Last Updated: Nov 19th, 2009 - 11:07:39 Newsletters : 2008 Newsletters : 14 March 2008 Thought for the Day Another week and more turmoil in the world money markets. The Fed rides to the rescue in America and the Kiwi superannuation fund loses nearly a billion dollars. I hope your financial hatches are well and truly battened. Our Prime Minister is in the NZ Listener this week as the "Sustainable PM". She has a cloth shopping bag, no waste master or dish washer and hangs her towels outside to dry. And so on and so forth. All very laudable on $5000 per week. I wonder if our old age pensioners are also "sustainable" on $200 per week. I see food has gone up 5.2% this year and electricity has about doubled since Helen came to power. I can just see a bunch of old age pensioners standing on the tarmac watching their retiring politicians fly off to a nice holiday in the sun before retiring on the Golden Poly Pension. I can see them now waving their knobbly fists in the air and shouting the latest curse, "Rich pricks". Mar 14, 2008, 10:32 Newsletters : 2008 Newsletters : 14 March 2008 Fed in a Desperate Race With The Spectre of Collapse All paper money based systems in the past have failed. Usually spectacularly and with disastrous results for the ordinary punter. Some journalists are starting to catch on. Just wait until the general public catches on. Mar 13, 2008, 12:04 Newsletters : 2008 Newsletters : 14 March 2008 Fed Begins Monetizing Everybody's Busted Mortgages There is no shortcut to wealth. Wealth must be earned and saved. Wealth cannot be borrowed. But when governments allow easy money to flood across the economy people do the obvious thing. They borrow and buy property. The problem comes when the easy paper money starts to fade away and the ordinary bloke is left holding a large mortgage on a house with a decreasing sale price. This has happened before and is predictable. In the US the problem is very large and is happening now. It will also get worse so we may have a long way to go. The foundation of economic growth is sound money. With every country in the world printing paper money and expanding their money supply by 10% to 15% we can see the problem clearly. This problem is self correcting and the correction seems to be happening now. Yet our economists still see New Zealand as having economic growth of 2% for the next two years and more in the future. Will we do well while the US goes down the tubes? Have a look at the latest efforts by the Fed and the Central Bankers. Will they succeed? Mar 13, 2008, 12:01 Newsletters : 2008 Newsletters : 14 March 2008 Sovereign Wealth Messiahs Sovereign Wealth Funds have come to the rescue of ailing western banks. Will they succeed? Are they a "good thing"? What are their intentions? Mar 12, 2008, 12:03 Newsletters : 2008 Newsletters : 14 March 2008 NZSF's Performance and Opportunities What about our very own Sovereign Wealth Fund - the Cullen Fund. The Cullen Fund declined by $859.7 million over the last seven months. Not much if you say it fast. The international money scene is in turmoil at the moment and we may be arriving as investors just at the time when it goes into melt-down. Very risky for a superannuation fund. Here is their most recent report. [ Visit Website ] Mar 11, 2008, 12:47 Newsletters : 2008 Newsletters : 14 March 2008 Rain, Rain, Go Away It is amazing how the price mechanism stops shortages from happening. This discussion has points for New Zealanders to consider as we too have droughts and floods. Feb 28, 2008, 15:40