On an Island

Conspiracy theories.......

2011-04-26T11:48:00.004+12:00

There is a certain monotony developing re people who, because they don't like, disapprove of, or fear a certain scenario - deal with that problem by declaring it a "conspiracy theory" without any proof of this assertion (a reverse conspiracy theory if you like).

Here is an accurate definition of a Conspiracy Theory:

Conspiracy theory was originally a neutral descriptor for any claim of civil, criminal, or political conspiracy.^[1] However, it has become largely pejorative and used almost exclusively to refer to any fringe theory which explains a historical or current event as the result of a secret plot by conspirators of almost superhuman power and cunning.

This is a Conspiracy theory:

The Fed is secretly owned and controlled by either the Rockefellers, Rothchilds, the Illuminati or a hybrid of all three. (possibly true but no proof)

This is a fact:

Most people believe the Fed is a US government department, it is not. The Federal Reserve is privately owned but has some government representation on the board to "control" policy. According to Wikipedia "In the current system, private banks are for-profit businesses but government regulation places restrictions on what they can do."
If you believe that you need your bumps read. the fact is, control is the other way around. the banks now control and regulate the government. That isn't a conspiracy - it's a fact. The administration isn't called "government sachs" for nothing.

Goldman Sachs is "a political organization masquerading as an investment bank, and they're sitting at the table with the top people in government," says Goldman critic Christopher Whalen, the managing director of Institutional Risk Analytics, which rates banks and provides customer analytics. He calls Goldman "the most political firm on Wall Street."

To many this may not seem to affect us, however whatever happens to the USA affects the whole planet.
The complete loss of control of the US financial system to the owners of the system is the major contributor to the instability and unrest around the planet. It is weakening the US dollar which most markets are priced in. This is driving up all commodity prices, (particularly food) as speculators use the flood of QE money to drive prices ever upwards. (QE money was never intended to do anything other than maintain confidence in the "market", an entity that has taken on religious qualities apparently.

For the majority, incomes are not remotely keeping pace and for those countries (Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Syria etc) where a most of that income is needed to feed a family we are seeing the direct results.

This is not a muslim/al quaeda uprising as some fear mongers (conspiracy nutters????) would try and make it out to be. People only rebel when the are starving. If they appear to be following radical islamics, it is only because those groups are there to fill the void left behind by the previous abberant rulers. There are many examples of this through history.

We are witnessing something that has happened on a regular basis throughout history, the decline of a dominant system. The current USA system has many parallels with the decline of the Roman Empire. Bread and circuses (reality TV), garrisons around the world (Afghanistan, Iraq, Germany, Japan etc etc), corrupt senators...........

Unless the financial system is shredded and rebuilt the inevitable will happen inside 10 years and quite possibly inside 5. I loathe the phrase "income redistribution", it smacks of the negativity of Marx and the failed communist fairy story, but unless that happens to some extent then the peasants truly will be revolting and that won't be good for any of us.

2011-03-26T01:52:00.000+13:00

Star Woes

Book 1: A New Creed

by Anne Belsey

http://www.moneyreformparty.org.uk

How to save the galaxy with just a knowledge of basic accountancy and an understanding of the money supply system!

"It's like a financial black-hole," he gasped.

"That is a very good way of looking at it, colonel. It is a debt that will eventually consume all credit, even that which it has created."

"It's criminal," decided the colonel.

"No, it's all perfectly legal."

"Well, it should be criminal; it's immoral; it's unethical. It is the most venal sleight of hand that ever was conceived! And when you think what the Debt Star cost, and what it did... It crippled the U-Sector government financially. Their taxes were so high that they forced the creation of the Galactic Empire, at the point of the Debt Star's neutron-laser, to spread the cost of the debt over other planets and federations. But, you know, I never realised that the money that was borrowed to build it never existed in the first place!"

"You understand our mission now, colonel?"

Next: Chapter 1

Global Cooling and the New World Order – Telegraph Blogs

2010-09-30T08:46:00.000+13:00

Global Cooling and the New World Order – Telegraph Blogs

Government meddling

2010-06-12T09:41:00.000+12:00

From the Daily Reckoning's Bill Bonner.

In the reign of Emperor Zhao, in 81 BC, 60 Confucian scholars were asked to consider the effect of government meddling in the economy. The Middle Kingdom was in a fix. Mongol raiders were pressing it from the East; the government was going broke. Taking the advice of Sang Hongyang, the feds of that era had put in place various state monopolies and price controls. The result?

"People live in houses with badly-made beams and shoddy thatched roofs. They wear clothes of rough fabric and eat out of bowls made of dirt," the sages explained. "We waste our time on vain efforts...and lack the essentials, food and clothing."

The scholars gave their advice in moral terms: "Above all, emphasize virtue and suppress get-rich-quick speculations." Too bad they didn't have The Financial Times or The New York Times to guide them! These journals offer a world without wickedness or moral lessons. Economy in a funk? Forget the real cause. Stimulate it! We can worry about the real problem "after the economy has recovered," writes Paul Krugman in The New York Times. "Only those who believe the economy is a morality play," would want to suffer the pain of a correction, adds Martin Wolf at the FT.

Readers are urged to focus on the hilarity of the scene rather than on its gravity. It is as if a fat man were bending over. The further over he goes, the more his seams split. First to go was the subprime seam in the back...then the Greek seam on the side. But no one wants to say the obvious thing: that he should stand up straight and lose weight. Instead, the FT and the NYT want the government to buy him a larger pair of pants.

You have read a number of unpopular views in our Daily Reckonings...

That this was not a typical post-war recession; it is a Great Correction. Over-indebted American and British economies need to de- leverage.

..That no recovery is possible, because the preceding model of debt- fueled consumption was unsustainable.

..That 'stimulus' efforts were not only a waste of time and money, but also harmful; people who made bad bets should take their losses with dignity instead of trying to get others to pay.

In the 10 million or so years since our ancestors have walked on two feet, many were the challenges that arose. We learned to hunt and gather...to build shelter...to clothe our bodies and to kill each other. We made tools and were able even to split atoms and remove body tattoos. We evolved into a practical, problem-solving race. But never could we solve the problem of an economic downturn.

Why? Because the Confucian scholars were right. A properly functioning market economy gives people neither what they want nor what they expect, but what they deserve. In that sense it is 'moral' not mechanical. You can't pull levers nor turn screws to stop a correction. Like old age, the best you can do is to endure it with good grace; the alternative is worse.

Central planners don't create wealth. They can only move it around, robbing Peter to pay Paul. This only 'stimulates' an economy if Paul uses the resources better than Peter. Don't make us laugh. In most cases, Paul is the same clown who made the bad bets in the first place.

In the present instance, instead of robbing Peter to pay Paul, the feds judged it prudent to borrow from Peter. But Peter is no dope. First, he turned his eyes on Greece. Then, he noticed all the other peripheral players in the Eurozone... Then, he put his wallet back in his pocket. It became obvious that the jig was up. As Nouriel Roubini put it, we reached the point where "austerity is not optional."

Stoicism went out of style in the economics profession 100 years ago. Activism paid. Stoicism did not. Since then, busybodies have advised presidents, headed central banks, run multi-national agencies, appeared on covers of TIME magazine, won the Legion d'Honneur and the Enron Prize...and run billion-dollar hedge funds. And now, after 18 months...and approximately $12 trillion worth of stimulus, bailouts and debt guarantees...we see the results of a live test. Have our modern economists done better than Sang Hongyang?

The latest evidence came in last week, from the US. The biggest source of employment lately is the US government itself, which has hired hundreds of thousands of census takers. Obviously, if you could make people better off by having them count things, why not hire more of them and have them count the hairs on our heads? Employment in the private sector is still going down. One in ten Americans is officially unemployed...one is six is working at less than capacity. Twice as many people have been out of work for more than 27 weeks this year than the year before. Not surprisingly, real incomes are going down too. Meanwhile, one of every 8 houses is delinquent or in default on its mortgage. Statistically, 7.2 million of them will be foreclosed, most likely leading to another drop in housing prices...and a drop in household wealth.

Prices are falling too. M3 fell at a 5% rate in May. Consumer prices, officially, are increasing at the slowest pace since 1966. Unofficially, adjusting for the real cost of housing, the actual cost of living is in outright deflation.

In short, the 'recovery' is a flop.

Bill Bonner

Think the recession is over? Think again.

2010-02-01T19:32:00.001+13:00

From the Daily Reckoning..............

“While the Illinois Constitution protects vested pension benefits, that promise, like all the state’s obligations, is only as good as its ability to pay.”

-Crain’s Chicago Business

“Illinois Enters a State of Insolvency” cried a January 18, 2010 headline from Crain’s Chicago Business: “As Illinois’ fiscal crisis deepens, the word ‘bankruptcy’ is creeping more and more into the public discourse.”

Illinois’ lack of discipline is no surprise; it is in the vanguard of the spendthrift states. Revenues are falling and expenses are rising.

The Land of Lincoln, without authority to print greenbacks, is in arrears. Over $5 billion of state bills were unpaid at the end of 2009. Over $1.4 billion in Medicaid claims have not been processed. More than $2.25 billion in short-term financing is coming due. Crain’s continued: “State employees, even legislators, are forced to pay their medical bills upfront because some doctors are tired of waiting to be paid by the state.”

There is a good chance several states will face a similar predicament in 2010. On January 15, CNNMoney quoted a college professor: “It is surprising that political leaders don’t seem to take seriously the magnitude of the problems.”

Maybe it is not surprising. Most states are required to balance their budgets each year, but this is often accomplished with a good deal of hokum. For instance, states borrow in the bond market to tide themselves over, then ignore bond covenants and slip funds raised to build highways into the operating budget.

The Obama administration’s fiscal stimulus is an additional means to delay the inevitable. Illinois received a 22% pay raise from the federal government as a beneficiary of the stimulus bill. Legislators probably assume, if worse comes to worse, they can go back to the Federal government.

A good part of the country makes this assumption, including too-big-to-fail banks, retired municipal workers and municipal bondholders. Most experts will discount warnings of financial forfeiture. Experts are recognized as such because they say what their audience wants to hear. Americans should discount the experts.

On January 13, the U.S. Treasury Department released an updated Monthly Treasury Statement for December 2009. Scrolling down to Table 3, estimated revenues for the fiscal year (which ends September 30, 2010) are $2.2 trillion. Budget outlays are expected to be $3.7 trillion. This is the type of financial rectitude practiced by President Mugabe in Zimbabwe.

The $1.5 trillion deficit for the current fiscal year needs to be funded, but the market for Treasury securities has a limit, certainly if it expects to sell securities at 3.7% (the current yield on a 10-year Treasury bond). If the U.S. dollar is to avoid Zimbabwe’s predicament, where the annual inflation rate passed 200-million-percent some time ago, the negligent states will be told to solve their own troubles.

This will leave many people in a fix, including public sector retirees. It has long been assumed by most government workers, particularly those in unions, that their pensions are guaranteed. This is not true. Every state has legal recourse. (See page 9 of “The Coming Collapse of the Municipal Bond Market” on my website, AuContrarian.com).

Crain’s may be one of the first to contemplate the fragility of these benefits: “The sharp rise in pension payments is the biggest factor pushing Illinois toward what a legislative task force last November called “a ‘tipping point’ beyond which it will be impossible to reverse the fiscal slide into bankruptcy.”

Crain’s quotes a “little-noticed report” produced by a legislative task force that addressed the state’s pension problems. The report-that-nobody-wanted-to-read claimed: “the radical cost-cutting and huge tax increases necessary to pay all the deferred costs from the past would become so large that many businesses and individuals would be driven out of Illinois, thereby magnifying the vicious cycle of contracting state services, increasing taxes, and loss of the state’s tax base.”

Crain’s goes on to explain the problem of a destitute state, legal claims not withstanding: “While the Illinois Constitution protects vested pension benefits, that promise, like all the state’s obligations, is only as good as its ability to pay.” [My italics.]

Americans are not used to limits. There is always a solution to a problem. Most often, ignoring it, then borrowing and spending more has worked. (Illinois has borrowed to meet contributions for worker pensions. Other states have done the same.) Today, dollars to pay the legally binding benefits are growing scarce. Crain’s quotes a Chicago research organization: “All the obligations of the state, whether vested or not, will be competing for funding with the other essential responsibilities of state government. Even vested pension rights are jeopardized when a government is insolvent.” [My italics.]

Bondholders, high-school teachers, university professors (and students), day-care directors and building contractors should take precautions now to ensure their last dollar is not negotiated in a court room.

Municipal Meltdown: Teacher Pensions, Bondholder Coupons, Go to Court originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning, a FREE daily e-letter, offers a "uniquely refreshing" perspective on the global economy, investing, and today's markets.

Predictions from Trends Institute

2010-01-24T10:06:00.002+13:00

The Collapse of 2010

In November of 2007, we predicted the "Panic of ’08." There was a panic. In November of 2008, we forecast the "Collapse of ’09." In March ‘09, the global equity markets collapsed. But before they could crash all the way to the ground, a scaffold of emergency props was erected. An unparalleled array of government cash infusions, rescue packages, bailouts and incentives papered over the crisis.

Today, even as government spokesmen and the major media proclaim that the world is emerging from its near-cataclysmic recession, we predict the "Crash of 2010." The rising equity markets, on which claims of recovery are based, are worlds away from the hard reality of the streets....

Terrorism 2010

While we can’t predict precise dates or the magnitude of terror attacks, we can be fairly certain they are on the way. The “Fort Hood Gunman” is being recognized by the intelligence community as the poster boy for an alarming new terror phenomenon termed “lone-wolf, self-radicalized gunmen.”

Years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq – and now Pakistan – have intensified anti-American sentiment and increased the number of individuals seeking revenge. NATO allies contributing troops to the wars will also be targeted......

Not Welcome Here

In 2010, the anti-immigration movement, long building, will arrive and stay in the US and abroad. America and Europe, with their immigrant populations close to double digits, are experiencing an identity crisis.

In Europe, fear and resentment of Muslims has led to huge gains for anti-immigrant political parties. In the US, with mid-term elections coming up, what to do about the “illegals” will be a hot- button issue that will top the political agenda and serve as a galvanizing force for a new party.....

Mothers of Invention

The ongoing shock to the economic system is rebooting “Yankee ingenuity.” The need to overcome the effects of reduced individual buying power will lead to the invention of a new class of product which will be a major trend of 2010 and into the future: “Technology for The Poor.”

Growing with the same speed as the Internet Revolution, the trend will be recognized, explored and exploited by legions of skilled but jobless geeks, innovators and inventors who will design and launch a new class of products and services affordable by millions of newly downscaled Western consumers......

Depression Uplift

As times get tougher and money gets scarcer, one of the hottest new money-making, mood-changing, influence-shaping trends of the century will soon be born. We forecast that this will be “Elegance” in its many manifestations.

The trend will begin with fashion and spread through all the creative arts, as the need for beauty trumps the thrill of the thuggish. A strong, do-it-yourself aspect will make up for reduced discretionary income, as personal effort provides the means for affordable sophistication.....

Neo-Survivalism

In 2010, survivalism will go mainstream. Unemployed or fearing it, foreclosed or nearing it, pensions lost and savings gone, all sorts of folk who once believed in the system have lost their faith.

Motivated not by worst-case scenario fears but by do-or-die necessity, the new non-believers, unwilling to go under or live on the streets, will devise ingenious stratagems to beat the system, get off the grid (as much as possible), and stay under the radar......

TB or not TB

About two-thirds of Americans are Too Big (TB) for their own good and everyone else’s. We forecast a massed revulsion for TB in all its manifestations – obesity is only the most obvious.

Everything in America is TB . Houses, cars, debt loads, deficits, state budgets, the states themselves, foreign aid, military budgets, bureaucracies local, state, federal and “too big to fail” businesses – they’re all Too Big.

Apart from government action, the “Shape Up” trend will provide a wide array of business opportunities.....

Not Made in China

A “Buy Local/My Country First” backlash will be the first sign of what we forecast will become a massive, “circle-the-wagons” movement. We forecast a “Not Made in China” consumer crusade that will spread among developed nations, leading to trade wars and protectionism.

Craftspeople and small manufacturers that can establish a reputation for quality products will be able to build thriving micro-brands, while marketers who can amalgamate micro-cooperatives into true local commerce organizations will carve a solid niche for themselves......

Predictions from Trends Research Institute

2010-01-24T03:16:00.004+13:00

The Collapse of 2010

In November of 2007, we predicted the "Panic of ’08." There was a panic. In November of 2008, we forecast the "Collapse of ’09." In March ‘09, the global equity markets collapsed. But before they could crash all the way to the ground, a scaffold of emergency props was erected. An unparalleled array of government cash infusions, rescue packages, bailouts and incentives papered over the crisis.

Today, even as government spokesmen and the major media proclaim that the world is emerging from its near-cataclysmic recession, we predict the "Crash of 2010." The rising equity markets, on which claims of recovery are based, are worlds away from the hard reality of the streets....

Terrorism 2010

While we can’t predict precise dates or the magnitude of terror attacks, we can be fairly certain they are on the way. The “Fort Hood Gunman” is being recognized by the intelligence community as the poster boy for an alarming new terror phenomenon termed “lone-wolf, self-radicalized gunmen.”

Years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq – and now Pakistan – have intensified anti-American sentiment and increased the number of individuals seeking revenge. NATO allies contributing troops to the wars will also be targeted......

Not Welcome Here

In 2010, the anti-immigration movement, long building, will arrive and stay in the US and abroad. America and Europe, with their immigrant populations close to double digits, are experiencing an identity crisis.

In Europe, fear and resentment of Muslims has led to huge gains for anti-immigrant political parties. In the US, with mid-term elections coming up, what to do about the “illegals” will be a hot- button issue that will top the political agenda and serve as a galvanizing force for a new party.....

Mothers of Invention

The ongoing shock to the economic system is rebooting “Yankee ingenuity.” The need to overcome the effects of reduced individual buying power will lead to the invention of a new class of product which will be a major trend of 2010 and into the future: “Technology for The Poor.”

Growing with the same speed as the Internet Revolution, the trend will be recognized, explored and exploited by legions of skilled but jobless geeks, innovators and inventors who will design and launch a new class of products and services affordable by millions of newly downscaled Western consumers......

Depression Uplift
As times get tougher and money gets scarcer, one of the hottest new money-making, mood-changing, influence-shaping trends of the century will soon be born. We forecast that this will be “Elegance” in its many manifestations. The trend will begin with fashion and spread through all the creative arts, as the need for beauty trumps the thrill of the thuggish. A strong, do-it-yourself aspect will make up for reduced discretionary income, as personal effort provides the means for affordable sophistication.....
Neo-Survivalism
In 2010, survivalism will go mainstream. Unemployed or fearing it, foreclosed or nearing it, pensions lost and savings gone, all sorts of folk who once believed in the system have lost their faith. Motivated not by worst-case scenario fears but by do-or-die necessity, the new non-believers, unwilling to go under or live on the streets, will devise ingenious stratagems to beat the system, get off the grid (as much as possible), and stay under the radar......
TB or not TB
About two-thirds of Americans are Too Big (TB) for their own good and everyone else’s. We forecast a massed revulsion for TB in all its manifestations – obesity is only the most obvious. Everything in America is TB . Houses, cars, debt loads, deficits, state budgets, the states themselves, foreign aid, military budgets, bureaucracies local, state, federal and “too big to fail” businesses – they’re all Too Big. Apart from government action, the “Shape Up” trend will provide a wide array of business opportunities.....
Not Made in China
A “Buy Local/My Country First” backlash will be the first sign of what we forecast will become a massive, “circle-the-wagons” movement. We forecast a “Not Made in China” consumer crusade that will spread among developed nations, leading to trade wars and protectionism. Craftspeople and small manufacturers that can establish a reputation for quality products will be able to build thriving micro-brands, while marketers who can amalgamate micro-cooperatives into true local commerce organizations will carve a solid niche for themselves......

Why Not Let the Whole Banking System Collapse?

2010-01-12T13:25:00.001+13:00

Never were truer words spoken, this by Bill Bonner at "The Daily Reckoning".

Why Not Let the Whole Banking System Collapse?

By Bill Bonner

01/11/10 Bethesda, Maryland – The news this morning tells us that markets are rising. Investors are bullish because China’s exports are recovering, says the new analysis.

Meanwhile, celebrated short-seller Jim Chanos says China is going to blow up. It’s going to be “Dubai times 1,000,” he says.

Our old friend Jim Rogers disagrees. He thinks Chanos hasn’t looked long enough or deeply enough into the China story. He thinks China is a buy.

And what do we think?

We don’t think. We listen:

“Something like 50% of Chinese economic growth – if you can believe the numbers – is based on capital investment,” said a dinner companion last week. “You can’t invest that kind of money without making some pretty major mistakes.”

If we were forced to bet on it…we’d bet that Chanos is right. We don’t know anything about China or the Chinese economy. But you don’t go from third-world communist hellhole to the world’s second major economy without some serious bust-ups…especially when the communists are still in control.

Barely had we touched down in the USA than we were invited to a dinner party in Georgetown. In keeping with the Chatham House Rules, we won’t mention any names, but we were in distinguished company. These were America’s elite of movers and shakers, ambassadors, lawyers, policymakers, people who reflect and shape the opinions – and actions – of the US empire.

We were invited to answer questions; instead, we asked them.

We began by mentioning the failure of the economics profession. Never had an unarmed group done more damage to the wealth of a society, we suggested. Economists helped create a huge bubble, ignored it until it blew up, and then gave the wrong advice about how to fix it. Bailouts and boondoggles were all they had to offer.

But wait a minute, said a fellow diner: ‘I’m an economist…we couldn’t let the whole banking system collapse.’

“Why not?” we asked.

‘Because unemployment would go up to 14% or more…’

“How do you know what the proper rate of employment should be?” we wanted to know.

‘But you can’t just ignore people when they are out of work…and you can’t ignore an economy when it goes into a depression, can you?’

“Why not?” we repeated our first question.

What we notice in our brush with America’s intellectual and political elite is that they are very smart, very well informed, but too busy to stop and think.

They are thinkers. They are always thinking about what to do. But they cannot afford to think radically…about why they should do anything at all. If they did, they would be as marginalized as we are… How much more fun it must be to be at the center of power…pulling the levers…turning the knobs…making the world a better place!

The presumption of all elites is that they can do a better job of running things than people who are less well educated, less informed, or less intelligent. In a sense, this is obviously true. In the administration of commonly held assets, for example – such as a municipal sewage-treatment plant…or an art collection – a person with taste, culture and education is likely to do a better job than a numbskull. (We admit that even this is a dubious assertion…but we will presume it is true for the sake of this argument…)

But the elites go a major step further…they claim to be able to do a better job of administering privately held assets too…things that belong to other people.

Take the Cash for Clunker program. Auto sales went down. But so what? How many cars SHOULD be bought and sold? Nobody knows. And it’s really not for anyone to say…other than the buyers and sellers themselves. But the elite think they know better.

The fellow with an old pick-up truck may have judged his truck good for another six months of service. But with the lure of a federal bribe before him, he junked the truck six months early. Any sensible person can see that this is a waste. A valuable asset has been lost – six months of truck service.

But the elite economist thinks he has saved the auto industry. Because the “demand for trucks has been stimulated.” Jobs have been saved. Detroit has been given a boost.

What kind of nonsense is this? Not only have useful resources been sent to the scrap heap prematurely, but the auto industry has been given a bum steer, too. Resources from all over the economy – steel, oil, labor, electronics – have been diverted to the auto industry, on the basis of ‘demand’ that only exists because of federal money. The laid-off autoworker is a victim too. He might have been considering turning to another trade…instead, called back to work by the Cash for Clunkers program, he shelves his plans for retraining and relocation. He thinks Detroit is making a comeback. How disappointed he will be when the phony demand disappears!

And where did the federal money come from? It had to come from somewhere. In the event, it was borrowed from lenders who would otherwise have lent it to someone else. We don’t know what the other borrower would have done with it, but no matter what it was, it could be expected to produce a net benefit, one way or another, to the economy.

Regards,

Bill Bonner

Nice to know the lawyers are looking after us.

2009-09-18T22:53:00.001+12:00

“FORMER PSYCHIATRIC PATIENTS CAN SUE”

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/2875133/Former-psychiatric-patients-can-sue

Isn’t Sonja Cooper a great person for helping all those people who were badly treated by the mental health system all those years ago? We need more people like Sonja to set examples so the rest of us can aspire to be so concerned for our fellow NZers.

“Wellington barrister Sonja Cooper received the most from legal aid funds for the final six months of last year, topping over $1,580,000 in payments for her psychiatric-related claims in the six month period.

For the 18 months up until the end of 2007 Ms Cooper received over $2.8 million, placing her in second place nationally behind major law firm Kensington Swan, whose total for the 18 months was over $3.6 million.”

Source:

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0802/S00300.htm

“FIRM PUTS ABUSE COMPO AT 50 MILLION”

http://www.stuff.co.nz/southland-times/news/2669312/Firm-puts-abuse-compo-at-50m

Now that we have anti smacking legislation a group of us should contact her and sue the government because we were beaten with canes and paddles in the 1960’s.
It’s only because we would want to see fairness and justice. (Insert on Tui billboard).

