If National wins ...

[craic]

And now the large German is to hold hands with the brothers from the North in an agreement that will see Labour gain the treasury benches at the election. I imagine that the Walt Disney people and Peter Jackson are rushing around looking at sites for the movie and someone with a streak of lunacy to write the script. Even before it reaches the screens DC will have provided a Cloud for "someone" to store it in and having paid the storer handsomely for their efforts will be charging per view and making another fortune. Problem is, in the unlikely event that Labour does not gain the treasury benches, the big lad will be gone to USA in the blink of an eye. JK has the good sense to leave that bit of nonsense alone and will not create martyrs at this time.

[westerly]

Very droll EZ, you are most amusing. Your hold on reality and economic history is tenuous to say the least.

You must be quite upset that NZ has a floating dollar, is approaching a Budget surplus, is paying down its debt, and shrinking it's government departments and reducing red tape. In fact were you to study economics these days you would find that far from being a small subset it is mainstream economics. Have a look at the IMF approach for example.

EZ is very close to the truth. And the super rich around the world are happy. Back in the 1980s worried that the peasants were getting too much power and cutting their profits and authority they fought back. Destroy the unions,reduce taxes (especially on the rich) eliminate welfare. As Allan Gibbs says the rich will be magniminous to the poor.
How they have suceeded. the rich have become wealthier. taxes have been reduced, welfare is under attack, and most importantly the unions are on the back foot.
David Cunliffe and the Greens threaten a lurch to the left. They must be discredited by all means available

Westerly

[elZorro]

Very droll EZ, you are most amusing. Your hold on reality and economic history is tenuous to say the least.

You must be quite upset that NZ has a floating dollar, is approaching a Budget surplus, is paying down its debt, and shrinking it's government departments and reducing red tape. In fact were you to study economics these days you would find that far from being a small subset it is mainstream economics. Have a look at the IMF approach for example.

MVT, everything you have said in that post is correct, but of course it's only part of the picture.

NZ has a floating dollar, but it is now a currency that is easily manipulated by daytraders and out of control, usually hurting our exporters unnecessarily. Many other countries make an effort to curb excesses in the exchange rate of their currencies.

NZ is approaching govt surpluses after record year on year budget deficits, five of them so far. Labour achieved record surpluses.

NZ is paying down its debt - not lately, National has been good at building the debt up. They are still borrowing, the stat vs GDP only looks OK because of recent high dairy and log prices. The current batch of ministers is simply loading up debt for the next to pay off. Labour are the party who paid off govt debt first, instead of reducing taxes. They sought equality in their other policies.

Shrinking govt departments: overall the staffing must be similar, because the govt expenses are still going up. In 1984, the new neoliberal policies came from a much larger economic section at Treasury, where young graduates worked on the huge documents and briefing papers, and formulated new models for the NZ economy based on ideas from the States, a completely different economy. And we are seeing how that has worked out over there too.

I have read another book that's more recent, charting the decline and distrust of globalisation as a theory. That's fundamentally the major difference in thinking between the two main parties. National is still pushing the neoliberal agenda, a policy that is just dead against what NZ's culture was. If we had a culture, it included something to do with the welfare state, the reforms that started in the 1930s under Labour. The idea that we would be perceived as a nation, as looking after those most in need, first.

This can be as simple as ensuring almost everyone of working age has a decent job. But that is not a neoliberal agenda at all. For that system to work, there has to be a "solid" level of unemployed, to keep wages down. Look back over the unemployment levels for the last 20 years and you'll see that is what has been the trend. National in, more unemployed.

[Cuzzie]

I'm not a betting man at all. I haven't work harder then smarter all my life without handouts even when I had to stop work all together for 18 months due to an illness to risk throwing it all away. I refused the sickness benefit and started a new business instead when I was a very sick chappy. Maybe if some of the Labour lay-abouts had some pride in themselves and a bit of get up and go, our economy would not need fixing every time National came into power.

Anyway regardless, I do admire both craic & EZ putting their money where there mouth is. I do feel that EZ is making all the calls in his favor though. Surly the loser should pay $1000 into the winning party on the day - not theirs. If that is unsatisfactory then appoint one charity like Kids Cancer. The loser should not win by adding to their party of choice, the loser should feel the pain of loosing and paying out to the party that won. After all betting is all about winning & losing, why should the party that lost - win 1k? Make sense yes?
Maybe we should go to a vote. Thoughts?

EZ, clearly you did not enjoy the truth above. You seemed to of formed a habit of not replying when cornered and simply change the subject. I find it incredibly selfish of you to want to pay your losing bet of one thousand dollars to the losing party - Labour(in your own words). That's no loss to you. Surly the loser must pay towards funding the other parties party. It's going to be a tax right-off to you anyway and a win win for the National party. Still want to go ahead with the Gentleman's agreement or we one Gentleman short now? I reckon EZ has not got the balls now, up to him to prove otherwise.

[craic]

EZ, clearly you did not enjoy the truth above. You seemed to of formed a habit of not replying when cornered and simply change the subject. I find it incredibly selfish of you to want to pay your losing bet of one thousand dollars to the losing party - Labour(in your own words). That's no loss to you. Surly the loser must pay towards funding the other parties party. It's going to be a tax right-off to you anyway and a win win for the National party. Still want to go ahead with the Gentleman's agreement or we one Gentleman short now? I reckon EZ has not got the balls now, up to him to prove otherwise.

