Open mike 17/03/2025

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, March 17th, 2025 - 23 comments
Categories: open mike - Tags:


Open mike is your post.

For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.

The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).

Step up to the mike …

23 comments on “Open mike 17/03/2025 ”

  1. Tony Veitch 1
    17 March 2025 at 7:35 am

    Get prepared!

    Though, to be honest, I’m not sure quite how us bottom-feeders can prepare.

    A crash is coming. Quite how bad, time will tell, but Trump will quite deliberately tank the US economy, and by inference, the world economy.

    Why? Because the morbidly rich do well during market downturns.

    Thom Hartman explains: 8 mins long.

    Reply
    • Tony Veitch 1.1
      17 March 2025 at 7:46 am

      One thing I'd like to add to the above: Luxon may be as thick as pig shit at politics, but we should never doubt his ability to look out for the interests of Christopher Luxon.

      Did he sense a crash coming, and is that why he's sitting on close on a $1 million tax free in his bank account, so he can double, treble it during a downturn?

      Reply
      • lprent 1.1.1
        17 March 2025 at 8:15 am

        Typically big downturns are not nice to cash. Typically the inflation rates aren't stable, and interest rates are unpredictably all over the place. What you have coming out of a depression or deep recession or a period of sustained stagflation or any of the other variations of economic instability and lack of growth is a reduction in purchasing power of cash.

        What cash has in a big down turn is an ability to to be able to purchase distressed assets when they run out of operating capital. Cashing up in the advance of predictable downturn is a characteristic of vulture investors.

        vulture investors

        Reply
        • thinker 1.1.1.1
          17 March 2025 at 1:00 pm

          Inflation is not, as we are led to believe, increasing prices, but a reduced value of $1.

          So, while there is inflation of any kind, it's not kind to cash.

          But deflation is the converse, increasing the value of $1.

          That can happen when the invisible cash starts to disappear, like foreclosed mortgages or corporate bankruptcies. We measured it and the bank called it an asset but it never existed in such a way that you could kick it.

          But because we accounted for it as part of the total amount of dollars that add up to be the country's total wealth, when it disappears it enhances the value of the remaining cash.

          So: I have a $1 coin. The bank lent you $1 by way of mortgage. That's the total of the country's wealth, say. My $1 represents half of the countrys wealth. The bank forecloses on your mortgage and now my $1 represents all of the counhtrys wealth.

          There are always foreclosures and bankruptcies but as long as new lending exceeds them we have inflation. When they exceed new lending we get deflation.

          Coming back to Tony Vietches two comments, he is saying "what if you knew which way the mop was going to flop, and when, you could do well out of it"

          Reply
          • Tony Veitch 1.1.1.1.1
            17 March 2025 at 1:18 pm

            Hartman, more than suggests, the morbidly rich have done very well out of all the recessions/depressions of this and the last century.

            Are they (the m/rich) capable of engineering a crash in order to profit (and to hell with ordinary mortals), yes, I think sociopaths quite willing and able to do so.

            Yes, I know Musk (in particular) Bezos and Zuckerberg have lost billions since Donald J. was elected, but, in context, they've still got billions to spend when the market bottoms – and we only know about those three prominent morbidly rich.

            There are many others, hedge fund managers and people who've sold 3 properties tax free recently, with the cash to make a killing.

            Reply
            • thinker 1.1.1.1.1.1
              17 March 2025 at 5:13 pm

              In the Great Depression (Heaven forbid we go there again), manipulating the market wasn't illegal.

              'pump and dump' made many rich people richer, even without the Depression.

              But if you had got out of shares in the weeks before Oct 1929 you could have made a fortune when the market went up and another fortune when it went down again.

              Reply
      • SPC 1.1.2
        17 March 2025 at 8:32 am

        His limited ambition is more likely towards coastal/lake/riverside property – something appealing to a foreign investor looking to park their money in a nation with no CGT.

        But generally ministers operate under investment constraints.

        Reply
        • gsays 1.1.2.1
          17 March 2025 at 9:14 am

          "But generally ministers operate under investment constraints."

          Yep it's not as if they would change laws that suit themselves eg lower bright line test to 2 years then sell properties.

          You would have to be rich and sorted and entitled to do that sort of thing.

          Worthy of a knighthood in this country…

          Reply
    • Hunter Thompson II 1.2
      17 March 2025 at 10:10 am

      I haven't studied Trump closely but it seems he has a God complex. That means whatever the issue he must always be right.

      So even if he had sound economic and foreign policy advisers he would simply dismiss their comments out of hand and do his own thing.

      In his opinion he has a fantastic relationship with Putin and can easily do a deal to fix the Middle East conflict.

      Reply
      • Macro 1.2.1
        17 March 2025 at 10:26 am

        Pretty much it – to which I would add – He can change his mind* in an instant depending upon whom he is with at the time.

        * if "mind" is an appropriate term in his instance.

        Reply
      • Sanctuary 1.2.2
        17 March 2025 at 1:43 pm

        Vlad Vexlar has taken the trouble to inform us of Trump's narcissism.

        Reply
  2. SPC 2
    17 March 2025 at 8:44 am

    Unemployment is up 12% over the year

    It's 11,600 18-19 and over twice that for those 19-24.

