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
112 Comments
It has been around a while, but for those who haven't seen it,.
Top of the morning to you all.
Cheers
The Banking Crisis simply explained...
Young Paddy bought a donkey from a farmer for £100.
The farmer agreed to deliver the donkey the next day...
The next day he drove up and said, 'Sorry son, but I have some
bad news. The donkey's died.'
Paddy replied, 'Well then just give me my money back.'
The farmer said, 'Can't do that. I've already spent it.'
Paddy said, 'OK, then, just bring me the dead donkey.'
The farmer asked, 'What are you going to do with him?'
Paddy said, 'I'm going to raffle him off.'
The farmer said, 'You can't raffle a dead donkey!'
Paddy said, 'Sure I can. Watch me. I just won't tell anybody
he's dead.'
A month later, the farmer met up with Paddy and asked, 'What
happened with that dead donkey?'
Paddy said, 'I raffled him off.
I sold 500 tickets at two pounds a piece and made a profit of
£898'
The farmer said, 'Didn't anyone complain?'
Paddy said, 'Just the guy who won.
So I gave him his two pounds back.'
Paddy now works for the Royal Bank of Scotland .
A Ron Paul win ?? Yeah right...Wall Street will sink him even before he goes into the finals...remember a guy name Robert Kennedy ??
China is in its first leg of a great meltdown...Brazil has already started...contrary to "going into recession"...Ozzies couldn't believe they have entered the negative zone...lots of propaganda about ''how great our economy is" stuff in the papers still....and as for God's Zone...well.........
My point is ...will they be able to vote for him.....ala Robert Kennedy ??
Fact that he wants to break up the Fed and kill the banks....that's reason enough to vote for him (in my books but I am not american)...or to do what's necessary to make sure he is not in the ballot....(in some others books)....remember he is in his 70s.
This news about Ron Paul gaining ground is fantastic. If the Euro fails this summer and we get lots of bank failures I believe he will win.
Obama and all the clone candidates know this as well - even more reason to keep kicking the can down the road and live in fantasy land.
Ron Paul 2012! Before it's too late!
Hey Gumbster, off tocic a bit but in previous threads your writing leads me to think you believe that the way banks operate is in the same way most people think they do, by borrowing money off one customer and lending it to another at a higher rate (i.e. for every borrower there is a depositor).
This is not how I or some other readers here understand it to work;
Banks are in the enviable position of being granted the power to credit a borrower's account the money they need and debiting their own, and in so doing in effect increasing the money supply at that very moment.
Of course as the borrower pays back the principle the money is then extinguished from the banks books and the money supply is reduced. If a borrower defaults and has no way to pay the outstanding, the debt then suddenly becomes very real for the bank and it feels the pain.
If there are as many loans being created (or slightly more) as paid off, then the economy ambles along nicely. This is regulated by RBNZ through its various means.
This would be all fine and dandy if it weren’t for the effect of the compounding interest attached to each loan, as collectively there isn't enough money in circulation to pay back the interest portion of each loan. Requiring more money to be introduced into circulation each and every year (with the corresponding debt too). This is a ponzi scheme and will get to a point where it cannot continue.
I don't want to sound like I am telling you how to suck eggs, but surely this is a very important fundamental distinction that underpins ones economic world view. Without understanding this underlying principle of money creation, how can one have an informed opinion, perhaps I have it completly wrong?
I enjoy reading your smart and witty comments, but I am curious to know what your take is on how you see loaning process works. Perhaps I have it completely wrong?
Regards -bb
" Captain Catastrophe " ....... were you aware , Bernard , that that is the favourite sobriquet for you by listeners to RadioLive ? ......
...... it seems that you're having a devastating effect upon Marcus Lush's listeners ...... depressing them , apparently ... ( and all in just a 5 minute spot each week-day morning ) ..
So much so , they swamp Marcus with choice titles for you . One of which was similar to Gummie's .. " Chicken Little Hickey " ..
..... the Chemist's Guild of NZ are raising a statue to you , Bernard ; sales of anti-depressants & anti-hickeystamines have cracked all time records !
Bernard
I love Porsche (have serveral all pre 73), but like you hate the Cayenne, When we visitied the Factory a few years ago you could see how cynical it was, at the worst the Polish built bodies are mated with a warmed over VW engine and trucked off to the port to be sent to Amerika, you could see why they were raking in the money. To add injury to insult if you ordered an option (such as carbon fibre trim), The factory fitted trim was pulled out and the option put in (This is totally different to a 911 which is bespoke built in Stuttgart) Truly they were/are the 'fast food' car of the venal and tasteless
Neven
LOL, yes I agree...