I'm sure someone has had more rum than me tonight. The bet is simple - if LZ wins I pay LZ $1000 to do whatever he wants to do.If I win he pays me $1000 and it goes into my back pocket for whatever I want to do with it. Today I sat in the club and put about $200 from last weeks winnings though the TAB. I managed to have $20 each way on the winner of the big one at Auckland and that saved my bacon. I won a $25 bar tab at the club and a $50 Pack'nSave voucher in a raffle. The $1000 will have a similar fate if it comes my way. Now I must check my lotto tickets.

[elZorro]

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/poli...-just-too-easy

Thanks for that post Belgarion, I always liked Colin Espiner. This part of the article I didn't know about:

The massive loss of public funds is highly embarrassing to National, despite Prime Minister John Key's best efforts to blame Labour for setting up the deposit guarantee before it left office in 2008. While it's true the original scheme was Labour's, it applied only to the banking sector - the ill-advised decision to extend the scheme to the finance companies was made on National's watch.

This needs some more research, which I'll do later. But it was a $2,000mill mistake, or to put it another way, a $2bill risk, that needed good backup from some bureaucrats sitting in offices somewhere, and paying audit visits to these finance companies. Labour set up a system like that for a few million dollars, to oversee the R&D tax credits. What did National do when they opened up the guarantee scheme a lot wider? That's the 2,000 million dollar question.

[Cuzzie]

I'm sure someone has had more rum than me tonight. The bet is simple - if LZ wins I pay LZ $1000 to do whatever he wants to do.If I win he pays me $1000 and it goes into my back pocket for whatever I want to do with it. Today I sat in the club and put about $200 from last weeks winnings though the TAB. I managed to have $20 each way on the winner of the big one at Auckland and that saved my bacon. I won a $25 bar tab at the club and a $50 Pack'nSave voucher in a raffle. The $1000 will have a similar fate if it comes my way. Now I must check my lotto tickets.

Yeah, I went back and read it again, fair cop. I thought EZ said he was going to donate his losing bet to the Labour party, in fact he said his winnings so good on you EZ for that. My mistake and all without the Rum too.

[elZorro]

Yeah, I went back and read it again, fair cop. I thought EZ said he was going to donate his losing bet to the Labour party, in fact he said his winnings so good on you EZ for that. My mistake and all without the Rum too.

No worries Cuzzie, the bet was spread out over several posts, even I was losing track.

Here is the retail deposit guarantee scheme that Michael Cullen put in place just before the election. In retrospect, this was a very good policy, with enough fees to generate dollars for some audit checks, cleverly it only applied to banks and credit unions and such. And the term it would work for, was limited too.

http://www.rbnz.govt.nz/news/2008/3462912.html

Now if National were a prudent government, they'd have thought long and hard about adding in finance companies, who are generally 2nd and 3rd tier lenders, the loans of last resort. Anyone knows they'd be a bigger risk. National brought in an extension all right, with tiered fees depending on the credit rating, but that wouldn't have put off shaky finance companies from applying.

By August 2009, Bill English was announcing there would be an extension, and this time it would apply to all suitable deposit takers, i.e. it included some finance companies, PIE funds etc. About 20 finance companies including SCF.

http://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/g...osit-guarantee

[Major von Tempsky]

I'm sure the extension of the Deposit Guarantee system went to some very deserving people who put money into Finance Companies (no, not me - I don't put money on deposit at Finance Companies as a matter of principle). People who have worked hard all their lives and saved hard for their retirement and took what seemed to be expert advice on what to do.
I think the nasty sneer on your part EZ is poor judgment and behavior.

[elZorro]

I'm sure the extension of the Deposit Guarantee system went to some very deserving people who put money into Finance Companies (no, not me - I don't put money on deposit at Finance Companies as a matter of principle). People who have worked hard all their lives and saved hard for their retirement and took what seemed to be expert advice on what to do.
I think the nasty sneer on your part EZ is poor judgment and behavior.

The first finance company failed in March 2009, and National did nothing before that to ringfence anything off, and did nothing for months after that event. But on reading the first link in my last post, I see that Labour also included Finance companies that took in deposits, in the first plan. So is Colin Espiner wrong? Did Labour allow finance companies to take part in the first scheme?

Handling of the guarantee scheme quickly passed to National in any case, so they needed to be on the ball. There were ferocious arguments in parliament about that. If National had looked carefully, they'd have seen the retail deposits going up by 1000%, large broker percentages being offered so that brokers started doing huge business with the shakiest finance companies, and glossy ads going out everywhere. The market went out of control, because National allowed it to, they even encouraged it.

Here is a Treasury paper which details all this: the election was held in early November 2008, and Treasury made the final decision to sign SCF into the scheme just after that date. The guarantee scheme was widened to allow guaranteed and non-guaranteed investments to be made by members of the scheme, and that was certainly done under a National watch. Meanwhile the credit rating of SCF slipped from BB+, BB, BB- and finally to CC just before receivers were called in.

http://www.treasury.govt.nz/publicat...logy-oct10.pdf