Search Results

  1. Is enough being done for Canterbury?

    Written By:  Marty G -  Date published: 10:30 am, December 13th, 2010 -  54 comments
    Categories: Economy, jobs
    Tags: ,

    I was in Christchurch this weekend for the second time since the quake. It felt like things are gradually getting worse. Compared to the pre-Christmas bustle in other cities, Christchurch CBD was a ghost-town. The public service’s emergency preparedness got us through the initial disaster – has enough been done since? What are your impressions?

  2. Hands-on National

    Written By:  Bunji -  Date published: 8:04 am, August 10th, 2013 -  19 comments
    Categories: business, national
    Tags: , ,

    It doesn’t suit the Labour Party narrative – and indeed it’s not their espoused philosophy – but every now and then National can’t help but be “hands on”. We’ve had the South Canterbury Finances in the past (won’t somebody think of the shareholders!), but this week was a real doozy for it, between Fonterra, Tiwai Point and Chorus.

  3. The biggest fraud

    Written By:  Zetetic -  Date published: 7:58 am, December 8th, 2011 -  99 comments
    Categories: capitalism, crime
    Tags: ,

    In its final days, South Canterbury Finance quietly loaned $300m to related-parties. Breach of the deposit guarantee scheme’s rules. Nats did nothing. When SCF collapsed the related parties got off scot-free – if they owned SCF bonds, the Nats even paid them $350m voluntarily. Now, the Serious Fraud Office has laid the biggest fraud charges in history over SCF. What’s the bet it’s over those related-party loans and bonds? And where’s our fucken money?

  4. Key SCF excuses fall flat

    Written By:  Guest post -  Date published: 1:00 pm, April 19th, 2011 -  10 comments
    Categories: business, john key, national
    Tags: , ,

    Michael Bott takes John Key to task for his claims over the South Canterbury Finance debacle. Key and English have tried to blame Labour for the deposit guarantee that covered SCF. But the truth is that National extended SCF’s coverage under the scheme again and again, despite knowing that SCF was in breach of the rules.

  5. SCF broke rules, kept deposit guarantee

    Written By:  r0b -  Date published: 1:00 pm, April 15th, 2011 -  26 comments
    Categories: accountability, business, john key
    Tags:

    Yesterday, under the cover of CERA, the government released hundreds of documents relating to South Canterbury Finance, it’s use and abuse of the deposit guarantee scheme, and the bailout. They show SCF broke the terms of its guarantee but National turned a blind eye. Someone needs to resign.

  6. Of train sets and stuffed companies

    Written By:  r0b -  Date published: 8:52 am, April 6th, 2011 -  29 comments
    Categories: accountability, bill english, business, john key
    Tags: , ,

    The saga of South Canterbury Finance just keeps getting worse and worse, with news yesterday that the taxpayers’ bill for the bailout rose by a further $300 million due to the costs of “insider loans”. Why are we spending $1.2 Billion (and climbing) on a stuffed company?

  7. Key: we were told SCF would fail

    Written By:  Eddie -  Date published: 2:45 pm, March 31st, 2011 -  72 comments
    Categories: accountability, business, john key
    Tags: ,

    In a raucous public meeting in Timaru last night, John Key said “The entire time I’ve been Prime Minister I’ve had Treasury in my office week after week, month after month telling me South Canterbury Finance was going bankrupt”. So, why did National sign SCF into the scheme and renew its deed three times?

  8. Christchurch earthquake & moral hazard

    Written By:  Marty G -  Date published: 12:00 am, September 9th, 2010 -  99 comments
    Categories: Economy
    Tags: , ,

    Fran O’Sullivan joins us in asking why the Government was so quick to completely bailout the South Canterbury Finance investors yet is so miserly with quake victims. The Right cries ‘moral hazard’ when it comes to helping out quake victims; we didn’t hear that over SCF. Fortunately, we can help those in need and avoid creating moral hazards.

  9. The silence of the lambs

    Written By:  Marty G -  Date published: 10:16 pm, September 4th, 2010 -  51 comments
    Categories: Economy, greens, labour
    Tags:

    Where are the Greens and Labour on the South Canterbury Finance issue? Just looking at the sheer politics of the situation, this is something they should be all over. There is enormous public anger at the way National was willing to magic up $1.7 billion of taxpayer cash for its rich mates while services are being cut. This should be the tipping point, when the Left seizes the public mood for its economic vision but where’s the leadership?

  10. SCF bail-out gets much, much murkier

    Written By:  Marty G -  Date published: 8:46 pm, September 2nd, 2010 -  14 comments
    Categories: capitalism, class war
    Tags: ,

    A few people have made a hell of a lot of money off the South Canterbury Finance collapse and bail-out. Are these the same people behind the mystery company that was created just three weeks ago and wants to buy SCF for $1.57 billion? Whether it’s been an organised plan or just lone sharks attracted by blood in the water, the result is the same: the rich win, we lose.