Simple, If I was going to buy a new and first rate 4wd it would be a Range Rover or a Discovery.....thats real 4wds with a rep to match it....
If I was getting a Porsche it would be a 911, there is NO other Porsche worthy of the name IMHO.
regards
Hi,
I was going to get a Wrangler or the Mits when I discovered them!, then started having children....LOL...oops....good choices though IMHO....I'd like to own the deisel Mits myself.
The conversion process to bio-deisel doesnt look that hard if you have some land to experiment on....not something I can do but a rural type who had some decent sheds with a few acres around it would be OK.
regards
With woodgas you need a big vehicle to carry the plant along with a big engine to make up for the 40% power loss.
Wouldn't touch a Land Rover with a barge pole though as the maintenance costs would be huge, as the Dog and Lemon guide states "avoild like the plague". VX Landcruiser or a Patrol.
Hugh the highly respected John Taylor from FX Concepts (40 years in the game) said this morning they or going short $Kiwi and are very nervous $Aussie because they see China slowing big time which could cause commodities to drop 50% which is quite conceivable. NZ Inc would need some major adjustments fast.
If commodities drop by 50%, wouldn't you be buying with both hands? The more relevant detail is; how long will they stay down by 50%? With the infinite creation of money, and the finite amount of commodities, sounds like a bit of redistribution could occur, kiwis have got an extra 200mil to spend.
The Bernanke has promised to fly around in a helicopter, dropping off parcels of money, if thats what it takes to totaly debase the worlds reserve currency.
Do not underestimate the power of policy to kick the can down the road. Relative to Europe, Japan, and the US. China has pleanty of road left, so does NZ.
50% drop in commodities is a buying opportunity, and people will swap their useless govt bonds, for commodities. The price of what you need will increase, and the things you don't will decrease. Biflation.
It took at least 15 years to get out of the depression in spite of Hoover spending, then FDR accelerating that spending. The cause was the FED inflating the money supply far too much in the 20's.
What needs to happen is for the debt to be extinguished before a genuine recovery can occur. That will be very painful but it could be brief if bankruptcies were allowed to take place. That may take place in a currency crisis event.
Keeping these economies artificially levitated at these levels with ever more debt can only postpone the inevitable collapse.
Think of it like pulling off a sticking plaster, there is a fast or slow way. Iceland took the fast way and they are now growing again 2 years later, Japan has chosen to take the slow way and they are in worse shape over 2 decades on.
Colin
Here's that link with Taylor shorting the Kiwi dollar
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-15/fx-concepts-john-taylor-says-e…
cheers
Bernard
Sorry that is not a link.
Its from Zero hedge. Here is a bit more.
According to the Australian Finance Review (link - subscription required), banks down under "have been given 1 week by regulators to stress test how they would handle a spike in joblessness, plunge in home prices spurred by EU debt crisis." Aka a European "Meltdown." And since we don't have immediate access to the article, we leave it to Bloomberg First Word to describe for us what the article says:
- Australian Prudential Regulation Authority envision worst-case scenario of 12% unemployment, 30% drop in house prices, 40% fall in commercial property values, AFR says
- Banks will assume that write-offs, other mitigation measures are unavailable; later stress tests might allow for such steps, AFR says
- Australia’s banks have A$87.2b of exposure to Europe, or 2.7% of assets, with A$74.6b of it mostly tied to bank borrowers in France, Germany, Netherlands, AFR says, citing RBA statistics
Here's the link
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/australian-banks-given-one-week-prepare-e…
More interesting is a youtube video on the Brisbane property market that one of the comments links to.
mr nev--that video clip was shot in the boonies in a place called yamanto--it,s about 42 ks fram the cbd----but it is fairly indicative of what,s going on even in the closer in development/estates-- last weeks Australian auction results
Sydney---value sold $184 392400---property,s sold---254
Melbourne--value sold--$89 000730--property,s sold----146
Brisbane---value sold---$2 445000----property,s sold---8
Adelaide---value sold---$4 972500---property,s sold---12
this has been going on for the best part of a year but there is very little publicity about it --surprise surprise-----another factor at play is interstate migration-into brisbane--it used to run at about 1200 persons per week--it,s currently about 300---click on the pdf, s in the link for city breakdown
cheers paul w
Ok, this got me to register.
The Porche/ Greek income story was debunked in the rather good BBC "More or Less" podcast of Dec 2nd, which focuses on the use of numbers in the media. Though they do note that the theme of the story (that there is a lot of tax dodging in Greece) is justified. The podcast website is at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qshd
Hugh Hendry on EU, this is a Depression.
Hugh Hendry on China's GDP fiddle...