"Big Government"

2009-09-17T09:28:00.002+12:00

Big Government” is becoming a populist catch phrase on the Internet and rolls off the tongue easily, don’t let it stop you examining all the information and making your own mind up.
Big government is certainly bad but it wasn’t they who caused the crap we are witnessing, that was financial traders who leech from the productive elements in society without contributing jack shit. Don’t deflect from the core problem. Big government is a side issue. The biggest mistake big government made was bailing these thieving bastards out. We can sort big government out after we deal with the main problem, financial traders.

Unless of course you subscribe to the view (that many do) that government and big business are the same beast. That it is irrelevant who the head of state is, the power brokers are the money behind the men.

If that is the case then the job ahead is massive and the upheaval will be traumatic as we aren’t just talking about getting rid of a few bad businesses, but major political and societal change – revolution in some form or other. I don’t know the truth yet, too much “stuff” out there but the next few years will be interesting. Keep reading and above all think critically. Make your own mind up, don't be a lazy bastard and accept the first thing you read.

“Too big to fail” is the problem. Let them go, we will work it out. The bastards produce nothing so what will we miss?

New Zealand and the Emmission Trading rort.....

2009-09-16T12:28:00.003+12:00

I have to admit to being one who thinks pollution of all sorts isn’t a great idea and it would be magic if we can stop it, however I am also a realist and have to agree with what many say regarding us being leaders in legislating a costly emission trading scheme which finds the average joe subsidising industry.

NZ only produces .001 % of the apparent pollutants.
If China, India and other substantial polluters don’t come to the party there is absolutely no point in us turning up on our own and standing around with a 6 pack and our thumb up our arse. If you play a game and most don’t play by the rules there isn’t much point in playing. All we will do is further hamper our best producers in markets that are tough enough without adding more impediment and punish the average household.

Leading by example sounds lovely but it won’t pay the power bill. Adding yet another level of administration and bureaucracy for garbage like the ETS is the last thing we need.

If we want to lead by example then instead of taxing people even more, why not invest in R&D in “green” technologies? (Solar, wind, hydro) These are slowly catching on and the more they do the more the costs will come down and the more viable they will become economically.
Instead of buying the technology from others why not try and be leaders and innovators? As has been demonstrated, we can’t compete on labour costs and nor should we try so we have to be smarter.

We should be encouraging the creation of a viable “green” industry as is being done in Germany:

“According to the Environmental Technology Atlas from Roland Berger, environmental technology will make up 16% of German industrial production by 2030 – a fourfold increase since 2005. Germany is the world’s leading exporter of environmental technology.”

http://engineers.ihs.com/news/roland-environmental-tech.htm

By approaching the so called problems this way through tackling power, building, manufacturing issues we could reap multiple benefits.

It helps reduce demand on our power generation system reducing the need to build more capacity.

The same applies to designing and manufacturing energy efficient building materials.

We create jobs in new industry.

We create new products for export markets.

We help keep NZ “clean and green” which is our greatest marketing advantage in the tourism field.

Instead of taxing the shit out of people wouldn’t we better to be proactive rather than reactive? Use the carrot not the stick?
If we haven’t got the ability to do it ourselves then maybe we should create a tax regime with incentives for companies and entrepreneurs who have those skills. Same as what Ireland did in the late 80’s which saw huge investment by software companies in that country.
It’s a no brainer but then that seems to be what we have running the country for the last 10 years. MP’s with no brains.

All of the above works whether the global warming/climate change argument is true or false or somewhere in between.

Financial Circus

2009-09-15T19:44:00.004+12:00

The levels of hype emanating from the mainstream media re the end of the financial crisis would be hilarious if they weren't so tragic. It just goes to show how poor the media are at actually doing stories for themselves.

Most do not ask questions anymore, instead they regurgitate press releases that are spewed from the perpetrators of the problems. Irrationally optimistic press releases full of garbage, spin and bullshit. Some of their dribblings would rank alongside Neville Chamberlain saying he had sorted out the wee problem with Hitler and everything is going to be hunky dory.

The Real Estate companies have been at it for months, the recent speech by the head of the Real Estate Institute would have to be right up there with General John Sedgwick who, as he looked out over the parapet at enemy lines during the Battle of Spotsylvania in 1864 said:

"Stand up you cowards, they couldn't hit an elephant at this dist........."

They were of course the last words he spoke.

I enjoy being positive and looking on the bright side. I certainly don't predict Armageddon but seriously, think about what this. The only reason the world financial markets give the illusion they are out of trouble is because of the phenomenal amount of money slopping around in the system thrown there by various Governments, taxpayers money, money that has to be paid back at some time in the future. Now ask yourself, fundamentally what has changed? Nothing at all. The bogeymen are back repackaging crap and selling it to each other, they are back paying out the big bonuses, they have learned nothing. They are still creating money out of thin air and as we will find out eventually, you get nothing for nothing.

They are creating nothing of value and we are being robbed by our Governments to do it! Our government is as culpable as any of the others with our guarantee scheme. We have removed "faith" with a guarantee to prop up the biggest Ponzi scheme the world has ever seen. How long will we let them get away with this?

Seriously, do yourself a favour on your time off, do some research. Look up "fractional reserve banking" for a start, that isn't too difficult to get your head around. Wikipedia has an excellent piece on it. Make sure you read the "criticisms" section at the bottom. You will think you have read the excerpts from the time traveler's diary.
'Then look for a copy of a DVD called "The Money Masters" it can be found in some places to download for free on the net.

Keep up the positivity people but obviously our mainstream media have good torches with them because normally it's pretty dark where they have their heads.

Little feet

2009-08-30T00:15:00.002+12:00

No not the band, we had the 20 week scan last week and I must admit to some trepidation on the way in after last year's disappointment. This time it was fine! Well better than fine really! Got to see the hands and feet, legs and arms and everything looked right on track which is outstanding news. The scan man said the baby was in the 92 percentile and asked Janene if she knew what that meant. Janene's eyes started watering, apparently it means the baby is in the top 10% for size. Ouch...... I am going on Saturday to learn massage technique apparently. Whatever happened to wandering of into the bush to give birth while the spuds are boiling? Not like the old days........

Anti smacking referendum

2009-08-30T00:07:00.002+12:00

OK I have posted my heart out on this on Kiwiblog so I'm not going into great detail. The main points are:

National have fucked this one up really badly.

Key and the Nat's rating will drop around 10 points at the next poll.

It won't stop any kids getting killed.

It won't stop me smacking my kids if I feel it is warranted - jail me.

Everybody needs to watch zeitgeist addendum as it is the only thing I know which gives some insight into the behaviour of the money markets and our politicians.

The death throes of the mainstream media

2009-07-18T10:55:00.000+12:00

It has been evident for a while now that the drive for ratings has turned the mainstream media into whores. Income and therefore content is dictated by attracting the most viewers/readers/listeners. Talkback radio is probably the worst example of this I believe. There is no real attempt to have a reasoned debate, it is better to find a controversial and preferably polarising topic to encourage the loonies to call in for a rave. There are occasionally good contributions but in reality, the hosts don’t want a solution.
Newspapers are becoming more and more tabloid every day, they might as well go the whole hog and stick the topless model on page three. TV is worse. There is no investigation, no depth or insight.
Blogging allows relatively instant interaction, debate and pretty much covers all the angles of a story. It doesn’t mean that you have to agree with them but the opinions and angles are out there and this can help you modify your own particular viewpoint. The mainstream media rarely allow this to happen. MSM used to control much of what was held to be true by many of the population. That was an incredible amount of power.
Times are changing, information is getting out there instantly, people are exposed to so many more points of view. This is the start of a whole new age and there are going to be some interesting years coming up.

Folic Acid

2009-07-14T21:17:00.002+12:00

This really is one of those no brainers. Mass medication via the food chain must never become the norm. NEVER EVER! My partner is pregnant and takes the supplement but that is her choice. Fuck I can’t believe we are even discussing this!!

Good to see Key is stepping in to this debate, it shows a bit of common sense before Wilkinson allows it to spin out of control. (If not too late). She has come out of this looking weak and pathetic, flip flopping from Sunday to Monday after obviously being dealt to overnight by the policy krats ensconced in Wellington. One to keep an eye on for a possible early dropkick unless she improves substantially. On the other side of the coin, what a loss Katherine Rich is! Her TV appearances on behalf of the bakers has been excellent.
Realistically this is not a biggy but it has the ability to do a lot of political damage to Key and the Nats. I have been concerned recently about his apparent fear of taking action on anything that moves half a degree from the perceived middle. Nice to see him find his spine again. People want him to take decisive action. Now for the anti smacking referendum…………*goes and finds old scuba tank from garage as doesn’t think will be able to hold breath that long*

Oh and where in the world is Annette King????

Weatherston - any excuses???

2009-07-09T22:50:00.002+12:00

There is much serious and intellectual debate going on about the legal pros and cons of various defence strategies and tactics by Weatherson's legal team, it’s bollocks.

Firstly I know the law says that everyone is entitled to a defence but I still fail to see how any decent human being can possibly stand up in court and try and get this pond scum even one day less than the rest of his life in jail. I look at the defence lawyer with almost as much disgust as I look at the accused. This isn’t academic or legal point scoring. It isn’t a university debate or a case study for final assignment. This is a person, a young woman mutilated and murdered in the most brutal manner possible, disfigured and degraded even in death, who gives a shit about the finer points of law? No I’m not a redneck, lynch mob type, but in this case a bullet and shallow grave would be appropriate.
Our legal system (it can’t be called a justice system, it fails to deliver justice on a regular basis) needs to stop this crap.

The waste of time, energy and money is similar to the Burton, Bell and Dixon cases amongst others. There is no doubt who perpetuated the crime, there are no mitigating defences. These people by their actions have declared they do not wish to be part of normal society, the rules of normal society (as far as they are concerned) do not apply to them. You can call them narcissistic or any other psycho label you like. This is a no brainer. There is no need for complex legal argument or court cases costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. People like this need to go to jail for the rest of their unnatural lives. The complexity in the system is the problem. The legal system hasn’t evolved, it has just gotten more bogged down in crap that suits no one but the legal circus industry that makes a fortune from it. Mind you there are many other professional industries in the same position.
It makes me want to puke.

WHY IS IT NECESSARY TO MAINTAIN CONFIDENCE IN BANKS?

2009-07-08T21:41:00.002+12:00

The whole banking system has been concerning me for a while. This is just one of many articles saying the same thing. I hope someone proves this wrong, I'll be happy to have been duped and feel a bit stupid, the alternative is scary.

WHY IS IT NECESSARY TO MAINTAIN CONFIDENCE IN BANKS?

by John Tomlinson

http://tinyurl.com/nweolf

"Silent Weapons for a Quiet War" think.........

2009-05-14T20:54:00.001+12:00

Silent Weapons for a Quiet War

An Introductory Programming Manual
Operations Research
Technical Manual

WELCOME ABOARD
This publication marks the 25th anniversary of the Third World War, called the "Quiet War," being conducted using subjective biological warfare, fought with "silent weapons."

This book contains an introductory description of this war, its strategies, and its weaponry.

May 1979 #74-1120

SECURITY

It is patently impossible to discuss social engineering or the automation of a society, i.e., the engineering of social automation systems (silent weapons) on a national or worldwide scale without implying extensive objectives of social control and destruction of human life, i .e., slavery and genocide.

This manual is in itself an analog declaration of intent. Such a writing must be secured from public scrutiny. Otherwise, it might be recognized as a technically formal declaration of domestic war. Furthermore, whenever any person or group of persons in a position of great power, and without the full knowledge and consent of the public, uses such knowledge and methodology for economic conquest -- it must be understood that a state of domestic warfare exists between said person or group of persons and the public.

The solution of today's problems requires an approach which is ruthlessly candid, with no agonizing over religious, moral, or cultural values.

You have qualified for this project because of your ability to look at human society with cold objectivity, and yet analyze and discuss your observations and conclusions with others of similar intellectual capacity without a loss of discretion or humility. Such virtues are exercised in your own best interest. Do not deviate from them.

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

Silent weapon technology has evolved from Operations Research (O.R.), a strategic and tactical methodology developed under the military management in England during World War II. The original purpose of Operations Research was to study the strategic and tactical problems of air and land defense with the objective of effective use of limited military resources against foreign enemies (i.e., logistics).

It was soon recognized by those in positions of power that the same methods might be useful for totally controlling a society. But better tools were necessary.

Social engineering (the analysis and automation of a society) requires the correlation of great amounts of constantly changing economic information (data), so a high speed computerized data processing system was necessary which could race ahead of the society and predict when society would arrive for capitulation.

Relay computers were too slow, but the electronic computer, invented in 1946 by J. Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly filled the bill.

The next breakthrough was the development of the simplex method of linear programming in 1947 by the mathematician, George B. Dantzig.

Then, in 1948, the transistor, invented by J. Bardeen, W. H. Brattain, and W. Shockley, promised great expansion of the computer field by reducing space and power requirements.

With these three inventions under their direction, those in positions of power strongly suspected that it was possible for them to control the whole world with the push of a button.

Immediately, the Rockefeller Foundation got in on the ground floor by making a four year grant to Harvard College, funding the Harvard economic research project for the study of the structure of the American economy. One year later, in 1949, the United States Air Force joined in.

In 1952 the original great period terminated, and a high level meeting of the elite was held to determine the next phase of social operations research. The Harvard project had been very fruitful as is borne out by the publication of some of its results in 1953 suggesting the feasibility of economic (social) engineering. (Studies in the Structure of the American Economy -- copyright 1953 by Wassily Leontief, International Sciences Press Inc., White Plains, New York.)

Engineered in the last half decade of the 1940's, the new Quiet War machine stood, so to-speak, in sparkling gold plated hardware on the showroom floor by 1954.

With the creation of the Maser in 1954, the promise of unlocking unlimited sources of fusion atomic energy from the heavy hydrogen in sea water and the consequent availability of unlimited social power became a possibility only decades away.

The combination was irresistible.

The Quiet War was quietly declared by the international elite at a meeting held in 1954.

Although the silent weapons system was nearly exposed 13 years later, the evolution of the new weapon system has never suffered any major setbacks.

This volume marks the 25th anniversary of the beginning of the Quiet War. Already this domestic war has had many victories on many fronts throughout the world.

POLITICAL INTRODUCTION

In 1954 it was well recognized by those in positions of authority that it was only a matter of time, only a few decades, before the general public would be able to grasp and upset the cradle of power, for the very elements of the new silent weapon technology were as accessible for a public utopia as they were for providing a private utopia.

The issue of primary concern that of dominance, revolved around the subject of the energy sciences.

ENERGY

Energy is recognized as the key to all activity on earth. Natural science is the study of the sources and control of natural energy, and social science, theoretically expressed as economics, is the study of the sources and control of social energy. Both are bookkeeping systems; mathematics. Therefore, mathematics is the primary energy science. And the bookkeeper can be king if the public can be kept ignorant of the methodology of the bookkeeping.

All science is merely a means to an end. The means is knowledge. The end is control. Beyond this remains only one issue, "who will be the beneficiary?".

In 1954 this was the issue of primary concern. Although the so-called "moral Issues" were raised, in view of the law of natural selection it was agreed that a nation or world of people who will not use their intelligence are no better than animals who do not have intelligence. Such a people are beasts of burden and steaks on the table by choice and consent.

CONSEQUENTLY, in the interest of future world order, peace, and tranquility, it was decided to privately wage a quiet war against the American public with an ultimate objective of permanently shifting the natural and social energy (wealth) of the undisciplined and irresponsible many into the hands of the self-disciplined, responsible, and worthy few.

In order to implement this objective, it was necessary to create, secure, and apply new weapons which, as it turned out, were a class of weapons so subtle and sophisticated in their principle of operation and public appearance as to earn for themselves the name 'silent weapons'.

In conclusion, the objective of economic research, as conducted by the magnates of capital (banking) and the industries of commodities (goods) and services, is the establishment of an economy which is totally predictable and manipulatable.

In order to achieve a totally predictable economy, the low class elements of the society must be brought under total control, i.e., must be house-broken, trained, and assigned a yoke and long term social duties from a very early age, before they have an opportunity to question the propriety of the matter. In order to achieve such conformity, the lower class family unit must be disintegrated by a process of increasing preoccupation of the parents and the establishment of government operated day care centers for the occupationally orphaned children.

The quality of education given to the lower class must be of the poorest sort, so that the meat of ignorance isolating the the inferior class from the superior class is and remains incomprehensible to the inferior class. With such an initial handicap, even bright lower class individuals have little if any hope of extricating themselves from their assigned lot in life. This form of slavery is essential to maintaining some measure of social order, peace, and tranquility for the ruling upper class.

DESCRIPTIVE INTRODUCTION OF THE SILENT WEAPON

Everything that is expected from an ordinary weapon is expected from a silent weapon by its creators, but only in it its own manner of functioning.

It shoots situations, instead of bullets; propelled by data processing, instead of chemical reaction (explosion); originating from bits of data, instead of grains of gunpowder; from a computer, instead of a gun; operated by a computer programmer, instead of marksman; under the orders of a banking magnate, instead of a military general.

It makes no obvious explosive noises, causes no obvious physical or mental injuries, and does not obviously interfere with anyone's daily social life.

Yet it makes an unmistakable 'noise', causes unmistakable physical and mental damage, and unmistakably interferes with daily social life, i.e., unmistakable to a trained observer, one who knows what to look for.

The public cannot comprehend this weapon, and therefore cannot believe that they are being attached and subdued by a weapon.

The public might instinctively feel that something is wrong, but because of the technical nature of the silent weapon, they cannot express their feeling in a rational way, or handle the problem with intelligence. Therefore, they do not know how to cry for help, and do not know how to associate with others to defend themselves against it.

When a silent weapon is applied gradually to the public, the public adjusts/adapts to its presence and learns to tolerate its encroachment on their lives until the pressure (psychological via economic) becomes too great and they crack up.

Therefore, the silent weapon is a type of biological war fare. It attacks the vitality, options, and mobility of the individuals of a society by knowing, understanding, manipulating, and attacking their sources of natural and social energy, and their physical, mental, and emotional strengths and weaknesses.

THEORETICAL INTRODUCTION

"Give me control over a nation's currency, and I care not who makes its laws."

Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1743-1812)

Today's silent weapons technology is an outgrowth of a simple idea discovered, succinctly expressed, and effectively applied by the quoted Mr. Mayor Amschel Rothschild. Mr. Rothschild discovered the missing passive component of economic theory known as economic inductance. He, of course, did not think of his discovery in these 20th century terms, and to be sure, mathematical analysis had to wait for the Second Industrial Revolution, the rise of the theory of mechanics and electronics, and finally, the invention of the electronic computer before it could be effectively applied in the control of the world economy.

GENERAL ENERGY CONCEPTS

In the study of energy systems, there always appear three elementary concepts. These are potential energy, kinetic energy, and energy dissipation. And corresponding to these concepts, there are three idealized, essentially pure physical counterparts, called passive components.

(1) In the science of physical mechanics, the phenomenon of of potential energy is associated with a physical property called elasticity or stiffness, and can be represented by a stretched spring.

In electronic science, potential energy is stored in a capacitor instead of a spring. This property is called capacitance instead of elasticity or stiffness.

(2) In the science of physical mechanics, the phenomenon of kinetic energy is associated with a physical property called inertia or mass and can be represented by a mass or a flywheel in motion.

In electronic science, kinetic energy is stored in an inductor (in a magnetic field) instead of a mass. This property is called inductance instead of inertia.

(3) In the science of physical mechanics, the phenomenon of energy dissipation is associated with a physical property called friction or resistance, and can be represented by a dashpot or other device which converts system energy into heat.

In electronic science, dissipation of energy is performed by an element called either a resistor or a conductor, the term 'resistor' being the one generally used to express the concept of friction, and the term 'conductor' being generally used to describe a more ideal device (e.g., wire) employed to convey electric energy efficiently from one location to another. The property of a resistor or conductor is measured as either resistance or conductance, reciprocals.

In economics these three energy concepts are associated with:

(1) Economic Capacitance -- Capital (money, stock/inventory, investments in building and durables, etc.)

(2) Economic Conductance -- Goods (production flow coefficients)

(3) Economic Inductance -- Services (the influence of the population of industry on output).

All of the mathematical theory developed in the study of one energy system, (e.g., mechanics, electronics, etc.) can be immediately applied in the study of any other energy system (e.g., economics).

MR. ROTHSCHILD'S ENERGY DISCOVERY

What Mr. Rothschild had discovered was the basic principle of power, influence, and control over people as applied to economics. That principle is "when you assume the appearance of power, people soon give it to you".

Mr. Rothschild had discovered that currency or deposit loan accounts had the required appearance of power that could be used to induce people (inductance, with people corresponding to a magnetic field) into surrendering their real wealth in exchange for a promise of greater wealth (instead of real compensation). They would put up real collateral in exchange for a loan of promissory notes. Mr. Rothschild found that he could issue more notes than he had backing for, so long as he had someone's stock of gold as a persuader to show to his customers.

Mr. Rothschild loaned his promissory notes to individuals and to governments. These would create over-confidence. Then he would make money scarce, tighten control of the system, and collect his collateral through the obligation of contracts. The cycle was then repeated. These pressures could be used to ignite a war. Then he would control the availability of currency to determine who would win the war. That government which agreed to give him control of its economic system got his support. Collection of debts was guaranteed by economic aid to the enemy of the debtor. The profit derived from this economic methodology made Mr. Rothschild all the more wealthy and all the more able to extend his wealth. He found that the public greed would allow currency to be printed by government order beyond the limits (inflation) of backing in precious metal or the production of goods and services (gross national product, GNP).

APPARENT CAPITAL AS "PAPER" INDUCTOR

In this structure, credit, presented as a pure circuit element called "currency", has the appearance of capital, but is, in fact, negative capital. Hence, it has the appearance of service, but is, in fact, indebtedness or debt. It is therefore an economic inductance instead of an economic capacitance, and if balanced in no other way, will be balanced by the negation of population (war, genocide). The total goods and services represents real capital called the gross national product, and currency may be printed up to this level and still represent economic capacitance; but currency printed beyond this level is subtractive, represents the introduction of economic inductance, and constitutes notes of indebtedness. War is therefore the balancing of the system by killing the true creditors (the public which we have taught to exchange true value for inflated currency) and falling back on whatever is left of the resources of nature and the regeneration of those resources.

Mr. Rothschild had discovered that currency gave him the power to rearrange the economic structure to his own advantage,, to shift economic inductance to those economic positions which would encourage the greatest economic instability and oscillation.

The final key to economic control had to wait until there was sufficient data and high speed computing equipment to keep close watch on the economic oscillations created by price shocking and excess paper energy credits -- (paper inductance/inflation).

BREAKTHROUGH

The aviation field provided the greatest evolution in economic engineering by way of the mathematical theory of shock testing. In this process, a projectile is fired from an airframe on the ground and the impulse of the recoil is monitored by vibration transducers connected to the airframe and wired to chart recorders. By studying the echoes or reflections of the recoil impulse in the airframe, it is possible to discover critical vibrations in the structure of the airframe which either vibrations of the negine or aeolian vibrations of the wings, or a combination of the two, might reinforce resulting in a reconant self-destruction of the airframe in flight as an aircraft. From the standpoint of engineering, this means that the strengths and weaknesses of the structure of the airframe in terms of vibrational energy can be discovered and manipulated.

APPLICATION IN ECONOMICS

To use this method of airframe shock testing in economic engineering, the prices of commodities are shocked, and the public consumer reaction is monitored. The resulting echoes of the economic shock are interpreted theoretically by computers and the psycho-economic structure of the economy is thus discovered. It is by this process that partial differential and difference matricos are discovered that define the family household and make possible its evolution as an economic industry (dissipative consumer structure). Then the response of the household to future shocks can be predicted and manipulated, and society becomes a well regulated animal with its reins under the control of a sophisticated computer-regulated social energy bookkeeping system.

Eventually every individual element of the structure comes under computer control through a knowledge of personal preferences, such knowledge guaranteed by computer association of consumer preferences (universal product code -- UPC -- zebra stripe pricing codes on packages) with identified consumers (identified via association with the use of a credit card and later a permanent 'tattooed' body number invisible under normal ambient illumination.

SUMMARY

Economics is only a social extension of a natural energy system. It, also, has its three passive components. Because of the distribution of wealth and the lack of communication and consequent lack of data, this field has been the last energy field for which a knowledge of these three passive components has been developed.

Since energy is the key to all activity on the face of the earth, it follows that in order to attain a monopoly of energy, raw materials, goods, and services and to establish a world system of slave labor, it is necessary to have a first strike capability in the field of economics. In order to maintain our position, it is necessary that we have absolute first knowledge of the science of control over all economic factors and the first experience at engineering the world economy.

In order to achieve such sovereignty, we must at least achieve this one end: that the public will not make either the logical or mathematical connection between economics and the other energy sciences or learn to apply such knowledge.

This is becoming increasingly difficult to control because more and more businesses are making demands upon their computer programmers to create and apply mathematical models for the management of those businesses.

It is only a matter of time before the new breed of private programmer/economists will catch on to the far reaching implications of the work begun at Harvard in 1948. The speed with which they can communicate their warning to the public will largely depend upon how effective we have been at controlling the media, subverting education, and keeping the public distracted with matters of no real importance.

THE ECONOMIC MODEL

Economics, as a social energy science has as a first objective the description of the complex way in which any given unit of resources is used to satisfy some economic want. (Leontief Matrix) The first objective, when it is extended to get the most product from the least or limited resources, comprises that objective of general military) and industrial logistics known as Operations Research. (See simplex method of linear programming.)

