Hard News: Deadly Exuberance
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Usury for fun and profit. :)
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The Onion, its prescience: Mom-And-Pop Loan Sharks Being Driven Out By Big Credit-Card Companies (2001)
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This week's best thing ever
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Niall Ferguson's Vanity Fair story on the history of the credit explosion is a top read.
Russ, he has a series called The History of Money on Channel 4 here in the UK at the moment. It is very good and he is good. He makes the bond market look interesting which is no small feat. Grab it if you find it um, lying around in cyberspace or DVD.
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I got my first CSA share of the winter yesterday. It was full of sensible fall-harvest veges and long-store roots. All this talk of tomatoes and strawberries is cruel, cruel, cruel.
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Grab it if you find it um, lying around in cyberspace or DVD.
If TVNZ runs true to form, they've already acquired the rights -- will sit on it for a couple of years, and then drop-kick it to air at 11pm on Sundays or Saturday afternoon with zero publicity.
I don't fully buy that savers are losing out in any way at the moment. Savings have been the best class of investment for a good 6 months. If any time were proof of the value of savings, it is now. Interest rates dropping doesn't help them, sure, but at least their investments are still growing. Most other types have been contracting. So they are 'outperforming the market' hugely.
Ben: True enough, as far as it goes. But it's rather cold comfort when you've seen the margin that pays for some modest comforts vanish.
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OTOH, as a homeowner who will actually have to borrow money to extend the house soon, I'm starting to feel guilty about the windfall ..
I know a good builder.... one who cares :)
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I got my first CSA share of the winter yesterday.
What a lovely concept, good for you. I love the German name for it - Landwirtschaftsgemeinschaftshof. Rolls off the tongue and onto the floor.
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__Niall Ferguson's Vanity Fair story on the history of the credit explosion is a top read.__
Russ, he has a series called The History of Money on Channel 4 here in the UK at the moment. It is very good and he is good. He makes the bond market look interesting which is no small feat.
He did a big fat book a few years back called The Cash NExus on the bond market, finance and war. It's a good, if long, read.
Last year I read his 'War of the World - History's Age of Hatred' which is about the wars of the 20th Century. It is very good but awful.
He's a one man History Channel, without quite the same propensity to make World War II the subject of every second programme.
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Side Show Bob has thrown his toys down in Christchurch.
Shep.
That was enough for me to contact your council .A landlord knows their responsibilities. All happy to .have their flower show, stuff the residents eh. Sounds like bully tactics to me. -
It was the same when I did my time in retail. We'd always be really busy after a public holiday cos people couldn't wait to go shopping. Maybe it was more enjoyable than spending time with the in-laws, who knows?
Boxing day Sale was always the bitch :) We would suggest to customers on Christmas eve to get gift vouchers for pressies so they could get more bang for their buck on Boxing day. Most appropriate name, I thought.Home by 2am Xmas day after setting up sale, back at 7am Boxing day to start sale. Ahh Retail,I remember it well :)
P.S Probably why I don't hurry on posting anymore either.I am still on page 2 dammit -
nice to see the media finally getting their heads around the notion that not all of us have mortgages -- and for some (like my late grandmother) low interest rates are actually a damn bad thing.
Because it reduces the annual rate of return on her grave plot? I am confused. :)
Joking aside, though, all of this is making more and more obvious the elephant in the room that neither of the major political parties seems to want to talk about -- the amount of the New Zealand economy that's foreign-owned. How much of New Zealand's GDP gets repatriated each year as profit? To what extent is this the real underlying issue behind the current account deficit?
To my mind, New Zealand business has never matured and is still stuck in the colonial era. In 19th-century New Zealand novels, the stereotypical happy ending sees the main characters make their fortunes in the antipodes and return to the Mother Country. Now, it seems like anyone who grows a medium-size business looks to sell it -- often to an offshore buyer. There's no long-term vision -- just a grow-it-and-flog-it-off-overseas mentality. And the lack of a Monopolies Commission, currency controls, and sensible foreign ownership restrictions is just making it worse.
Now that we are where we are in the political cycle, there won't be any chance to fix this for a good number of years. Which simply makes me more angry that Labour chose to waste its 9 years in office on Clintonite triangulation and useless trophy legislation like the anti-smacking law.
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Ben: True enough, as far as it goes. But it's rather cold comfort when you've seen the margin that pays for some modest comforts vanish.