Nouriel Roubini on 2012 prospects
Meanwhile, flaws in China’s growth model are becoming obvious. Falling property prices are starting a chain reaction that will have a negative effect on developers, investment, and government revenue. The construction boom is starting to stall, just as net exports have become a drag on growth, owing to weakening US and especially eurozone demand. Having sought to cool the property market by reining in runaway prices, Chinese leaders will be hard put to restart growth.
I dont think even a tank would be enough, nice guy, he's what, 76, hmmmm heart attack time, he's only got the one 70 year old body guard, hope his insurance is up to date. Feel sorry for him looks like such a nice guy. Step over that line and boom look at Kennedy, talk about a silver back currency and next thing some nutter shoots him, with a italian army rifle while he's moving at impossible range.
http://www.john-f-kennedy.net/executiveorder11110.htm
On June 4, 1963, a little known attempt was made to strip the Federal ReserveBank of its power to loan money to the government at interest. On that day President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order No. 11110 that returned to the U.S. government the power to issue currency, without going through the Federal Reserve. Mr. Kennedy's order gave the Treasury the power "to issue silver certificates against any silver bullion, silver, or standard silver dollars in the Treasury." This meant that for every ounce of silver in the U.S. Treasury's vault, the government could introduce new money into circulation. In all, Kennedy brought nearly $4.3 billion in U.S. notes into circulation. The ramifications of this bill are enormous.
With the stroke of a pen, Mr. Kennedy was on his way to putting the Federal Reserve Bank of New York out of business. If enough of these silver certificats were to come into circulation they would have eliminated the demand for Federal Reserve notes. This is because the silver certificates are backed by silver and the Federal Reserve notes are not backed by anything. Executive Order 11110 could have prevented the national debt from reaching its current level, because it would have given the gevernment the ability to repay its debt without going to the Federal Reserve and being charged interest in order to create the new money. Executive Order 11110 gave the U.S. the ability to create its own money backed by silver.
After Mr. Kennedy was assassinated just five months later, no more silver certificates were issued.
Gold is backed by nothing, the dollar is backed by the Federal Reserve, thats gonna be around a year from now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1V7n3qRRM60
In Unprecedented Move, Canada Withdraws from Kyoto Protocol
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=106223
Carbon trading dying in a ditch.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/15/eu-carbon-trading-in-freefall/#comments
THANKS, O IWI FOR HELPING KEEP NZ A LOW WAGE,LOW GROWTH ECONOMY
Maori Party MP Te Ururoa Flavell's welcoming news a judicial review will examine a deep sea oil exploration permit awarded to oil company Petrobras. PATHETIC
East Coast Iwi Te Whanau-a-Apanui have won a legal bid to have the process by which the permit was awarded examined .SAD
The Iwi opposes the project saying deep water oil drilling will pose a serious environmental risk. OF COURSE
Mr Flavell is praising the iwi for its perseverance and initiative in seeking the judicial review.
He's congratulating them on their efforts.WHY ?
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10773368 Social Development Minister Paula Bennett has reclaimed the Waitakere seat from Labour's Carmel Sepuloni by nine votes in a judicial recount.
Talk of 'nuclear default' sums up Left's anger at EU dictates Tempers are fraying in austerity-racked Portugal. A top socialist politician was taped at a party dinner calling for diplomatic warfare against the EU's northern powers and issuing threats of debt default.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/8959687/Talk-of-nucl…
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Otsuka Duojinshi
I am mindful of a book I read eons ago - Barbara Tuchman's - The March of Folly. Leaving aside Ms. Tuchman's academe, the book's central premise was the astonishing pathetic government leaders that have presided over us throughout history. I am certain that she spins in her grave watching what we're subject to today. Historic corruption and incompetence.The left AND right have corrupted banking and finance to the point of utter perversion, where their negotiation seems best characterized by the phrase "What's mine is mine, and what's yours is negotiable." We truly are cursed by living in the most interesting of times. Thank goodness it is endgame. The desperation writ large herein and elsewhere speaks to this.
The collapse of MF Global and John Corzine's crony corruption is a perfect meme for our times - particularly when one considers that this man was seriously entertained as a candidate for US Treasury secretary. The EU, ECB, and all like minded €urocratic sponsors are full of similar incompetent buffoons with one goal privatise their own gain and socialize all risk to them and all proposals are simply for more of the same and one more draught at the punch bowl.
Default? Debacle? Nuclear default bomb? A downward spiral inflicting "demented" policies on the whole of Europe?
Bring it on! End this €uro lie and return the sovereign contol for good & bad to each country - It is sink or swim time.