The Harvard Economic Research Project (1948-) was an extension of World War II Operations Research. Its purpose was to discover the science of controlling an economy; at first the American economy, and then the world economy. It was felt that with sufficient mathematical foundation and data, it would be nearly as easy to predict and control the trend of an economy as to predict and control the trajectory of a projectile. Such as proven to be the case. Moreover, the economy has been transformed into a guided missile on target.

The immediate aim of the Harvard project was to discover the economic structure, what forces change that structure, how the behavior of the structure can be predicted, and how it can be manipulated. What was needed was a well organized knowledge of the mathematical structures and interrelationships of investment, production, distribution, and consumption. To make a short story of it all, it was discovered than an economy obeyed the same, laws as electricity and that all of the mathematical theory and practical and computer know-how developed for the electronic field could be directly applied in the study of economics. This discovery was not openly declared, and its more subtle implications were and are kept a closely guarded secret, for example that in an economic model, human life is measured in dollars, and that the electric spark generated when opening a switch connected to an active inductor in mathematically analogous to the initiation of a war.

The greatest hurdle which theoretical economists faced was the accurate description of the household as an industry. This is a challenge, because consumer purchases are a matter of choice which in turn is influenced by income, price, and other economic factors.

This hurdle was cleared in an indirect and statistically approximate way by an application of shock testing to determine the current characteristics, called current technical coefficients, of a household industry. Why GAS Costs $2.00 Per Gallon

Finally, because problems in theoretical economics can be translated very easily into problems in theoretical electronics, and the solution translated back again, it follows that only a book of language translation and concept definition needed to be written for economics. The remainder could be gotten from standard works on mathematics and electronics. This makes the publication of books on advanced economics unnecessary, and greatly simplifies project security.

INDUSTRIAL DIAGRAMS

An ideal industry is defined as a device which receives value from other industries in several forms and converts it into one specific product for sales and distribution to other industries. It has several inputs and one output. What the public normally thinks of as one industry is really an industrial complex where several industries under one roof produce one or more products.

The flow of product from industry #1 (supply) to industry #2 (demand) is denoted by 112. The total flow out of industry 'K' is denoted by I k . (sales, etc.)

A node is a symbol of collection and distribution of flow. Node #3 receives from industry #3 and distributes to industries #1 through #3. If industry #3 manufactures chairs, then a flow from Industry #3 back to industry #3 simply indicates that industry #3 is using part of its own output product, for example, as office furniture. Therefore, the flow may be summarized by the equations:

THREE INDUSTRIAL CLASSES

Industries fell into three categories or class by type of output.

Class #1 - Capital (resources)

Class #2 - Goods (commodities or use - dissipative)

Class #3 - Services (action of population)

Class # 1 Industries exist at three levels

(1) Nature - sources of energy and raw materials.

(2) Government - printing of currency equal to gross national product (GNP), and extension of currency in excess of GNP.

(3) Banking - loaning of money for interest, and extension (counterfeiting) of economic value through deposit loan account - inflation.

Class # 2 industries exist as producers of tangible or consumer (dissipated) products. This sort of activity is usually recognized and labeled by the public as an 'industry'.

Class # 3 industries are those which have service rather than a tangible product as their output. These industries are called (1) households, and (2) governments. Their output is human activity of a mechanical sort, and their basis is population.

AGGREGATION

The whole economic system can be represented by a three industry model if one allows the names of the outputs to be (1) capital, (2) goods, and (3) services. The problem with this representation is that it would not show the influence of, say, the textile industry on the ferrous metal industry. This is because both the textile industry and the ferrous metal industry would be contained within a single classification called the 'goods industry' and by this process of combining or aggregating these two industries under one system block they would lose their economic individuality.

THE E-MODEL

A national economy consists of simultaneous flows of production, distribution, consumption, and investment. If all of these elements including labor and human functions are assigned a numerical value in like units of measure, say, 1939 dollars, on this flow can be further represented by a current flow in an electronic circuit, and its behavior can be predicted and manipulated with useful precision.

The three ideal passive energy components of electronics, the capacitor, the resistor, and the inductor correspond to the three ideal passive energy components of economics called the pure industries of capital, goods, and services, resp..

Economic capacitance represents the storage of capital in one form or another.

Economic conductance represents the level of conductance of materials for the production of goods.

Economic inductance represents the inertia of economic value in motion. This is a population phenomenon known as services.

ECONOMIC INDUCTANCE

An electrical inductor (e.g., a coil of wire) has an electric current as its primary phenomenon and a magnetic field as its secondary phenomenon (inertia). Corresponding to this, an economic inductor has a flow of economic value as its primary phenomenon and a population field as its secondary phenomenon of inertia. When the flow of economic value (e.g., money) diminishes, the human population field collapses in order to keep the economic value (money) flowing (extreme case - war).

The public inertia is a result of consumer buying habits, expected standard of living, etc., and is generally a phenomenon of self-preservation.

INDUCTIVE FACTORS TO CONSIDER

(1) Population

(2) magnitude of the economic activities of the government.

(3) the method of financing these government activities (see Peter-Paul Principle-inflation of the currency)

TRANSLATION

(A few examples will be given.)

CHARGE -- coulombs

-- dollars (1939).

FLOW/CURRENT -- amperes (coulombs per second)

-- dollars of flow per year.

MOTIVATING FORCE -- volts -- dollars (output) demand.

CONDUCTANCE -- amperes per volt.

-- dollars of flow per year per dollar demand.

CAPITANCE -- coulombs per volt.

-- dollars of production inventory/stock per dollar demand.

TIME-FLOW RELATIONSHIPS AND SELF-DESTRUCTIVE OSCILLATIONS

An ideal industry may be symbolized electronically in various ways. The simplest way is to represent a demand by a voltage and a supply by a current. When this is done, the relationship between the two becomes what is called an admittance, which can result from three economic factors: (1) hindsight flow, 2) present flow, and (3) foresight flow.

Foresight flow is the result of that property of living entities to cause energy (food) to be stored for a period of low energy (e.g., a winter season). It consists of demands made upon an economic system for that period of low energy (winter season). In a production industry it takes several forms, one of which is known as production stock or inventory. In electronic symbology this specific industry demand (a pure capital industry) is represented by capacitance and the stock or resource is represented by a stored charge. Satisfaction of an industry demand suffers a lag because of the loading effect of inventory priorities.

Present flow ideally involves no delays. It is, so to speak, input today for output today, a 'hand to mouth' flow. In electronic symbology, this specific industry demand (a pure use industry) is represented by a conductance which is then a simple economic valve (a dissipative element).

Hindsight flow is known as habit or inertia. In electronics, this phenomenon is the characteristic of an inductor (economic analog = a pure service industry) in which a current flow (economic analog = flow of money) creates a magnetic field (economic analog = active human population) which, if the current (money flow) begins to diminish, collapses (war) to maintain the current (flow of money -- energy).

Other large alternatives to war as economic inductors or economic flywheels are an open-ended social welfare program, or enormous (but fruitful) open-ended space program.

The problem with stabilizing the economic system is that there is too much demand on account of (1) too much greed and (2) too much population.

This creates excessive economic inductance which can only be balanced with economic capacitance (true resources or value - e.g. in goods or services). The social welfare program is nothing more than an open-ended credit balance system which creates a false capital industry to give non-productive people a roof over their heads and food in their stomachs. This can be useful, however, because the recipients become state property, in return for the 'gift' , a standing array for the elite. For he who pays the piper, picks the tune. Those who get hooked on the economic drug, must go to the elite for a fix. In this, the method of introducing large amounts of stabilizing capacitance is by borrowing on the future 'credit' of the world. This is a fourth law of motion -- onset, and consists of performing an action and leaving the system before the reflected reaction returns to the point of action -- a delayed reaction. The means of surviving the reaction is by changing the system before the reaction can return. By this means, politicians become popular in their own time and the public pays for it later. In fact the measure of such a politician is the delay time. The same thing is achieved by a government by printing money beyond the limit of the gross national product, an economic process called inflation. This puts a large quantity of money into the hands of the public and maintains a balance against their greed, creates a false self-confidence in them and, for a while, stays the wolf from the door.

They must eventually resort to war to balance the account, because war ultimately is merely the act to keep the responsibility and blood off the public conscience. (See section on consent factors and social-economic structuring.)

If the people really cared about their fellow man, they would control their appetites (greed, procreation, etc.) so that they would not have to operate on a credit or welfare social system which steals from this worker to satisfy the bum.

Since most of the general public will not exercise restraint, there are only two alternatives to reduce the economic inductance of the system.

(1) Let the populace bludgeon each other to death in war, which will only result in a total destruction of the living earth.

(2) Take control of the world by the use of economic 'silent weapons' in a form of 'quiet warfare', and reduce the economic inductance of the world to a safe level by a process of benevolent slavery and genocide.

The latter option has been taken as the obviously better option. At this point it should be crystal clear to the reader why absolute secrecy about the silent weapons is necessary. The general public refuses to improve its own mentality and its faith in its fellow man. It has become a herd of proliferating barbarians, and, so' to speak, a blight upon the fate of the earth. They do not care enough about economic science to learn why they have not been able to avoid war despite religious morality, and their religious or self-gratifying refusal to deal with earthly problems renders the solution of the earthly problem unreachable by them. It is left to those few who are truly willing to think and survive as the fittest to survive, to solve the problem for themselves as the few who really care. Otherwise, exposure of the silent weapon would destroy our only hope of preserving the seed of future true humanity.

THE HOUSEHOLD INDUSTRY

The industries of finance (banking), manufacturing, and government, real counterparts of the pure industries of capital, goods, and services, are easily defined because they are generally logically structured. Because of this their processes can be described mathematically and their technical coefficients can be easily deduced. This, however, is not the case with the service industry known as the household industry.

HOUSEHOLD MODELS

When the industry flow diagram is represented by a 2-block system of households on the right and all other industries on the left, the following results.

(labor, etc.)

The arrows from left to right labeled A, B, C, etc., denote flow of economic value from the industries in the left hand block to the industry in the right hand block called 'households'. These may be thought of as the monthly consumer flows of the following commodities. A - alcoholic beverages, B - beef, C - coffee, ..., U - unknown, etc..

The problem which a theoretical economist faces is that the consumer preferences of any household is not easily predictable and the technical coefficients of any one household tend to be a non-linear, very complex, and variable function income, prices, etc.

Computer information derived from the use of the universal product code in conjunction with credit card purchase as an individual household identifier could change this state of affairs. But the U.P.C. method is not yet available on a national or even a significant regional scale. To compensate for this data deficiency, an alternate indirect approach of analysis has been adopted known as economic shock testing. This method, widely used in the aircraft manufacturing industry develops an aggregate statistical sort of data.

Applied to economics, this means that all of the households in one region or in the whole nation are studied as a group or class rather than individually, and the mass behavior rather than individual behavior is used to discover useful estimates of the technical coefficients governing the economic structure of the hypothetical single household industry.

Notice in the industry flow diagram that the values for the flows A,B,C, etc., are accessible to measurement in terms of selling prices and total sales of commodities.

One method of evaluating the technical coefficients of the household industry depends upon shocking the prices of a commodity and noting the changes in the sales of all of the commodities.

ECONOMIC SHOCK TESTING

In recent times, the application of Operations Research to the study of the public economy has been obvious for anyone who understands the principles of shock testing.

In the shock testing of an aircraft airframe, the recoil impulse of firing a gun mounted on that airframe causes shock waves in that structure which tell aviation engineers the conditions under which parts of the airplane or the whole airplane or its wings will start to vibrate or flutter like a guitar string, a flute reed, or a tuning fork, and disintegrate or fall apart in flight.

Economic engineers achieve the same result in studying the behavior of the economy and the consumer public by carefully selecting a staple commodity such as beef, coffee, gasoline, or sugar and then causing a sudden change or shock in its price or availability, thus kicking everybody's budget and buying habits out of shape.

They then observe the shock waves which result by monitoring the changes in advertising, prices, and sales of that and other commodities.

The objective of such studies is to acquire know-how to set the public economy into a predictable state of motion or change, even a controlled self-destructive state of motion which will convince the public that certain "expert" people should take control of the money system and reestablish security (rather than liberty and justice) for all. When the subject citizens are rendered unable to control their financial affairs, they of course, become totally enslaved, a source of cheap labor.

Not only the prices of commodities, but also the availability of labor can be used as the means of shock testing. Labor strikes deliver excellent test shocks to an economy, especially in the critical service areas of trucking (transportation), communication, public utilities (energy, water, garbage collection), etc.

By shock testing, it is found that there is a direct relationship between the availability of money flowing in an economy and the psychological outlook and response of masses of people dependent upon that availability.

For example, there is a measurable, quantitative relationship between the price of gasoline, and the probability that a person would experience a headache, feel a need to watch a violent movie, smoke a cigarette, or go to a tavern for a mug of beer.

It is most interesting that, by observing and measuring the economic modes by which the public tries to run from their problems and escape from reality, and by applying the mathematical theory of Operations Research, it is possible to program computers to predict the most probable combination of created events (shocks) which will bring about a complete control and subjugation of the public through a subversion of the public economy (by shaking the plum tree).

INTRODUCTION TO THE THEORY OF ECONOMIC SHOCK TESTING

Let the prices and total sales of commodities be given and symbolized as follows.

Let us assume a simple economic model in which the total number of important (staple) commodities are represented as beef, gasoline, and an aggregate of all other staple commodities which we will call the hypothetical miscellaneous staple commodity 'M'. (e.g., M is an aggregate of C, S, T, U, etc..)

INTRODUCTION TO ECONOMIC AMPLIFIERS

Economic amplifiers are the active components of economic engineering. The basic characteristic of any amplifier, (mechanical, electrical, or economic) is that it receives an input control signal and delivers energy from an independent energy, source to a specified output terminal in a predictable relationship to that input control signal.

The simplest form of economic amplifier is a device called advertising.

If a person is spoken to by a T.V. advertiser as if he were a twelve year old, then, due to suggestibility, he will, with a certain probability, respond or react to that suggestion with the uncritical response of a twelve year old and will reach into his economic reservoir and deliver its energy to buy that product on impulse when he passes it in the store.

An economic amplifier may have several inputs and outputs. Its response might be instantaneous or delayed. Its circuit symbol might be a rotary switch if its options are exclusive, qualitative, 'go' or 'no go', or it might have its parametric input/output relationships specified by a matrix with internal energy sources represented.

Whatever its form might be, its purpose is to govern the flow of energy from a source to an output sink in direct relationship to an input control signal. For this reason, it is called an active circuit element or component.

Economic Amplifiers fall into classes called strategies, and in comparison with electronic amplifiers, the specific internal functions or an economic amplifier are called logistical instead of electrical.

Therefore, economic amplifiers not only deliver power gain, but also, in effect, are used to cause changes in the economic circuitry.

In the design of an economic amplifier we must have some idea of at least five functions, which are:

(1) the available input signals,

(2) the desired output control objectives,

(3) the strategic objective,

(4) the available economic power sources,

(5) the logistical options.

The process of defining and evaluating these factors and incorporating the economic amplifier into an economic system has been popularly called game theory.

The design of an economic amplifier begins with a specification of the power level of the output, which can range from personal to national. The second condition is accuracy of response, i.e., how accurately the output action is a function of the input commands. High gain combined with strong feedback helps to deliver the required precision. Most of the error will be in the input data signal. Personal input data tends to be specific, while national input data tends to be statistical.

SHORT LIST OF INPUTS

Questions to be answered:

(1) what (3) where (5) why

(2) when (4) how (6) who

General sources of information:

(1) telephone taps (3) analysis of garbage

(2) surveillance (4) behavior of children in school

Standard of living by:

(1) food (3) shelter

(2) clothing (4) transportation

Social contacts:

(1) telephone - itemized record of calls

(2) family - marriage certificate, birth certificates, etc.

(3) friends, associates, etc.

(4) memberships in organizations

(5) political affiliation

THE PERSONAL PAPER TRAIL

Personal buying habits, i.e.,

Personal consumer preferences:

(1) checking accounts

(2) credit card purchases

(3) ' tagged' credit card purchases - the credit card purchase of products bearing the U.P.C. (Universal Product Code)

Assets:

(1) checking accounts (5) automobile, etc.

(2) savings accounts (6) safety deposit at bank

(3) real estate (7) stock market

(4) business

Liabilities:

(1) creditors (3) loans

(2) enemies (see legal) (4) consumer credit

Government sources (ploys)*:

(1) Welfare (4) doles

(2) Social Security (5) grants

(3) U.S.D.A. surplus food (6) subsidies

Government sources (via intimidation)

(1) Internal Revenue Service

(2) OSHA

(3) Census

(4) etc.

* Principle of this ploy -- the citizen will almost always make the collection of information easy if he can operate on the 'free sandwich principle' of 'eat now, and pay later'.

Other Government sources -- surveillance of U.S. Mail.

HABIT PATTERNS -- PROGRAMMING

Strengths and weaknesses:

(1) activities (sports, hobbies, etc.)

(2) see 'legal' (fear, anger, etc. - crime record)

(3) hospital records (drug sensitivities, reaction to pain, etc.)

(4) psychiatric records (fears, angers, disgusts, adaptability, reactions to stimuli, violence, suggestibility or hypnosis, pain, pleasure, love and sex)

Methods of coping -- adaptability -- behavior:

(1) consumption of alcohol

(2) consumption of drugs

(3) entertainment

(4) religious factors influencing behavior

(5) other methods of escaping from reality.

Payment modus operandi (MO) -- pay on time, etc.:

(1) payment of telephone bills

(2) energy purchases (electric, gas...)

(3) water purchases

(4) repayment of loans

(5) house payments

(6) automobile payments

(7) payments on credit cards

Political sensitivity:

(1) beliefs (3) position (5) projects/activities

(2) contacts (4) strengths/weaknesses

Legal inputs - behavior control

(Excuses for investigation, search, arrest, or employment of force to modify behavior.)

(1) court reports (4) reports made to police

(2) police records - NCIC (5) insurance information

(3) driving record (6) anti-establishment acquaintances

NATIONAL INPUT INFORMATION

Business sources (via I.R.S., etc.):

(1) prices of commodities

(2) sales

(3) investments in

(a) stocks/inventory

(b) production tools and machinery

(c) buildings and improvements

(d) the stock market

Banks and credit bureaus:

(1) credit information

(2) payment information

Miscellaneous Sources:

(1) polls and surveys

(2) publications

(3) telephone records

(4) energy and utility purchases

SHORT LIST OF OUT PUTS

Outputs - create controlled situations

- manipulation of the economy. hence society

- control by control of compensation and losses.

Sequence:

(1) allocates opportunities.

(2) destroys opportunities.

(3) controls the economic industry.

(4) controls the availability of raw materials

(5) controls capital.

(6) controls bank rates.

(7) controls the inflation of the currency.

(8) controls the possession of property.

(9) controls the industrial capacity.

(10) controls manufacturing.

(11) controls the availability of goods (commodities).

(12) controls the prices of commodities.

(13) controls services, the labor force, etc.

(14) controls payments to government officials.

(15) controls the legal functions

(16) controls the personal data file uncorrectable - by the party slandered.

(17) controls advertising.

(18) controls media content.

(19) controls material available for T.V. viewing.

(20) disengages attention from real issues.

(21) engages emotions.

(22) creates disorder, chaos, and insanity.

(23) controls design of more probing tax forms.

(24) controls surveillance.

(25) controls the storage of information.

(26) develops psychological analyses and profiles of individuals.

(27) controls legal functions (repeat of 15).

(28) controls sociological factors.

(29) controls health options.

(30) preys on weaknesses.

(31) cripples strengths.

(32) leaches wealth and substance.

DIVERSION, THE PRIMARY STRATEGY

Experience has proven that the simplest method of securing a silent weapon and gaining control of the public is to keep the public undisciplined and ignorant of basic systems principles on the one hand, while keeping them confused, disorganized, and distracted with matters of no real importance on the other hand.

This is achieved by:

(1) Disengaging their minds, sabotaging their mental activities, by providing a low quality program of public education in mathematics, logic, systems design, and economics, and by discouraging technical creativity.

(2) Engaging their emotions, increasing their self-indulgence and their indulgence in emotional and physical activities, by:

(a) unrelenting emotional affrontations and attacks (mental and emotional rape) by way of a constant barrage of sex, violence, and wars in the media - especially the T.V. and the newspapers.

(b) giving them what they desire - in excess - "junk food for thought" and depriving them of what they really need.

(3) Rewriting history and law and subjecting the public to the deviant creation, thus being able to shift their thinking from personal needs to highly fabricated outside priorities.

These preclude their interest in and discovery of the silent weapons of social automation technology.

The general rule is that there is profit in confusion; the more confusion, the more profit. Therefore, the best approach is to create problems and then offer the solutions.

DIVERSION SUMMARY

MEDIA: Keep the adult public attention diverted away from the real social issues, and captivated by matters of no real importance.

SCHOOLS: Keep the young public ignorant of real mathematics, real economics, real law, and real history.

ENTERTAINMENT: Keep the public entertainment below a sixth grade level.

WORK: Keep the public busy, busy, busy, with no time to think; back on the farm with the other animals.

CONSENT, THE PRIMARY VICTORY

A silent weapon system operates upon data obtained from a docile public by legal (but not always lawful) force. Much information is made available to silent weapon systems programmers through the Internal Revenue Service . (See "Studies In The Structure Of The American Economy" for an I.R.S. source list.) This information consists of the enforced delivery of well organized data contained in federal and state tax forms collected, assembled, and submitted by slave labor provided by taxpayers and employers. Furthermore, the number of such forms submitted to the I.R.S. is a useful indicator of public consent, an important factor in strategic decision making. Other data sources are given in the "Short List Of Inputs.

Consent Coefficients: numerical feedback indicating victory status. Psychological basis:

When the government is able to collect tax and seize private property without just compensation, it is an indication that the public is ripe for surrender and is consenting to enslavement and legal encroachment. A good and easily quantified indicator of harvest time is the number of public citizens who pay income tax.

AMPLIFICATION ENERGY SOURCES

The next step in the process of designing as economic amplifier is discovering the energy sources. The energy sources which support any primitive economic system are, of course, a supply of raw materials, and the consent of the people to labor and consequently assume a certain rank, position, level, or class in the social structure; i.e., to provide labor at various levels in the pecking order.

Each class, in guaranteeing its own level of income, controls the class immediately below it, hence preserves the class structure. This provides stability and security, but also government from the top.

As time goes on and communication and education improve, the lower class elements of the social labor structure become knowledgeable and envious of the good things that the upper class members have. They also begin to attain a knowledge of energy systems and the ability to enforce their rise through the class structure.

This threatens the sovereignty of the elite.

If this rise of the lower classes can be postponed long enough, the elite can achieve energy dominance, and labor by consent no longer will hold a position of an essential economic energy source.

Until such energy dominance is absolutely established, the consent of people to labor and let others handle their affairs must be taken into consideration, since failure to do so could cause the people to interfere in the final transfer of energy sources to the control of the elite.

It is essential to recognize that at this time, public consent is still an essential key to the release of energy in the process of economic amplification.

Therefore, consent as an energy release mechanism will now be considered.

LOGISTICS

The successful application of a strategy requires a careful study of inputs, outputs, the strategy connecting the inputs and the outputs, and the available energy sources to fuel the strategy. This study is called logistics.

A logistical problem is studied at the elementary level first, and then levels of greater complexity are studied as a synthesis of elementary factors.

This means that a given system is analyzed, i.e., broken down into its sub-systems, and these in turn are analyzed, until, by this process, one arrives at the logistical 'atom', the individual.

This is where the process of syntheses properly begins, at the time of the birth of the individual.

THE ARTIFICIAL WOMB

From the time a person leaves its mother's womb, its every effort is directed toward building, maintaining, and withdrawing into artificial wombs, various sorts of substitute protective devices or shells.

The objective of these artificial wombs is to provide a stable environment for both stable and unstable activity; to provide a shelter for the evolutionary processes of growth, and maturity - i.e., survival; to provide security for freedom and to provide defensive protection for offensive activity.

THE POLITICAL STRUCTURE OF A NATION - DEPENDENCY

The primary reason why the individual citizens of a country create a political structure is a subconscious wish or desire to perpetuate their own dependency relationship of childhood.

Simply put, they want a human god to eliminate all risk from their life, pat them on the head, kiss their bruises, put a chicken on every dinner table, clothe their bodies, tuck them into bed at night, and tell them that everything will be alright when they wake up in the morning.

This public demand is incredible, so the human god, the political, meets incredibility with incredibility by promising the world and delivering nothing. So who is the bigger liar?, the public?, or the 'godfather'?

This public behavior is surrender born of fear, laziness and expediency. It is the basis of the welfare state as a strategic weapon, useful against a disgusting public.

ACTION/OFFENSE

Most people want to be able to subdue and/or kill other human beings which disturb their daily lives, but they do not want to have to cope with the moral and religious issues which such an overt act on their part might raise. Therefore, they assign the dirty work to others (including their own children) so as to keep the blood off their own hands. They rave about the humane treatment of animals and then sit down to a delicious hamburger from a whitewashed slaughterhouse down the street and out of sight. But even more hypocritical, they pay taxes to finance a professional association of hit men collectively called politicians, and then complain about corruption in government.

RESPONSIBILITY

Again, most people want to be free to do things (to explore, etc.) but they are afraid to fail.

The fear of failure is manifested in irresponsibility, and especially in delegating those personal responsibilities to others where success is uncertain or carries possible or created liabilities (law) which the person is not prepared to accept.

