Banks not participating in Recession

Bill English wants customers to "take banks to task" a nice attention grabbing headline and politically expedient but as I have found, my bank just isn't listening.

I mused a few months back as to why banks were not participating in the current recession, coming to the party and giving New Zealanders a break, considering taxpayers are now guaranteeing their own banks.

Lets face it, gone are the days when your bank manager knew your name and cared about the service they gave you and it seems even when it counts the most, in dire economic circumstances not seen for 70 years, they simply bury their heads in your money.

My bank's approach to the recession and what effect it might be having on me is to sack its staff, to make we wait longer in a line of other disgruntled sheep, falsely ask me at the counter what will I be doing in the weekend, ask if I want to buy insurance and then continue to punish me 25 bucks a time if I forget to have sufficient funds in my account when an auto payment is due. Its kinda like Robin Hood with a smile, except the taxpayer is paying for the arrows.

Short of forcing banks to play their part, and we don't want that, it seems the only pressure that might work is pressure from every bank customer on their bank manager.

The likelihood of that happening from the average passive Kiwi consumer is less than Lynda Carter coming back and playing the lead role in the new Wonder Woman movie.

It is worth a try though.

*Cartoon from Emmerson


Banking @ Share Investor

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c Share Investor 2009

What is a Depression?

There has been talk of recessions, deep recessions and depressions and I am confused. I think I have my head around a recession but what the hell is a depression?

You would have to be blind, deaf plain stupid or just Al Gore if you didn't know about the current global recession.

So read on and let me explain how I see things

Some commentators are saying recession, some deep recession and some the dreaded "D" word, depression.

A recession is technically 2 quarters of negative economic GDP growth with various other determinants depending on what school of economics you when to.

A deep recession is a prolonged deeper felt recession.

But what is a depression?

Well, those of us old enough to know about economic depressions know about them from their knowledge of the Great Depression. Briefly, in case you didn't, the Great Depression kicked off on October 24, 1929, or “Black Thursday” when U.S. stock prices fell 15 - 20%, causing a stock market crash. The following depression was a worldwide economic collapse that lasted approximately 10 years and led to massive unemployment in the U.S. of 25% at its peak in 1933 and those that were in work having their incomes drop by 40%. GDP halved and world trade dropped 65% ! Similar events occurred world-wide.



We have all seen the images of long lines of people queuing at soup kitchens for food, rushing their banks to get their money out and vast tracts of empty business.

Assets were worth what you could get for them depending on your need to sell.

We are also aware of the bailouts by the Roosevelt Government and the subsequent failure of those measures as they prolonged the downturn.

People were in despair.

The globe only recovered because of WW2.

A depression though seems technically harder to define than a recession but many economists think that a 10% GDP drop in one year indicates one but others would define it by the number of quarters there was double digit unemployment.

Many economists would say that a depression is merely a "prolonged recession" and from the reading I have done I think that this description best suits.

The impetus for the current global recession was the U.S. housing bubble finally bursting and that took the banks down, then weak businesses, then the US stockmarket dropped by nearly half and unemployment looks set to top 10% when figures are released tomorrow.

Global trade has been hit badly in January dropping by around 40%.

Assets of all kinds are not selling for their true worth.

This has also reverberated around the globe.

I don't know whether we are currently in the middle of a deep recession or some kind of depression but one would have to consider the amount of fear and angst there was during the Great Depression and what is happening now.



89 year old Victor Zarnowitz has an interesting take:

Victor Zarnowitz also doesn't think we're there yet. He ought to know. The 89-year-old is one of six NBER board members that date U.S. business cycles. Besides being one of the world's leading economists, Zarnowitz was also a young man himself during the Depression of the 1930s. "It's too close, and the information is too incomplete to be sure we are in a depression and not a severe recession," he said. "Unemployment is much lower than it was at the peak. It was much worse than what I see today." Forbes.com

Personally I have not been affected badly yet.

It is really hard to know in the middle of all this what is really happening and we will always know more looking back but what is clear is that the recession we are experiencing now is nowhere near as bad as the Great Depression.

What is also very clear is that we have not seen the worst yet.

Roll on 2018 or boom 2011?


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c Share Investor 2009

Fletcher Building down tools in short term

Like any other companies operating in the current market Fletcher Building Ltd [FBU.NZ] is going to find the next 18 months or so very hard.