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Otsuka,
The seeds of the chaos the world will reap within the next ten years or so were sown 20, 30 or perhaps even longer ago. When you, quite reasonably, allow lenders to charge interest on their capital and at the same time, corruptly, prevent bad debt from being shaken out regularly in boom and bust cycles you will inevitably end up in an unsustainable situation. This is not opinion but just mathematics.
Try to make a simple plot showing growth and the cost of debt service versus time (two exponential curves) and see when they cross - that is the year when growth can no longer support the service of the debt, let alone bring it down. This is where a number of countries and many private organisations and individuals are at the moment. They have ended up there because of the fraudulent debt-based money supply system allowing banksters to conjure up money from nothing and charge interest on it, in complicity with the political class who gets re-elected by allowing this scam.
Central banks obviously seek to control the consequences of the scam by stealing from small savers, the poor, and retired people, through the mechanism of inflation - while indemnifying the beneficiaries of this colossal fraud, including the bankers themselves. However, despite their best efforts they will not succeed and the system will crash. The maths is not in their favour.
They obviously know this and they know that in the end they will suffer huge losses, the longer this terminally ill system is kept alive on a debt ventilator, the bigger the losses will be. Forcing the large banks to account honestly for their assets, and forcing those that de facto operate unlawfully, i.e. in a state of insolvency, to go under and the economy re-balanced in a slow and controlled manner is the only possible way out - but it may already be too late.
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Otsuka Duojinshi
Well said and thoughtfully written. I would expand upon remarks in specifics. I was in secondary school when President Nixon declared the US's post Vietnam war bankruptcy in the early seventies and abandoned Bretton Woods. Since the close of the gold window , the world has lurched from one inflationary credit bust cycle to another.He also imposed wage and price controls - the wage controls lagged on and prices skyrocketed - we have never recovered from that debasement of purchasing power since. It was the Saudi's who weren't interested in accepting cheaper and cheaper dollars that kicked off the inflationary seventies and eighties, and I'd suggest we are in the final collapse of the lack of a Bretton Woods type anchor.
There is simply no more money to steal from the productive to finance welfare states and inflating away the debt will be the final coffin nail in this 30-40 year cycle.
Spot on!
FYI The yuan jumped in early trade on Friday, hitting a record high against the dollar, as traders reported large amounts of dollar offers from major Chinese state-owned banks, in a sign that the central bank is intervening to support the currency.
The People's Bank of China has been setting a slew of high dollar/yuan mid-points over the past few weeks to deter speculation on yuan depreciation.
http://www.cnbc.com//id/45692261
cheers
More here on the European bank run is inevitable meme ...
http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-15/peripheral-europe-may-face-…
Michael Platt, founder of the $30 billion hedge fund BlueCrest Capital Management LLP, said most of the banks in Europe are insolvent and the situation will worsen in 2012 as the region’s debt crisis accelerates.
Kyle Bass, the Dallas-based hedge-fund manager who said in 2009 there would be sovereign defaults within three years, said Greek, Portuguese and Spanish depositors will withdraw money from banks in the coming months.
“I do not take any exposure to banks at all if I can avoid it,” Platt, 43, said today in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Inside Track With Erik Schatzker.” If European lenders had to mark their books to markets every day in the same way hedge funds do, most would be proven “insolvent,” he said.
FYI on the things we'll do in NZ to protect property prices:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/christchurch-earthquake-2011/6148…
The Earthquake Commission (EQC) withheld information on a dangerous and ultimately deadly Christchurch building to protect privacy and property prices, a royal commission has been told.
EQC inspectors identified the western wall as dangerous, but the information was never passed on to neighbouring building owners or the Christchurch City Council.
EQC CEO Ian Simpson said the policy had been to not release any information on inspections to third parties to preserve property prices and privacy.
"It was about bricks and mortar and property prices," he said.
The policy had reflected many residents' concerns that if information on quake damage was attached to their property, it could affect values, he said.
The policy was changed in October this year, largely because of the deaths at Wicks, he said.
At least some painful truth telling in Fielding.
More than a quarter of buildings in Feilding's central business district have been deemed earthquake-prone, and landlords have been given five to 10 years to strengthen or demolish their properties.
But Feilding Promotion manager Helen Worboys has urged owners to "sit tight and not make any rash decisions".
Manawatu District Council has spent the past six months investigating and assessing 108 commercial buildings considered to be at risk in the district, and 87 of those were not up to scratch. Of these, 68 were in Feilding's central business district and the remaining 19 were from other areas in the district. There are 250 buildings in the CBD.
This week, building owners received letters from the council stating their buildings were not up to scratch and that they would be invited to a "one on one" meeting with council staff in the New Year.
