The smiling assassin

21 comments on “The smiling assassin ”

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1. felix 1

   10 April 2011 at 1:32 pm

   Cool music Trillion, nice work.
2. Irascible 2

   10 April 2011 at 1:45 pm

   Lewis Carroll’s Humpty-Dumpty politician demonstrating that words don’t mean anything except what Key wants them to mean at different times.
   A great expose of suspect and shonkey dealings.
3. felix 3

   10 April 2011 at 1:54 pm

   Download the song here: http://trillion.bandcamp.com/track/the-smiling-assassin-donation
4. todd 4

   10 April 2011 at 2:02 pm

   Makes me wonder who actually owns AMI?
   • ghostwhowalksnz 4.1

     10 April 2011 at 6:17 pm

     Its a Mutual, owned by the policyholders,  which would normally allow cheaper premiums as there is no need  for  profits.
     but  it could be a forced sale to  private owners now that  Key and English have stepped in
   • Tanz 4.2

     10 April 2011 at 6:50 pm

     The policyholders.
   • Marty G 4.3

     10 April 2011 at 9:39 pm

     the problem with AMI was is cheap-skated on re-insurance so it could undercut the other insurers on premiums. now, we’re bailing out the people that benefited from that.
     But no insurance company should be allowed to operate with so little reinsurance in the first place.
     I don’t think it’s a problem with the mutual model.
     • joe bloggs 4.3.1

       11 April 2011 at 12:23 pm

       hogwash Marty
       There’s no bail-out yet – simply a government guarantee of cover for the exceptional level of claims from the Chch earthquake should the total claims exceed the funds that AMI already has on hand.
       AMI is reinsured for more than the best industry practices require – in other words they operate to a higher standard than best industry practices require.

       Suggestions that AMI was under-insured have been promulgated by their competitors – Australian-owned Vero in particular has been fast to criticise, but has no evidence to support their claims.

       You’ve been well and truly sucked in by a shabby competitor’s cheap shots.
       • Colonial Viper 4.3.1.1

         11 April 2011 at 12:26 pm

         Suggestions that AMI was under-insured have been promulgated by their competitors – Australian-owned Vero in particular has been fast to criticise, but has no evidence to support their claims.

         The evidence is pretty obvious mate, AMI is so weak it that it needs a Government guarantee, Vero doesn’t.
          
         Backing another one of this Government’s dodgy private sector bailouts, what has this “Conservative” Government turned into.
5. Rex Widerstrom 5

   10 April 2011 at 3:15 pm

   Great to see some real creativity brought to bear on NZ politics… we need our own Rage Against, looks like trillion has stepped up. Well done.

   My favourite lyric – the bit about people not noticing because they were too busy watching sport. How very, very true.
6. browncoal brownlee 6

   10 April 2011 at 5:42 pm

   Awesome stuff. NZ needs a lot more of this kind of creative music.
7. travellerev 7

   10 April 2011 at 7:14 pm

   Anybody know who made the first video and which mining company Key owned shares in and which uranium mines were involved?
    
   • Marty G 7.1

     10 April 2011 at 9:44 pm

     Jackson mining is the company.
   • felix 7.2

     11 April 2011 at 7:18 am

     Hi Ev, as far as I know Trillion made both the videos and the music. http://www.trillion.co.nz
     • travellerev 7.2.1

       11 April 2011 at 7:52 am

       Hi Felix,
       I put the song on my blog several days ago when I got the link from Vinny Eastwood. Good alternative internet news show.

       Did you stop with the market?

       Hi Marty
       Thanks for that. How can I get more info about what’s in his portfolio (Is the Whitehall one still public)?
        
8. Puddleglum 8

   10 April 2011 at 10:17 pm

   I had a friend in the early nineties who went into money-trading. After the first year they were told by their boss, very explicitly, “Now that your clients trust you, you can really earn the bank some money.” They were told that their job, from then on, was to use that trust to push deals that made the bank – rather than the client – the most money. Basically, ‘gain trust, then exploit it’.

   It’s unnerving having a PM who flourished in that environment and – from the video – clearly enjoyed the game. In that strange topsy-turvy world, having the convincing appearance of trustworthiness but a ready willingness to exploit trust is the Royal Road to Success.

   It’s particularly unnerving that the electorate now appears to trust Key, no questions asked. Not very wise.
   • Jim Nald 8.1

     10 April 2011 at 10:30 pm

     Don’t ask questions, trust Key – that’s whackey!
     🙂
   • Bored 8.2

     11 April 2011 at 6:47 am

     As obnoxious as it is Key and his aspirational antics reflect the zeitgeist of NZ as it is today, the desire for wealth at anybody elses expense, the suspension of moral obligations to your fellow citizen in favour of a couple of renters and a big black Merc. We ignore the obvious dishonesty because we all want what he has got, we dont ask the questions about the casino nature of merchant banking that got this man his easy bucks. Nor his selective memory of dubious transactions. He is us, 2010 style.
      
     The next decade will tell a different story. Cassandras song will become the refrain. NZers are in for a shock when they see how far this lizard and his reptilian mates have sold them off. He had better hope the Parnell security compound is safe…or is will it be off to Hawaii and feck all you NZers?
   • vto 8.3

     11 April 2011 at 7:24 am

     If you watch his eyes closely, especially in the tranzrail share ownership interview, you can see he is not being honest. Each of his eyes is dong different things..

     He is not someone to trust.
   • ChrisH 8.4

     11 April 2011 at 8:23 am

     Gee that’s astute Puddleglum, explains a lot.
9. Jenny 9

   11 April 2011 at 9:47 pm

   No wonder he is smiling.

   Talk about smug.

   John Key has admitted that the finance sector needs to be regulated and that, “people should not have been allowed to do the things they did.”

   What an admission from a man who made a fortune on speculative currency trading.

   However he is not about to give any of it back.

   Now speaking as leader of the country John Key says,

   “So the only lessons we can learn is how we protect ourselves in the future. We can go and look in the past but that’s not gonna save us.”

   What John is warning us is, we need to learn to protect ourselves from people like himself.

   Petra Bagust interviews John Key

   Petra Bagust: So we understand that you had to be there for the people of Christchurch, but it potentially creates this moral hazard where people can take bigger risks because they realise if a company is too big to fail then the government will step in and look after us, or bail us out?

   John Key: Yes you wouldn’t want to rely on that as a strategy if you were in business, but what it does show you in the finance sector, when you become a large company then you actually do end up tying governments in to a certain degree. Now that’s the moral hazard. So from our point of view the answer here is to have proper regulation and supervision of that sector, whether it’s finance companies, insurance companies or banks. Now the insurance sector five years ago, they started working on new laws to supervise them properly. We passed them last year, quite frankly too late. The finance companies were exactly the same, and we can all talk about you know the bailout of them, that I’ve gotta add was brought in by a Labour government. So just before everyone gets a little too excited about that, but the bottom line was that whole sector was extremely badly regulated, people shouldn’t have been allowed to do the things they did. So the only lessons we can lean is how we protect ourselves in the future. We can go and look in the past but that’s not gonna save us. 

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