  11. Our $20 million bill for Nats’ expediency

    Written By:  Eddie -  Date published: 8:48 pm, September 1st, 2010 -  28 comments
    Categories: business, capitalism, class war, labour, national
    Tags: , ,

    Many argue English should never have extended the deposit guarantee to South Canterbury Finance in April, or question whether the terms of the guarantee called for the pay-out. Then there’s the stink around the payment of SCF bonds. One thing’s for sure, the Nats didn’t need to spend $20 million on foreign depositors – they did it to try to kill the issue faster. Plenty of meat for Labour. Will they bite?

  12. National’s ‘line calls’

    Written By:  Marty G -  Date published: 7:38 am, September 1st, 2010 -  76 comments
    Categories: Economy
    Tags: ,

    Serious questions are being asked why South Canterbury Finance was allowed to join the extended retail deposit guarantee scheme in April given that its financial problems were well-known and its credit rating was downgraded just weeks later. Bill English says it was a ‘line call’, one that’s just cost us at least $600 million. It’s not the first ‘line call’ English has stuffed up.

  13. Anything too big to fail should be publicly owned

    Written By:  Marty G -  Date published: 8:30 am, August 31st, 2010 -  96 comments
    Categories: business, capitalism, Economy
    Tags:

    South Canterbury Finance is on the brink of collapse. The plan appears to be for the government to purchase the bad loans from the company at twice their book value, giving SCF the cash it needs to get back on its feet. That’s a dumb idea. The owners of SCF have taken huge profits in the good times, they can’t be allowed to pass their losses on to the rest of us now and continue as if nothing happened.

  14. China and Real Estate Developers

    Written By:  advantage -  Date published: 9:14 am, October 10th, 2021 -  17 comments
    Categories: capitalism, China, Deep stuff, Economy
    Tags:

    Speaking of contagion, China is dealing with an outbreak of real estate market ebola.

  15. Unthinkable Things

    Written By:  advantage -  Date published: 8:41 am, July 22nd, 2020 -  29 comments
    Categories: australian politics, China, Deep stuff, Economy, economy, exports, Globalisation, International, jacinda ardern, labour, Politics, uncategorized, us politics
    Tags:

    With the government clearly watching the unravelling of Australia’s Covid-19 response and putting in place $14 billion in preparation for a second infection wave, we are clearly now in a history-in-making territory of the highest instability outside a world war.

  16. Fonterra failure and Government failure

    Written By:  advantage -  Date published: 7:38 am, August 19th, 2019 -  95 comments
    Categories: capitalism, Economy, farming, Free Trade, jacinda ardern, labour, nz first, Shane Jones, trade
    Tags:

    Fonterra is dragging New Zealand down, faster and faster.  What is this Government going to do?

  17. Regulating Bankers

    Written By:  advantage -  Date published: 8:16 am, June 25th, 2019 -  76 comments
    Categories: Economy, Financial markets, grant robertson, john key
    Tags:

    Grant Robertson gets occasional criticism from the left but it is hard to fault him for his timing or his delivery in seeking to strengthen banking sector oversight.

  18. They got bailed out and we got sold out

    Written By:  mickysavage -  Date published: 12:05 pm, September 15th, 2018 -  56 comments
    Categories: business, capitalism, class war, Economy, uk politics
    Tags:

    Ros Wynne Jones in the Daily Mirror excoriates the excesses of the Banking system and wonders why the rest of us tolerate bankers’ behaviour.

  19. It’s Time for a Cost-Benefit Analysis of Dairy Farming

    Written By:  advantage -  Date published: 7:42 am, May 29th, 2018 -  166 comments
    Categories: Conservation, Environment, exports, farming, farming, food, uncategorized
    Tags:

    Not just, ‘we’ve got to make the good outweigh the bad’. I mean: why should dairy farming exist here?

  20. Paid parental leave bill progresses – towards veto

    Written By:  Anthony R0bins -  Date published: 7:02 am, September 17th, 2015 -  30 comments
    Categories: babies, child welfare, families, national
    Tags: , ,

    Last night in Parliament Labour MP Sue Moroney’s bill extending paid parental leave to 26 weeks passed its first reading by one vote, with only National and ACT opposed.