It also said an owner would be given between five and 10 years to strengthen their buildings, depending on the level of risk.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/manawatu-standard/6150525/Quarter-of-CBD-on-shaky-ground#comments
More on the Siege of Wukan: Keep an eye on this
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iQNp-hQS3UJAOtPtAKLgY…
China's government is trying to defuse a revolt in a small fishing village, offering to investigate the land seizures that touched off the rebellion and vowing to punish leaders of the uprising.
The village of Wukan has for months been the site of simmering protests by locals who say officials sold farmland to developers without their consent. Protests against official misconduct are increasingly common in fast-developing China, but the residents of Wukan have taken things a step further, erecting barricades over the weekend to keep police out and posing a challenge to the authoritarian government.
On Wednesday, the mayor of Shanwei city — which oversees Wukan, a village of 20,000 — threatened to take strong measures against those who instigated others to create trouble and damage public property, the official China News Service said.
FYI via Bloomberg
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-15/spain-banks-face-43-price-fall…
Repossessed houses in Spain are worth 43 percent less on average than the valuations assigned on the mortgages for the properties, according to Fitch Ratings.
Price declines range from 20 percent to 58 percent, analysts Juan David Garcia and Carlos Masip in Madrid wrote in a report analyzing 8,235 properties funded by loans from banks including Banco Santander SA (SAN) and Bankia SA. The mortgages are in asset-backed securities with high loan-to-value ratios.
Fukushima Plant Declared Stable
I know this issue got a few of you very excited, so here is the "official" version - and you don't have to pay for the article ;-)
TOKYO–More than nine months after the outbreak of Japan's worst nuclear accident, the government declared Friday that the Fukushima Daiichi power plant has reached cold shutdown, a major milestone in bringing the catastrophe closer to resolution.
In this Nov. 12, 2011 file photo, the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power station is seen through a bus window in Okuma, Japan, as the media were allowed into Japan's tsunami-damaged nuclear power plant for the first time since the March 11 disaster.
The announcement means that the government and plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. have concluded that the plant's reactors can be safely kept cool, thereby stopping emissions of radioactive materials into the environment.
"The reactors have reached a cold shutdown stage, where safety at the plant can be assured," said Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda as he concluded a meeting of his nuclear crisis task force. "The accident itself has come to an end, and the government has requested that the decommissioning process begin."
Speaking at a later televised news conference, Mr. Noda announced that the government will review the evacuation orders that are still keeping an estimated 88,000 people from their homes.
He also said the government is ready to spend more than ¥1 trillion ($12.83 billion) to decontaminate the areas around the plant.
More- After Nuclear Milestone, a Long Road
- Japan Real Time: Fukushima Daiichi Post-Shutdown: Ready for the Robots
To date, scientists estimate that the total radiation dispersed over a broad swath of northern Japan is equal to about 15% of what was released from the Chernobyl accident 25 years ago, the worst nuclear accident in history.
But scientists say the plants will require decades more work to remove the heavily damaged nuclear fuel, dismantle the units and decontaminate the site.
"The Fukushima crisis is a major challenge for all of humanity," Mr. Noda declared.
With the risk of further serious developments significantly reduced, however, the government now believes it can allow the return of more evacuees to their homes, even within a 20-kilometer radius of the plant, a zone that has been kept off-limits since March 12. Tokyo intends to embark on a massive cleanup campaign as early as next month.
The evacuation orders have forced local residents to abandon their homes and businesses and made it necessary for the government and Tepco to pay compensation estimated to total nearly ¥5 trillion over just the next two years.
As many as 140,000 people were asked to either evacuate or remain indoors for an extended period of time during the peak of the crisis. By cleaning up the contaminated areas, the government hopes to rebuild the local economy and rein in compensation payments.
The evacuation orders have been issued to avoid exposing local residents to radiation of more than 20 millisieverts per year, in line with standards endorsed by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
But that level may actually be too high, according to some experts.
On Thursday, a panel of experts recommended to the government that the radiation level per year should be reduced to 10 millisieverts or less in two years, where possible. For places often used by children, the radiation level should not exceed 1 millisievert, it said.
The declaration comes amid continuing public mistrust of the government and Tepco. The situation is far different from a normal cold shutdown, where nuclear fuel is kept cool in a water-filled container. Since the containers at the Fukushima Daiichi are severely damaged by melted fuel and cannot hold water, Tepco needs to pour hundreds of tons of water over the molten fuel every day.
Underscoring the fears over nuclear power, none of the nation's other reactors have come back online from regular maintenance cycles that take place every 13 months. Another reactor, located at the Ohi facility in western Japan, was taken off the network Friday, leaving just seven reactors operating nationwide and worsening the risks of renewed power shortages.
