Posts by Paul Litterick
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I remember listening to a BBC podcast, oh, six months ago now, talking about the subprime crisis.
I heard the same broadcast (National Radio: sounds like us) and I was struck by the phenomenon of people walking - simply leaving the property and the mortgage behind. It goes against every value that middle-class people are supposed to hold about property.
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As Gareth Morgan (who I don't often agree with) said on MR today...
After his piece (which was really good) Morning Report had an item about pet bereavement counselling. Some people obviously still have more money than sense.
So when people say things like "this would be hilarious if it wasn’t so effing serious" they should bear in mind that seriousness has not been at a premium in the twenty-five years. Our global economy is essentially trivial.
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Well, the Fed is about to start raising its own debt ...
And when John Key gets to be Prime Minister, he is going to borrow money to finance tax cuts...
...or maybe that plan has been shelved in view of the current crisis.
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Too right. Key is runinng on the self-made man myth, let's have a little conversation about what a currency trader does and how he makes his money, and whether you'd want to put him in charge of a country.
From the Big Book of Career Opportunities: a currency trader gambles with his employer's money, buying and selling foreign currency. If he gets it right, his employer makes a big profit and they give him a very big bonus for Christmas. If he gets it wrong, his employer goes down the gurgler.
It is simple, really, and pretty much the same as borrowing to fund tax cuts.
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As Dean Barker puts it: "The first target for reform should be the outrageous salaries drawn by the top executives at financial firms. The crew that lost tens of billions at Citigroup, Merrill Lynch and the rest have received tens of millions, possibly even hundreds of millions, in compensation for their "work" over the last few years."
Fixt: these people probably no longer have jobs, as of yesterday.
Surely, the first target for reform should be the stock exchanges which allow these bizarre derivatives to be created. People like John Key got very rich because they gambled with their employers' money in a fantasy world of their creating. It was all fine while everybody believed the fantasy but now the... [insert Wizard of Oz reference here]
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There's also stuff to be said about the culture in and around Ruatoki, especially surrounding gun ownership, none of which I am culturally qualified to really comment upon, but I suspect an understanding of the people of Tuhoe probably explains a lot of it.
At least two of the gunslingers were a long, long way from Ruatoki, both culturally and geographically.
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Do you want to securitise those scones?
I plan to use them as collateral in a leveraged buy out of French pastries, as soon as the Bourse collapses. As they say, no pain, no gain.
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the collapse of Lehman has just made credit that much harder to get - and therefore more expensive - for our baking system.
So the price of bread goes up too? Will no-one think of the children?
I am putting my money into scones.
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next, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.
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I, too, am a Brit, although I always prefer to think of myself as a European. The xenophobia of our compatriots is one of the reasons I came here and stay here.