It has already forecast a much lower profit guidance of $289 million to $354 million for FY 2009, such a wide ranging forecast because of extreme uncertainties in the market in which the company operates.

The domestic housing markets in which it operates in; New Zealand, Australia and the USA are experiencing major downturns and that construction downturn coupled with the associated slowdown in supplies of their building materials to said construction is having a big impact on revenue and of course profit.

In my opinion this is likely to get considerably worse before it gets better and shareholders probably wont be seeing anything positive coming out of these domestic housing markets until well into 2010-well later if governments in those countries make the economy worse.

Having said that there are bright spots for the company.

Fletchers has a long list of major infrastructure projects currently underway, especially in Auckland; with Mount Eden Prison upgrade, the Eden Park redevelopment, the Manukau Harbour Crossing(PDF)and the New Lynn Rail Trench among them and a backlog of other infrastructure work in the wings.

The newly elected National Government have also indicated an emphasis on State funded infrastructure projects to help New Zealand get out of its deep economic funk and hundreds of millions in contracts are bound to come Fletchers way in the next year or so.

Australian and American Governments have also indicated a preference to concentrate on crumbling infrastructure to kick their economies along as well.

All this bodes well for their commercial construction division and also the raw materials that they can supply as the inevitable upturn comes.

A question still remaining is how much negative impact the purchase of the Formica Corporation last year for nearly 1 billion Kiwi dollars will have on company bottom line.

Bought for a premium, the global maker of laminates was already in trouble before it was rescued by Fletcher Building and the company has had some trouble and unforeseen(although it should have been) expense so far in restructuring plants and manufacturing processes in order to make the initial decision to buy a relevant one.

The jury is still out.

Make no mistake, Fletcher Building is one company that will be especially hit hard over the global recession. What it has going in its favour though is good management and a backlog of work to fall back on when other sectors of its business get negatively impacted and once again a good decision by management to diversify the company geographically as well as sectorially have put the company in good stead.

As it was one of the first sectors of the economy-along with the retail sector- to show signs of this current economic slowdown, its eventual emergence from the gloom will be a good indicator that New Zealand is at the beginning of another economic upturn.

**Disclosure: I own FBU Shares


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c Share Investor 2008

Putting knuckle dragging hippies in their place

I originally wrote the piece below for the Share Investor Blog but after a couple of ignorant comments from some angry loser knuckle dragging hippie lefties, it is clear the politics of it all simply went over my head, so I posted it here with some additional comments just to clear up a few things.

Dude,

How can you say the current problems are the fault of the Labour govt, what a load of balls!
NZ is but a tiny tiny fish in the world ocean. We are at the mercy of much bigger and greedier economies than ours and don't forget for a moment it is people like John Key and his ilk that have plunged the world into the mess that we are all now in! Investment bankers !

...and you are celebrating?

I agree, whatever we do ( or don't do) doesn't matter a damn in the current economic climate. We are ruled by the rest of the world.  

The fallacy that Michael Cullen's tax and spend policies didn't cause the current recession and a number of other economic problems is just that, a fallacy-we have been in a recession for more than 6 months.

John Key and his "ilk" were only part of a much larger group of reasons why the world is experiencing a global financial crises. Bill Clinton's Democrat Party's relaxing of lending criteria through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the 1990s that allowed those two government backed institutions to lend money to those that couldn't afford to pay it back was the spark that lit the fire and of course the knuckle draggers that borrowed it in the first place were the main culprits.

The wide boys of finance simply went along for the ride-where there is government backed lending there are always financial vultures.

These are the facts.

The original article from Share Investor

But wait theres more!

If you think New Zealand has seen the worst of its economic slowdown think again.

Currently New Zealand is suffering a recession brought on by profligate spending by our previous Finance Minister, Michael Cullen. Problems related to the credit squeeze have only just started to hit us and will reach their worst probably sometime mid 2009.

Some of the symptoms of the outgoing Labour Governments spending so far are; higher inflation, rising unemployment, a massive public deficit, lower spending on every level of consumer goods, high interest rates, low productivity, lower property prices, higher mortgage defaults and business failures, amongst other things.

These factors are set to get worse as we move into the New Year, save the higher interest rates, and clearly this is going to have a highly negative effect on the New Zealand stockmarket.

With the current NZX index at 2800, it is likely to go below 2000 points before it starts to get any better, probably towards the end of 2009 to early 2010.