Tepco President Toshio Nishizawa, in a recent interview, acknowledged that there is distrust among the public about plant safety and transparency at Tepco. "We bungled our release of information, especially early on in the crisis," he said.
Fukushima residents forced out of their homes say that while the cold shutdown is a welcome development, it's a tiny step toward making their towns and villages inhabitable again.
"The situation at the plant is separate from our main concern, the decontamination of our town," said Hirobumui Sanpei, the deputy mayor of the coastal town of Tomioka, located within 20 kilometers of the plant. The entire community of this 16,000-person town has had to evacuate due to its proximity to the reactors. It lost 19 residents to the tsunami, and an additional six are still unaccounted for.
Surveys among Fukushima residents have shown that roughly 30% of evacuees have no intention of returning even after their towns are declared safe.
Can one trust ? This is far from over.
Arnie Gundersen discusses whether the accidents at Fukushima were a meltdown, a melt-through, or a China Syndrome. Whatever the accidents are named, thousands of tons of water contaminated with plutonium, uranium, and other very toxic radioactive isotopes are flooding the site, the surrounding water table, and the ocean.
Listen please: http://vimeo.com/33561652
Eurozone crisis live: IMF's Lagarde warns of return to Great Depression
The world risks sliding into a 1930s-style slump unless countries settle their differences and work together to tackle Europe's deepening debt crisis, the head of the International Monetary Fund has warned.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/dec/15/eurozone-crisis-live
Overnight the Brits have been slagged off by the French ..... which leads one to agree with the British stance , to distance itself from the Eurozone .
.... the Euro is a rigged game , to further enrich the already wealthy , and to permanently enslave and impoverish the poorer nations .
A bloody stupid idea , being run by a bunch of unaccountable bloody minded unelected bureaucrats ......
Plan B – How to loot nations and their banks legally by Golem XIV on DECEMBER 15, 2011 in LATEST
Is there a plan B? That question is usually asked of governments regarding their attempts to ‘save’ the banks domiciled in their country. But has anyone asked if the banks have a plan B?
Does anyone think that if our governments fail to keep to their austerity targets and fail to keep bailing out the banking sector, that the banks will just shrug and say, “Well, thanks for trying” and accept their fate? Or do you think the banks might have a Plan B of their own?
First let’s be clear about Plan A. That plan is to enforce an era of long-term austerity cuts to public services, in part to cut public expenditure so as to free up money for spending on the banks, but perhaps more importantly to further atrophy public services so that private providers can take over. A privatization of services which will bring great profits and cash flow to the private sector and to the banks who finance them, and a further general victory for those who feel that private debts rather than public taxes should be what underpins our national life and social contract.
Plan A therefore requires that governments convince their populace that private debts should be taken on to the public purse and that once taken on, the contracts signed by governments on behalf of the tax payers/citizens, are then sacrosanct and above any democratic change of mind. If governments can hold their peoples to this,then the banks are ‘saved’ with the added bonus that democracy and the ‘Rights’ it once guaranteed will all have been redefined as subordinate to finance and its contracts, and our citizenship will have become second to one’s contractual place in a web of private debts. Debts to the private lenders will become more important than taxes to the public exchequer. And as they do the State will wither away, leaving free-market believers and extreme libertarians exactly where they have always wanted to be – in charge – by dint of being rich. It is, in my view, a bleak future which I once described as A Toxic Debt Wasteland.
http://www.golemxiv.co.uk/2011/12/plan-b-how-to-loot-nations-and-their-…
A very good read. Another reason to keep anything you own, as far away from the banks as possible. The only way to kill them is to starve them to death.
Money is meant to be spent. Use it to buy worthwhile assets of lasting value, and worth.
It's christmas time, and the masses are out in the street, spending their hard earned labour on worthless crap, that will not even last a month, let alone have any significance whatsoever in 5 years time.
Putin crapped on by his Iranian friends....haha
"Russia's customs agency has seized pieces of radioactive metal from the luggage of an Iranian passenger bound for Tehran from Moscow's main airport.: Herald and Telegraph uk.
What you don't get told is just how many Russians have been exposed to the radiation during the attempt to smuggle the stuff to Iran...Visiting a Russian airport soon are we..?
This is what you get when you deal with thieving lying shites....
Wolly – you don’t think there are just Russian airports ? – it is happening all over the world – South Africa, Switzerland, Israel, France, UK, Korea, etc. - a massive, corrupt business, creating more millionaires & billionaires - investing their corrupt money in corrupt Swiss banks good for corrupt Swiss millionaire banksters - all over the world.