They want authority (root word - 'author'), but they will not accept responsibility or liability. They hire politicians to face reality for them.

SUMMARY

The people hire the politicians so that the people can:

(1) obtain security without managing it.

(2) obtain action without thinking about it.

(3) inflict theft, injury, and death upon others without having to contemplate either life or death.

(4) avoid responsibility for their own intentions.

(5) obtain the benefits of reality and science without exerting themselves in the discipline of facing or learning either of these things.

They give the politicians the power to create and manage a war machine to:

(1) provide for the survival of the NATION/WOMB.

(2) prevent encroachment of anything of anything upon the NATION/WOMB.

(3) destroy the enemy who threatens the NATION/WOMB.

(4) destroy those citizens of their own country who do not conform for the sake of stability of the NATION/WOMB.

Politicians hold many quasi-military jobs, the lowest being the police which are soldiers, the attorneys and the C.P.A.s next who are spies and saboteurs (licensed), and the judges who shout the orders and run the closed union military shop for whatever the market will bear. The generals are industrialists. The 'presidential' level of commander-in-chief is shared by the international bankers. The people know that they have created this farce and financed it with their own taxes (consent), but they would rather knuckle under than be the hypocrite.

Thus, a nation becomes divided into two very distinct parts, a DOCILE SUB-NATION and a POLITICAL SUB-NATION. The political sub-nation remains attached to the docile sub-nation, tolerates it, and leaches its substance until it grows strong enough to detach itself and devour its parent.

SYSTEM ANALYSIS

In order to make meaningful computerized economic decisions about war, the primary economic flywheel, it is necessary to assign concrete logistical values to each element of the war structure -- personnel and material alike.

This process begins with a clear and candid description of the sub-systems of such a structure.

THE DRAFT (As military service)

Few efforts of human behavior modification are more remarkable or more effective than that of the socio-military institution known as the draft. A primary purpose of a draft or other such institution is to instill, by intimidation, in the young males of a society the uncritical conviction that the government is omnipotent. He is soon taught that a prayer is slow to reverse what a bullet can do in an instant. Thus, a man trained in a religious environment for eighteen years of his life can, by this instrument of the government, be broken down, be purged of his fantasies and delusions in a matter of mere months. Once that conviction is instilled, all else becomes easy to instill.

Even more interesting is the process by which a young man's parents, who purportedly love him, can be induced to send him off to war to his death. Although the scope of this work will not allow this matter to be expanded in full detail, nevertheless, a course overview will be possible and can serve to reveal those factors which must be included in some numerical form in a computer analysis of social and war systems.

We begin with a tentative definition of the draft.

The draft: (selective service, etc.) is an institution of compulsory collective sacrifice and slavery, devised by the middle aged and the elderly for the purpose of pressing the young into doing the public dirty work. It further serves to make the youth as guilty as the elders, thus making criticism of the elders by the youth less likely (Generational Stabilizer). It is marketed and sold to the public under the label of "patriotic - national" service.

Once a candid economic definition of the draft is achieved, that definition is used to outline the boundaries of a structure called a Human Value System, which in turn is translated into the terms of game theory. The value of such a slave laborer is given in a Table of Human Values, a table broken down into categories by intellect, experience, post service job demand, etc..

Some of these categories are ordinary and can be tentatively evaluated in terms of the value of certain jobs for which a known fee exists. Some jobs are harder to value because they are unique to the demands of social subversion, for an extreme example: the value of a mother's instruction to her daughter causing that daughter to put certain behavioral demands upon a future husband, ten or fifteen years hence, thus, by suppressing his resistance to a perversion of a government, making it easier for a banking cartel to buy the State of New York in, say, twenty years.

Such a problem leans heavily upon the observations and the data of wartime espionage and many types of psychological testing. But crude mathematical models (algorithms, etc.) can be devised, if not to predict, at least to predetermine theme events with maximum certainty. What does not exist by natural cooperation is thus enhanced by calculated compulsion. Human beings are machines, levers which may be grasped and turned, and there is little real difference between automating a society and automating a shoe factory.

These derived values are variable. (It is necessary to use a current Table of Human Values for computer analysis.) These values are given in true measure rather than U.S. dollars, since the latter is unstable, being presently inflated beyond the production of national goods and services so as to give the economy a false kinetic energy ('paper' inductance).

The silver value is stable, it being possible to buy the same amount with a gram of silver today as could be bought in 1920. Human value measured in silver units changes slightly due to changes in production technology.

ENFORCEMENT

FACTOR I

As in every social system approach, stability is achieved only by understanding and accounting for human nature (action/reaction patterns). A failure to do so can be, and usually is, disastrous. As in other human social schemes, one for or another of intimidation (or incentive) is essential to the success of the draft. Physical principles of action and reaction must be applied to both internal and external sub-systems. To secure the draft, individual brainwashing/programming and both the family unit and the peer group must be engaged and brought under control.

FACTOR II FATHER

The man of the household must be house-broken to ensure that junior will grow up with the right social training and attitudes. The advertising media, etc., are engaged to see to it that father-to-be is pussy-whipped before or by the time he is married. He is taught that he either conforms to the social notch out for him or his sex life will be hobbled and his tender companionship will be zero. He is made to see that women demand security more than logical, principled, or honorable behavior. By the time his son must go to war, father (with jelly for a back bone) will slam a gun into junior's hand before father will risk the censure of his peers, or make a hypocrite of himself by crossing the investment he has in his own personal opinion or self-esteem. Junior will go to war or father will be embarrassed. So junior will go to war, the true purpose of the war notwithstanding.

FACTOR III MOTHER

The female element of human society is ruled by emotion first and logic second. In the battle between logic and imagination, imagination always wins, fantasy prevails, maternal instinct dominates so that the child comes first and the future comes second. A woman with a newborn baby is too starry-eyed to see a wealthy man's cannon fodder or a cheap source of slave labor. A woman must, however, be conditioned to accept the transition to "reality" when it comes, or sooner.

As the transition becomes more difficult to manage, the family unit must be carefully disintegrated, and state controlled public education and state operated child care centers must become more common and legally enforced so as to begin the detachment of the child from the mother and the father at an earlier age. Inoculation of behavioral drugs can speed the transition for the child (mandatory). CAUTION: A woman's impulsive anger can override her fear. An irate woman's power must never be underestimated, and her power over a pussy-whipped husband must likewise never be underestimated. It got women the vote in 1920.

FACTOR IV JUNIOR

The emotional pressure for self-preservation during time of war and the self-serving attitude of the common herd that have an option to avoid the battlefield -- if junior can be persuaded to go -- is all of the pressure finally necessary to propel Johnny off to war. Their quiet black mailings of him are the threats: "No sacrifice, no friends; no glory, no girlfriends."

FACTOR V SISTER

And what about junior's sister? She is given all the good things of life by her father, and taught to expect the same from her future husband regardless of the price.

FACTOR VI CATTLE

Those who will not use their brains are not better off than those who have no brains, and so this mindless school of jellyfish, father, mother, son, and daughter, become useful beasts of burden or trainers of the same.

This concludes what is available (and what was found) of this government document.

Tragic deaths on New Zealand roads this weekend.

2009-04-27T10:31:00.003+12:00

National road policing manager Superintendent Paula Rose has described NZ roads as "killing fields" after a horrific weekend on NZ roads.

Not all NZ drivers are bad, there are a percentage as in any other country.
National road policing manager Superintendent Paula Rose is part of the problem, top down policy that is well meaning is failing badly. The "sytemisation" of the police in an effort to increase effectiveness is an abject failure. We are told there isn't a "quota system". Apparently it is "performance measuring" which causes police officers to take the "soft" targets of automatically ticketing people barely breaking the speed limit, not wearing a seat belt etc. No discretion, no issuing a warning for minor infringements as may have been the norm not too many years ago.
Officers' jobs are now based on "performing" by writing X amount of tickets per hour, it isn't their fault, it is the system. If the "performance" pressure was removed and police were allowed to target dangerous drivers instead of revenue gathering and if police were allowed to use judgment and discretion we would see an improvement in our statistics.
This is all a reflection of the Clark/Labour failure of academic bollocks being applied to the real world scenarios and failing abysmally.
My point is, the small percentage of bad drivers in NZ are not being targeted, police resources are being sucked up by trivialities. Yet another legacy of 9 years of PC crap from Clark and her ilk.

Quote of the week.......

2009-04-26T10:18:00.004+12:00

Quote of the week came from Bruce Sheppard after hearing that some Hanover finance company investors were upset with Eric Watson for spending copious amounts on a flash party in Turkey. This followed on from last year when fellow Director Mark Hotchin spent a small fortune on a lavish party in Fiji for his 50th.

Hanover collapsed last July, leaving about 17,000 investors owed more than $527m.
Investors had the chance to put the company to the wall but voted to give them 5 years to pay back the money without interest.
Many of the investors are now grumbling. Sheppards response is gorgeous!!!

He said Hanover investors had essentially agreed to give the two directors a five-year interest-free loan when they agreed to the rescue package.

QUOTE:"Their time to be upset and pissed off was some time ago. I went to the meeting and I had a whole bunch of really useful questions and they wouldn't let me ask them, so they can go **** themselves."

Watson was 16th equal on last year's National Business Review Rich List with an estimated $415m.

Muppet of the week -

Phil Goff suggests we should have a referendum around the proposed "super city" for Auckland. This from the leader of the Party with the greatest record on the planet (apart from possibly Zimbabwe, though it's close) for ignoring the "will of the people". Bye bye Phil.

Why the financial system is f#cked

2009-04-04T19:46:00.000+13:00

Taken from the Daily Reckoning

The "Big Picture" is that a huge concentration of wealth has been going on for decades, and the people at the top have stretched greed about as far as can be done before things blow up” which is about as pithy as you can get about the terrors of mal-distribution of wealth, a cancerous condition that comes from a huge, decades-long monetary and fiscal boom where all the money filters up the food chain because the wealthy are the ones who have the wherewithal to borrow all the money to buy all the government debt so that the government funnels more and more money to the rich via increasing interest payments because the government has to borrow more and more money just to offset the inflation in prices that the new money created, and why deflation of financial assets, in a big bust like right now, has, among its other beauties, the ability to correct this unhealthy imbalance.

The problem of mal-distribution of wealth is not just that a few very rich people own the vast majority of everything and the many, many of us in the grubby multitudes of common-clay peasant scum whose lot in life is to make scumbags and government scumbags rich and make the other rich richer, too, while we “un-rich” own virtually nothing.

In case you were wondering, the multitudes of the un-rich include you, me, and everyone we know.

The kicker that makes it all so funny is that it is us un-rich peons that still owe all the money that the rich now own! Hahaha! That is the result of having a credit-based money; money only comes into existence if somebody borrows it, and money goes out of existence when the debt is paid, so that if the debt that created the money in the first place was repaid, there would be no money for the rich to have! Hahaha! WoooOOooo! Makes your head spin! Hahaha!

And what was bought, and is being bought, with all this money that the government is spending? Well, after decades of Congress spending its time finding ways of permanently compensating everyone who suffered either real or imagined hardship, or even inconvenience, through the simple expedient of borrowing the money and giving it away, a task made easy by the Federal Reserve creating the mountains of money and credit to make such reckless, insane government borrowing possible, it is not surprising, then, that after looking at the budget of $3 trillion in budgeted federal spending for the next year, “almost 50% is entitlements and interest on our debt. Defense spending [is] almost 25%.”

Of course, 50% of the budget for entitlement spending plus 25% for military spending means that “everything else” must be 25%.

Desperate for some relief, I was at the SteveQuayle.com site when I idly clicked on one of their “Story of the Day” pieces, which linked to Marketskeptics.com. While I was waiting for my computer to load, the title came up on the bar of my browser, a feature that I apparently never noticed before, since as a husband, father and paranoid citizen afraid of the idiotic, homicidal, corrupt and criminal government, I take every opportunity like this to check what’s happening behind my back and sweep the perimeter for hostile threats of some kind to make sure something isn’t sneaking up on me, particularly the kids, who seem to understand (and understand a little too well to suit me) the significance of still being legally too young to be charged as an adult, if you catch my drift.

But it is not just the kids, wife, family, neighbors, government officials, random passersby and sometimes complete strangers who are openly hostile to me, but I blame the Federal Reserve for being the cause of all of our problems because it is the Fed that created too much money and credit, which financed the inflations and booms in the prices of stocks, bonds, houses and size of government, and thus they are my enemy, too, and I blame the despicable Congress for consistently allowing them to do it, and thus they are my enemy, too, and I particularly loathe the Supreme Court for allowing Congress to do it by, astonishingly, ruling, and then upholding that ruling time after time, to negate that whole part of the actual Constitution of the United States, Article One, Section 10, that requires that no state allow anything other than silver and gold to be payment of a debt, a simple-yet-effective circumscription which would have completely prevented all of the economic problems we have today, illustrating the genius of the Founding Fathers and the completely and utterly treacherous and traitorous idiocy of Congress and the Supreme Court today, a pox on all their houses!

Anyway, as I am waiting and pondering writing some hate mail to the Fed, Congress and the Supreme Court (“Dear Morons: Drop dead! Sincerely, Angry Man In Florida (AMIF)”), the title of the article came up on my browser bar, and I saw, with alarm, “Fed Planning 15-Fold Increase In US Monetary Base”, by Eric deCarbonnel which was so horrifying that I immediately thought it must be some kind of a joke, an outlandish editorial cartoon, or something equally fanciful.

Well, it wasn’t, and he calculates from official reports that if you define “cash” as the real monetary base of the USA available to the USA, then as of September 2008, it was a paltry $262 billion (30% of the Fed’s published $833 billion in actual cash, which is what you have left after subtracting the value of 70% of U.S. currency that is being held abroad).

This is pretty scary stuff, and I don’t understand any of it, but he goes on, “Now compare that to the projected US domestic monetary base for September 2009 which is $3,818 billion ($4,500 billion – $583 billion dollars circulating abroad) – $99 billion (other fed liabilities not part of the money supply).”

He says, “The fed’s planned balance sheet expansion results in a 15-fold increase in the base money supply” calculated as “$3,818 billion/$262 billion = 15-Fold increase in US monetary base.” Whoops!

Tim Geithner rings the Daily Reckoning.....

2009-04-02T09:48:00.000+13:00

From Bill Bonner.....

Our phone rang yesterday. You know, the hotline we set up to help Treasury Secretaries and Finance Ministers cope with the problems of the global financial meltdown?

We picked it up…it was Tim Geithner!

Imagine our surprise. But we explained that we were delighted to help and proceeded to outline the problem he faced and suggested a course of action. What follows is merely a recitation of our conversation:

“Tim,” (we were on a first-name basis right away) “look, we know it’s tough. You were called in to do an impossible job. And now everyone’s taking shots at you – blaming you for the whole thing…

“As if you could have known that things would turn bad, just because every clown on the street was making multi-billion dollar mistakes…

“As if you should have said something when you were watching the crisis build from your perch at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York…

“As if you might have used your regulatory power to prevent the banks from making catastrophic speculations…

“Yes, it’s all very unfair…terrible…but let’s look at what’s really going on and see what we can do about it.

“We need to recognize, first, that this is not just a regular recession. So you can forget the usual recession remedies – a few points off the Fed funds rate…a little counter-cyclical fiscal spending. This is much more serious.

“What we have here is a depression. It’s a depression because it requires a fundamental restructuring of the international financial model. You know how it worked during the Bubble Epoch; Asians made things…Americans bought them. Asians made money; Americans spent it. Asians saved; Americans borrowed. And now the Asians have money; and Americans have debts. Not really very complicated, is it?

“Well, these programs of trying to bailout businesses…and the banks…and the economy…you can see how they are all a waste of money. All of these efforts are trying to revive the old model. They’re trying to free up credit so that Americans can buy more! Now, we don’t really have to explain why that won’t work, do we? More debt won’t do Americans any good; more IOUs from Americans won’t do China any good.

“Instead, the model has to be taken apart and reconstructed. China needs to sell more to people with money – its own people, mainly. Americans need to pay down their debts before they can take up serious consumption again.”

“But wait, Bill,” Mr. Geithner interrupted. “Won’t that cause serious disruptions? When Americans save, in order to reduce their debts, they take away the single primary source of demand for the world economy. If they don’t begin buying soon, businesses all over the world will go broke. That’s why I’ve spent so much money trying to bail out the banks. Americans have no money. So the only way they can spend is if the banks provide credit. So, we have to save the banks first…then they’ll begin lending…and then the economy can begin growing again.”

“Uh…no. That’s not how it works. Even if you make all the banks solvent, whom are they going to lend to? Who’s going to borrow? Americans have too much debt already. Right now, if they get any money, they’re holding onto it…and using it to pay down their debts. They’re not going to start spending just because a bank offers them a loan. They’ll only want to spend money if they think inflation is returning…”

“Well, Ben is working on that…”

“And maybe he’ll eventually succeed. But it doesn’t matter. The old model – where the Chinese lend us money so we can buy their products – is broken. It can’t be fixed. Because the more Bernanke causes inflation…the less the Chinese want U.S. dollar assets…meaning, the less they want to lend to us. And if Bernanke doesn’t cause inflation, Americans won’t want to part with their money. So, they’ll buy fewer Chinese products – and China will have less money to lend back to us. We’re trapped in both directions. Forget it.”

“Well…what’s the solution then? I’m new to this job. I’ve got to do something…”

“Tim, get a grip on yourself. There isn’t really anything you can do. Capitalism has to do its work. It’s got to destroy the businesses and the investments that were built up on the false promises of the Bubble Epoch. The faster it does it, the better. A number of banks need to go broke…and a lot of big businesses, too. You can try to hold it off with taxpayers’ money…but you’re just making the whole process of restructuring longer, and more expensive, than it needs to be.

“Tim, have faith. Let it be. Give capitalism a chance.”

“I can’t do that. I’d be fired.”

“Maybe…but at least you’d go out with a little dignity.

“Wait…how about this…? Take your case directly to the American people. Go on TV for 10 minutes at a time, once a week. Each week, explain to them what is going on. Gain their confidence by telling them the truth about what went wrong, and about why the bailouts don’t work.

“Then announce a program of Dynamic Restructuring. Drag a few bankers and businessmen into a public square and have them beheaded. Force Wall Street employees to go to re-education camps, where they will be taught how to do simple math. Tell the auto industry to come up with a prototype with five wheels, in order to give a boost to the tire manufacturers. Tell the nation that the national language is changing to Swedish – because the economy there seems to work better. Start a campaign to encourage tourism from Europe by making the nation more authentic and different. Getting people to dress in buckskin outfits like Native Americans. Then, get all those people who are living in tents because of the crisis to switch to teepees…”

“Sounds crazy…”

“Well…of course, it IS crazy. Completely ineffective too. But at least it wouldn’t be harmful. It’s just meant to distract the yahoos while capitalism does its work.”

“Good thinking…I’ll get right on it.”

No matter how much sense we try to talk into Mr. Geithner and whoever else may call our hotline looking for advice, the money for these bailouts have already been spent…and it came directly out of your pocket, as an American taxpayer.

Billl Bonner re the bailouts - again.

2009-03-28T09:15:00.001+13:00

Mr. Timothy Geithner was the man who was on watch when the ship ran aground. His job, as head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, was to keep an eye on Wall Street. Now, he’s come forward with a new $1 trillion plan to get the boat back on the water. He should have left it to the ship-breakers.

We almost feel sorry for him; Sisyphus had it easier. But Sisyphus was doing honest work. Besides, when Geithner’s tour of duty is finished, the public will pay for his jackass bamboozles for decades, while he moves on to a cushy job at Goldman Sachs…or maybe AIG itself, if it is still in business.

Of course, we are out of harmony with mainstream opinion; but we are always out of harmony. When the USS Bubble was steaming along we fretted and warned: it was too heavily laden with debt; it was off course; the captain and his mates were all morons. Then, when it washed up, we switched to a more cheerful song, with the sound of blowtorches cutting her up…and the furnaces melting her down…as background music. Finally, capitalism was doing its job and happily whistling our tune.

But now that we are jolly, the rest of the world is full of doom and gloom. Thomas L. Friedman, writing in the New York Times, tells us that we have a “once in a century financial crisis on our hands…” We can’t let capitalism do her work, he says; we have to get this wreck out of the mud and back on the cruise circuit!

So far, America’s efforts to borrow its way out of debt have not gone well. The scum gets dredged up from the bottom on Wall Street. But when it is dumped onto the ship, the whole thing just sinks lower. Henry Paulson began the digging with his TARP program in September of last year. Then came TALF. Not to mention various trillion-dollar salvage operations from the Fed. How much do all these rescue efforts cost? The last number we saw – in Barron’s – was $14 trillion.

Last week, Mr. Ben Bernanke announced to the whole world that he was doing the sort of thing that people used to be ashamed of. Instead of dredging out the mud, he was going to blow hot air into the rusty hull. And on Wednesday, he began following in the footsteps of pioneers at the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, and most importantly, the Bank of Zimbabwe. Buying U.S. Treasury debt directly, he will add trillions to the U.S. money supply. Last year, before Lehman Brothers dove in the water and never came up; the entire monetary base of the United States of America measured $850 billion. With so much gas being pumped, it will soon rise to 5 times that amount – or more than $4 trillion.

America still sinks under the weight of more than twice as much debt as usual. The collateral behind that debt has lost about 20% of its value – or about $10 trillion. Normally, those losses should be born by the capitalists – the reckless lenders and investors who extended loans to people who couldn’t pay them back. But all of the bailouts have one thing in common: they aim to shift the losses from the people who deserve them to the people who don’t…from the culpable to the gullible. Which is why they are so popular. After such a remarkable excursion, many are those who deserve to lose money – from those who bought doublewide trailers they couldn’t afford…to those who lent them the money…to those who securitized the debt and passed it out all over town. That’s why the biggest problem confronting the salvage workers has been to find some other group of innocents dumb enough and rich enough to pay the bills.

Mr. Bernanke’s focused on shifting the burden onto dollar holders worldwide – notably the Chinese – by inflating the currency. But the Bank of China is also America’s biggest creditor and has threatened to get upset if the dollar loses too much value. Besides, inflation is no sure thing. As James Ferguson points out, Japan has been trying to incite inflation for many years – with no success.

Until now, Geithner and his boss targeted the taxpayers. Private losses became public losses…as toxic assets were bought up, or backed up, by the government. But when the public got a look at what the bailouts actually paid for – million dollar bonuses, for example – it was outraged. The mob called for Geithner’s head; the stingers themselves got stung.

This latest plan has a fairer sound to it, but it is a bigger fraud. “The solution depends on getting private money funds to team up with the government to buy up toxic assets” wrote Mr. Friedman, anticipating the Geithner plan by only a few hours and the truth by an eternity. “The president’s comprehensive plan to remove the toxic assets from our ailing banks…is the key to our economic recovery…” he continued.

Geithner has invited investors up to the trough. His plan leaves the government with 90% of the risk; investors will quickly figure out how to get 100% of the profits. The latest estimate tells us that all this salvage work will add $9.5 trillion to the U.S. national debt over the next 10 years. At the current rate, it would still take 20 years to pay it off, even if every dime of savings of every American were applied to the task. Necessarily, the debt sludge will be dumped on the next generation – who don’t vote…and won’t notice the smell for years.

Liquor store owner Virender Singh will not stand trial.

2009-03-26T08:47:00.003+13:00

The story is worth a read, here is a link:

http://tinyurl.com/c5dlfk

I imagine there will be almost universal support for the actions of the liquor store owner and the dismissing of the stupid charges laid against him. If it is so apparently obvious to almost everyone in the country then the question has to be asked, why do our police continue to act moronically in such situations?
Surely the officers involved are as aware as the rest of us of the absurdity of their actions? That being the case then the fault must lie in the systems that have been developed. Systems developed over the term of the Labour Government by poorly made appointments at the top. Systems prevalent throughout the country now that couldn't recognise common sense if it bit them in the posterior. Systems designed by academics in a nanny state that have no useful function in the real world. Systems that measure performance by statistics hoping that no one in the country will notice that it is whitewash and hogwash.
Come on National, time for a clean out of all Government controlled departments but starting from the top down.

"Government" bailouts....

2009-03-24T07:49:00.003+13:00

Let's clear one thing up re the phrase"Government bailout". It is a bullshit statement, inaccurate, not true, basically a big fat lie and people need to think about that every time they hear it. The Government's only source of income is from the taxpayer, that is who is funding the bailouts.

Today the US Government has announced another plan so cunning you could pin a platinum card on it and call it an investment banker. They are going to clear much of the bank's debts with a bailout (taxpayer's money) and they hope that this will stimulate............go on have a wee guess..........they hope it will stimulate credit! Outstanding! Let's have more of the same shit that got us in the shit in the first place! So - clear the debt of the bankers who screwed up in the first place yet keep paying themselves million dollar bonuses, then get the people who have been screwed over (Mr taxpayer again) to pay for it. This is turning into the biggest pile of steaming turds the world has ever seen! China has indicated they will keep buying American treasury bonds (suckers!) but not for long I would guess. What happens when they stop should be fun, hope they serialise it as a reality TV show, it will be the first real thing to have happened in the financial markets for many years.

What is becoming more obvious than the hair growing out of my old Uncle's ears is that it is the WHOLE financial industry that is in meltdown because it is a non existent, irrelevant and non contributing pyramid scheme. The real world will carry on. A truck is a truck is a truck. People will still need the real things that are really needed. Only the irrelevant shit (like traders and speculators who cause the problems) will be washed away after all of this. Relax, if you do a job and you feel like what you do is worthwhile you will probably be fine!