It would be colder comfort if you'd actually lost capital too, like everyone else. It's not savers I'm worried about at the moment, they are in a sweet position really, since they can pick their time to start buying bargains. It's the people who have lost their shirts that are the problem.
Now that we are where we are in the political cycle, there won't be any chance to fix this for a good number of years.
Caleb, now is exactly the time for a revision of all the things you lament were not done. I don't see anything about the 'political cycle' that makes it impossible, quite the opposite, it would receive bipartisan support. Only ACT would be opposed because they are nutcases or crooks or both.
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It's the people who have lost their shirts that are the problem.
I agree. If you're retired and rely on high return on fixed interest, it means you own your house and have a reasonable nest egg, plus there's always the bedrock of NZ super. And while the headline interests are plummeting, inflation is retreating too, and that should moderate the loss of real income.
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Because it reduces the annual rate of return on her grave plot? I am confused. :)
:(
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well inflation may be reducing in some global sense short term - but everyone's printing money at the moment like it's the end of the world - add to that that the NZ$ is diving (by about 30$ wrt the US$) so imported stuff is going to go up by about that much real soon now
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add to that that the NZ$ is diving (by about 30$ wrt the US$) so imported stuff is going to go up by about that much real soon now
True, but look at where petrol is and where food prices are compared to a few months ago, in spite of the diving dollar. A pensioner will probably get by without the latest imported iPhone, but cheap parsnips are a plus.
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And while the headline interests are plummeting, inflation is retreating too, and that should moderate the loss of real income.
If China slows more than expected and Governments then had to keep slashing interest rates and inflation continued to retreat you would end up with this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquidity_trap
I might be acting all negative but China seems awfully critical to all of this.
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always go MasterCard
Do explain..
In regards to disputes between a cardholder and a merchant, the card issuer can sometimes assist. This assistance is governed by the credit card scheme rules. (It's a very useful aspect of credit cards especially when buying online and even more so when buying from overseas sellers. It's not so easy to take legal action against the overseas company - it's not like you can take them to the disputes tribunal.)
In general, MasterCard's scheme rules favour the cardholder, giving them the benefit of the doubt and putting more onus on the merchant to make their case (did you scratch that rental car or was the damage already there, etc). Visa are the other way around (keep that in mind if you see a "This merchant prefers Visa" sign.)
Having said that, there may be other considerations. For example, it might pay to check whether the particular bank issuing the card charges the same 'currency conversion fee' for foreign currency transactions. I think some banks may still charge slightly more on MasterCard, but I'm sure not all do.
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Thanks, Steve. I had no idea they differed like that.
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Oh, and in the interests of disclosure, I work for a bank. But I don't work for MasterCard and honestly it makes no difference to me whether people use a Visa or a MasterCard. (In fact the bank I work for has a preferential relationship with Visa.)
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__So you're Golden, Giovanni.__
I've been waiting so long to hear you say that...
Maybe I'm channelling the Shins:
Totally unsolicited, the National Bank sent us a pre-approved form for a shiny new pair of Visa Platinum cards (motto: "the world is your concierge"). The copy, the font screaming "prestige!" and the accompanying pictures are all to die for. A gloved hand holds a door open for us:
" They'll want you to decide. Eventually it happens. Some gather on one side, with all their pearly's snapping. ...** 'Cause you're finally golden, boy.** It's like I'm perched on the handlebars of a blind man's bike. No straws to grab, just the rushing wind..."
I dunno. It's late. -
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Sorry, Craig. That was a bit obnoxious.
Caleb, now is exactly the time for a revision of all the things you lament were not done. I don't see anything about the 'political cycle' that makes it impossible, quite the opposite, it would receive bipartisan support.
I really hope so, for everyone's sakes. But a number of early indications about the new government don't suggest to me that there will be any movement away from the paralyzing orthodoxy of free trade and open borders. (Which is to say, of course, neocolonialism and the unilateral giving-away of New Zealand's economic sovereignty to whoever.) ACT's ministerial portfolios and disproportionate amount of policy influence, the scrapping of the R&D tax credit, and the 'reviewing' of the Buy NZ Made campaign in particular don't make me optimistic.
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This week's best thing ever ...
Mr Campbell, I came into the office well over an hour ago to complete a 15 minute task, had a look at PA before I got started. I still haven't got stared.
There goes productivity next week
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Agreed. That is a seriously cool game and will wate far too much of my time. Thank you
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