Posts by Rich of Observationz
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
The world cup final *will* be "inaccessible to the wider nation whatever happens.
I'm guessing that a million NZers will want to go, there'll be around 60,000 tickets on sale and half of those will go to international visitors. So only 3% of those wanting tickets will get one.
If the RFU wanted to help the game, it could auction half those tickets to the highest bidder and give the remainder to those who help with grassroots rugby. There are a bunch of other ways they could make money and help the game without criminalising ticket resale.
Incidentally, I used to watch polo a lot when I lived in the part of England where it's a popular game. My membership of Cowdray Park Polo Club, which got me into every game played there, cost around NZD200 a year - about the same as one Premiership soccer game. Cheap as chips really.
-
Plus: why is disrupting a rugby game for a few seconds a crime on a par with beating someone up?
And why should the owner of a building opposite Eden park not be able to advertise Tui on it? It's their building not the RFUs?
Seems to me that our laws are being dictated by the IRB.
-
I just wrote a big post about all thats wrong with the "Major Events Management Bill" but the system went "your webpage has expired" and ate it.
Basically, if a promoter doesn't take advantage of the last few dollars that can be made from an event and a third party steps in and grabs those dollars, why is that a matter for the criminal law?
Grocery stores buy food in bulk at a low price and sell it for a higher price. They don't participate in growing it. Food, unlike rugby tickets, is an essential of life. Should food retailing be criminalised?
-
James: the problem with your investment strategy is that if the price of BHP shares takes a temporary dip in May 09, you could wind up losing some/all of your investment. You don't have the ability to extend the term.
With a house, you can just wait until the price recovers, which it probably will long term. Because the bank won't foreclose on you, you have the ability to be technically "bankrupt" for an extended period without much effect on your real finances.
-
ASB will lend you up to 70% of the value of quite a range of shares. The rates are a little less favourable than mortgage, but it's still not too bad. ...A number of australian shares offer warrants, which are also quite attractive in terms of leverage, plus you don't have ongoing interest costs.
With no other security? - that's a bit brave, although I suppose if it's only blue chips. My US broker will only go to 50% I think, though I haven't pressed the point. The difference with a house though is that a bank/broker will usually make a margin call if the price falls (I assume ASB would do this). A house can be deep in negative equity and provided the "owner" keeps paying the interest the bank will do nothing about it. (Question: what happens when you refinance a 5 year fixed rate - do the bank want a new valuation or are they happy to just roll the loan over?)
Warrants aren't really the same thing. The loss is limited - if they expire worthless you lose your principal but no more. Also, if you plan to play derivatives you've basically got to factor in a large amount of your time to watch the market like a hawk. Plus, you need to trade a lot and as a small investor you'll get nailed on transaction costs.
-
Property is the only leveraged investment an average person can make (ok, there are managed investments that use leverage to boost yield, but they haven't worked well).
-
I rent. I'm happy that way. I can see that a lot of people, and me in the future, might want to be confident of staying in a place and to be able to faff around with the decor not to mention install *central heating* (a wonderful invention that is used overseas to keep ones house at a constant, comfortable temperature all through winter).
It would be good to be able to rent long term with a maintenance agreement (somewhat like the deal my firm has on the office). In other words unbundle the "somewhere to live" part from the "speculative investment" part. One idea would be to get back to the days when state housing was for ordinary people rather than just the underclass.
I did own a flat in London. I bought at the depths of the 90's slump and made a 50% capital gain in five years. On which I paid how much tax - a big fat zero! At the same time, the money I actually earnt through productive work got taxed at 50%. It's much the same in New Zealand. I have never seen an explanation of why this is a fair way to spread the tax burden.
I'm sort of convinced that the property bubble in NZ will burst and there'll be a buyers market again. There are some possible reasons why it might not. Part of that is that currencies are supposed to move towards purchasing power parity in the long term. The NZ dollar is way, way below this, which implies that any NZ assets are a good long term buy - even if other factors are pushing their value downwards.
There is also the way New Zealanders love buying houses and *are* willing to impoverish themselves to pay the mortgage. This both helps keep the boom going *and* reduces the spillover into the productive economy. If more people were reducing equity and upping their lifestyle with the proceeds then that would be more of an inflationary driver. -
WiFi: I was going to post some techy stuff about ERP and so forth, but this caught my eye and expressed it so much better:
The writer is probably aware of the paper, "Information can impair your health," IEEE Trans Ireproduc. Theory, Vol 44, No. 7 pp. 1576-1578, 2006, by Schmoozer and Schockemuller in which it is shown that Tom Cruise movies modulated onto the carrier frequency showed a marked deterioration of human tissue, much more so than say Jurassic Park. This has been attributed to the "long term memory" processes of Tom Cruise movies where scenes are correlated, due to Tom's inferior acting, with Hurst parameter, H>0.5 , and efficient modeling using Levy-stable processes.I personally feel that too much exposure to system architecture diagrams being transmitted around the office by WiFi can cause a non-specific feeling of malaise, but that might just be me..
-
radiological weapons
Not wanting to defend the yanks or anything, but I dispute that DU is in any way a "radiological weapon".
Generally, an effective weapon will cause death or immediate, acute injury such that your enemy is removed from the battlefield and becomes a casualty requiring treatment. Something that causes an ill defined set of symptoms that might only manifest when the war is over isn't really a weapon. (even if you believe that DU causes those symptoms, as opposed to them being psychosomatic or caused by something else that was around the area - I have seen no explanation why uranium miners who are exposed to pretty much the same stuff not getting "Gulf War Syndrome").
The purpose of a U235 projectile is basically to smash into an object you dislike and f..k it and any occupants up. They use U235 because it's heavy, not for any radiation effect. It's also in the wingtip (?) weights on aircraft and was formerly used in the keels of racing yachts before the IYRU banned it on grounds of cost.
Incidentally, NZ has a Phalanx gun for use on the Anzac frigates. I wonder whether this has the lead bullet option rather than DU and whether this has always been the case. (If I was onboard and an Exocet was headed for me I'd rather have the DU and take my chances with the "radiation").
-
Lets just assume that this isn't totally imaginary..
Why would the Russians want to gather up Saddam's collection of hopped-up V2s, unstable anthrax, leaky drums of home made organo-phosphates and insufficiently enriched uranium when they already have:
this
and
these
and
(allegedly) some of these