Will New Zealanders ever save enough? The recent call by the Governor of the Reserve Bank for people to save more and stop piling up debt should send a shiver down the spine of all business folk and those in paid employment.
The internationally renowned author on economic matters, the American, Ellen Brown recently explained to a London audience that with money withdrawn from the market, economic society went into depression. No money means depression.
So saving money means not spending and not spending sends your local dairy into worry land.
It's all right trying to stop an increase in debt, but it is impossible to pay it off- it can't be done. Unless you change the system, which Messrs Key and Goff will not even contemplate, there is no way that there will ever be enough money in the system now and in the future to pay off debt- most of which is due to foreign bankers.
With today's crackpot financial system, saving - a meritorious objective in itself - for the future is a dubious endeavour. Ten trillion US dollars disappeared from the money markets in a flash only a few months back. Were some of your savings among them?
Have NZ Pension funds been threatened yet again?
How many Kiwisaver accounts have been adversely affected by BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? Let's not forget the Cullen Fund too.
With the BP oil well out of control for weeks with massive financial costs to those affected by the pollution, few seem to think of the grief and loss incurred by relatives and friends of the 11 people killed in the blast at the oil rig.
Much of the news media concern in Britain has been about the loss of value in BP shares and the potential loss of dividend payments. The oil giant is Britain's biggest payer of share dividends accounting for £1 in every £6 going to pension funds. With BP owned 60% by non British shareholders, how many Kiwisaver accounts have BP shares in their portfolios? Has the Cullen Fund sustained another loss?
This shows again the ill judged practice of having pension funds gamble in the stock market to produce money for their pensioners. As for people saving for pensions in such risky ventures, the old song wish me luck as you wave me goodbye comes readily to mind.
Thought you lived in a representative democracy? Think again.
That was the eye grabbing heading in an advertisement placed by the British Electoral Reform Society in seeking a Chief Executive with an annual salary of $140,000.
The advert said The mission of the Electoral Reform Society is to secure a truly representative electoral system through the use of single transferable voting.
For the salary you will need to be a strategic and visionary leader.
Well, that rules out Messrs Key and Goff then.
British manufacturing - joining the dodo and the moa?
When it is easier to earn, or rather get, much more money by buying and selling money, why bother to work -at producing something tangible like real wealth.
Will Butler-Adams, 36, is in charge of a successful company making possibly the best folding bike in the world and sales continue to rise with exports to 33 countries. As an engineer, he said in a Sunday Times report [6-6-10], When I was at school, the cleverest didn't do engineering at university and of the ones who did study engineering, the cleverest ones went on to do other things such as become consultants or bankers. We have so much fun as engineers. We're actually creating something.
The reporter commented:-the conventional wisdom is brutally simple: British manufacturing is virtually extinct.
Dave-you know the problem. Why don't you apply the solution?
Prime Minister David Cameron of the British coalition government has been softening up the people for a massive attack upon their lives in order to balance the books and please the markets and bank controlled ratings agencies.
In the Sunday Times [6-6-10] he said the problem of the deficit and the mounting debt is huge. The simple matter is that the more we borrow the more we have to pay back; the more we borrow the more the danger is that interest rates get pushed up; and the more we borrow, the more debt interest goes up. If we don't do anything about it, it is going to be £50-£60-£70 billion. We will be spending more on debt interest than on educating our children and defending our country.
All these problems and the people's sufferings need never have happened had the British government borrowed their monetary requirements from their own bank, the Bank of England, at a nil interest rate instead of borrowing from private banks at high interest rates.
If someone were seeking a mortgage to buy a home, would they borrow from someone lending at 5% or more when they could get the mortgage at 1% or less?
Carbon trading and the banks - a finger in every pie
The American financier bank JPMorgan recently bought for $263 million Eco Securities, a developer of projects that earn carbon credits.
Under the scheme, approved by the United Nations, environmentally friendly companies can earn credits which can then be sold, in the market, to companies needing permits to pollute.
Barclays Capital was to buy a Swedish company certifying renewable energy projects around the world to create credits for sale. They were planning to pay $216 million.
As the Sunday Times reported [6-6-10] This is a further sign that the carbon trading market is moving into the hands of banks.
- contributed by Colin J Whitmill, DSC's UK correspondent