Bill Bonner, listen to the man!! He knows!!

2009-02-21T10:20:00.000+13:00

The jobless benefit rolls edged up to just shy of the 5 million mark. They’ll go over 10 million before this is over.

“US doubles Fannie, Freddie backing to $400 billion,” reports the Washington Post. What numbskulls. They should have cut the two mortgage disaster twins loose long ago. Then we wouldn’t have such a huge hole to fill. Jumbo loans are not covered by Fannie or Freddie. They average, now, nearly 2% points higher than conventional mortgages. Why? Because they reflect the real cost of mortgage money on the free market - not the cost of mortgage funds in the twisted market of implied government guarantees.

But heck…we’re not giving advice to the politicians; they wouldn’t take it anyway.

So, let’s turn our attention back to the man who saved the world.

You know our version of this story, dear long-suffering reader. You’ve heard it so often you’re probably getting tired of it. Instead of allowing nature to correct the excesses of the ’90s bubble in dotcoms, Alan Greenspan and his sidekicks juiced up the biggest speculative frenzy in history. For nearly four years, they kept the Fed’s key lending rate below the level of consumer price inflation. In other words - they were giving money away. No wonder people borrowed too much! They created a new bubble that was not centered in the stock market…but in housing. And since housing is the core asset of most American families, when this bubble popped, it did far more damage than the explosion of the NASDAQ in 2000. In the last two years, homeowners have lost about 20%-30% of their houses’ value. Stock-market investors in the United States are down about 35%. Wall Street, as we knew it, has ceased to exist. And the world is entering the worst recession since the ’30s.

At least, that’s what Alan Greenspan says. Well…what can we say to the man who has done more than any other to create this catastrophe?

Thanks a lot.

*** “Synchronized boom, synchronized bust,” explains our old friend Marc Faber in the Wall Street Journal. Greenspan’s EZ credit terms created a worldwide boom. Now, we pay for it with a worldwide bust.

Isn’t that the way it always works? For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. For every bubble there’s a pin. And for every politician there’s an envelope with $100 bills in it.

But Greenspan’s successor wants to get his picture on the cover of TIME just as much as his former boss did. He’s determined to beat the bust. If he can do it, TIME will probably give him the Man of the Year award. If he can’t, he’ll probably get the ‘Schmuck of the Year’ award from us.

He’s tried cutting rates. In fact, he cut them more than Greenspan, who stopped at a nominal rate of 1%. Bernanke didn’t stop. Once he had his chainsaw in gear, he just kept cutting…down to zero.

Greenspan didn’t put in jeopardy the Fed’s own balance sheet either. When he was running things, the Fed held only a bare minimum of Wall Street’s junk assets. Now, they’ve got trillions’ worth of them.

Nor did Greenspan resort so nakedly to printing money. The Bernanke Fed has already used “quantitative easing.” Soon, the will embark on ‘inflation targeting’ too. No kidding. That’s what it says in the paper. Bernanke is going to set a target for inflation …say 3%…and keep the printing presses running hot until prices are rising by at least that much.

We never thought central bank management was a science. It certainly isn’t. The theories that guide it are unproven in practice…and unbelievable in theory. Instead, it’s all guesswork, bunkum and dead reckoning. Which is to say, the Fed will hit its target or we reckon the economy will be dead.

Maybe Ben Bernanke is a champion marksman…and maybe he isn’t. We don’t know, but if we were you, dear reader, we wouldn’t stand too close to the target…if you know what we mean.

*** Poor Old Europe. The news is all gloomy. All around the periphery of Europe, countries are in trouble. While the United States bails out banks…France and Germany, at the center of Europe, might have to bail out entire nations.

Ireland is in trouble. And Spain. And Italy. And Poland. And even England may be forced into bankruptcy. British finances are deteriorating at an “alarming” rate, says a report.

We knew it was madness - and we reported it to you, dear reader - when we visited Dublin two years ago. There in the middle of town were retail shops offering the Irish an opportunity to buy houses in Spain…Croatia…or even Georgia (not the U.S. version…Stalin’s birthplace). Property prices soared in Ireland more than in the United States. What you could get for your money was absurd - tiny, non-descript houses in rundown sections of town sold for more than $1 million. The Irish came to believe that property always went up - no matter where you bought it.

It was madness on the way up…and it will be madness on the way down. A friend reports that houses in Ireland are going “no bid” too.

“There’s a guy trying to sell a house for half what he paid for it 3 three years ago…and nobody is interested. He’s stuck,” says our source.

France and Germany may be stuck too. They’ve hitched their wagons to all these marginal countries on the fringe of Europe. Now, it looks like they’re going to have to get out and push.

*** And now for some really disturbing news. Even vice is getting gripped by the downturn. Yes, first we get a report that Playboy Magazine is taking such losses that it may be forced to sell out.

Then, a report circulates that the bordellos of Las Vegas have fallen on soft times. The truckers and tourists who used to frequent them no longer have the dough. The poor girls just sit around…waiting for the phone to ring.

And now cometh from England news that cocaine has fallen in price. It’s now cheaper than beer, says the Telegraph. Either the supply has increased, or the demand has fallen; we don’t know which.

“What’s the world coming to when cocaine is cheaper than beer or wine,” writes a friend. “Looks like we’ll have to change our vices, to economize…”

But here at The Daily Reckoning, we remain loyal to the old-fashioned vices. We’re not going to give up alcohol just because it’s become more expensive than hard drugs. We’ll stick to booze, thank you. Besides, a man who isn’t faithful to his vices is prey to every bad habit that comes along. You can’t trust him.

Bill Bonner comments on the Pyramid Scheme......

2009-02-20T12:38:00.001+13:00

“Greenspan backs nationalisation,” says a headline.

Well, that does it for us here at The Daily Reckoning. If Greenspan is in favor of it, we’re against it. No one man bears more responsibility for the present worldwide financial crisis and coming depression that Alan Greenspan.

The Fed’s job is to take the punchbowl away when the party gets too wild, said former Fed chairman William McChesney Martin. Greenspan did no such thing. As soon as the party began to quiet down and people began fumbling for their car keys, Greenspan added more rum to the punch and turned up the music. By the time the credit cops finally shut it down, people were dancing on tabletops all over the world.

And now, poor Mr. Obama has to deal with the headaches.

Yesterday, the Dow held steady. But the Dow is a bit of a fraud anyway. Failing stocks are routinely removed. In the present case, financial stocks slipped below $10 and were taken out of the index. Result: the index does not measure real world results.

Elsewhere in the financial news, oil traded at $37 at close of business yesterday. The dollar rose – to $1.25 per euro. And gold added another $10, to bring it to $978.

Gold looks a bit stretched. It could be ready for another pull back. But the bull market in gold is unlikely to end anytime soon.

What is odd is that while gold goes up, so does the dollar. And so do U.S. Treasury bonds. It is as if investors couldn’t make up their minds. They bid up the price of U.S. Treasuries…and bid up the price of anti-Treasuries at the same time. What gives?

On the right side of their brains, they figure that U.S. Treasury bonds are the only place you can put your money and be sure of getting it back. Stocks are a disaster. Bonds – except for U.S. Treasuries – are too risky; heck, even England could go broke.

Commodities? We’ve seen what can happen there…just look at oil! Even gold could easily take a 20% haircut. That’s why U.S. Treasury bonds are the place to be.

But wait… the left side of the brain is sending a message too. Buy gold, it says; something fishy is going on in the Treasury bond market, it tells us. How it is possible that the feds can borrow trillions of dollars without causing interest rates to rise? How can they increase the quantity of something so much…without lowering its quality? Where’s the point of diminishing returns?

One question leads to another one: ‘How are they going to pay this money back?’ the left side wants to know.

The more the left side thinks about it, the more it doesn’t understand what is going on. Let’s see…the biggest spendthrift on the planet issues trillions more in IOUs…with no obvious way to pay back the money…

…and let’s see…this same spendthrift actually has the right to pay off its IOUs with more IOUs that it prints up itself….

…and it actually WANTS to make its IOUs less valuable…so that people won’t hold on to them. It wants people to spend its IOUs on goods and services…as fast as possible…in order to “get the economy moving again.”

‘What am I missing here?’ asks the left side of the brain of no one in particular.

“The rest of the world has queued up to lend America as much money as it might wish to borrow in order to get its consumers to spend again,” writes Spengler in the Asia Times. “It won’t work, but that is another matter…”

Spengler is a clever guy. Unfortunately, many of his thoughts are unworthy of a clever man.

“A fearful world is buying trillions of dollars of securities from the US Treasury,” he continues. “Of all the cash flows in the world, nothing is more reliable than the tax revenues of the American state, the longest-lasting government on Earth presiding over the world’s largest economy.”

Yes, and General Motors was the world’s most successful automobile company – until it wasn’t. The fearful world is buying Treasuries, but not because the tax revenues of the American state are so reliable; they’re buying Treasuries because the United States is the only substantial debtor in the world that can make good on its debts with money of its own making. Tax revenues in the United States are falling sharply. Already, they’re far short of what is necessary to cover America’s public expenses. That’s why both Republican and Democratic administrations have run deficits – real deficits – since the Nixon administration. And it’s why the United States is now the largest Ponzi scheme in the world. The only way to pay off the old lenders is to bring in new ones – or run the printing press. That’s all lenders have to worry about – inflation. And for the moment, prices are going down. They’ll keep going down too – until they go up.

*** President Obama has come up with another plan – for $75 billion, he’s going to try to prevent foreclosures. It was determined a half century ago that home ownership was a good thing. Since then, the government has bent the rules in favor of the homeowner – with artificially low mortgage rates…and substantial tax benefits. As an unforeseen consequence, the feds helped create the biggest mortgage-backed credit bubble in history. Not only that, they changed to geography of America – with vast suburbs stretching out in all directions, rather than cheaper and more efficient tightly packed apartment buildings.

Now, Obama compounds the mistake…

When he signed the $787 billion bailout bill on Tuesday, he warned the nation that we’re not at the end of our troubles. “Nor does it constitute all of what we are going to have to do to turn our economy around,” he said. “But today does mark the beginning of the end.’’

Maybe so. But it feels like the beginning of the middle to us. We’ve had the initial shock. We’ve had a small rebound. Now, we’re ready for the second phase. In this stage, we ought to have a better rebound…but also another big leg down. Stocks are still selling for 15-18 times earnings (which are falling fast). They need to get down to 5-8 times earnings. That will bring the Dow down to around 5,000, or lower. This could take a long time. We’re in a depression, remember. And in depressions economies need to be restructured, not just refreshed.

In the ’30s, none of the bailouts and stimulus packages of the Roosevelt Administration did any real good. At the end of the decade, the economy was about where it was when the decade began – with 11 million people still unemployed. And the poor Japanese have been waiting 19 years to get to the beginning of the end of their restructuring crisis. They probably would have gotten to it years ago, were it not for the diligent efforts of Japanese politicians. Instead of letting the banks fail, they bailed them out and propped them up. Result: an on-again, off-again depression that has lasted longer than most marriages.

*** Our intrepid correspondent, Byron King, offers some more insight:

“Congress collects a lot of funds through taxes. But not nearly enough to pay for all the spending. It’s not even close. So will Congress raise taxes? And do it during a recession? I don’t think so. Herbert Hoover tried that in 1930. Didn’t work too well.

“What about the federal government borrowing? OK, it borrows a lot. But can it borrow even more? Trillions of dollars? From whom? Who has an extra trillion dollars lying around that they want to loan the U.S.? Will China and the oil-exporting nations continue to buy up U.S. Treasury paper? If so, with what? Chinese exports are down. Oil income is way down as well. (Oil is selling at $34 per barrel today.) So good luck with borrowing.

“That leaves the U.S. government with only one choice. The U.S. is about to embark on the greatest currency-creating binge in modern history (excluding that of Zimbabwe, perhaps.) A lot of that trillion dollars is going to come right out of nothing. The Fed is just going to monetize the debt. So we’ll have new dollars chasing the same amount of goods. That’s the basic definition of inflation.

“The bottom line is you need to own precious metals. Own gold. How much? For now, the more, the better. Own coins, if you can get ’em. Own bullion, if you can get it. Own shares in good miners with reserves in the ground while you can buy ’em. Just get some gold.”

*** On the other hand, our old friend Mark Hulbert notes that whenever investment advisors become this positive about gold the yellow metal usually goes down.

The Federal Reserve, Alice in Wonderland and paper money...

2008-12-28T07:13:00.003+13:00

quoted from Bill Bonner in "The Daily Reckoning"

Nothing particularly remarkable in market news yesterday. The Dow fell 59 points. Oil slipped $2.50…to close below $40 again. The euro climbed back to the $1.39 level.

Caterpillar said it was cutting back executive pay. Corporations have been embarrassed by how much they paid their managers. They paid the top people millions of dollars; you'd think, if they were getting that kind of money, they'd at least look where they were going. Instead, they drove the businesses right into a ditch.

The whole auto industry seems to have hit a telephone pole. GM and Ford saw their debt downgraded again. And Toyota forecasts its first operating loss in 71 years.

We're coming close to the end of a remarkable year. And the wonders keep coming…

Last Friday, the Fed said it would make low cost loans to anyone who would help get consumer credit pumped up again. "This includes hedge funds," explained the report in the Financial Times, "which have never been able to borrow from the US central bank before."

Isn't that nice, dear reader? The helpful people at the Fed are going to provide money so that hedge funds can speculate on consumer debt. Then, the Fed will have a new kind of "asset" on its books - a loan to a hedge fund. From the date of its founding in 1913 until just six months ago the Fed kept little more than U.S. Treasury debt in its vault. Everything else was considered too risky for America's central bank.

But everything has changed in the last half year. The banks…the capitalists…and Wall Street have all been humbled. Now, politicians are in the driver's seat - in Detroit…in Lower Manhattan…and all through the economy. And now the Fed has $1.5 trillion worth of the kind of "assets" that got the financial industry into trouble in the first place.

Want money? Ask the hacks in Washington! Get in line!

Need to decide what kind of car to build? Ask a Senator or a Congressman?

Need to figure out if you should make a loan…or not make a loan…what business should be saved and which one should be left to die? There's some bureaucrat at the U.S. Treasury who will help make the decision.

At long last, the dream of the bankers who set up the Fed has been realized. If you want to control a society, get control of its money. Everybody needs money. Everybody wants money. And they'll have to come to you to get it.

In a gold-backed currency system, people have to respect the golden rule: he has the gold makes the rules. That's why the Roosevelt Administration confiscated gold in the '30s; it wanted to make a lot of new rules.

But gold is limited…and hard to control. In political matters, it is uncooperative. Say you want to prop up a failing industry…or buy off a pressure group…or pay off friends? Where do you get the money? You only have so much gold…and you don't want to waste it. So you tend to be careful. That's why the feds turned to the kind of money you get from trees. Paper money is much more, shall we say, pliable… It is a go-along, get-along kind of money. It's ready to pick up the tab for any party, no matter how outrageous…and ready to go along with any scheme…no matter how absurd.

And today, we have just the sort of situation for which paper money was invented. Absurd and outrageous. The feds want to hand out money; they need some cheap money to hand out. And since everyone needs money - in fact, at this stage of the crisis they are desperate for it - they're ready to go along with anything the feds want.

This man says it much better than I ever could......

2008-12-23T22:51:00.002+13:00

By Bill Bonner from "The Daily Reckoning"

The worst is over. At least in the Northern Hemisphere. Yesterday marked the earth's greatest tilt away the sun, leaving the northern latitudes in darkness for much of the day.

Here in Paris, for example, it was practically dark at 4PM yesterday…at 9AM this morning, it is still dark.

But the world turns. Around and around it goes. It never seems to stop. Oh…we're getting dizzy!

And while it is dark and cold today…lo! Soon it will be sunny and warm. Beginning today, the daylight will last a little longer every day. Gradually, we will tip back into the sun's favor.

In the meantime, we can't remember such a foreboding Christmas season. Factories all around the world are shutting down. People are losing their jobs. Banks are repossessing houses. Prices are being cut.

Just this morning, we turned to Elizabeth: "We're going to have to shift to Plan B next year."

"Plan B?"

"Yes…we've got to cut back on our expenses. Plan A is where we go along as we have been. Plan B is where you have to get rid of some of your horses. And then, there's Plan C…"

"Plan C?"

"Yes, in Plan C we eat the horses."

In California, joblessness has reached a 14-year high - at 8.4%. European car sales have plunged. HSBC says it needs more money. Louis Vuitton cancelled a new flagship store in Tokyo. Traffic at Gatwick Airport in London is down 13% from the year before.

These are just today's headlines. Every day is about the same - more cutbacks…more bankruptcies…more trouble.

The Dow fell 25 points on Friday. Oil closed the day about $42. And the 10-year T-note rose to yield all of 2.12%. People are eager to put their money in Treasury paper - even at these tiny yields. They may not make any money, they reason, but at least they won't lose any. (We predict that they will lose a lot of their money; when…we can't say.)

And we will venture another guess. When next it is sunny and warm outside in Paris and New York, the financial crisis will still be with us. That's right; market cycles last longer than planetary cycles. The bull market in stocks began when it was sunny and hot, August 1982. Since then, the earth has made its way around the sun 26 times…and the Dow rose almost 20 times.

You don't think that such a huge, generational bull market will be corrected in a single year, do you? You don't think that the correction will only take the Dow down about 45%, do you? You don't think people will be able to stick with Plan A, do you?

We don't. The worst is still ahead. Here's why:

When the boom began, people were slow to get in the spirit of it. They remembered the '70s and fretted. As the Dow rose from 800 to 1,800 they thought they saw a crash around every corner. Then, in October of '87, the Dow hit 2,700 and crashed - down 507 points in a single day. Investors thought the bull market was over. Instead, it continued.

By December, 1996, the Dow had reached 6,437. Alan Greenspan, as witless at the beginning of his career as at the end of it, pronounced this the result of "irrational exuberance."

But the boom continued. And gradually, people came to accept that stocks would always go up "in the long run," and that houses always went up all the time. Oh yes, and jobs were always available…and so was credit. At the beginning of the boom, people saved about 10% of their incomes. But as their faith in the boom grew their savings diminished. There was no longer any need to save money for a rainy day - because it never rained.

And if they did need money, they could always draw on someone else's savings! Stocking money began to seem as old-fashioned as canning tomatoes. Why bother? You can get all the fresh tomatoes you want at the supermarket. And, until recently, you could get all the cash you needed from credit cards and home equity lines.

The saving rate fell to zero.

Then, of course, it started to rain. And now, the lack of savings is becoming a serious crisis at the household level. Gone are the smiley faces at the home-equity loan departments. Nor are there more credit cards arriving in the mail.

A little insight from Durham University in Britain: You might have thought that in the Bubble Epoch people used their credit for extraordinary expenses…such as adding on to their houses or taking a once-in-a-lifetime vacation. If that were the case, they could now merely forego the unusual expense. Their lives may not be so much fun…but at least they would be solvent. Not so. It turns out that borrowers got used to living on home equity withdrawals. They counted on the money to fill in the gaps in their household budgets.

James Saft: "It seems that even during boom times in Britain people were not borrowing against their houses simply to buy BMWs or to pay for vacations, but often to keep their households running during tough times."

In short, they used borrowing in place of savings - for when they got sick, lost their jobs, or had some other crisis.

Now, cometh another crisis - the worldwide financial crisis - and they have to move to Plan B. But how? They have no savings. They can no longer borrow. What do they do if they lose their jobs?

"You can always get a job flipping burgers," was the poor cousin of "stocks always go up over the long run." Both these fantasies depended on a boom. The boom gone…so are the jobs… Soon, they will have a crazed look in their eyes…and a carving knife in their hands. Look out, Flicka! Look out, Mr. Ed!

The financial soap opera drags on....

2008-12-14T12:10:00.002+13:00

I've deliberately avoided the financial market bs as it is boring to think about let alone write about or read about. The problem is that it's all very simple yet is deliberately made to sound complicated by the talking heads who scarily don't get it and "experts" who feed them and us the absolute crap that is needed to muddy the water enough for us to lose interest. You can only live on borrowed money for a short space of time.

From Bill Bonner, a best selling author of financial books:

Will all these bailouts work? Of course not. The government has no real savings. What can it do? Either borrow…or just print up the money the way they do in Zimbabwe. Either way, all it is doing is shifting resources away from people who earned it…and towards people who didn't.

It's a hidden tax that people don't complain about…because they don't understand it. Who will be the recipients? The insiders, of course…but also the outsiders. That is, while the elites will skim a good deal of the loot for themselves, quite a lot of it will go to "the poor." Why? Well, two reasons - one legitimate…the other corrupt. Since the poor have no balance sheets to repair, the feds can be sure that if they give the poor money it will go right back into the economy. More importantly, the poor vote. And you can buy more poor votes for less money than you can buy rich ones.

So you see, dear reader, the poor are coming out way ahead. Everyone else is losing money…and they had nothing to lose.

Keep reading for today's guest essay, where Alice Rivlin, who was the first director of the Congressional Budget Office, and now works at the Brookings Institution, explains why she thinks deficits matter.

*** So far, the bailouts have worked like a straightjacket. The more the feds fight against the correction, the tighter the straightjacket binds…restricting their movement even further. Already, they've committed more than $10 trillion in various bailout measures…and the more they try to fix the problem, the worse the problem gets.

They've not got much wiggle room left. As for monetary policy, the Fed has used all but 100 of its basis points. A couple more rate cuts and the key Fed rate will be zero.

Could it go below zero? Not really. But the feds could impose a penalty on cash deposits…as Switzerland once did. Or…they could simply inflate the currency so people will want to get rid of it as quickly as possible. Either way, people who save their money for a rainy day will lose money.

Of course, they're losing money already. The real rate on savings is negative… the inflation rate is about 3% or 4% while the return from money market funds is zilch. Well, actually, zilch would be an improvement. Savers are losing a couple of percent per year - just to inflation.

Who saved money? Not the poor.

But even the savers count themselves among the lucky ones. Stocks are down about 50% worldwide. Mutual funds have gotten hammered. Hedge funds have been clipped for big losses. Leading American brand-name companies are down 50% to 80%. Middle-class Americans have seen their 401(k)s cut in half…while their houses have lost 20% of their value, and are still going down.

The poor have none of these things. In fact, the poor have no financial assets at all.

Remember the advice financial planners used to hand out: put your money into a balanced portfolio of various asset classes. One might go down…but they won't all go down.

Oh yeah? Almost every asset class has been hit hard…growth stocks…retailers…technology…energy…emerging markets… And not just stocks, suppose you put your money into one of those nifty partnerships with swaps and SIVs and other investments the experts said were as safe a T-bonds? You'd be lucky to have anything left at all.

And commodities? Weren't they supposed to be so scarce that they couldn't go down? Even we cynics at The Daily Reckoning were almost convinced. We knew oil was too expensive at $147…but we thought it was fairly priced at $90. Now, it's less than half that.

Just goes to show…you never know. You know that what must happen, will happen. But you never know how much it will happen…or when.

Now investors are losing money in EVERY ASSET CLASS - including cash. Is this a first? Maybe.

But now we can more fully appreciate the elegant wisdom and justice of the free market system. Mr. Market may be a hanging judge…but at least he's fair.

The great asset bubble seemed to prove out the old expression "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer." But it was all a mirage, caused by a bubble in credit. The rich were getting richer…but only on paper. And now paper of all sorts is going up in smoke. The "rich" have lost a quarter to a half of their wealth. The poor have lost relatively little. Now, the rich get poorer. And the poor? Well, they will always be with us. But being poor is not so bad. Many of the middle-class lumpenhouseholders, for example, are "upside down" on their mortgages. They're below zero, in other words. The poor - with nothing - are ahead of them.

Who would have thought?

Then there is this from Ron Paul, a US Senator and apparently the only sane politician they have:

A response to Chris Trotter

2008-11-21T15:39:00.002+13:00

On Sunday 16th November 2008 Chris Trotter, a well known, left leaning political journalist produced what is apparently his last column for the Sunday Star Times. It can be found here. A more disgusting, sad and disgraceful piece of tripe has yet to be written. What a sad effort from a man I previously had quite a bit of respect for. I responded with this:

Wow, good on you Chris. I am stunned that a year ago I had respect for your intellect and ability to debate in a rational manner. What a fall from grace in recent months, your true personality and beliefs have become readily apparent in the increasing vitriol in your commentary. I feel like someone who has left a bar after a few too many and woken with horror beside someone in the reality of the morning light.

I am one of the “cloth cap” brigade it appears Chris feels he speaks for. I was born in the “shadow of the shipyard” in Belfast, as working class as it is possible to be, my core beliefs are strongly socialist. I have voted Labour for 30 years. I applauded loudly when Clark was first elected, yet I voted National National last week, why? It is because the stench of desperation has driven me away from the Labour party in it’s current manifestation. A party of the people has become a party of liars and cheats who will do anything to maintain control and power. Power at any cost is an ugly thing to behold. (Winston was another example of this) I became sick of being told what to do, sick of being ignored even when 80%+ people disagreed, sick of petty politics for the sake of winning, never mind what was obviously the right thing to do.
As for the obviously highly intelligent and articulate feminist movement on here, get over yourselves. Go and join H1 and H2 and take a few months off and think about what you are saying. None of this is about your sexuality. It is about doing the right thing and Labour have not done the right thing for a number of years now. From here on I am ignoring the front name of political parties, it is irrelevant what they are called or how they are supposed to “lean”. I just want to hear common sense coming out of their mouths, good decisions being made and for once have politicians who do what they say they will. Labour need to spend the next couple of years looking hard at themselves and then move back to there core values. The Greens should do the same thing straight after they get rid of Sue Bradford. If she becomes Co-leader after Fitzsimons goes the Green Party support will plummet. That is not a mysoginist point of view. She is a moron and a liability to any organisation. If she was male, bisexual, black, orange, disabled or even a visitor from the planet Pluto she would still be these things.