  21. A Fair Deal for Christchurch

    Written By:  Bryan Gould -  Date published: 4:51 pm, March 1st, 2015 -  92 comments
    Categories: Economy
    Tags:

    The Christchurch earthquake was a catastrophe that was national in its impact and significance but that required the people of Christchurch to pay its terrible price. In the four years that have since elapsed, they have had to shoulder the burden of rebuilding shattered lives and a devastated environment. There has been no shortage of […]

  22. Couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery

    Written By:  Eddie -  Date published: 7:18 am, November 6th, 2013 -  99 comments
    Categories: capitalism, national, privatisation
    Tags:

    National was warned not to give the main ultrafast broadband contracts to Chorus. All it would do would restore and strengthen the monopoly that had kept internet prices too high (which Cunliffe has addressed). Of course, National ignored that. And now, once again, National finds itself in a corner, about to bailout out a large corporate that is using its market power to threaten its political agenda.

  23. This

    Written By:  Ben Clark -  Date published: 9:27 am, December 11th, 2012 -  54 comments
    Categories: poverty
    Tags:

    Child poverty is fixable, but National isn’t interested.

  24. Money Week: avoid getting ripped off

    Written By:  Guest post -  Date published: 2:35 pm, September 11th, 2012 -  23 comments
    Categories: business, Economy
    Tags:

    Since 2006, 66 New Zealand finance companies, funds and mortgage trusts have failed (closed, liquidation, receivership, moratorium, suspended). An estimated $3.5 billion has already been lost with another $8.6 billion still at risk.

    Guest poster Adele shows the need  for a week of events and activities to raise awareness about how people can better manage their money (if they have any) and get help to do so – Money Week.

  25. Legitimate calls for inquiries

    Written By:  Zetetic -  Date published: 7:07 am, July 4th, 2012 -  33 comments
    Categories: greens, national
    Tags:

    Key has dismissed calls for an inquiry into the Police’s actions in the Dotcom affair. He says that the Greens call for inquiries every week. In fact, they’ve called for 19 in the past year and a half. Is that too many? Well, the Auditor-General didn’t think so: she responded positively to the Greens’ call for a investigation into Key’s dodgy SkyCity deal.

  26. Retail Deposit Guarantee: When’s the enquiry?

    Written By:  Bunji -  Date published: 7:46 am, June 1st, 2012 -  14 comments
    Categories: bill english, economy, treasury
    Tags:

    Labour are pushing for an enquiry into how Treasury oversight of the Retail Deposit Guarantee Scheme was so poor that it has cost us hundreds of millions of dollars. Bill English can’t be allowed to hide this under the plus Treasury carpet, so his lack of oversight of Treasury isn’t shown up.

  27. Blinglish’s Treasury not so hot

    Written By:  Bunji -  Date published: 4:16 pm, March 29th, 2012 -  12 comments
    Categories: bill english, treasury
    Tags: ,

    Bill English and Treasury adopted a “see no evil, hear no evil” approach to the Retail Deposit Guarantee Scheme. And it’s cost us $2 billion. The Deputy Auditor General has delivered a damning report on a ministry used to judging others, not suffering any oversight itself…

  28. Nats fail own asset sales tests

    Written By:  James Henderson -  Date published: 6:29 am, November 14th, 2011 -  67 comments
    Categories: david cunliffe, election 2011, labour, national, privatisation
    Tags:

    Labour’s David Cunliffe put out a press release judging National’s proposed asset sales programme by the 5 tests that Key laid down in an effort to reassure us that sales would only go ahead if they made sense and were good for the country. Cunliffe’s analysis shows asset sales clearly fail the Nats’ own tests. The only reason to go ahead is blind ideology.

  29. Muddling through makes problems worse

    Written By:  Eddie -  Date published: 10:40 am, October 12th, 2011 -  8 comments
    Categories: business, debt / deficit, Economy
    Tags:

    We’re witnessing, once again, the results of a government whose disaster management is focused on keeping blame off itself, rather than acting. It bears remarkable resemblance to their approach to economic management. National didn’t cause the natural and economic disasters it faces but its handling of them has inevitably made them worse.

  30. Brownlee’s savage attack on Chch business owners

    Written By:  Eddie -  Date published: 12:05 pm, June 4th, 2011 -  83 comments
    Categories: disaster, Gerry Brownlee
    Tags:

    Christchurch business owners, unable to even get to their premises in the red-zone, have asked for some help to stop going under. Gerry Brownlee’s arrogant response: “If they are such clever, gifted, and forward-looking entrepreneurs it’s pretty sad that their first port of call has to be to Government looking for a bailout”. What an arsehole.

  31. Spending cuts I’d like to see – No 3

    Written By:  Guest post -  Date published: 10:30 am, April 27th, 2011 -  4 comments
    Categories: election 2011, transport
    Tags:

    Following two years of unsustainable tax cuts and economic mismanagement, National appears certain to rebalance the books with spending cuts. But what will they choose to cut? George.com asks: ‘how about the $4.2 billion in roading projects that will return, at best, just $3 billion of benefits?’

The server will be getting hardware changes this evening starting at 10pm NZDT.
The site will be off line for some hours.