Of course all the finer points of timing for recovery and or a worsening of the scenario outlined above hinge on what responses John Key's new Government makes to the current recession and whether it looms for longer or deeper.

The economic situation for our trading partners is also an important factor for any export led recovery and obviously the seriousness or otherwise of the global slowdown will have an impact and that impact we have largely yet to see.

Wasteful spending clearly needs cutting back in all areas of Government and the savings returned to taxpaying citizens via more tax cuts, this way the economy will be stimulated over and above any initiatives to speed the economy up via Government attached incentives or direct spending by them.

More of what we had from the Labour Party just isn't going to cut the mustard. Economies are best stimulated directly by citizens rather than by bureaucrats or politicians looking to spend taxpayer dosh on their favourite business charity.

Government spending on essential infrastructure is one notable exception.

New power stations, motorways in Auckland-another harbour crossing, a motorway through Mt Albert to finish the city's motorway system-and some decent school buildings would be a good start.

Any continuation of what got us in this mess in the first place will simply drag out out the recession for several years, rather than the likely 18 months or so.

Particular importance should placed on the speed and timing of the building blocks that must be put in place for us to start to grow the economy again.

A quick response is the best response and any impediment to economic development must be put aside so as to assist an economy that could get alot worse.

This means a fast tracking of a relaxing of the Resource Management Act and the immediate rescinding of the Emissions trading scheme, which will hamper economic growth by piling unnecessary cost into the economy when we least need it.

New Zealand finally has an administration that has the expertise to negotiate their way through financial management for the good and bad times.

New Zealand has made a choice by electing a new Government and our elected leaders must make the right economic choices, some of them difficult, in order for us to prosper again, sooner rather than latter.

The alternative is a continued slide down the economic ladder which will be extremely difficult to extricate ourselves from.

c Share Investor & Political Animal 2008

The $700 Billion Question: How much will the taxpayer bailout affect my investments?

I have been busy consumed with dirty politics over the last few weeks and haven't been writing much on investing. I cant help myself, these are interesting times in which we live.

I, like many of us, have been nervous about global economic problems and what that might mean to my investments.

I have a share portfolio, a house, a business, money in the bank and other financial interests that are going to be deleteriously affected by the fallout from the Sub-Prime meltdown.

Whatever your politics or attitude to investing, the US$ 700 billion taxpayer bailout of the US banking system is a necessary evil-I happen to be vehemently opposed to this kind of corporate welfare, but that is another story-we will suffer more economically if nothing is done.

So lets get to the point of this little rant.

Assuming the bailout will go ahead in a reasonably swift fashion, and it is likely to happen, how much impact will there be on your assets?

To be sure there is no free lunch when this size bailout is made, someone has to pay, in this case the American taxpayer digs deep and pays directly and the rest of the world will get caught in the fallout in a more indirect way.

$700 billion of extra debt for the biggest economy in the world means higher interest rates, higher gas, food and living costs and much, much more for the rest of us. All this unproductive spending means higher inflation, a slow down in the US economy, and a cut back by corporations-even outside the crippled financial sector-which will clearly have an impact on employment.

A decent recession is something we will have to look forward to and this will impact on asset classes of all kinds. When $700 billion is removed from an economy like that, your house, shares and business are going to be worth less.

Even though I am a long-term investor in all the assets that I hold, it is still hard to take the day to day devaluing of those assets.

I wrote a piece the other day about what companies you might consider buying during an economic slump of this kind and came to the conclusion that buying stocks in companies that sell day to day commodities or things that people will still use during a recession is a relatively safe bet.

I called it "The Monopoly Board" approach to investing, buy the eclectic, water and airport company monopolies and you will soon see your wealth increase.

Clearly shares in companies that sell widgets that are not essential are going to struggle during the coming downturn and as a result they ain't going to be worth as much.

If the bailout works and it probably will in the medium term, we will still need to hunker down and live a bit more frugally than we have been over the last 15 years or so.

Global economic growth was astounding in those years, assets increased in value multiple times and you shouldn't be surprised if your current assets lose half of their value before things get better. Even with a decrease of that nature we will still all be better off than we were at the beginning of this century.

Oh well, at least I still have my health.