A thing of great beauty.......

2008-11-21T08:46:00.002+13:00

This arrived in my inbox yesterday, while most forwarded emails finish up in the trash can this one brought tears to my eyes. Beautiful.

Correspondence with the Reserve Bank

2008-11-18T13:08:00.002+13:00

It is quite possible that I am just a paranoid conspiracy theorist (though a damn fine one I believe) but I can't help noticing a repeating pattern. Whenever you approach anyone in "authority" to question them on certain issues you never ever ever get an answer to the actual question you asked in the first place. Sure you get an official sounding response with lots of super words in it that sound really impressive, but after a couple of reads you realise it actually hasn't said anything of substance. It's a bit like a Porsche 4x4, looks the part but it's a piece of shit. The problem for people in "authority" is that the more this happens the more plausible the conspiracy theory becomes or in effect it becomes less of a conspiracy theory and starts to resemble the Edmonds Cookbook, full of lots of real, relevant and practical information only not about cooking.
This was very apparent in one of my early blog entries re correspondence with the NZ Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA). One thing that is very encouraging though is that more and more the general public are becoming aware of this fact and I feel it's only a matter of time before they start to say "enough". Can't wait.
Anyway, here is a recent correspondence I had with the Reserve Bank asking questions about the "global meltdown" (sounds like a 70's disaster movie).

ORIGINAL EMAIL TO RESERVE BANK OF NZ

Hi

So Labour are going to consider an insurance scheme (as already mooted by National) for investor deposits similar to most other countries in the OECD. I am assuming that it is the Government who will ultimately cover this insurance policy. I have a couple of questions around that.

1) Where will the money come from to replace all the money if it went missing? Apparently we have a $6 billion deficit coming up this year.

2) If we truly do have a deficit then am I correct in assuming we would have to print more money to cover any banking failure as no one in the world has any money for us to borrow from? If we print more money it will ultimately be a taxpayer bill so in effect we will be guaranteeing our own money? Actually all taxpayers will be bailing out those who lose money. Isn't it true that in effect it will be bailing out the banks that fail as it will be covering money they have taken off customers and been unable to pay back? That makes it no different to the US bailout which is actually blackmail by Wall Street.

If any money is paid out won't it have an inflationary effect which will make any the money in circulation worth less - in effect making all of us poorer. What is the point in that?

3) Isn't this really just about looking as if someone is doing something for political reasons?

An analogy; Wall St has taken a loaded gun, pointed it at its own head and is saying "if you don't give me money I'll shoot myself". Now call me a sociopath but I say pull the trigger.

Regards etc

RESPONSE

Dear Mr Hunsdale

The Deposit Guarantee Scheme is designed to ensure on-going confidence in New Zealand given international financial market turbulence and is limited to two years. The Scheme is a contingent liability of the New Zealand Government and our expectation is that there is a very low probability the facility will be drawn upon. In the event of default by a guaranteed institution, the Government would have to find payments made under the scheme, either from one or more of the guarantee fee, Government revenue or Government borrowing.

Regards,

Now call me old Mr stupidy bum but I can't actually find any answers to my question in there.....

I retorted:

Dear Ms----------

Thank you for clarifying that it will indeed be the taxpayer bailing out any financial institution which fails. The taxpayers ARE the Government's revenue. The low probability you mention will be totally dependent on the printing of copious amounts of money by world Governments which, as I stated in my initial email will have the effect of increasing inflation. That will have to be done in conjunction with a huge amount of PR and spin to convince people that this is actually real money rather than the monopoly money it actually is. Longer term it will fall over as the world will eventually run out of paper.
Re the "markets" It seems the "markets" are taking on Biblical qualities, if we don't have faith or confidence they won't work. I imagine that is because they are an illusion and they have no tangible element to them whatsoever. Again thank you for taking the time to respond.

Kind regards

Tom Hunsdale

I really will have to stop drinking and watching conspiracy theory movies and get myself back with the programme and onto some good anti depressants. Ah fuck it, I'll just go the Barrier instead.

Friends

2008-11-18T13:02:00.004+13:00

Terry Graham, my best friend ever died last week at the age of 49 from a heart attack. He had other ongoing health issues which might have contributed. I will do a post about him but I'm not ready yet, I am still getting my head around it or as he would have probably said "you've still got your head up your arse". Too true.

5 days later Chris Preddle, another good friend died at the age of 46, also from a heart attack. It's been a big couple of weeks and I don't think reality has bitten just yet.

Bledisloe Cup in Hong Kong!!

2008-10-29T10:27:00.006+13:00

The next AB v Wallabies game is to be played in Hong Kong..........

I must be evolving into something I swore I never would, a grumpy old man! However I remember not too long ago when "globalisation" was a dirty word and it's actual existence was denied by all and sundry, now it appears to be an accepted way forward for the world. I have serious doubts.
I was a fanatical Liverpool FC follower since the late 60's. I have cried tears after games. Now I follow the results with interest but not as much intense feeling. I used to know the names of every player in the team and in the reserves, now I know perhaps half of the first squad. I love it when we beat Man Utd and Chelsea, but that is because of an inbuilt hatred of both teams, the passion and pride is fading.

In fact if Steven Gerrard had left when Chelsea chased him a couple of seasons ago I may never have followed them again. His decision, based on loyalty and love for the club rekindled my desire to some degree. I hope he stays with the club when his playing career is over. The man ranks alongside Shankly, Dalglish, St. John, Hunt, Case, Hughes, Clemence, Keegan et al.

Globalisation means corporatisation. Both mean the death of sport in the true meaning of the word. Business sport is an oxymoron. The AB's are becoming a product to produce money for shareholders. Those shareholders will not be the NZ public, rather a chosen few who can afford to buy the shares. You might as well be a supporter of McDonalds. All the things the AB's stand for - pride, loyalty, honour - will be completely eradicated. All the emotions aroused by great sporting battles will be gone, money rules all. If that is the future we want and if that is the best way forward for sport and the world generally then so be it. This grumpy old man will be flicking through the channels with a total lack of interest in the game outcomes, unless I have a bet on it of course......

US National Debt Clock runs out of digits.....

2008-10-11T18:27:00.004+13:00

The US National Debt Clock ran out of digits this week.

The clock was was erected to highlight the $2.7 trillion level of debt in 1989. This week the national debt reached $10 trillion which was too much for the counter to cope with. Apparently the owner of the clock, Douglas Durst, intends adding 2 more zeros which will allow the clock to reach a quadrillion dollars of debt. The way it is going currently it made me think a job as digit adder would be almost as good as the fellas that paint the San Francisco bridge, a job for life!

Warning from International Monetary Fund......Tui anyone?

2008-10-09T10:02:00.003+13:00

The Wall Street Crash in 1939 was engineered to allow the creation of the Federal Reserve which gave control of the US to a small group of private individuals. This is a widely held belief in many areas and even after much research I have been unable to find any source which can refute this with any authority. (Zeitgeist covers the timeline of this theft much better than I can.)
My paranoia kicked in this morning when a panel from the International Monetary Fund started talking about the crisis we are in and what lies ahead. Then an announcement that the Federal Reserve, Bank of England and 4 or 5 other large financial organisations are taking a coordinated approach in addressing the problem. My alarm bells rang, will another financial crisis be the catalyst for the need to "streamline" the world's banking system? Fuck. I honestly hope that in a couple of years from now I will look back and see myself as having gone through some sort of weird mid-life paranoid episode and the world will not consist of 4 economic blocks and a "streamlined" banking system.
Financial crisis.................................modification of financial system.................................entrenchment of bonded slavery system. Sounds like 1939 all over again.

Ignore the talking heads on TV, better still treat it as a soap opera and have a laugh, better still turn the TV off when they come on. Raise a middle finger at anyone that talks shit and eventually they will go away. That is all that needs to happen, ignore them and they will go away.

Final financial analysis

2008-10-08T23:59:00.006+13:00

After a long think about it I have got the definitive answer as to why the financial markets are in such turmoil. It came to me in a flash, the whole thing is nothing but a fucking casino. Simple as that. There is no product, no service, no added value, squat, zip, nada, fuck all squared in a box. Ignore it, it will go away and the world will be normal again very soon.
The only people truly shatting themselves are those who are dependent on this mickey mouse pyramid scheme for their jobs, mainly non productive, parasitical suits. They should not now and never be bailed out. Why should taxpayers bailout the parasites that have been making money from nothing.

If your job involves anything real such as manufacturing, building, real services which people need, in fact anything that doesn't involve gambling with non existent money then fear not, those things will always be needed. Even if the system of acquiring them changes dramatically you will still have something to offer.
The current system has been allowed to quietly evolve with the rules mostly made and modified by those who run it - WARNING! DANGER WILL ROBINSON!! You never let the people with most to benefit make the rules, they ALWAYS cheat!
Anyway, the most important thing is not to let the news headlines frighten you, if you are a normal person doing normal stuff the impact on you will be minimal. We haven't got far to fall! The sun will still come up and Winston will still get back into parliament just as sure as the air you breathe, isn't that comforting..........

Insurance for investor deposits - Tui anyone?

2008-10-08T21:06:00.006+13:00

It looks like National are going to consider an insurance scheme for investor deposits similar to most other countries in the OECD. Part of the US bailout agreement was to insure deposits up to $250000. Very nice and good on them for looking after people's money in the bank for them. Of course it will come at a cost as there will be administration fees and transaction fees etc for the nice people in the financial sector to run it. I am assuming that it is the Government who will ultimately cover the insurance policy. I can't help having one nagging question that won't go away - where will the money come from to replace all the money if it went missing? Is there a hidden stash somewhere that we haven't been told about? If so that would seem to be misleading accounting or "a bit sneaky" to say the least.
Then another question sprang to mind, a lot of money has been "lost" in the markets, now you can call me picky but if I lost $20 never mind the thousands of billions being bandied about by barmy banking bandits around the globe, (pardon the alliteration) I'd be looking pretty hard to find it. The actual figure wiped off share values as of toay is 25.4 trillion dollars, I would write it out numercally but it would mean absolutely nothing to you. These guys seem to have just given up and accepted it as OK! It's almost as if it's just a game of Monopoly and you lost your money down the back of the chair - not to worry! The problem is it is worse than a game of Monopoly, at least in the game there is a limited money supply, nobody has a printing press with which to magic up a few extra dollars because that is what is happening in the financial markets. Governments are printing more bits of paper with pretty pictures and that makes it all better. Either that or a couple of million pixels are jiggled around and finish up in bank accounts. The most amazing smoke and mirrors trick ever!

Our financial systems are the greatest pyramid scheme ever invented. Listening to the "experts" in recent days has been enlightening. We keep hearing them say there is a lack of "confidence" in the market. Pardon? What the fuck was that? There is a minor detail here, if the money was actually real you wouldn't need to have "confidence"! Money has become the new religion, you have to believe brothers and sisters! You gotta have faith!!! Hallelujah! The market has confidence again! The market is rising! Get in quick and make your money!
As Janene pointed out, it is like the tooth fairy, when you stop believing you stop getting the money. If you care just a little about our planet and the people on it then do yourself and your family and all the future inhabitants of the planet a favour. Watch "Zeitgeist" and more importantly the follow up "Zeitgeist Addendum".

Cullen, May 2008 - The Cupboard is Amlmost Bare"

2008-10-06T19:25:00.003+13:00

Michael Cullen is a disgrace and should be thrown out of office for fiscal irresponsibility.

Remember this?

The cupboard is almost bare

3:30PM Thursday May 22, 2008

He has wasted the greatest tax take in the history of New Zealand on nothing. He has squandered many years of surpluses and now that we find ourselves in the middle of the "rainy day" (downpour and getting heavier) we find that the accounts are decimated. What makes this take on criminal proportions is Cullen's behaviour during the budget in May, 5 months ago. Before delivering his budget he said to journalists:

"I would not want to repeat the famous Robert Muldoon statement that the cupboard is bare - actually Sir Robert had sold the cupboard off and pawned the house at the same time - but I would say that we are in this Budget reducing the fiscal position to one which is quite tight and does not allow for any significant further loosening at all.''

Afterwards in Parliament he gloated that he had spent the surplus, he was gleeful in telling us how there was no money left for National to spend on anything. This nasty, petty little man wasted OUR money as he taunted Bill English and John Key.
It is what Cullen promised and it is what he delivered. Now that we are facing a genuine crisis his infantile behaviour is the legacy he will leave behind. A budget deficit next year forecast at 6 billion dollars rising to 30 billion!!!

Go away little man and play with your train set.

Phil Goff, you da man......

2008-10-06T18:17:00.007+13:00

Justice Minister Phil Goff was interesting on TV tonight explaining how his Party's law and order policies are as tough as those announced by National today.

National have said that violent criminals who repeat offend will be locked up for life and that means life. Go National. Goff's main example of Labour toughness was how Graham Burton who executed innocent father Karl Kuchenbecker would never leave prison, ever, except possibly in a wheelchair or on crutches. Very observant Mr Goff, you are a legend. For those who do not know, Burton had a leg amputated after being shot by police after the execution. Chances are if we take away the very expensive prosthetic paid for by the taxpayer when he is released from jail, there is a very good chance Mr Goff might be right. Personally I think we should take away the wheelchair and crutches too and make the fucker hop. Talk about covering your bases Mr Goff.

Zeitgeist Addendum

2008-10-06T08:14:00.003+13:00

The follow up to the movie Zeitgeist has been released. I watched Zeitgeist Addendum last night and will watch it again in the next couple of days. The concept within it appears at first too out there, too radical, but then our current system is so firmly entrenched that it will take something radical to fix it. It is a corrupt and flawed system.
The fact that the presentation opens explaining how the current financial fiasco is inevitable (not bad considering this crisis wasn't even contemplated by the markets until a month or so ago) was enough for me. They describe how this would happen before it happened. I've always had a deep suspicion of how our system works, it has always felt like bonded slavery through debt. All I can say is watch it. If you haven't seen the original then watch it first, it is a good lead in to Addendum which can be a little heavy on detail at times. It has to be, it is talking about our financial systems which are the greatest pyramid scheme the world has ever seen. Of course the rules around it are going to be complex, keeps the plebs from finding too much about it. Watch these and do some thinking for yourself.

Speculating bastards and globalisation

2008-10-05T17:14:00.009+13:00

Watching a programme on speculation in markets around the world and the whole concept of globalisation. What a load of wank. German investors wanting to buy up 18000 hectares of food producing land, not to farm it, to own it, make profits on the food and increases in land value. This is bollocks and cannot be sustained! Investment is one thing but speculation cannot work, it is not sustainable!
In New Zealand Fonterra (the Milky Bar kids, doh!) tried last year to list the company on the stock market but luckily the farmers (owners) here knew better and said no. Be alert though, more and more consortiums and investors are buying farmers out and getting managers to run them. The farms are getting bigger in size and fewer in number, it will only be a matter of time before more businessmen that farmers own the land. Then watch as it is listed on the market and ownership of a huge chunk of NZ moves into overseas hands and consequently prices of food grown in NZ will increase out of reach of the average family, as with dairy products currently.

More and more people are moving to this form of income generation and we are getting close to a tipping point. It is gambling, artificially drives markets and is morally wrong. You cannot keep making money without adding some value to the product or service on the way through. Except of course if you ring fence a necessity of life and auction it off to the highest bidder, like food or water. Yes that will work, right up until the peasants raise a finger in the air and say f#$k off and stick a pitchfork up your arse - the sooner the better!
All of you speculators and other greedy bastards, take your money and fuck off to the casino where you belong. If you have nothing beneficial to contribute to humanity or the planet then you are not wanted or needed. Try doing something constructive like making something or growing something. This is the era of the parasite and they are currently reigning supreme, not for much longer with any luck. Tell the lot of them to fuck off.

Wall Street contd.

2008-10-05T09:26:00.004+13:00

The whole issue with the fractional reserve banking system is not at all interesting, this piece from Deborah Coddington in the NZ Herald does a nice job of summing up the current situation.
More importantly people have to realise we have the ability to say NO to others who take the piss out of us. No violence or revolutions, just say NO! That includes Councils with stupid rules, Politicians who ignore our will and businesses who thieve with immunity.
These markets should have been allowed to fail. The consequences would have been dire but we would have survived, we always do. There would have been a major change in the order of how these things are done and that is what is needed. This current system is constantly modified by legislation to protect those who control it, no matter what they do. The current order is unsustainable and needs to change. This bailout will not stop the change that has to come, it will only delay it for a little while. The days of extreme greed being rewarded are numbered and not soon enough.

Grumpy old man.....

2008-10-04T12:49:00.004+13:00

I think young Tel Graham was right, he bought me a keyring a couple of years ago when Janene and I were back in the UK. It was from the BBC shop in Belfast and was from the TV series Grumpy Old Men.

I'm starting to think he must be right, I went to the shops this morning and someone was parked on a yellow line outside the video shop. For some inane reason this really pissed me off. As do people who park in handicapped parks and others who drive rudely on the road. In my younger day I hated old bastards like me. I wonder what causes it?
I hate people in sports cars who feel they have to overtake you just because you drive a van. As soon as they overtake you they slow down, what's that all about? I get really annoyed by people who have forgotten the art of queueing up for things. Yes that's right! You wait your turn in line behind others who were there before you! It's a very simple concept that seems to be lost on the young in particular.
Mostly I'm really pissed of at George dubya. Taking taxpayers money to help out his old mates, same as in the Enron BS. Mind you, I just got back from Great Barrier Island 3 days ago so maybe that's why I'm pissed off.

Wall Street

2008-10-04T12:14:00.004+13:00

Looks like the bailout of Wall Street is going ahead. That sends out all the right signals to people doesn't it? If you want to get ahead then manage your business really badly, sell non-existent products and services and then when the house of cards comes tumbling down go to the Government and demand that they bail you out with taxpayers money........yeah right! I understand there may have been dire consequences for not doing something but it needed to be allowed to crash. The pain needed to be felt and the lessons would have been learned. It would have taken years to recover and their would have been much collateral damage but it was a cull that was required. This easy out is going to cause major problems in the long term.

It is obvious to me what is wrong. The West no longer manufacture enough nor do we provide enough real services that people wish to buy. Our manufacturing base has been steadily moved off-shore by management trying to squeeze every possible dollar of profit from businesses. That is their job and the shareholders demand it. It is a flawed system driven by greed. It is another step down the road to globalisation which I see more and more politicians are happy to talk about in public, previously the word was barely used. Globalisation is a move back to the days of Lords and serfs.
The outcome of this move of real business away from our own countries means their are not enough real jobs for people in the market. More and more people are being university educated (which is great) but it means there are more and more jobs that are untenable. Management, advisers, consultants, analysts, we have more and more high income people being supported by fewer and fewer workers actually producing real products and services which earn money. We spend more than we earn internationally and or whole system is too top heavy and will topple eventually. Interesting times ahead with new powers emerging who will more and more dictate the way of the world. Hopefully people are aware of what is going on and stop seeing the world from a Nationalistic point of view. There will be a small group of people in every society who will only be interested in their own self interests. We really need to tell these people to f@$k off. These people will use up all our resources in an unsustainable way, they will accumulate apparent wealth, they will try and control scarce resources. Don't let it happen, jut say no.

Welcome to Disneyland......

2008-09-21T07:27:00.004+12:00

President Bush hailing the Federal Reserve decision.

It's official, the signs will be going up over the weekend. The next time you fly to the USA the sign in the airport will be "Welcome to Disneyland, have a nice day!"
If recent decisions by the US Treasury, Federal Reserve and the Government are anything to go by there will be a barrel of money you can dip into as well, don't worry about paying it back, just get spending and keep the economy ticking over, the taxpayer will cover the bill!

Seriously, our financial systems in the West have reached crisis point and it is time for major change. How much longer can the greedy elite and powerful continue robbing the rest of us before we stand up and say no? In the US the taxpayer is told they will be bailing out and guaranteeing the debt of these parasitical creatures, the alternative is beyond contemplation. The truth is this decision is beyond contemplation. Naked greed has just been given a blank cheque book.

""But the whole scheme of a Federal Reserve Bank with its commercial-paper basis is an impractical, cumbersome machinery, is simply a cover, to find a way to secure the privilege of issuing money and to evade payment of as much tax upon circulation as possible, and then control the issue and maintain, instead of reduce, interest rates. It is a system that, if inaugurated, will prove to the advantage of the few and the detriment of the people of the United States. It will mean continued shortage of actual money and further extension of credits; for when there is a lack of real money people have to borrow credit to their cost."

Do you think those words sound relevant? They were spoken by Mr Alexander in 1913 to the Senate Banking and Currency Committee. If you are interested in the subject of the Federal Reserve read this article. Even if you don't believe in conspiracies the read is enlightening.

Here in New Zealand we are a bit more direct in shafting people. Here the little people are left to pick up the broken pieces of their lives while the parasites retreat to their luxury yachts and porsches hidden behind their trust funds to lick their wounds with a fresh martini, unaffected in any real way by the damage they have caused.
This is wrong, plain and simple, where are our so called "leaders" to sort this out? Where was the financial expert Dr Cullen when he was needed? The same man who crowed for years about his astute financial management creating surpluses year in year out? Surpluses we now find were as a result of unprecedented tax takes on the back of a false economy. An economy based on credit, nothing tangible. One would have though such a financial wizard would have recognised that.
Of course Dr Cullen will have these recent events written off as "unforeseen", what utter rubbish, this meltdown has been predicted for years. It just wasn't politically expedient for Dr Cullen to do anything about it. The money was rolling in, the plebs were happy with their "no deposit, no interest, no repayments for 3 years" lifestyle. Any half baked economist knew that it was a false economy and many predicted this outcome but apparently Dr Cullen didn't see it coming. I think he needs to stick to history. The good thing is he should become part of it on the 8th of November.

Labour politicians, good grief these people have lost it......

2008-09-18T19:25:00.009+12:00

Well this week has been getting funnier and funnier with Helen and Dr "Gnome" Cullen trying to outdo each other for the dumbest statement of the week, let's call it a draw.
Firstly, the history teacher tried to draw some link between the current problems at Merrill Lynch and the fact John Key was employed there 7 years ago!! Such an observant man.
Then Aunty Helen did some calculations on the back of an envelope and figured that if National had been in power then NZ would have had 60 of our soldiers come home in body bags from Iraq............................

Colin Espiner did a more accurate calculation and worked out that we would have had to send 15,000 troops to that hellhole to get the same equation as the US. Problem is we only have 9,500 or so, tricky. Aha!! That makes it even worse, those nasty Nats would have introduced the draft!!
I did another calculation, if we use the Labour method of statistical manipulation and calculate on the other side of the envelope used by Ms Clark then we can legitimately use Australia in our theoretical troop loss calculation. In fact it is far more accurate to imagine our troop levels would be similar in percentage to the Australians rather than the Americans.
21 million Aussies, 4 million Kiwis, makes us around 20% of their population. 2000 Aussie troops would equate to 400 Kiwis. Australia lost 2 soldiers, one who accidentally shot himself while cleaning his gun, the other died when a British Hercules he was aboard crashed.
Based on scientific calculations, then statistically it is probable that Kiwi losses would have been one cook with a sprained ankle received while jumping out of the way of an errant US jeep driven by some stoned 19 year old from Missouri delivering potatoes. Give the lad a medal.

World banking

2008-09-18T19:25:00.002+12:00

I have already blogged in my layman's way about financial markets/pyramid schemes under misc ravings. I came across this link today. It is VERY long but that's because it covers the complete history of money!

http://www.iamthewitness.com/books/Andrew.Carrington.Hitchcock/The.History.of.the.Money.Changers.htm

It is well worth reading.

Sarah Palin

2008-09-06T13:27:00.006+12:00

Well John McCain left a few stunned mullets in his wake with the announcement of Sarah Palin as his Presidential running mate. The spunky Alaskan, moose hunting hockey mom has spiced the US election campaign up no end. My first response was that she was too young and inexperienced, what a mistake by the Republicans! Then the political analysis from the experts in America started filtering through and it became clear that this was in fact a very sharp move indeed.
I don't pretend to have more than a basic knowledge of US politics and even less interest. Though watching the middle aged Republican supporters starting to dance when they realised they were on the big screen at their convention had me in danger of leaving some very difficult to remove stains in my undies. You could just imagine the "look! look! we're on the screen!" shrieks as they suddenly threw down the walking frame, wiggled the hips and jiggled the fists in some sad attempt to look hip and spontaneous.
To date I have been quite keen on Obama, he reminds me of JFK except he has no holes in his head (yet) . A great orator and like JFK, someone I would trust to bring my sister home from a date with her clothing intact, knowing that if he didn't we were marrying into quite a good family and I could probably give up my real job real soon. More to the point someone I have enough trust in to have their finger near "the" button without being concerned about a sudden twitch or Tourettes outbreak. I know Palin is not President but with McCain's age............well it is a concern.
I tried to paint the same mental image with Palin, the only thing that remotely matched in my mental imagery was the state of repair of my sister's clothing, almost as intact as with Obama. I couldn't quite cope with the whole "finger" "button" thing and I knew my job prospects were probably less encouraging. My mind kept seeing wild staring eyes, the audio track was "Sisters, are doin' it for themselves" and all along this evil laugh like "bwahahahahahah" 6 octaves higher than it was ever meant to be heard kept ringing in my ears. I realised that this was an unfair image, why was my brain doing this to me? Hadn't I been brought up to be fair minded? Non racist? sexist? anythingist? What could be causing this? I wracked my brains, something had to be influencing this..............and then WHAMMO!! Team America World Police, the picture was so clear! Have a look at this!!!