    What I am wondering about is those under 18. The government has been failing more students (with a new co-requisite) and if they leave school under 18 without qualifications or employment – what are their numbers …?

    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/labour-slams-govt-as-jobseeker-numbers-rise-but-minister-says-increase-was-expected/B23OLIQPXJHE7LFSU5JD2MCDQY/

    Reply
    • AB 2.1
      17 March 2025 at 9:25 am

      Good wage suppression opportunities in all that. But gifting business with low wages will keep productivity in the basement.

      Reply
    • Descendant Of Smith 2.2
      17 March 2025 at 9:33 pm

      Older people continuing to work and get NZS are also denying young people opportunities for work. Is growing quite fast.

      Was one of the reasons the public service used to have a compulsory retirement age of 60 (back when you could get super at 60.)

      Reply
    • Incognito 2.3
      17 March 2025 at 9:43 pm

      Boston said New Zealand was moving into a period of “increased unpredictability and uncertainty”.

      “In that context, the capacity of the Government to influence things is going to be reduced because there are so many exogenous factors if not exogenous shocks affecting the global economy.”

      Boston hasn’t read the memo because NZ is stable and a safe heaven for overseas investors, the Coalition has said so.

      Reply
  3. Sanctuary 3
    17 March 2025 at 1:09 pm

    A black US Army Medal of Honour winner has had the page honouring him removed from the US DoD website and replaced with a 404 error.

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/16/defense-department-black-medal-of-honor-veteran

    Meanwhile, racist slaveowners and traitors who fought against the United States get bases (re)named after them:

    https://www.stripes.com/theaters/us/2025-01-16/army-bases-confederate-names-trump-16501423.html

    Trump isn't anti-DEI. This is all about erasing black and minorities from history in the name of white supremacy.

    Reply
  4. joe90 4
    17 March 2025 at 1:22 pm

    Cooked from the outset.

    .

    America's fatal division is nothing new: It was baked in from the beginning

    Liberals still haven't awakened from the dream of American unity — but the Puritans and their followers knew better

    […]

    The creation of the American republic was a valiant attempt at uniting the two sides, but the founders themselves were well aware of the gulf, and of how differently each saw the new nation. The philosophical descendants of the Puritans believed the call to freedom that was embedded in the founding was meant for white Christians. As it evolved in the 19th century, this ideology held that the country was a promised land, the “city upon a hill” that Puritan leader John Winthrop of Massachusetts spoke of. This America had a theological destiny – a manifest destiny, as it was termed in the 19th century by a pro-expansion, pro-slavery champion – “to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us.”

    The rival ideology, meanwhile, viewed the cry for freedom in the Declaration of Independence as only a first step. Over time, its adherents pushed for the abolition of slavery, for women’s suffrage, for civil rights for all, for same-sex marriage. As the left has ventured into new territory — trans rights, Black Lives Matter, land acknowledgments — the right has shifted in the other direction, embracing racist and “tradwife” tropes that no politician would have dreamed of employing a decade ago. Then, finally, a dam burst and, in the eyes of millions of latter-day Puritans, one man stepped forward who was brave enough to speak the truth.

    https://www.salon.com/2025/03/15/americas-fatal-division-is-nothing-new-it-was-baked-in-from-the-beginning/

    https://archive.li/5fmhQ

    Reply
    • SPC 4.1
      17 March 2025 at 2:50 pm

      From the Tea party to the gop Rump Congress.

      In 1789 they build a republic on the model of the defeated British, only men with property could vote and they would have the rule of law and their civil liberties. Because they had no Crown, they elected their head of state and others controlled legislation.

      The two political factions were Federalists, led by such as Hamilton with his banking monopoly in New York and the democrats, Burr – all American men should vote and women too. Via a water company, a duel and Tammany Hall (use of Indian names to suggest they were the ones of the American new world way) they won New York.

      Today the Federalist Society is winning the duel, via alliance with the Heritage Foundation. Libertarian and puritan. Behind an oligarchy order founded by their lord protector who seizes for them crown power to both reign and rule. Thus a Christian kingdom dominionism, what they called at the last Maunder Minimum, a false advent (new world order) cult.

      Cromwell was left sterile like a mule without a successor and so nothing came of it then.

      Reply
  5. adam 5
    17 March 2025 at 2:07 pm

    Inequality is killing us.

    That said, satire can be cathartic

    Reply
  6. Drowsy M. Kram 6
    17 March 2025 at 2:29 pm

    'Classic greenwashing': Gas company removes ad after complaints
    [17 March 2025]
    Gas company Clarus has removed an advertisement which said renewable gas was flowing in its pipelines after complaints about greenwashing.

    The advertisement, which appeared on Stuff and the New Zealand Herald, showed a photo of a family in a kitchen making pancakes above the text: "Renewable gas now flowing – Enjoy all the same benefits of gas with renewable gas."

    Thanks RNZ Climate Change Correspondent Eloise Gibson.

    Anyone know who might have an 'arms-length' stake in 'renewable' gas company Clarus?

    Reply
  7. Morrissey 7
    17 March 2025 at 5:22 pm

    Happy St. Patrick's Day to all Stanardisti!

    In the Emerald Isle, two courageous Irish women letting a terrorist know what they think of him…

    Reply

Leave a Comment