Buy Toughen Up: What I've Learned About Surviving Tough Times



Toughen Up - Fishpond.co.nz



c Share Investor 2008

Freightways keeps delivering during recession

Given the bleak economic conditions over the last year, one could forgive Dean Bracewell, Managing Director, and his team for underachieving in their management of Freightways Ltd [FRE.NZ] , the New Zealand courier and document management company, but they have managed the business to a good profit result to 30 June 2008 out today.

A 5% increase in Full Year profit to just over NZ$32 million, on gross revenue of $324 million, up 14%, shows that operating costs have had an impact on the bottom line.

As canvassed before on Share Investor, Freightway's movement to diversify income streams in terms of new business areas, other than their courier businesses, has paid off-in New Zealand and Australia.

Freightways entry into document management has proven a good move for the company:
"The information management business currently contributes approximately 15% of Freightways' revenue and earnings. The performance of this business has been outstanding".
From operating result , 18 Aug 2008.

This sector is a more prominent area of business in North America and Europe. Freightway's experience in their well managed document storage and destruction business in New Zealand and Australia will provide a good base for them to grow revenue and profit in the future.

According to some business analysts, a transport related business like Freightways can be looked at as a wider barometer of how the economy is going as a whole. I would argue though that careful cost management and forward planning has helped the company avoid the pitfalls of an economy in a steep decline and that isn't as easy to do as it sounds when faced with macro economic pressures that one cannot control.

Petrol, surprise government road user charges and labour increases will continue to crimp the bottom line profit in the coming 2009 year.

The company characteristically have a subdued outlook for the following year and it is a sign of good management that they do this. Many a company, especially in hard economic times don't give a true picture of their businesses as they look forward, only to disappoint come reporting time.

Over the last several months, the share price has been affected badly. From a high of nearly 5 bucks in 2007, and a low just recently of just under NZ$2.90, nervous markets have struggled to determine a realistic price for this company-so what else is new.

At a net return of just over 6% on today's share price, it is a healthy return for a well run company with good future prospects and falling interest rates for other investments. Freightways is worth a look when considering a long term investment.

Excellent management, an easy to understand business and a good dividend delivers the goods for me.

Disclosure I own FRE shares

Freightways @ Share Investor

Long VS Short: Freightways Ltd
Freightway's keeps delivering
Why did you but that stock: Freightways Ltd
Freightway's delivers
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Related links

Freightway's Financial Data

• Summary
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• Price History
• Related Securities

Dean Bracewell, Freightways MD

Interview 1 min 10 sec, 3.69 MB

Investor Relations -Freightways.co.nz
Value Cruncher


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c Share Investor 2008

BRUCE SHEPPARD: Recession, how deep? How ugly?

A very interesting blog post from Bruce Sheppard's Stirring the Pot I missed it in all my travels recently but it discusses the subject of our failing economy and where Bruce sees things going.

He is very pessimistic but elements of his post ring with clarity for me.

If things do descend into chaos there is no doubt the economy will face very tough times.

This post is essential reading for those who like to get all sides of the economic story.

Bruce Sheppard in Stirring the Pot | 2:08 pm 8 May 2008

For two years now I have been predicting the collapse of the finance sector and the result will also be a collapse of the domestic economy. It will not be isolated as Reserve Bank governor Alan Bollard thinks.

Let us start by joining the factual dots to date.

• New Zealand households are seriously screwed. Over the last 5 years they have binged on debt and consistently spent $1.20 for every dollar they earned, on average. What this means is that the bottom end of the economy probably spent $1.50, the median household spent $1, and the top end spent maybe 75c.

For households to do this they had to have access to debt, either in the form of credit card, finance companies or mortgage top ups. For banks to do this they had to have access to cheap offshore funds, largely funded via the carry trade that has held up our currency, and screwed our exporters.

• Then 12 months ago the sub prime bubble started to burst and progressively the merchant banks in the middle of all this hype have hemorrhaged value, destroying the savings of middle and upper income households globally. NZ is not immune, a number of managed funds have now suspended redemption's.

• Finance companies to the extent they have survived are struggling to maintain liquidity, so they are not lending. The banks are now also faced with increasing defaults on the back of a property melt down, so they have now got an increasing incidence of asset impairment, so they too will now struggle to maintain liquidity. This means they will be exceedingly unlikely to top up homeowners for consumption expenditure.