Now have a look at this!!!!!! Even their names are the same!!!!!
AARrrrrgggghhhhhh!!!!

Nuff said..........

Rolling!

2008-09-01T10:52:00.004+12:00

Just a quick entry to put up the "director's cut" of the kayak rolling video, Facebook would only let me put up 2 minutes.

Oh Winston........oh Helen......

2008-08-31T14:19:00.002+12:00

The whole dreary saga continues……….

The sooner Helen Clark takes up a post at the UN the better. It is seems apparent it is what she is angling for. To sell one’s soul to push through what is seen by most qualified people to be (at the very least) flawed legislation (ETS) is a disgrace.

It is also the only plausible reason the Winston Peters fiasco is being dragged out in such a blatant manner. She needs his vote. Is Helen trying to put the final “gold star” on her CV before leaving the scorched earth of NZ for an international audience? That really is ironic.

On a deeper level, there should be concern at the revelation Ms Clark was aware of the Owen Glenn donation to NZ First since February of this year. It is a sliding doors scenario. “If” that issue had been dealt with then and “if” it was proven and Winston Peters had been removed as an MP then Labour would have not had its majority in parliament. It also means that much of the legislation that has been introduced since February is at the very least suspect and at worst, illegal.

Clark was a great leader at one time; she has somehow become a victim of "Emperor's New Clothes" syndrome and has totally lost the plot. She will slot in beautifully at the UN. The UN is such an amazingly bureaucratic and ineffectual organisation.

“Now now, you’re a naughty country and if you don’t stop slaughtering all those innocent people we will read your name out at our next meeting and you won’t be allowed any bikkies, we might make you sit in the naughty corner or even stop you coming to our club………hmmmm””

We just have to look at the marvelous job she has done with New Zealand to see she has all the required credentials.

Consider this when wringing your hands re the state of the country today. The apparent increase in senseless violence, especially amongst our young people, the blatant lack of respect for people, property and authority. Just ponder the examples being given by our “leaders” and you will see the reasons.

However these are sideshows to the real malaise affecting New Zealand today. Problems created by a 9 year social experiment based on text book theory and computer modeling.

The biggest problem in New Zealand at all levels today is too many people in the public service are being paid in jobs that don't actually produce value. Jobs mainly created by Central or Local government. Not all of these jobs, but too many of them are created needlessly and are actually irrelevant.

Many people in these jobs spend most of their time maintaining an illusion of actually doing something. Producing reports, figures, more reports, I am sick of hearing about another report coming out on something. 6 months for a report that everyone with an IQ slighter larger than a chocolate fish knew what the outcome would be before the report/inquiry was started. No one does ANYTHING!! No one takes responsibility for ANYTHING!! All the way to the top! Either that or they contract an "advisor" to do their job for them at huge expense to the taxpayer. Why not employ the advisor in the first place instead of hiring people who are incapable of doing their job? In my position (which is self-employed trades) there is no way I can turn up for work and decide I can't do it. Better get a specialist in and pass the cost on to the client!!! I wouldn’t be working for very long if I did.

These people's whole focus is to produce data that lends strength to the illusion that they are doing their job. This is not the employees fault! It is the fault of overly controlling, unwieldy systems that are totally inefficient. I think the word is bureaucracy. People are presumed to be incapable of thinking for themselves therefore a system must be designed that is foolproof and can be followed by a trained monkey. The huge flaw in that belief is that such systems do not exist and never will! The attempts created however become unwieldy and unworkable for all practical purposes. Too many systems!!!

OSH is a good example. Admittedly they have been needed because of dodgy and dangerous practices in various industries, especially in earlier years, but for a long time they have been operating at a point of diminishing return. In fact some would argue at a point of no return. The problem is that people who work for OSH are real people, with mortgages and families, who need to justify their jobs to maintain their income. So they scratch around to try and find anything at all so they can report it and write it up, make new rules, more compliance around issues that are irrelevant and pedantic in many cases. Same with building inspectors and many other bureaucrats. They need to make their jobs indispensable so that is what they try and do. Too many rules!!! Then after charging us thousands of dollars to comply with their rules and to have the work inspected and signed off, when it fails no one is responsible!! What about the inspector who said it was fine?

The ultimate example is the Justice System, thousands upon thousands of rules and regulations that have accumulated over hundreds of years. Accumulated, not evolved because if they had evolved, the legal system would not be as over complicated as it is today. The law would be able to be summed up in one volume rather than in thousands of volumes as is the case presently. We are at a point where it is quite easy to avoid justice as long as you can afford to pay top dollar to a lawyer who can manoeuvre round the legal system. As many people have said before in this country, there is no longer a Justice system, only a legal system. How many times has it been blatantly clear that injustice has occurred yet the perpetrator has been able to avoid taking responsibility for their actions by the use of some clever tactics? Lawyers love this system; it is an exclusive club, a closed shop to which only they belong!!!! And which they live off very handsomely. Too many rules!!!!

This bureaucracy used to be a big problem in the 60's but was eradicated in the era of market reforms apparently. Ha! Yeah right! It's back under a different guise. Everything is over complicated; the paperwork in this country is at insane levels. The compliance issues for small businesses are ludicrous not to mention the expense involved and lost productivity. Someone needs to explain the difference between efficiency and effectiveness. People are not as stupid as you think.

A question.

Unemployment is at a record low, why does WINZ still employ as many people (or more) today as it did when unemployment was double or more what it is now?

In praise of Labour's last nine years, Chris Trotter states the jobless in 1991 stood at 300,000 "and all around these despairing souls clustered the grim companions of unemployment: poverty, crime, drug use, domestic violence and the long-forgotten diseases of overcrowded and unsanitary housing". (I thought I was reading a Dickens novel for a moment....)

Well nothing has changed except that crime, domestic violence, drug use and domestic abuse have all increased. The true number of unemployed is buried in a quagmire of alternative benefits or training schemes and low paid jobs. We are told Working for Families is not a benefit. You can paint it pink, fill it with helium and call it a flying pig; it is a handout and has been carefully manipulated to create a dependent electorate.

We benefited from a cyclical upward swing in the world economy despite of Labour policy, not because of it. As in the rest of the world this is a false market driven by speculation in property, not related to real growth. That bubble has developed a slow leak. The sad part is that National will inherit this world of pain and are likely only to get one term because of lack of foresight by many voters.

Accidents on worksites are at their lowest levels in a number of decades, why does OSH still have the same or more staff numbers? The number of reported accidents will have increased, but that is because of requirements that every accident no matter how trivial must be reported. I cut my finger slightly on a job, a regular occurrence due to using sharp knives every day. Normally I wash it, stick a plaster on it and carry on working. Because the accident happened on another company’s jobsite I had to get a first aid person to examine it, dress it and fill in a full page report of how, where, and why it happened. It took an hour! An hour of wasting 2 people’s time that would have been better used doing something productive. Too many regulations!!!!!

There are layers of parasites in every society that can usually be accommodated to some degree, however, sometimes they get too big and start to drag society down. That is where we are at now. This Labour government has nurtured systems where the only purpose is survival at any cost. At all levels in central and local government, people scurry around whitewashing, stonewalling and massaging figures and reports for our consumption. Let’s make it LOOK good, bugger reality. By the way, this is not even attempting to look deeply at the apparent ease with which the current Government can lie to the public and not even blush! Taito Philip Field and pledge cards?!?! What I am talking about here is the day to day running of Local and Central Government departments.

The police are a classic example, they shouldn't be given ticketing books, they should be given invoice books instead. I have no doubt that most police officers would like to do the job they are paid for, but it is obvious from leaked faxes and emails that the direction from above is not focused on priority police work. Never mind the revenue gathering argument, it is not the big issue, these officers are being measured for productivity, not QUALITY!! I know which one I would rather have. (Admittedly they seem to have realised how transparent they have been and seem to be tackling real crime with some success. I would applaud this but it is actually what they are paid to do).

The Government might feel that by having good looking numbers the public are fooled. By quoting % increases in this and % reductions in the other we will all say "whoopdeedee", what a great job the Government are doing! Statistics, statistics and damn lies someone once said. Get a grip, I don't think so. There is uneasiness in most people regarding the direction this country is taking.

The more I look at these issues the more I see the same pattern emerging. This never ending desire to fix things by making more rules is a contagious disease. It's what bureaucrats do best it would seem. Never mind if the rules are impractical and mainly unworkable (not to mention unenforceable). I'm fairly confident the desire to do good is the driving force behind all this. Sue Bradford's Section 59 fiasco being one of the more "in your face" examples of this insane nonsense. If I didn't believe it was driven by good intentions my faith in human nature would be seriously eroded and I could possibly become cynical. What do you mean too late??? The fact that it was legislation introduced by an UNELECTED MP against the wishes of over 80% of the population is a whole other issue.

Get this country back to the place it once was, a place of common sense attitudes, where the people who prospered where those prepared to work hardest. Where heroes where held up and the bad guys were sorted out. It all seems to be going the other way, the good get downtrodden, the bad get a lawyer and the taxpayer pays for it!!!!

The Winston Peters Circus

2008-07-30T20:12:00.003+12:00

There really aren't words to describe the fiasco currently playing out in New Zealand politics at the moment. At best Winston Peters is making Bill Cliton (sic) look like Mother Theresa in his efforts to talk sincerely and deal honestly with questions surrounding funding issues within his party. At worst he is destroying any vague notion people may have held that he was a champion of the common man fighting the corruption of the evil capitalists. That's how I used to perceive him, even when at times he behaved like a clown. No more. He is a snake oil salesman of the highest order, a charlatan, a nasty petty little politician too engrossed in his own ego to be able to make the right call. Stand up like a man and admit he screwed up.

It is no good building the Chinese wall to protect yourself from accusations. People are not stupid, we are getting better and better at seeing through the bullshit that is laid down as smokescreen by most politicians these days.
The next truly great statesman or woman in this country will demonstrate a simple philosophy....honesty. The sort of thing we all admired in people like Sir Edmund Hillary, Peter Blake, Colin Meads, Murray Halberg etc. Where is our next great leader?

Key asset sale to China approved......

2008-07-16T11:10:00.003+12:00

Good to see there is no hypocrisy involved in today's announcement that it is OK for a Chinese based company to purchase Wellington's electricity grid, currently owned by Vector.
According to Finance Minister Michael "gollum" Cullen this is different from the attempted sale of part of Auckland Airport to a Canadian pension fund (which the Government blocked) because the Wellington grid is not on sensitive land...............that's right, a grid that supplies power to the engine room of the country and to our House of Representatives (muppets) and has one of our major ports in the middle of it apparently isn't sensitive land??
Cullen either has no conscience or no mirrors in the house, I would go with the former. How these people can stand up and lie with a straight face is incredible, though after reading Absolute Power I am starting to see another side to this Labour Government. I used to believe it was mostly ineptitude that explained some of their decisions, now I can see that it is a much darker agenda. It isn't ineptitude, it is pure malicious evil. The frightening thing is trying to work out what the long term goal is. Wishart gives some pointers and I just hope and pray he has got it wrong.

Veitch

2008-07-14T15:45:00.003+12:00

I really wasn't going to comment on this woman's magazine story about an auto-cue reader hitting his ex, but the hysterical way it is being covered and responded to has driven me to it. (Labour will be dancing in the streets that something so vitally important has drawn the attention of the population away from their scorched earth destruction of the country to this far more serious matter).
The feminazi's of the sisterhood want this midget hung, drawn and segmented like a grapefruit if the feedback to the press and talk-back radio is anything to go by, yet no one knows exactly what happened!! I used to lean towards having the death penalty but now I know why it is impossible to retain it without the extreme likelihood of innocent people being topped. The screams and shrieks and baying for blood have been positively medieval.

Now call me stupid (many do) but the information I have is that his ex (the beatee) actually approached him (the beator) with a non-negotiable price for her silence. Ostensibly for loss of income etc but the lines are very wide here and beg to be looked between, bear with me. Also, based on the same information sources (media), she had an appointment with the police re the same beating but failed to show. Now, did she make the appointment with police then approach Veitch with the ultimatum and fail to show after he agreed or what? If he had not agreed would she then have went to police (or Woman's Day maybe?). Also at what stage did the wheelchair appear? Was it as she was taken to the ambulance or moved to intensive care after her visit to the A&E? Or was it after the visit to her lawyer??? Sorry about the scepticism but something in this story stinks.
Another piece of information in the public domain (NZ Herald, Sunday Star Times) is that it was a month before the seriousness of her injuries were known, all that time her back was broken in four places and she went about her normal business? This chick should be Captain of the All Blacks. With fortitude like that she makes Buck Shelford and his ripped scrotum look like a very effeminate rhythmic gymnast.
I was going to ask where the police were when this battered body was taken to the hospital but I forgot there are speeding tickets to issue. The order of these events is very important stuff as it can put the whole story in a variety of new lights. I smell a touch of malevolence, some might call it blackmail.
This is not a defence of Veitch himself, he has admitted assaulting her, he should NEVER have resorted to physical violence, I know it happens and nothing makes it right, but it happens. I would just like to know all of the facts of what happened before I decide whether to hang him by the balls, jail him or see him get off completely like the lawyers of the murderers of various young children have managed in recent months.

Another vampire is born......

2008-07-14T15:26:00.003+12:00

*groan*

The Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA) have initiated yet another money pit for pen pushers to milk the people of New Zealand dry. EECA have contracted EBSA to administer HERS, (it will soon be a requirement to have a degree in acronyms to live in this country.)
EBSA (apparently a non profit organisation) appear to be clipping the ticket at all three ends, no mean feat as there are usually only two ends. They are contracted to EECA, one income stream. They train assessors for a fee, a second income stream; and you can guarantee their will eventually be a not insubstantial ongoing annual fee to be a member of EBSA for assesors (which will be compulsory of course).

Next, (once the HERS scheme has been in place for a while) it will become a legal requirement to have an energy audit carried out on your home - for a fee of course. Those on lower incomes will be able to apply for a taxpayer funded grant obviously. Ultimately we will finish up with another bloated bureaucracy sucking on the taxpayer tit, whose only motivation will be to find ways to entrench itself into the money sucking system. It will become another cancer which survives and grows only for its own end, (as with all bureaucracies.)

I have monitored EECA for some time now, I have corresponded with them at high levels for many months (in exchange for pages of academic dribble) and have come to an obvious conclusion; this is an organisation that needs a chainsaw taken to it. The cost benefit analysis of this organisation since it became a Crown entity would read like an epic tragedy.
When is this organisation going to actually do something for itself instead of contracting out all its responsibilities?How much has been spent on this organisation in the last eight years and what has been the return? Where can I get a breakdown on the running costs of this monster? Number of staff, salary bands, expenses etc. as was recently revealed and dissected on talk-back radio and letters to newspapers regarding the funding and activities of SPARC. I can guarantee EECA will be right up there.
This appears to be an ongoing practice with all Government funded departments.
I am looking forward to National getting into power and slashing some of the massive, massive waste of the money that goes on in Wellington on a daily basis. I hope a National Government has the balls to attack this cancer the way it needs to be attacked, in fact I believe they will have no option, Labour will have bled the coffers dry by the time they vacate their BMWs. The economic boom is over, the GST take will be down, the tax take in every area will be down, there will be more demand for various benefits and National will be committed to most of the nonsense that Labour has signed up to! I really do not envy them the work they have ahead of them.

NZ legal system goes from strength to strength......Tui

2008-05-29T08:39:00.005+12:00

The legal system would appear to have hit an all time high this week in four high profile murder cases. The three "classic" murder trials all came back with not guilty verdicts. I did not hear the evidence in these cases but my deep gut instinct strongly disagrees with two of them. That is neither here nor there.
But let us not be despondent, at least the legal system had some success! On the fourth case congratulations must go out to whoever decided to prosecute Ian Crutchley for the murder of his mother who was in the finals stages with terminal stomach cancer. Apparently he gave her a lethal cocktail of her pain relief drugs including morphine. Shame on him! The dedicated detective work that must have went in to proving this case has to be applauded. Well done all of you involved in bringing this heinous criminal up before the courts, damn shame they abolished the death penalty..................
One other notable success was the conviction of Garth Gadsby who discharged a shotgun at a fleeing burglar's vehicle. Read the story, it will warm the cockles of your heart to realise we have such an outstanding legal system that keeps nailing these vile criminals one after the other.

Common sense is dying a slow death in New Zealand. When situations continuously arise where the use of the "letter of the law" results in inequity and unfairness then legal system has become a joke and needs ripped down and rebuilt. Criminals have more rights than victims, lawyers abuse the legal aid system and milk the taxpayers by defending low life scum and dragging cases out for months on trivialities. Common sense dies and we all pay the price, emotionally and financially.

Vietnam Vets and Clark

2008-05-29T08:23:00.003+12:00

Helen Clark's timely and stage-managed apology to the Veterans of the Vietnam War is nothing more than yet another photo opportunity in election year. A cynical vote grabbing exercise.
Watch this space, this is only one amongst what will be an avalanche of such appearances. We will be seeing Ms Clark everywhere in a series of feel good "aren't I wonderful" news items in all forms of media. Ms Clark and the Labour Party are masters in the use of propaganda, they would certainly have given the German WWII Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda Joseph Goebbels a run for his money.
I do not disagree with the apology, just with the deliverer and the timing, political expediency at its worst.

Rolling, rolling, rolling.........

2008-05-28T12:29:00.003+12:00

Just finished our second night of our rolling course on Monday. I forgot to take the camera again but will make sure it's there for next time! It isn't happening next Monday as it is a long weekend so I will have to try and get out to the beach for a practice.......brrrrrrrrrrrr.
Warren is rolling well and I think I'm getting a handle on it, Nick is still struggling a little but he looked to have gotten a couple in right at the end of the session and will definitely crack it next week.
The next thing I have to do is modify the cockpit of my Torres. I bought some foam blocks etc from the plastic shop so I just need to get some contact adhesive and we're away! Photos and a bit more detail after our next class.

Where is the camera!!!!!!

2008-05-22T00:09:00.003+12:00

Short entry, Went for a Wednesday kayak tonight, inner harbour, Salthouse to Riverhead. Beautiful winter evening, full moon, flat water and to make it even more perfect good old Warren fell in!!! I love that boy, he's such a sport.......

Longer entry as requested by Dave.......

I put it down to my failure as an "instructor" ;)
Warren and Nick were asking about the paddle strokes I had learned on the introduction course so I was showing them the low brace, sweep strokes etc etc. Also the quick stop from high speed, Wazza was belting around the place like a mad man trying the different bits when I think he tried a low brace and did more of a crab!! Lol I was pissing myself laughing, lucky he learned about wet exits on Monday night!! I don't think he was impressed when I decided to try a variety of rescues before getting him out of the water........."never f#c$ing mind the T-rescue!, get me out it's f#c$ing collllllldddd!!!!" Managed to pull him out fairly easily by rafting up to his boat and basically dragging him in to his which wasn't bad considering he is a fat b@#$tard.......lol
That's a new one for the CV, a night time rescue! Watch this space for more Wednesday night adventures.

Now for something completely different. good luck Man U tomorrow morning. Something I have never said in my life before!!! ABC!!! (anybody but Chelsea)

Soft plastics 11 - real bait 4 :)

2008-05-17T13:08:00.017+12:00

It was one of those unique occasions when all the universal elements align to create a rare occurrence - think total eclipse of the sun, a moonbow, the Warriors winning away from home, Jeanette Fitzismmons or Sue Bradford actually doing something useful or that had a common sense aspect to it...........rare indeed.
The elements on this particular Friday were, blue skies, no swell, no wind, no work..........................................they rarely line up, get the yaks and fishing rods out!!!

The weather forecast was for a stunner and Warren's job had fallen through, I had a small job to do on Whangaparoa Peninsula so we I decided that would do nicely as a place for a paddle and a bit of fishing. We arranged to catch up around lunch time.
I loaded up all my bits and took off early on Friday morning. I had a flight of stairs to install, nice and straightforward and everything went smoothly. I was walking out the door of my job just before midday and about to call Warren to see where he was when my phone rang, the tune from The Twilight Zone popped into my head, it was the Wazzman and he was on the main road on the peninsula less than 3 kms away........spooky shit.
We did a bit of "fishing bits" shopping at the Warehouse then made our way up to Army Bay. It is as far along the peninsula you can go and still access the water.

ARMY BAY (the squiggly bit is where I was chasing the bird and kahwai work ups..........)
20 minutes or so had the boats loaded at the edge of the water and away we went. It was one of those truly stunning days, the water was like oil, the temperature must have been around 18 degrees. I had heard that the fish were out at the 35 metre mark. We could see a few boats further out and paddled in their direction. The one big advantage they had over us was electronic sounders so we decided to use theirs :) We went around 2 kms straight out in a direct line looking at Kawau Island.
Warren was fishing with bait while I had my soft plastic rig with me, a little Abu Garcia set with 4kg braid on it. The fish were biting straight away, lots of little tap tap taps which signalled the end of my first soft bait.....I wound up and yep, tail gone, tiny teeth marks everywhere. It looked like being one of those days. Who cares, this was the ultimate example of the old saying, "A bad day fishing is better than your best day at work!"
Warren spied some birds working a couple of kms in the direction of Kawau, I was in the Torres which is a wee bit quicker than Warren's old faithful Scrambler ;-) so I took off to see what was happening. It was a slow, gentle work up, more of a simmer than a boil! Worth dropping a line over though.

Sure enough first drop and I hooked up almost instantly. I was getting the tell tale nodding to let me know it was a snapper, not a huge fish but as the sit-in is a bit less stable than the sit on top it made playing it interesting! It was my first time fishing out of the Torres and catching a fish for the first time felt a bit like juggling on a unicycle. I got the fish up without capsizing and had a look to check if it was legal size, it was borderline so back he went.
The minimum size for snapper is 27cm which I personally think is too small. I was told by good fishermen on Great Barrier Island that if you have to measure, it must be too small, throw it back!! I have a measure marked at 30cm on my Prowler 13 which is my main fishing rig and that's as small as I want to take.
The problem was I didn't have anything with me on the Torres to check with. I caught another 3 before I started thinking about what I was throwing back! With getting to fish on Great Barrier reasonably frequently you get spoiled. I remember fishing there once and throwing 3 or 4 back one day that I presumed were too small, I decided to just do a quick check on the next one of similar size, it was at least 35cm!!
I had a close look at the next one I pulled up! It was at least 30cm so this one was a keeper. Problem was that while I was trying to take it off the hook and transfer it to the hatch behind me it got as twitchy as Michael Cullen just before announcing a tax cut and got away from me.......:( The next one was getting the big icky first!!
The work ups started getting more frequent and intense. hence the squiggly line on the map above!! I had a ball, hooked up one decent kahawai who did a couple of good leaps out of the water and pulled me round a bit, at one stage going under the yak and threatening to broach me!! By now though the adrenaline had kicked in and I wasn't worried about falling out! I lost that one but quickly hooked up a second. This one had the good manners to not fight quite so hard and I pulled him on board, bled and gutted him (nice berley trail for any sharks in the vicinity!) and dropped him in the day hatch. Sweet, the Torres had her first fish! I got another couple of throwback snapper then a couple of keepers. After another couple of unsuccessful casts into the workup I decided to head back. I could see Wazza in close and paddled over to see how he had got on. He had one kahawai in the bin and had thrown a couple of small snapper back. The soft plastic had kicked arse............:). Not conclusive really, we will have to wait until we are both fishing the same bit of water before the jury can decide. Oh dear, we might have to go fishing again, life sucks sometimes...................

Mary Anne Thompson

2008-05-16T00:04:00.004+12:00

Well Ms Thompson has finally "resigned" (English translation, told to fck off by Aunty teflon Helen - "don't dare tarnish my image in an election year.") What a seedy place Wellington is.
All I really want to know is where can I get a job where if I behave as immorally and corruptly as Mary Anne Thompson, I will be rewarded with 3 months salary as I fly out the door with Helen's boot up my arse.........This woman should be facing criminal charges.
Another story surfaced last night hinting at a half million dollar contract being inappropriately awarded.........the plot solidifies.
Another point, Ms Thompson's family members should be required to re-apply for residency. Not as part of a witch hunt. Let them make a genuine application without the signature of the head of immigration easing the way. If they qualify, fine. If not then a one way ticket back to wherever they came from to be paid for out of Mary Anne's severance pay. No apologies, just be fair to all the other genuine applicants who spend thousands of dollars trying to achieve the same end.

The other intriguing aspect which is unraveling is who else knew about all this and didn't say anything? It is going to be interesting watching the goings on around this for the next few weeks. One thing is for certain, there will be quite a few nervous people in Wellington this week, hoping especially that there isn't a general check up on CV's...............

Cindy Kiro.....NO!!

