Last Updated: Oct 22nd, 2010 - 15:35:08 Newsletters : 2009 Newsletters : 27 March 2009 Thought for the Day The Kiwi Cycle Path. Tariana Turia is the only politician I have heard on public record say that people should not expect to get paid by the government for doing nothing. Last year before the election on national TV she advocated "Work for the Dole". So, we get the unemployed to build our new cycle path around New Zealand. After the broad plan is developed over just where the path is to go, we ask the local mayors to be involved in employing (for the minimum wage) any unemployed to work on the new tourist attraction. Each week after pay day the council will be reimbursed by the IRD. We could then have a competition to see which city or town can produce the best path! This philosophy could be extended to planting avenues of trees in the grass verges of roads leading to and from towns and cities. Councils already have a section that deals with parks and reserves so this could be easily extended to growing more trees and planting specimens alongside tourist roads. In twenty years' time we will have beautiful avenues of trees lining all roads out of our towns. If we had started in the last down-turn in 1991 we would have those avenues right now!! Again the councils pay the minimum wage for the work and are reimbursed by the IRD. Meanwhile, Social welfare closes down its section for the unemployed since anyone can get one of these tourist growth jobs at the local council. The wonderful result is that we become the first nation to have no-one on the dole!! Just like back in the fifties and sixties. And we save a lot of cash by reducing the size of the social welfare bureaucracy. With no unemployed to worry about the Social welfare costs should reduce by about 25%! Thus we save a few billion welfare dollars and end up with a tourist paradise. Of course, since the young layabouts who are currently preying on our hapless tourists will be in steady full time employment, they will have no spare time to be a nuisance. Not only are we producing a tourist paradise we are solving our crime problem as well. All at no cost! The big problem is - how do we persuade the bureaucrats at Welfare to leave their cushy jobs and become useful to our tourist trade by planting trees and building a cycle track? Mar 24, 2009, 18:15 Newsletters : 2009 Newsletters : 27 March 2009 A New World Currency Draws Nearer After Geithner's Slip The Chinese might sound very mild and mannerly in their communications but they haven't been running the biggest nation on this Earth for 6000 years without learning a thing or two. How will America respond? Looks like fun times for international politics. Mar 27, 2009, 12:12 Newsletters : 2009 Newsletters : 27 March 2009 The Threat of Hyper-Depression Not all people think that President Obama is doing the right thing by borrowing trillions of dollars and boosting the money supply. He does look rather set on the direction that Japan marked out nearly two decades ago. Standard economists didn't predict this current recession (depression?) that is sweeping the world. Why do we think they can predict the next phase? Mar 27, 2009, 11:58 Newsletters : 2009 Newsletters : 27 March 2009 Special Drawing Rights As the USA devalues its dollars and puts China's reserves in jeopardy so China is responding by suggesting that the world start using Special Drawing Rights (SDR) as the reserve currency instead of the now flaky US Dollar. These SDRs were originally connected to gold but have since been shifted to be based on a basket of currencies. This financial guarantee and support system is starting to look a bit circular to me. Every nation's paper money is supported by SDRs and the SDRS are supported by the currencies of the major nations. It all makes me wonder just how much gold the IMF really has stored away. Where is it stored? Is it ever audited? Could it have been "loaned" out? The IMF is proposing to sell a few hundred tons this year. maybe more information will be available then. Meanwhile if you want to know what these SDRs are here is the write-up from the IMF: [ Visit Website ] Mar 27, 2009, 11:21 Newsletters : 2009 Newsletters : 27 March 2009 Alarm as UK Treasury Bond Auction Fails The news from the UK is not good. The big Western economies are going broke (if they are not broke already) and are borrowing Trillions. Future generations of taxpayers will pay the interest on these loans - current taxpayers are short of the readies! No-one will ever pay the loans back. The loans will continue to grow as the bankers do their best to quietly inflate their debts away. Is this the way that all empires go? Mar 26, 2009, 15:52 Newsletters : 2009 Newsletters : 27 March 2009 IMF Urged to Flood World With Global Super-Currency You can't be serious! Can the leaders of our free world really be proposing to issue new paper money through the IMF? Will this money be backed by IMF gold reserves? Where are these gold reserves anyway? Have they been audited recently? Perhaps they have been "leased" out! Will global money give politicians more global power? Remember that the United Nations has been proposing a universal world tax on money exchanges. We are getting into really dangerous territory here. Mar 26, 2009, 10:57 Newsletters : 2009 Newsletters : 27 March 2009 Falling Dollar Prompts BRIC Nations to Rethink Dollar Politicians are doing everything possible to hold onto their paper currencies. This helps to retain their power over their economies. How long can they continue? Mar 25, 2009, 10:07 Newsletters : 2009 Newsletters : 27 March 2009 Bugs Ttriumphant About Gold, Terrified About U.S. What if the vast masses of the Earth decide that paper money is too flaky and they rush back to gold and silver? At some stage it will happen. Is this post boom period the time? Mar 24, 2009, 16:57 Newsletters : 2009 Newsletters : 27 March 2009 China Expresses Cautious Faith in Treasuries, Dollar Interesting how much the usually reticent Chinese officials are talking about money and reassuring the world that there will be no change. This is what countries used to do back in the old fixed exchange rate days immediately before devaluing! Mar 24, 2009, 16:51 Newsletters : 2009 Newsletters : 27 March 2009 Chinese Central Banker Sketches Plan For New Reserve Currency China is starting to get a bit nervous about America's ability to control its own economy. The only way for America to solve its problem is to devalue the dollar and so reduce its debts to manageable proportions. But still they avoid talking about a gold standard - the only thing that would allow the market to determine the real interest rate for money rather than having the Central Bank continually jiggle it up and down a bit and never getting it right. More pressure on Obama. Mar 24, 2009, 16:39 Newsletters : 2009 Newsletters : 27 March 2009 How The Markets Really Work (From 2007) Again and again we hear politicians, financial reporters and bank CEOs claim: "We didn't see it coming." If that's so, how come these two British comedians saw it coming way back in the summer of 2007? [ Visit Website ] Mar 24, 2009, 12:34 Newsletters : 2009 Newsletters : 27 March 2009 How To Save The World With his tongue firmly in his cheek Bill explains how to save the world and points out the absurdities under which our current crop of bankers, politicians and economists labour. Mar 18, 2009, 13:53 Newsletters : 2009 Newsletters : 27 March 2009 Ten Lessons for the Recession Sir Roger turned the economy around in the eighties. He must know a thing or two. Mar 17, 2009, 10:29 Newsletters : 2009 Newsletters : 27 March 2009 Quote for the Week Dr Peiser is predicting that the cost of Europe’s energy policy is giving rise to a political backlash in many European countries and that: “Above all, Europe’s politicians have recognized that climate taxes have turned to political liabilities that may undermine economic stability and their chances of re-election”. Jan 18, 2009, 12:48