Now, the next predictable outcomes of all of this that are now being borne out by some statistics:
The net effect of all this is the bottom end is going to be forced to live within their means and reduce expenditure. The middle sector will find that they too need to borrow to maintain their lifestyle and may well be disinclined to do so.

The top end has already seen significant wealth elimination. Falling share markets, falling property prices, finance company defaults and investment scams like Blue Chip. Thus they feel poorer. When the relatively wealthy feel poorer they simply spend less and save more. Not a single sector of the economy is consuming at the levels they were 12 months ago.

In October last year I was quoted in the media as saying we would be in recession by Christmas. And that the Christmas of 2007 would be the worst for retailers for a decade, that NZ has to forget all the talk of a soft landing, and even for that matter hard landing. This recession is going to be a crash landing. Briscoe managing director Rod Duke at the time commented that he thought this was unlikely. Now his group turnover is down 10 per cent on a year ago and he is blaming the Government and rightly so.

He should have been yelling a year ago. My advise to Rod at the time, was forget his mantra of “stack em high and watch them fly” and instead adopt a mantra of “stack em low and don’t let them grow”.
Was this avoidable 2 or 3 years ago? The simple answer is yes. Did I nag Finance Minister Michael Cullen and Bollard? Yes. What needed to be done?

• The OCR had to fall, and more or less we had to adopt a monetary policy on interest rates that reflected that of our major trading partners. If we had done that we would have an OCR of around 4 per cent and a currency to the US dollar of around 60 cents, most likely. The export sector would then be viable, thus providing an employment balance for the inevitable correction in the domestic economy.

• To correct the property market bubble Cullen had to effectively ring fence rental losses, and he could have done that by treating all investment income (including rental) as a separate tax base and capping the tax on rental income at, say 30 per cent, the same rate as Portfolio Investment Entities (PIEs), but only allowing investment losses to be offset with investment gains. A sizable incentive to save, which could have been increased even further by lowing the tax rate on investment income to, say 20 per cent. And we needed to save.

• To correct the consumption bubble the regulation of credit creation by banks and finance companies could have been redressed by simply increasing the level of equity and near cash holdings as a percentage of lending. I.E. a reversion to, or a tightening of, the reserve asset ratio regime.

The lower OCR would have significantly reduced the carry trade and the domestic credit expansion that fuelled the property boom.

All of these points are covered in my submission to the Finance and Expenditure Select committee in September last year. Six months on still no action. Useless leadership again.

It is now too late for any of that. So what might the next twelve months look like?
Everything I say about what might come next is conjecture.

• Domestic expenditure will shrink as will the domestic economy over the next 12 months. It will take down retailers, importers, and manufactures that are dependant on the domestic economy with it.

• Unemployment will rise strongly, maybe to depression levels.

• As unemployment rises mortgage and credit card defaults will accelerate. More finance companies will fall over. It won’t be a matter of how few fall over it will be a matter of how few are left.

• As the default rate on mortgages climb, banks will scramble for liquidity. And will press good customers to repay. I am already seeing this happening.

• The property market tumble will accelerate, but most likely the banks won’t bother mortgagee selling much as there won’t be any buyers. Bankruptcy will rise.

• Bollard will lower interest rates, first cut will be a full 1 per cent and my guess is as early as July. It won’t make any difference; the banks will increase their spread to pay for the bad debts that will be mounting. Bollard will cut each month thereafter through to Xmas, until the OCR is around 3.5 per cent and still it will make no difference. He will then have to request the Government to regulate bank spreads so that mortgage rates fall.

• While all this is happening the carry trade will reverse with a vengeance. The balance of payments will go to hell in a handcart, all on invisibles and capital account. We will have a reasonable balance of trade surplus, but the currency will haemorrhage. We will fall against the USD to mid 40 to 50c, and against the Australian dollar to high 60’s.

• Petrol will hit $3 per litre by Xmas and inflation will be running in the high teens, a regular stagflation depression.

Now, how will our people react to this, will we just hunker down and accept a significantly diminished lifestyle, or……. might it be really ugly and if it is how will we as a nation deal with that?
By the election we may have a rising level of civil unrest. The public marches against the Electoral Finance Bill will be nothing compared to the turn out for the “decent life” marches. They might even turn into riots, and then the demoralised police, will have to turn on the public to restore order.
There is a chance, remote admittedly, that they won’t have the stomach for the task. I doubt you would have a police force that is prepared to deal with Springbok rugby tour level civil unrest in the same forceful manner today. The army then might have to be called in, but we don’t have one. In a worst case scenario the poor who have been used to spending $1.50 and now being forced to live on a third less might just decide to take what they can’t buy. In short anarchy.

