Missive to a parasite

Written By: - Date published: 9:58 am, February 11th, 2013 - 25 comments
Categories: crime, exports, jobs - Tags:

damien grant fraudsterConvicted fraudster and Herald columnist Damien Grant says ‘good riddance’ to manufacturing in his latest piece. Apparently, manufacturing dying is just one of those things and, also, it’s not dying (it’s those contradictions that get you caught, Damien). And we shouldn’t do anything to get the dollar down to a level where we can make our way in the world, because it would make his smartphone more expensive.

When not in jail on ten counts of fraud, Grant’s a liquidator. Things are good for him at the moment with all these companies collapsing.

All the workers who produce real things who are losing their jobs as their businesses go under would ask what’s the point in smartphones being cheap if you don’t have a job. But, Grant gets fat picking over the bones, and he’s in the market for imported luxury goods – so a high dollar is good, he thinks.

It’s funny how the people who feed off the work of others think that they are the most important people society, when really they’re just parasites with power. The dumb thing is that they think that they can just keep on partying and ignoring what’s happening in the real economy, as if it has no effect on them.

Well, I’ll tell Grant this: even carrion birds ultimately need a healthy herd to scavenge off.

25 comments on “Missive to a parasite ”

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  1. mickysavage 1
    11 February 2013 at 10:23 am

    Much more important that we pay as little as possible for our iPhones than for our neighbour to have a job so they can feed their kids …

  2. vto 2
    11 February 2013 at 10:33 am

    Consumerism and fancy gadgets are the way of the past. Boring and shallow. But this line made me lol …

    “When not in jail, Grant’s a liquidator”

    • RedLogix 2.1
      11 February 2013 at 10:43 am

      Consumerism and fancy gadgets are the way of the past. Boring and shallow.

      And a scam. 90% of gadgets add nothing of enduring value to your life or productivity.

  3. geoff 3
    11 February 2013 at 10:40 am

    This is what happens when you instate psychotic policies, the only people left who support them are sociopaths.

  4. RedLogix 4
    11 February 2013 at 10:51 am

    And of course Grant is wrong as usual. Globally manufacturing is changing not dying.

    http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/01/get_ready_for_the_new_era_of_g.html

    The problem for this country is that we have a business and political class that is still stuck in the extractive, exploitative ‘rape the commons’ model of manufacturing. And that mode of operation is definitely dying.

  5. NoseViper (The Nose knows) 5
    11 February 2013 at 11:33 am

    The man’s worse than a dung beetle – they have ecological worth, even vultures do. But people who incite and justify injury and death even when it is damage to a person’s living and earning rather than to the body, even though they are not physically participating in that damage, are I think called sociopaths.
    edit
    I see geoff has already named the type.

  6. RJLC 6
    11 February 2013 at 11:49 am

    Cutting the exchange rate will not bring jobs back quickly.

    Manufacturing is capital intensive; any upturn in jobs will take many years.

    In the meantime, those of us not engaged in the sector would be paying more for imported products such as petrol. Particularly distressing, the cost of upgrading my smartphone would rise.

    What can you say.

    • fenderviper 6.1
      11 February 2013 at 11:56 am

      The really dumb ones need a smartphone to take up the slack.

      • Colonial Viper 6.1.1
        11 February 2013 at 11:59 am

        He’s right though, rebuilding our manufacturing sector will take a generation.

        However some benefits will be immediate – a reduction in job losses right away, along with expansion of existing businesses within the first 12 months.

        • RedLogix 6.1.1.1
          11 February 2013 at 12:14 pm

          Any new manufacturing will be quite different to what we are used to. This article is interesting because it makes the point that the new generation of manufacturing employs a lot more people indirectly than is often realised … and that many of these jobs (typically in design, technology, marketing, sales, logistics and support) are quite well paid.

          • Colonial Viper 6.1.1.1.1
            11 February 2013 at 12:24 pm

            Interesting article thanks RL. I still have concerns that many of the indirect jobs created will be based in cheap component factories in Thailand, and (relatively) low wage software design houses in India, rather than right here in NZ.

            • RedLogix 6.1.1.1.1.1
              11 February 2013 at 12:31 pm

              Ah yes .. I agree. But that is a political problem that the business and political class in this country have mostly failed to grasp. There are exceptions (I could list a dozen or so off the top of my head) but unfortunately they aren’t generally supported by the business ecosystem here in this country … and they either fail to realise their potential or get sold to someone else who has the vision and means to realise it.

              Oh and this too.

  7. Tiresias 7
    11 February 2013 at 12:51 pm

    Smartphones can go hang – I’ve never found them particularly smart anyway. However a 10% fall in the va;ue of the NZ dollar would send the price of oil and petrol rocketting – and by more than 10% I’ll wager -which will have repercussions across the whole economy. Also a fall in the value of the dollar increases our National Debt – the private contibution to which already makes it scarily high in relation to GDP – which would impact the cost of borrowing both privately and by the Govt.

    This is the main reason the Govt. for all its crocodile tears about the high exchange rate wouldn’t do anything about it even if it could.

    An intelligent Government would be using the opportunities offered by the high dollar to make preparations to cushion the impact of its inevitable fall. Unfortunately we don’t have an intelligent Government.

    • Poission 7.1
      11 February 2013 at 1:12 pm

      The fuel assumption is not necessarily an adjunct to pump prices ,for instance in 2008 when international oil prices where at record levels (around 10% higher) the NZ dollar was 15% lower the pump (retail) prices were lower then today due to stealth taxes

      • Lightly 7.1.1
        11 February 2013 at 2:14 pm

        actually, the largest spike was in 2008 but prices have been consistently in recent years

        2008: USD$94 per barrel (Dubai crude)
        2012: USD$109 per barrel (Dubai crude)

    • Draco T Bastard 7.2
      11 February 2013 at 6:06 pm

      An intelligent government would be eliminating the OCR, dropping Kiwibank lending rates (business and private) to zero and printing money to both invest in our economy using our resources and to pay off the bonds that we’ve sold.

      The problem we’d have after that is most likely that we wouldn’t be able to maintain make work things like McDs as there just wouldn’t be enough workers.

  8. Saarbo 8
    11 February 2013 at 7:44 pm

    Very difficult to find a bean counter with a big picture view of the economy..they can be good at detail but generally a hopeless bunch(IMO). I’m surprised that he is allowed to be a liquidator after doing time. Surely he is not a member of ICANZ???

    • James Henderson 8.1
      11 February 2013 at 10:17 pm

      apparently there’s some issue that amendments to the law will, among other things, make people like him ineligible to practice – the whole doing time thing was revealed after he wrote columns opposing those amendments without revealing his conflict of interest.

      The Herald didn’t even know that they had a columnist writing about financial issues who had done time for financial fraud – and didn’t care when they found out.

  9. damien grant 9
    12 February 2013 at 1:55 pm

    This is excellent work. I love the picture. You guys are too kind.

    Really. You flatter me!

    “…even carrion birds ultimately need a healthy herd to scavenge off.”

    That is a clever line.

  10. swan 10
    13 February 2013 at 9:42 pm

    Hang on, a lower exchange rate is only good for manufacturers because it means lower real wages for New Zealand workers. But then people are now calling for higher wages.

    What do we want, lower wages or higher wages?

    • Colonial Viper 10.1
      13 February 2013 at 9:58 pm

      We definitely want lower wages, John Key said so, and English views it as a competitive advantage.

      Get with the programme please.