2008-05-16T00:01:00.004+12:00

Cindy Kiro, don't tell me to move on.......you can f#$k OFF, I say that with the greatest respect. You are a waste of space. Slightly more so than Mary Anne Thompson. You are a disgrace.
I wasn't going to do this but I need to qualify this statement.

This person has said in an article that the people who signed the petition calling for a referendum to overturn the law on child discipline are wrong, all 300,000+ of them. Take the time to read it. The conclusion has to be that democracy is a concept this person is either unaware of or she doesn't believe in it. Hmmmm try and think of some characters from history with a similar attitude to democracy.......... not a very nice list eh? But then we have to remember she comes from that notable group of people who apparently know better than the average pleb like you and I, people like Sue Bradford, Helen Clark, Michael Cullen...........that list is almost as ugly as the first one I referred to.
In her article, Kiro comes out with emotive statements such as

"It is not and never should be a parental right to assault your child."

People are not asking for the right to assault their kids, discipline is not assault. A smack on the arse or clip on the ear is not assault.
Their are already enough laws in the statute books dealing with assault. If the courts cannot tell the difference between the use of discipline and assault then the court system needs overhauled and the judges need to be sent back to law school. We do not need another law or variation to complicate the matter further, only lawyers win when this happens.
By the way, I have a 6 year old, I have NEVER disciplined her physically but I may one day decide it will be an appropriate course of action. When that day comes, law or no law I will do whatever I have to do as a good parent. Cindy Kiro, you win the knobhead of the week award just ahead of Mary Anne Thompson. The only thing she did was be corrupt and get caught, you on the other hand are seriously deluded, arrogant and even more frightening, you are still in a position of some power and influence......

Nick, Wazza and Tom's Excellent Adventure......

2008-05-07T21:46:00.020+12:00

The weather forecast for the weekend wasn't brilliant, 15kt SW winds rising to 2okt gusting 30kt. Heavy rain Sunday with wind turning NE in the morning 10kt rising to 20kt gusting 35kt in the afternoon! Ah well, at least the wind was behind us both ways........:)

This was to be our first overnighter with the kayaks, we had talked about it for a while and finally decided to just do it before the real winter weather kicked in. Take the yaks, bring tents, beer, sleeping bags, food and beer and head out to the Hauraki Gulf. Our plan was to circumnavigate Rangitoto and Motutapu spending a night on Motutapu.
Saturday morning the weather forecast was pretty much on the money, a little southerly breeze picked up as the morning progressed and hinted at an interesting paddle. I spent a couple of hours checking to make sure I had everything I needed. Tent, sleeping bag, beer, kayak..........all the essentials. Wazza turned up about 10.30am as excited as a 4 year old on Xmas Eve, I'm sure he peed his pants. (He isn't allowed out very often.) We went over everything again and gave a trip report to Janene letting her know where we were headed, what our planned route was and what time we expected to get there at. We would contact her when we had arrived safely.
Warren took off to pick up Nick and I headed to Narrowneck Beach via the camping shop at the bottom of Link Drive for some final retail therapy before we took off. Purchased a neat little compact gas cooker and a couple of gas cannisters. I thought for sure the boys would be there before me bitching about my lateness, I have absolutely no concept of time, however I arrived to find the place deserted. Good one! I got my yak unloaded and took it down to the beach closer to the water. Easier carrying the bits and pieces to the boat than trying to fill it and then carry it down!
The other two turned up about half an hour later after some last minute shopping of their own. We got their stuff off the wagon, good old Warren the hobbit had decided to partially load his kayak on the roof of the van........getting it off was fun, nice one Wazza!

We parked the vehicles and got the yaks into the water and took off, sweet! The trip to Rangi is about 3.5 k, after we had paddled about a third of the way and got out of the lee of the land we started to catch the southerly wind coming over our shoulders. It wasn't cold, With the right clothes on and with paddling you stay warm. Personally I'm a big fan of merinos, the thermal tops, not the sheep. They are very light but retain a lot of heat, even when wet. They dry quickly too. So do the tops.
The mid channel was washing machine slop, no consistency in the swell at all which made the paddle interesting. Every now and then it would pick up the back end of the yak and push it sideways though once we got closer to Rangi it settled down again.

As we got closer to the shoreline of Rangitoto we got a look at some of the little b aches (mostly made from recycled materials) that have been there since the 1920's and 30's. What was disappointing was the amount of rubbish around the shore line. Apparently in those early days, inmates from Mt Eden Prison built community facilities such as roads, the swimming pool at Ran gitoto Wharf and the hall at Islington Bay. I reckon those days should be revisited. It would be an ideal job once or twice a week for a couple of groups of PD workers to get over there and clean it up.........

We landed on Rangitoto for a nature stop, and wandered through the bush a short way to one of the WWII gun emplacements, part of a network of defences erected in preparation for a possible Japanese attack.

With Islington Bay on our left we paddled across to Motutapu. The two islands look as though they are linked but there is a small channel between them accessible on a high tide. On our right we could see Brown's Island, Motuhie and beyond that the Parnell of the Gulf Islands, Waiheke.

The further out into the gulf we got the clearer and more blue the water became. It started to feel more like an adventure instead of a paddle in the city, not that those paddles are too shabby! Just good to put a bit of distance between us and the city.

We arrived in Home Bay just after 5pm and contacted home to let them know we had arrived safely. The timing was perfect, just enough to get our tents set up and gear organised before darkness set in. Their is a DOC campground at Home Bay which has toilet facilities and water, luxury. Also good flat areas for pitching tents.
Time to cook up a feed!
It was a cruisy night, we had a few brews, I had a hip flask of whiskey and Nick managed to clobber a feral cat with an empty beer bottle - awesome shot. All part of our assistance with the pest eradication programme currently happening on the island. If there wasn't one already then there is now. It didn't put the cat off too much as I found my bread had been dealt to next morning. Bigger bottle next time.

Apparently I didn't have too much trouble getting to sleep as the others reckon my tent was expanding and contracting about 3 seconds after I climbed in. I thought maybe it was down to the fact that I had a good sleeping bag or maybe the self inflating bed roll but decided in the end it was probably the hip flask of whiskey that did the trick. A useful tip for all you potential outdoorsey types. Nothing like the restful sleep of the innocent........

Next morning we woke to perfect calm and a picturesque sunrise.

With a stress free breakfast in our bellies we packed up the tents and equipment and hit the water around 9am. Like the day before, the wind picked up slowly and built steadily through the rest of the morning but from the complete opposite direction. It had swung around 180 degrees to our advantage, the kayak Gods were on our side!
We rounded the NE corner of the island with Rakino a couple of kms out to the East. As we headed to the Western corner of Motutapu I could just glimpse the end of Great Barrier Island, a circumnavigation for the future, get your arse back here for that one Coyle!!
When we rounded the top end we were looking at the back of Rangitoto pointing South. We had the wind behind us again and as it picked up we surfed most of the way to Rangi, I had my hand held GPS with me and we were getting 8- 10 kts at times! That was a lot of fun, I haven't used my Torres very often in conditions that weren't mill pond flat so I got a real buzz out of it.

As we got to the Southern end of Motutapu we stopped on an group of rocks exposed on the low
tide to stretch our legs.

The wind had got up and we wanted to get across Gardiner Gap and into the lee of Rangitoto so we could put the billy on for a warm cup of coffee. There were a few boats fishing here though we didn't see too much action coming from them.
The forecast was for worsening conditions as the day went on and there were already a few boats heading back in, if not all the way home then probably to get a bit closer in case things got foul.
We found a sheltered stony bay on Rangitoto and with a bit of swell following us in it made the landing and exiting the kayak interesting! I think a gel coat and wear strip will be going on this winter as part of a maintenance programme! Nick got the billy going and brought out Jody's "Desperate Dan" pie. There was enough to feed half of Auckland with some left over. Huge!

Then wandering round the rocks we saw a seagull lying against a rock quietly fading out of this world. There was no sign of injury but he wasn't looking too good, just an occasional flicker from the eye let us know he was actually still alive. I had a thought of putting him out of his misery but he didn't look distressed at all so I left him to it to do his own thing. Warren threw half a pizza at him but he wasn't interested in that either........

While we supped our coffee the swell picked up a little more so we managed to get a bit of launching experience in different conditions to normal. Off the rocky beach and with the swell it was almost a seal launch........ :) I'm finding it enjoyable just pushing our usual boundaries.
I think we all realised it was an awesome trip that would get "awesomer" after we had finished!!
The conditions weren't dangerous at any stage, "interesting" is a good description. We were mainly down wind the whole time which I personally don't like, I'd much rather be head on into the weather. Also knowing the weather was forecast to worsen probably helped keep the edge on it!

We got into the lee of Rangitoto around midday, it was quite surreal. We were on the inside of the lighthouse on the NW corner of the island, a large launch was parked by the lighthouse. The small area we found ourselves in was like a lagoon, flat calm, totally quiet. The light drizzle was getting heavier and over our shoulders we could see heavy black rain clouds heading our way. We paddled through this "lagoon" and almost instinctively grouped up as we came to the end of this awesome little shelter. The last stretch was going to be 3.5km back across to Narrowneck Beach. The wind was strengthening all the time, the rain was getting heavier, visibilty was dropping rapidly and we had to cross the main shipping channel into Auckland..........sweet!!

The home leg was the same as when we had set off the day before, very sloppy, messy sea. I think we all were ready to get back on shore and the paddle was steady and relatively quiet, especially when you consider that Wazza was with us. We did lose sight of land for a bit when we left Rangitoto but I had taken a bearing on the compass on my foredeck so I knew where we were heading. I could tell by the heavy breathing and snorting behind me that that Warren and Nick were pleased to have someone as qualified as myself with them to see them through the difficult stage of the trip ahead.
We got within 500m from the beach at Narrowneck and saw the RIBs taking out the marker buoys for an Optimist race in the afternoon. I can remember thinking "ffs don't let me fall out now after all this time on the water!!!". It was close! There was a bit of surging swell/surf around a metre high slopping onto the beach. It was rudder up, paddle out the back and go for it! We alll managed to hit the shore without getting spilled out which I thought was fairly impressive! Half an hour of packing, drying, undressing, dressing and loading kayaks and we were on the road home again. As we drove up the hill away from Narrowneck Beach we looked back out into the channel. There was a massive container ship making it's way into Auckland, perfect timing and an awesome trip.....cheers boys!!!!

Power companies to pay businesses for not using power :-\

2008-04-30T10:26:00.005+12:00

Apparently one of the strategies to address possible power shortages in NZ this coming winter is to pay businesses to "NOT" use electricity.........

(My thanks to my good friend John who sent me the original email regarding EU policy which I have modified to NZ conditions.)

Dear Sir/Madam

My friend, who runs a business at the moment, is quite excited about the prospect of being paid for not using power. I would now like to join the "not using power" business.

In your opinion, what is the best kind of power not to use? I am presuming peak hour power will bring the best return and I would therefore be best not to use power at this time. Can you please let me know what the peak hours are and I will organise my not using time around this. I want to be sure I approach this endeavor in keeping with all power company policies, as dictated by the Government under the energy conservation and efficiency banner.

I would prefer not to use off peak power but if this is not the type you want not used I will just as gladly not use peak.
As I see it, the hardest part of this programme will be keeping an accurate record of how much electricity I have not used. Are there any Government or Power Company courses on this?
My friend is very satisfied with this business. He has been using electricity for forty years or so, and up until now he hasn't made a cent, when he didn't use power he got absolutely nothing which is a disgrace. That is - until this year, he is very excited at the thought of receiving a cheque for not using any.

If I get $3,000 for not using 1 megawatt does that mean I will get $6,000 for not using 2 megawatts?

I plan to operate on a small scale at first, holding myself down in the first year to about 10 megawatt not used. As I become more expert in not using power I plan to be more ambitious, perhaps increasing to, say, 40 megawatts not used in my second year. Incidentally, as the majority of my power comes from Huntly which runs on fossil fuel I wondered if under the Kyoto Protocol I would be eligible to receive tradeable carbon credits for all the electricity I am not using which in turn means I am not encouraging production of harmful and polluting gases?

Another point: This power I don't use will therefore not need transmission lines to carry it, will I be eligible for any of the associated savings?

Can this be done on an e-commerce basis with virtual businesses (of which I seem to have a couple of hundred?)

In view of the above you will realise that I will be totally unemployed, and will therefore qualify for unemployment benefits and Working for Families.

I shall of course be voting for your party at the next general election
Yours faithfully,

World food shortage is not our problem..........yet

2008-04-26T09:33:00.008+12:00

UN leader, Jean Ziegler, who specialises in the right people have to food speaking about escalating world food prices, particularly staples like rice and wheat:

"This is silent mass murder," ,we have a herd of market traders, speculators and financial bandits who have turned wild and constructed a world of inequality and horror. We have to put a stop to this."

The financial market has been hijacked by speculators, trading on food that hasn't been produced yet, ring-fencing whole markets and driving prices to insane levels. These people are nothing but parasitic, thieving bastards who deserve nothing better than a bullet.

From the International Herald Tribune:

"Speculative purchases have no other purpose than to make money for the speculators, who hold their contracts to drive up current prices with the intention not of selling the commodities on the real future market, but of unloading their holdings onto an artificially inflated market, at the expense of the ultimate consumer. Even the general public can now play the speculative game; most banks offer investment funds specializing in metals, oil and, more recently, food products.

It is astonishing in the present situation that the international financial institutions and government regulators have done little to control or banish this parasitical and antisocial practice. The myth of the benevolent and ultimately impartial market prevails against all contrary evidence."

This system is seriously flawed and something has to be done immediately, no reports, no studies. No matter what the impact is this practice needs to be stopped NOW. Forget about global warming, if this is not sorted the implications for the world are dire.

On a lighter note, Liverpool managed to snatch a draw from the jaws of victory against Chelsea in the Champions League semi final. 1-0 ahead and in the 4th minute of injury time and John Arne Risse scored a stunning own goal. Poor bastard, hopefully he can score the winner in the second leg and make up for it.....

How to create whitewash.......

2008-04-25T11:46:00.003+12:00

Easy peasy. Take copious amounts of bullshit and spread around liberally, watch as the truth miraculously disappears in the ensuing steam cloud. Keep applying the bullshit to maintain the steam cloud and eventually people will get tired of looking for the truth and move on to another story...........

If you have never witnessed this amazing process in action you are missing out! Keep an eye on the story of the head of the Immigration Department, Mary-Anne Thompson and her "lack of judgement" when she waived visa requirements for family members. Said family members are now NZ residents.
Apparently State Services Commission head Mark Prebble has ordered an "inquiry". Mr Prebble has a history of ambiguity and is an expert in the manufacture of whitewash. Watch in awe as the State Services Commission apply an even more liberal coat in the coming months than the immigration department have up to now. "Lack of judgment" my arse, they can paint it pink, fill it with helium and call it a flying pig, it will still be corruption.

Tired of getting fckd at the gas station? You should be....

2008-04-23T21:56:00.008+12:00

But there is a way to fight back and it isn't even
difficult!!!!! Read on........!

	Q1 2007	Q1 2006	% INCR
ExxonMobil	$9.280B	$8.400B	10%
Chevron	$4.715B	$3.996B	18%
ConocoPhillips	$3.546B	$3.291B	8%

Those are the comparisons of 1st quarter profits for 3 of the biggest oil companies in the USA in 2006 and 2007, this year will exceed those again breaking all previous records.

Why are oil and petrol prices still rising? The BS we hear on the news preceding the rises is exactly that, absolute BS. We are getting gouged big time. "A really loud fart was heard in Nigeria yesterday and there are concerns this may cause stress fractures in the pipeline..........."

Bollocks.

Want to know one of the key reasons for high prices? Speculators. The same vultures who have fckd over the housing market and the stock market. Want to join the bandwagon of parasites living the biggest pyramid scheme in history? Easy peasy.....

Crude Oil Trading

GCI offers online trading in Crude Oil - commission free with the industry's lowest margin requirements.

Think demand is increasing and supplies are tight? Think a speculative rally is underway? Charts look technically bullish? Buy crude oil on GCI's trading software and make money as the price of crude oil rises.

This is where the "demand" comes from, not at the pumps. This sort of software is all over the net and is available for trading anything, gold, currency, shares........and more frighteningly food. The oil companies aren't complaining. Speculating was never easier, it really is like playing monopoly.

Nor is the NZ Government going to listen to the grizzles, what is happening suits their purpose in many ways. The number of vehicles on the road and distances driven will reduce as people feel the squeeze, more people will use public transport and the carbon emission should reduce. Traffic congestion should ease. All great stuff. Only downside for Dr Cullen would be the reduced tax take because of reduced demand. Hallelujah!!! Price rises!!! That should take care of the tax take thank you very much........win win win for Labour, ouch ouch ouch for the plebs no matter how you look at it.

Interesting comment in the Herald yesterday from the GM of Gull:

"Gull NZ general manager Dave Bodger said last night he found the price rises puzzling, as there did not appear to have been any major overseas fluctuations.

Gull would be discounting all its fuels by 5c a litre for 26 hours from 7am today."

OK, want to know how to fight back? This has been around before and will work, as long as people do it. Pick one of the major companies. As BP are the first A-holes to break the $2 barrier lets pick them. Do everything you can to avoid buying fuel from BP. Drive to the next station, for most of us they are usually not that far apart!! It won't take many people to do this for very long before it will impact on BP's profits. The more people who boycott and the longer it goes, the harder it will hurt them. The only way they can attract customers back is to drop their prices.
It really is a simple way of using people power to bring a result. Make up your own email to this effect and start a viral email campaign!!! Either that or keep paying through the nose and stop bitching about the price!!!!!

Labour karaoke singers......

2008-04-23T09:12:00.001+12:00

Love it!

Not a lot you can say about that really. I took the phone of the hook just in case anyone from overseas rang to ask me about it, too embarrassed to admit I used to vote Labour and that, yes, these were people from the Labour Party who are involved in decision making at the highest level........

Labour's new trade buddies.....

2008-04-23T01:34:00.004+12:00

I thought I was imagining things, I was sure I read last week that a Chinese registered ship carrying guns, hand grenades and other weapons destined for Zimbabwe was stopped at Durban and refused entry to South Africa. I read that it had turned away and was though to be heading towards Mozambique. The implications were startling. Mugabe has been stalling the democratic process ever since the election 3 weeks ago, about the time it takes for a freighter full of arms to get from China to Zimbabwe... Since the ship was turned away there have been further delays in releasing the election "results", work it out for yourself.

Well I trawled online and struggled to find any reference to this story! It was as if the ship and the story had disappeared. Finally I found this old snippet:

"Chinese vessel bearing arms stopped in Durban"

We can pick our preferred trade buddies, the silence from the Government is deafening. Barely a whisper about Tibet and total silence on this. Looked at in a clear light the implication is that we are now allied with China, North Korea and Zimbabwe. Comrade Helen will be in line for the Order of Lenin at the very least.

And remember: "the right to bear arms is almost as ludicrous as the right to arm bears"

Financial Markets/Pyramid Schemes

2008-04-20T01:59:00.009+12:00

To tell the truth I am a complete financial market peasant, mainly because I don't fully understand it and I can't be arsed with things I don't fully understand. It's my dad's fault again. One other time when he was sober he told me a couple of core truths that I have used most of my life when faced with financial decisions. One was:

"You get nothing for nothing"

the other was:

"If anything seems to be too good to be true, it probably is".

Using these mantras it is easy to see why I have never owned a share or invested in anything in my life. Every time I considered dabbling in a financial markets the proposal would fail on at least one, and usually both of these tests. Ben Elton, someone who's intellect I respect much more than all the politicians and financial experts I know, put it simply for me in the book Stark. Not verbatim but along the lines of:

How can a factory which employs 100 people and produces 10,000 pots of jam every day be valued at $1million today but by the vagaries of the market is seen to be worth $2million tomorrow? (I know, I know, simplistic..... bear with me, I do simple best) Nothing has changed at the factory, no change in staff, no change in machines, no sudden demand for strawberry jam from an enlightened public after the amazing discovery that it prevents cancer AND gives you an all day erection. Simply put, the "market" has influenced the value. Now call me weird but that smacks of Monopoly on really good drugs.
The "experts" tell us that's the way it is, the market is cyclical, you need to be in for the long term whether in the housing or share-market. The graph evens out over time. Now I can understand that and if everyone was in for the "long haul" things would probably be fine. We would have stability.
The problem is that there is a nasty gene in the human make up. Scientists haven't quite isolated it or even named it yet but we all know it, it's the "the Greedy bastard" gene. (There is a mutually exclusive gene called "the Good bastard" gene that inhabits people such as Mother Theresa, Sir Edmund Hillary, Nelson Mandela and your Auntie Agnes who made perfect pavlova, wore an apron and always had home made Anzac bickies in the cupboard, ne'er the twain shall meet.)
People with the former gene are involved in a practice called "speculating". Some of the definitions of speculation in my thesaurus:

rumour, gossip, guessing, hearsay

When you take the long term aspect out of it the whole thing becomes nothing more than an elaborate pyramid scheme. The recent property boom is a simple example, speculation drives up prices, properties turn over every few months and the values are over inflated. In a market like this the results are negative for all but a few. The Stock market is worse when speculation is rife. It produces no value and is nothing but a glorified casino and is based on something that doesn't exist......... Try withdrawing the money..........Heard of the Wall Street Crash of 1929? The Great Depression that followed? Here is another perspective on it from the movie Zeitgeist.

I loved it a few months ago when the Federal Reserve put 200 billion dollars (that's 200,000,000,000) into the U.S. markets to give them "liquidity". Where did they get it from? Under the mattress? Tucked away in a drawer for a rainy day? Now they are pulling together another $85 billion. The European Union is looking at 100 billion EUROS. It doesn't exist. It is printing money to bail out failed markets, money that will eventually have to be paid back by the TAXPAYER! So much for allowing level playing fields in the free market. The problem is that these large financial empires are so intrinsically linked to each other that the whole system could implode if they didn't bail out AIG. As I said, so much for the free market. The message to cowboys in the financial market is simple, the harder you go and the more you fraudulently create markets, the less chance we will let you go under! Don't forget to keep paying yourself those multi-million dollar payouts when you screw up!

The U.S. National Debt stands at over $9 TRILLION! (9,000,000,000,000.) and rises by $1.5 billion EVERY DAY. Credit card debt is at a record level, up over 8% on this time last year. As in NZ, prices of everyday goods are skyrocketing and people are turning more and more to plastic to get by. America is bankrupt except nobody has called it. Everyone is too shit scared because the economies of most of the West are intrinsically tied to the American.

The problems are spiraling. Credit card defaults in the States are on the increase. This will cause havoc as there are billions of dollars loaned out that use the money owed on credit cards as security. These debts are seen as an an asset!!!! See a problem emerging here? Spot the pyramid scheme analogy? Same as when defaults in the housing market wiped billions of dollars from mortgage backed securities. I think we might have to re-define the meaning of the word security :\ Last person leaving turn the lights out......

The problem for NZ is that just like mortgage backed securities, credit card debt is packaged and sold to investors. An increase in defaults could lead to losses not just for the credit card lenders, but also for pension funds and global financial investors who bought the debt. Say bye bye to a few more Investment companies here.

I loved this letter to the financial page of one of the Sunday papers:

"Once upon a time, in a village, a man appeared and announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for $10 each.

The villagers, seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest and started catching them.

The man bought thousands at $10 and, as supply started to diminish, the villagers stopped their effort. He further announced that he would now buy at $20 for a monkey. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again.

Soon the supply diminished even further and people started going back to their farms. The offer increased to $25 each, and the supply of monkeys became so small that it was an effort to even find a monkey, let alone catch it!

The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at $50! However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would now buy on behalf of him.

In the absence of the man, the assistant told the villagers. "Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has collected. I will sell them to you at $35, and when the man returns from the city, you can sell them to him for $50 each."

The villagers rounded up all their savings and bought all the monkeys.

They never saw the man nor his assistant again, only monkeys everywhere!

Now you have a better understanding of how the stock market works."

That's lovely, I like simple explanations!!

Is there any good news? Yes, Livepool FC beat Arsenal in the quarter finals of the Champions League last week and almost cetainly secured a place in the competition next year after a fine 2-0 win over Fulham. Walk on............

People to admire.......

2008-04-18T22:09:00.003+12:00

Every now and then someone comes along who we have to admire. People so noble and forthright, whose whole moral outlook makes us feel inadequate. People of character, honesty and integrity. You know the type, Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King, JFK. Well this fella here is perfect if you ever need to explain the meaning of the word incongruent. This is the lead from his website.

The World Water Crisis:

The Earth's Most Precious Resource May Be the 21st Century's Most Lucrative Investment...
Here's How To Profit from the Coming Fresh Water Shortage

Wow, this bloke makes Hitler, Mussolini and Attila the Hun look like a few likable chaps you would have no problem inviting home to dinner with your, wife and kids, shit you'd even let them play with your daughter's hamster.

Here he is, remember the face so that hopefully when you see it next it will be smack in the middle of your headlights.

Jeff Siegel is the name and this earth citizen is genuinely intending to try and make money from the impending water shortage in the world?!?!?!?

A couple of other little snippets from his website:

You'll get our latest global water report, including the following urgent details:

How worldwide demand for water is already severely outpacing supply...
The only 2 ways to capitalize on the water-supply market, including the little-known "Reverse Osmosis" Model...
Why the water industry closely resembles the oil industry in its infancy, and how Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi began securing his nation's water supply back in 1991 by funneling water away from Sudan, Chad, and Egypt

Oi! Jeff!! F C K OFF!!