Could this really happen? Maybe. The poor today are not the poor of the 1930’s. A substantial minority of our population have been brought up with an expectation of being able to pull money out of an ATM machine without doing anything to put it in, in the first place. Our grandparents expected nothing but the right to work.

I am not sure who would want to win such an election.

But whoever wins the election this year will have a number of unpleasant tasks to complete.
The first might be to restore order. This means the usual unpleasant stuff; expect that they might hire overseas mercenaries for the task.

Then they have to stabilise the haemorrhaging dollar. This means the Reserve Bank will have to support it and they will need crown funds to do it. The chance of taking it out of taxes is nil. So crown assets will be sold out of necessity, which in reality is what Roger Douglas and David Lange confronted in 1984, but way worse.

Then they will have to restore middle NZ households’ spending capacity. Maybe there will be debt moratoriums including a regulated inability to charge interest on household debt. Savers confronted with high inflation and low interest will then have no choice but to buy property and shares to preserve their wealth and so the cycle will begin to reverse.

To stimulate employment employers will be offered subsidies and benefits will be reduced. Universal national super will be abolished with all crown benefits means tested.

The lower dollar won’t be enough to get the value add labour employing sector going again. So expect research and development incentives to be increased further, corporate tax rates cut further to attract inbound foreign investment and a return to export incentives.

The free trade agreement with China will die a natural death as will our involvement in the Kyoto Protocol.

These tough moves should within 3 years turn the asset deflationary cycle around, employment levels will rise, the tax base will increase and we should be through the worst in 3 years.

But we are dealing with politicians and MMP so don’t expect any of these tough decisions to be made. As a result we will languish in a recession much longer until eventually Australia makes us an offer we can’t refuse, and Tasmania gets a promotion.

Labour and their Last Crusade

“We just don't believe in tax cuts - it's against our fundamental philosophy - after all we are socialists and proud of it.”

— Dr Michael Cullen


No wonder Dr Cullen found it difficult to announce his meager tax cuts in this weeks 2008 budget announcement, because his party simply does not fundamentally believe that personal tax cuts are deserved by the working people of this country.

Cullen of course believes that he knows best and that he should hold on to most of your money because he knows best how to spend it. He has done that for 9 years now and simply because it is election year he is giving your money back at an average $16 per week. The price of a ticket to the latest Indiana Jones movie.

We all know that tax cuts do stimulate economies but this is far too little and far too late. Costs imposed on individuals and business by Labour put us way behind where we were in 1999 and most workers would require $200-300 to have them back at status quo.


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We can exclude so-called "working for families" from the tax equation because it is welfare and we are talking about tax cuts here and not handouts.

The focus of this budget on yet more welfare, through working for families, higher student allowances and unemployment benefits and higher profligate spending on embassies, Governor General house renovations and train set purchases just shows where Labour's priorities lie. The extra spending on these u necessaries far outweighs their meagre cuts in taxes and in these dire economic times you cut back on spending, you don't spend more on luxuries.

That is where the wriggle room for National comes in promising more money going back to those who earn't it in the first place.

A far better tax cut regime would have been the first NZ$10000.00 tax free and a progressive rise to around 20% tax rate to $30,000 of income then a tapering off to 10% after that as incomes go higher-an incentive to work harder/smarter, instead of the current disincentive as the tax rates go higher the more you earn. That ain't going to happen under National either but one can dream nonetheless!

If this was a budget to help pout those in need because of the current blow out in oil, food and service prices then the October 1 cuts would have been brought forward to June 1 but there will be an election not long after Oct 1 and as Michael Cullen rightly says:

My view is that tax cuts are largely offered as a political bribe, not because of beneficial economic or social effects.

— Dr Michael Cullen

Cullen's maxim doesn't not apply to National as they have always been consistent on personal tax cuts. They believe in them, they always have and it has always been one of that party's main economic tenants-that is, kiwis know best how to spend their own money, not the government.

