennes than the number of people who declare taxable incomes over €50,000.
Now Bloomberg reports on the Cayenne crisis in Southern Europe and Germany. Sales have collapsed.
Roberto Murga, a construction manager from Barcelona, loved his platinum gray Porsche Cayenne until the debt crisis made the sport-utility vehicle’s leather interior and electronic seats expendable.
The 66,370-euro ($88,800) status symbol is now unnecessary ballast for Murga, 33, who like other Spaniards has been forced to cut spending because of the country’s weakening economy. Car demand, which has halved since peaking in 2007, probably won’t recover this decade, analysts predict.
“I can’t splurge anymore, and maintaining my precious Cayenne is just too expensive,” said Murga, who made as much as 8,000 euros a month before the real estate bubble went bust three years ago, forcing him to fire half his workers. “We have no profit at all. We just try to survive.”
"Investors are massively underestimating the risk of a hard-landing in China, and indeed other BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China)... a 'Bloody Ridiculous Investment Concept' in my view," said Albert Edwards at Societe Generale.
"The BRICs are falling like bricks and the crises are home-blown, caused by their own boom-bust credit cycles. Industrial production is already falling in India, and Brazil will soon follow."
"There is so much spare capacity that they will start dumping goods, risking a deflation shock for the rest of the world. It no surpise that China has just imposed tariffs on imports of GM cars. (see #8 below) I think it is highly likely that China will devalue the yuan next year, risking a trade war," he said.
3. Beijing apartment prices down 13% - GlobalPropertyGuide reports on what's happening at the most speculative end of the Chinese property market.
In Beijing, new apartment prices were 13.45% down y-o-y to October 2011, after rising 18% during 2010. Shanghai experienced a much smaller price-drop of 0.39%, according to the National Bureau of Statistics of China (NBSC).
In the 4th quarter, the downward trend is intensifying. In fact each month, for several months, more regions have reported falling house price, and fewer regions have reported rising prices.
4. Nein, Nein und Nein again - This is not going to end well.
Reuters reports the Germans are steadfast on not allowing the European Central Bank to print money to solve the European crisis.
Germany's chancellor and central banker urged Europe to stick to stricter budget discipline and forget about one-shot solutions after financial markets judged that another EU summit had failed to resolve the euro zone's debt crisis.
Weidmann, an influential voice in the ECB, made clear his opposition to ramping up purchases of troubled euro zone states' debt, saying he was "no fan" of the existing limited bond-buying program and even its supporters were growing skeptical.
He also said the Bundesbank would only provide fresh funds for the International Monetary Fund to help fight the euro zone crisis if countries beyond Europe did so too.
5. Could Ron Paul actually win it? - Libertarian Republican Presidential hopeful Ron Paul has some interesting ideas. He wants to dismantle the US Federal Reserve, massively reduce the size of the US military and won't oppose gay marriage. He scares the hell out of Wall St and none of the conventional pundits or candidates seem able to combat his popularity or dismantle his arguments.
He really is the outsider and now the polls are saying he actually has a chance of winning the first Republican primary in Iowa. You can sense the growing sense of panic among the 'people in charge' in Washington and Manhattan.
Public Policy Polling released a survey on Tuesday showing him one percentage point behind Gingrich for the lead in Iowa. Paul took 21 percent in the survey compared to 22 percent for Gingrich with Romney third at 16 percent.
In New Hampshire, which follows Iowa's caucus with a primary election on January 10, Romney led with 33 percent in a Rasmussen Reports poll released on Tuesday. Gingrich was second with 22 percent and Paul third at 18 percent. Paul's four-point gap behind Gingrich narrowed from a 10-point gap in the previous week's poll and marked Paul's best showing so far, Rasmussen said.
Paul, 76, attracts voters with a libertarian vision of eliminating a role for the state wherever possible. But some of his views alienate traditional bases of the Republican Party. His call to abolish the Federal Reserve alarms Wall Street Republicans. His advocacy for withdrawing from U.S. military engagements abroad concerns national security Republicans. Social conservatives may be wary of his refusal to oppose gay marriage, as Paul says the federal government has no business regulating any marriage.
"The special interests on Wall Street -- they might have a lot of money but they don't have a lot of voters," Paul said.
6. Chinese exporters bracing for 'very severe' first quarter - Some people thought China would be able to decouple from Europe. It appears this is not happening...
Here's Reuters with what the Chinese are saying on the ground there.
"The overall trade environment next year for China will be complicated, partly due to the economic uncertainties in the European countries, and I should say that the export situation in the first quarter of next year will be very severe," Commerce Ministry spokesman Shen Danyang told a news conference.
7. The siege of Wukan - Keep an eye on this. The Telegraph's Malcolm Moore writes about the seige by Police of a village in China called Wukan where 20,000 people have been protesting illegal land seizures by the local government for months. This could be interesting.
Now Police have cut off food supplies to the village and it's being talked about on the Internet in China.
Here's Moore:
The latest protests began on Sunday, when police attempting to arrest a villager were repelled by villagers armed with sticks. The police fired tear gas before retreating. At the same time, the local government brought the village's simmering anger to a boil by admitting that Xue Jinbo, a 43-year-old butcher who had represented the villagers in their negotiations with the government, had died in police custody of "cardiac failure".
Mr Xue was taken into custody last week and accused of inciting riots. Mr Xue was widely believed to have been tortured, perhaps to death, and his family were rumoured to have found several of his bones broken when receiving his corpse.
On Monday, around 6,000 people attended Mr Xue's funeral and photographs of the massed crowds paying their respects circulated on the Chinese internet. Meanwhile, more photographs showed thousands of Chinese police massing on the roads surrounding Wukan and villagers said that a blockade had been imposed. Villagers using the internet inside the cordon claimed that supplies of food, including rice were running low. "A lot of policemen are assembled outside the village," wrote one villager on Weibo, China's version of Twitter, who named himself as Charles Suen.
8. China vs American trade dispute growing - Reuters reports China has imposed a punitive duty of 22% on imports of American-made large cars and SUVs.
Chinese officials said the U.S.-built SUVs and luxury sedans were being dumped on the Chinese market and causing "substantial damage to China's domestic industry." Vehicle exports to China had already been subject to a 25 percent tariff and the new tariff will be in addition to that duty.
The decision by Beijing to impose the additional levy comes after China lost a two-year fight over tire exports to the United States in September.
A World Trade Organization ruling favored an Obama administration proposal to sharply increase duties on Chinese tires, rejecting an appeal that the 2009 move was protectionist and would hurt China's tire industry.
9. US government spending may be shut down by Saturday morning - It's hard to believe we're back here again, but this is one of the scenarios now facing the US government.
President Barack Obama's brinkmanship strategy over the payroll tax cut and a bill to fund the government after Friday appears to have fallen apart.
An email from White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer sent to reporters Wednesday night calls on congress to shelve the $1 trillion funding measure, saying Obama has "significant concerns" about the bill. Instead, Obama urged Congress to proceed with another short-term continuing resolution — without which, much of the federal government will shut down early Saturday morning.
10. Totally relevant and riveting video of UK MEP Daniel Hannan slamming Eurocrats in the European parliament
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