Some call these people successful business people - good on them - Tribeless - calls this "crony capitalism" - HA !
Yes Walter..probably related to the scum in Switzerland who kissed the Nazi ring...what a shame the Swiss didn't stretch their necks in 46.
You are right of course and I see the Japs have come out with a radiation warning detector as part of a cell phone I think....standard tool for the traveler me thinks.
But Putin has spewed forth with all manner of hatred aimed at the west while doing 'deals' with the scum running iran...no wonder the Russian peasants now regard him as worthy of being tossed on a garbage heap.
Another story has it that the Iranian was smuggling the radioactive material for medical purposes in Iran .....
........ the quantity of material found was so small that only an American could be fooled into thinking that it was for weapons of mass destruction .....
Karrrboooooooom
"We have an atomic bomb that we can use in the face of the Germans and the French: this atomic bomb is simply that we won't pay," said Pedro Nuno Santos, vice-president of the Socialist Party in the parliament.
"Debt is our only weapon and we must use it to impose better conditions, because recession itself is what is stopping us complying with the (EU-IMF Troika) accord. We should make the legs of the German bankers tremble," he said
Suddenly Russia is a member of the WTO. Offers to lend euro nations 10 billion euros to help them out..and calls the Syrian VP. to moscow for a good talking too.They seem to know which side their bread is buttered .Now with Russia keeping Europe warm with Gas, their star seems to be rising in Europe which will piss America off. Like we have the raw material..you have the means to process it.I bet America stops this flirtation.
The shape of things to come methinks:
Banks stand to lose millions of dollars in debt repayments if the biggest municipal bankruptcy in American history is allowed to proceed.
But the real victims of the financial collapse in the US state of Alabama's most populous county are its poorest residents - forced to bathe in bottled water and use portable toilets after being cut off from the mains supply.
The corruption is sickening. Corrupt Bankers, bribing Corrupt Polliticians, to create a massive debt, and foist it upon the poorest residents, who didn't borrow the money, had no say in the deal, would never have agreed to it. Yet they are the ones that have to pay, while the bankers and politicians laugh all the way to the..........
One for the collapseniks... Dmitri Orlov on the US/Europe:
http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2011/12/conversation-about-europe.html
In the final analysis all currency is debt, but not all debt is currency, the debt is unpayable.
All currency is created from the issuance of debt, and is accompanied by interest. Therefore:- currency < (debt+interest)
Once the lenders stop lending, and ask to be repaid, how will they be repaid when there is not enough currency to pay the loan? With real assets!
Currency is not money, currency is debt. Debt cannot clear debt, it can only increase debt. Only money can clear debt. As the financial collapse continues on through the final stages, it will become clear, who has money, and who has debt.
almost there....
Money is an IOU for work, or energy as is debt....or if slightly higher up the food chain, an IOU for a asset taht produces a good or energy eg a farm.....
So the final stages will come down to who has assets and energy to back their money/debt...because with leverage at 100 to 1 that means only a tiny fraction of the wealth ppl think they have is real.
So, indeed, when lenders ask to be paid back and there are not enough energy or assets to meet that call, what happens?
Eventually I think the Global debt will simply vanish because globalisation will vanash....Its only debt and its international debt when ppl agree to pay it back, if they say no aka Iceland it ceases to exist.
regards
Many of us have been saying it for ages Gummy, who cares what we say, who cares what the rating agancies say. In fact who cares what the bankers and politicians and treasury says. Get the data, do the math, work it out. They are stuffed, there is no mathmatical solution. Timeing the collapse is far more difficult then saying it will happen.
Whats true for the EMU, is true for the UK, Japan, USA, NZ. I'm expecting to live through the collapse, and see the emergence of the NWO.
"The Spanish banking system is in far worse shape than most realize because of unrealized losses related to Spain's imploded housing bubble. Various austerity measures and tax hikes to bail out French and German banks will greatly exacerbate this problem."
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2011/12/home-prices-in-spain-drop-14.html
Right, which ever way you look at things we are heading for trouble at mill....forget about budget surplus BS and if you still believe in "recovery" see somebody, anybody at the nearest nutter clinic fast as.
The only glint of the fading light remaining is the commodity export market...but expect the non food elements to show the first signs of reversing...ie timber exports...then wool....
Meanwhile look to see Bollard extend and pretend with the ocr being slashed to 1.5% to "boost the economy".....about all it will boost is the BS.
Back we go to the root cause of the yet to worsen crisis...too much bloody debt....which also means the banks were allowed to invent out of thin air way too much credit to pork the housing bubble that remains the number one priority for the govt and the RBNZ to save at any cost.....because a collapsing bubble takes banks down with it...