A chorus that has been sung by Labour since our economy went pear shaped and reiterated in the budget is that "global economic conditions" have affected our economy. Sure they have, but the largest negative affect by far has been Labour's mis-management of the economy for the last 9 years. Hard work by our businesses and middle classes (those that provide the bulk of taxes) provided the best economic conditions in generations but the good times were squandered by Labour. High taxes, regulation and reckless government spending have led to a doubling of mortgage rates, higher food and energy prices and inflation. These things happed before any global slowdown and it is simply a lie to say otherwise.

What was needed in the 2008 budget was a vision for its people. That is, a strong focus on hard work and personal responsibility and incentives to enable that. What we got was more of the same. Energies channeled on State involvement in our lives and a tax and spend policy that would extend into a Labour 4th term should we all be unlucky enough to have them foisted upon us again for another 3 years.

We will leave the second to last word(because I always get the upper hand over her) to our Aunty Helen:

Tax cuts are a path to inequality. They are the promises of a vision-less and intellectually bankrupt people.— Helen Clark, speech to 2000 labour Party Conference

Tax cuts are actually the path to fairness, equity and personal responsibility, the intellectually bankrupt tag goes to those who disagree or would cut personal taxes weeks before an election.




c Political Animal 2008

Dont dare use the "D" word

The announcement on March 31 (US time) that secretary Paulson is going to regulate the United State's financial markets with changes to it not seen since the Great Depression leaves me with a thought that has been running rat wheels in my mind ever since the current "Credit Crunch" kicked off.

Midway through last year, the Fed began sticking its filthy little hands in dikes all across the financial backbone of the USA by propping up institutions who had lent too much money to those who now cannot pay and to keep the wheels of commerce greased by trying to increase liquidity in the credit market-so we can do business with each other.

Now I am skeptical at the best of times as to State involvement in anything, let alone interfering in capital markets and don't have the foggiest whether the announcement by Paulson is going to change anything in the future at all.



Latest on global financial fallout

German watchdog eyes $600 bln global bank losses: report Reuters
Overhaul of Wall Street regulation doesn't address current crisis Int' Herald Tribune
International Financial Panel Urges Bank Disclosures on Risk Exposure Wall Street Journal
G7 to press big banks to reveal extent of credit crunch losses Times Online
US prepares to give Fed sweeping oversight powers Taipei Times
Ghosts of the Great Depression Business Spectator
US Fed to be grilled over massive support to financial system MercoPress
World Bank cuts East Asia growth forecast Channel News Asia
East Asia Economies Pressed by Inflation The Associated Press

The 1933 changes didn't stop the bear market in the 1970s, it didn't stop the sharemarket crash of 1987 or the tech bubble bursting in 2000 or the current credit crisis because of dodgy lending and investment practices related to that lending.

The interventions by the Fed and its global equivalents, to shore up credit liquidity is the main rat on the wheel in my mind.

What have these interventions stopped?

One can only speculate but one can do that with a largish amount of surety.

During the Great Depression, when faith in financial markets at the time was at an all time low there simply wasn't any intervention by the State apparatus to ameliorate what happened on that infamous day in 1929 when Wall Street threw a woopsey and capitalism jumped out of tall buildings in the financial districts around New York and around the world.

Have interventions in financial markets by State backed funds globally stopped some sort of 2008 crash from happening?

Probably, but not to the extent of 1929, but it is clear that it would have been a crash of some serious nature had there not been intervention.

Another question I have running through my head is, how long will the squillions of taxpayer dollars pumped into the economy stave off the inevitability of a bigger blowout?

That is harder to answer. In order to know better one would have to know the losses involved in the Sub prime loans and associated sub prime bonds, and we are no closer to knowing that than knowing if Hillary Clinton is going to be the Democratic Party leader or if Barry Obama still loves his preacher.

The vexed question of the massive derivatives market also looms in the minds of investors:

Large amounts of risk, particularly credit risk, have become concentrated in the hands of relatively few derivatives dealers, who in addition trade extensively with one another. The troubles of one could quickly infect the others. On top of that, these dealers are owed huge amounts by nondealer counterparties. Some of these counterparties, as I’ve mentioned, are linked in ways that could cause them to contemporaneously run into a problem because of a single event (such as the implosion of the telecom industry or the precipitous decline in the value of merchant power projects). Linkage, when it suddenly surfaces, can trigger serious systemic problems.

"Derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction. The dangers are now latent--but they could be lethal".