Warning to you....do not save your loot in a long term deposit in a bank in NZ..you risk losing it. Expect the planned debasement of the Kiwi$ to continue apace...3 to 5% per year...to stand still as a saver you need to be earning at least 4% before tax and debasement are removed.
Consequently, you need to consider playing the game their way....blow the cash on stuff you need or on stuff that will escape the debasement...no not Gold or silver....quality farmland ditto residential land and or property. This govt will kill to preserve the landlord subsidy..so take advantage of it. Look for a potential renter with plenty of rooms in good nick in the right location and work on getting tenants who can help you access the subsidy. This is a better investment than govt bonds, bank deposits or even the promised eldorado SOE share dividends.
The Marlborough District Council acting wastefully again...
"Council environmental policy manager Pere Hawes said the council had contracted consultants Boffa Miskell to identify outstanding natural features and landscapes in Marlborough.
Landscape planner James Bentley of Boffa Miskell said identifying outstanding landscapes was no longer "`driving around the countryside and putting a ring around pretty things". Instead, assessors objectively measured biophysical, sensory and associative values
"This is an absolute waste of ratepayers money, council employing consultants to justify their existance". tony
Tony is right...note that ratepayers have not been told how much of their money has been handed to the consultants for objective measuring of biophysical, sensory and associative values...
Add in the cost to land owners, who will never be able to build, develope, plant grapes or change the use of land, because of biophysical, sensory and associative values (whatever the heck that is.) Or another classic example of ristricting land use to benefit those who have, and keep down those who have not.
"France could be stripped of its triple-A credit rating before Christmas, raising new doubts about the survival of the euro, analysts have predicted.
Standard & Poor's – one of the three top rating agencies – is expected to cut France's rating within days, in a move that would weaken its ability to raise funds on financial markets"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/17/french-credit-ratings-eurozone-crisis?newsfeed=true
Maria van der Hoeven, the head of the International Energy Agency:
"...said production at currently producing oil wells is declining at the rate of 7 percent per year and that newer sources of oil more expensive to produce."
http://latinbusinesstoday.com/2011/12/opec-and-iea-at-odds-over-oil-pri…
7%!!!!!
"Evacuation plans for British expats stranded in Spain and Portugal if their banking systems collapse are being drawn up by the Foreign Office.
The contingency plans are being put in place to help thousands of Britons if they were unable to get to their money in the event of a catastrophic banking collapse in two of the most vulnerable eurozone economies.
Around one million British expats live in Spain, particularly around Marbella and Malaga, and some 50,000 in Portugal"
Expats ...hated the UK...moved away...pay no UK tax....now expect to be bailed out...haha
Now go read the stuff between the lines in the RBNZ OBR plans....YOU are next.
"Ireland's economy shrank 1.9 percent in the third quarter, an unexpectedly large drop that raised doubts about the country's capacity to meet its deficit-fighting targets through painful cuts
Until now, EU leaders have held up Ireland as an example of how a country can keep growing its economy while simultaneously sucking money out of it through spending cuts and tax hikes. Ireland's economy was performing better than those of Greece and Portugal, the other two European nations to have received an international bailout.
But Ireland, midway through a seven-year deficit-fighting program that requires at least modest growth to meet its targets, said its gross domestic product fell 1.9 percent in the July-September period -- the worst quarterly fall in the eurozone"
Puts to rest the "growth through austerity" mantra.....the screams and tantrums from the monetrist/austrian school's and the US Republicans trying to blame this mess on the "socialists" and "keynesians" will reach new heights....
Iceland is doing how well btw?
Ireland is also asking for relief like Greece and fair enough......so there will be haircuts I reckon.....
regards
But steven...you miss the point.... the debt mountain has crushed both roads to 'recovery'....you can't print your way out ...and it seems as though you cant get out via austerity measures when the worlds economic activity has stopped growing....
Haircuts lead to rapid increases in the cost of credit...no way would I lend knowing haircuts were likely...would you?
QED the cost of credit must rise...leading to......
Q.E.D. is an initialism of the Latin phrase quod erat demonstrandum, which translates as "which was to be demonstrated". The phrase is traditionally placed in its abbreviated form at the end of a mathematical proof or philosophical argument when what was specified in the enunciation — and in the setting-out — has been exactly restated as the conclusion of the demonstration.[1] The abbreviation thus signals the completion of the proof.
".. UK is not alone, Hungary has already stated that they will not participate, and the Czech Republic has said that they will take time to take a decision. So there are now four countries that eventually will not go along with the treaty. And then you have Finland which IS a Euro country"
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/
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