[Warren Buffett 2003]


Warren Buffett aside, I don't think anyone fancies the Fed's chances of shoring up the derivatives market should the dominoes start to topple.



Warren Buffett has always
feared the massive derivatives
market.

What is clear is this scenario has at least the rest of the year to fully play out and further State intervention should be carefully applied only if is really going to work and not because the Fed needs to be seen to be doing something.

Hold onto those gold bars and keep the cash under the mattress, you just might need them.


Essential related reading from Share Investor

The Global Economy looks bad now? But wait there's more
Global credit squeeze: There is no free lunch
Current Credit crunch a blessing in disguise
Lenders must come clean over losses to restore faith in credit markets
Watch for dead cats bouncing
Global Market Meltdown: I can smell the fear from here
Warren Buffett's The Intelligent Investor
Global Market's dropping and your portfolio
Global Market Meltdown: What is Warren Buffett doing?
A sensible approach to global market volatility

Visit Everything Warren Buffett-for everything Warren Buffett

C Share Investor 2008

Time for OCR intervention by Dr Cullen

The New Zealand Government is happy to intervene where its citizens don't want them
but when it comes to the precipitous economy in relation to lowering interest rates,
Michael Cullen gets blisters on his hands from sitting on them.


I'm not an interventionist by any stretch of the imagination but our monetary system, for better or worse, is, and so is the present regime that presides over the country's books, the New Zealand Labour party.

The interventionist approach in regard to the Reserve Bank and through the official cash rate(OCR) has led NZ INC, courtesy of drunken overspending and overtaxing by the aforementioned regime, to the highest interest rates in the "developed" world.

The Mike and Helen show has put the country in a very precarious position, given the uncertainty over the global economy and the "credit crunch"(2 days in a row, sorry) has slowed the wheels of commerce globally.

This dastardly duo seem quite pleased that an excuse like the global credit crunch has come around because they are now on a PR offensive to blame any current or future New Zealand downturn on it and not themselves, where the bony finger should be pointing.

The sensible among us know that high interest rate were here 3-4 years ago and then we though a credit crunch was a new chocolate bar bought on time payment.

Like Al Gore's science fiction movie "The Inconvenient Truth", we also know, like that movie, the M and K show lacks consistency and truth. When it comes to the economy we can all remember the Labour Party taking the accolades for the nearly 4% growth we had for a nano second, but they now blame the downturn and any possible downturns on other circumstances.

You cant have it both ways.

Now this government's profligate taxes and spending(they go hand in hand) has put its citizens in such debt that we even outrank those nasty Americans for our debt levels. This debt is primarily in real estate and servicing the high interest debt that bought it.

Higher house prices meant more borrowing on the increased equity, because taxes are so high we had to borrow to survive.

So guess what, now things are in reverse, because of that debt we are in potentially a worse condition than America.

They at least borrowed to buy other sorts of assets beside houses, while we sunk most of ours into houses and plasma TVs.

While we haven't had the extreme reckless lending like America's Sub Prime loans, we have got many thousands of kiwis who have borrowed more than they will be able to service when the shit hitith the fan.

Its hitting now.

NZ$40 billion of mortgages will be refinanced this year alone at close to 10% and others will be higher, the time for intervention is now.

The OCR should have been cut at least a year ago but now there is urgent need for it. An emergency cut to bring it into line with other nations suffering from the sub prime fallout would be a key move in the right direction.

There is no use sitting on your hands waiting "to see what happens" according to Alan Bollard, the Reserve Bank Governor. Decisive action needs to be taken because inflation is the least of his/our worries now.

Like I have said before the OCR is a poor way to maintain an economic system, it doesn't serve its purpose well, but it is all we have at present.

A progressive cut over this year, down to below 6%, starting with a .75 point basis cut will send a good message to the market and business, that lending rates will be somewhat dampened and business will be stimulated when it needs it.

Our socialist government are intervening in every other part of our lives, including the private business world but for the life of me , when we really do need intervention, Micheal Cullen just sits on his calloused hands and blames others for our countries current mis- fortunes.

Get off your arse and do something history boy.


Related Share Investor reading

Alan Bollard's indecision over OCR a worry to NZ INC
Bollard sits on his hands

Global credit squeeze: There is no free lunch
Current Credit crunch a blessing in disguise
Lenders must come clean over losses to restore faith in credit markets


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c Share Investor 2008