Hard News: Life Goes On
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I'm stunned that Obama is ahead in the polls. I am trying not to become complacent. It could still all go horribly wrong! Wrong I say!
There's always Diebold. Or voter disenfranchisement.
As usual, I'm boggling at the practices of American political parties and wondering how the hell they get away with it? Why haven't the people said "enough!" and stuck the lot of them in jail?
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Has anyone else seen this? A mistake surely?
Picking recent and ongoing campaigns in Nigeria, Russia, Austria, New Zealand, Taiwan and Zimbabwe, they remind that we're watching a Stepford Wives Tupperware gathering by comparison, with all the venom of virtually any congressional hearing ("I thank the gentle lady from Florida....").
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But anyhoo .... "The Cullen Fund isn't there to prop up our economy" Yes, but imagine what could have been. Imagine if the Super Fund owned Telecom, Rail, BNZ, Air NZ, V/42 Below, NavMan, and Watties. We might have decent broadband, electric trains, kiwibank, an airline that serviced all parts of NZ, an international beverage brand, and crops grown in NZ again.
I'm not so sure; that would require a management culture interested in investment rather than asset-stripping, and willing to sacrifice short-term gains for longer-term returns. And since the latter is actually illegal, we'd just end up being screwed over by our own pension fund, just like people overseas have been.
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overwhelmingly
Out of interest, how do you know?
On most of the company reports I have seen recently, small holdings account for the majority of the shares. Of the remainder most large holders are investment firms that are front ends for super schemes, nominee companies representing many investors, or insurance companies investing their float, etc. Is the stock market largely owned by rich people? I don't know how you could tell.
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Andrew: if you check their source - a list of "The World’s Ugliest Elections" in Foreign Policy - they think we're "dirty" because of... Googlebombing John Key?!?
That's a long way from telling your bodyguard to drag your opponent off the debating stage and shoot them (Russia), or whipping up Islamophobia (Austria).
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John, to be fair I don't think Key was talking about divesting - and I heard him say something about letting the fund Guardians decide how long to take to reach that 40% target - which makes a mockery of any short term benefits.
Are you sure Kyle? A few pages back I was pretty much told that Key was storming the building, selling the international shares at today's rock-bottom prices, and redirecting 40% of the fund to be spent on NZ shares, including all the dodgy ones, thereby sorting out his super-rich fat cat mates. Or am I just projecting?
But seriously, isn't it weird that 'we' are arguing over whether the State (through it's Super Fund) should be buying into the NZ sharemarket when it's the Nats who are saying 'Yea' and Labour saying 'Nay'??
Why haven't the people said "enough!" and stuck the lot of them in jail?
There's a lot of ppl pinning those hopes on an Obama Administration. But they will be disappointed because 'in the interests of national unity' he will do no such thing. Which is a shame because only then would America have had any chance of waking up. But perhaps I'm overly pessimistic. Maybe 'voting for the N***a' is a positive sign. Seriously.
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<blockquote> Idiot, why do you persist in this delusional belief that only rich people own shares?
Not "only", but certainly overwhelmingly.</blockquote>
Over 800,000 New Zealanders have KiwiSaver accounts - almost all of them will have a share-market component to them. And many employers in New Zealand have pre-existing retirement schemes that will also have large market investments. I'd guess the majority of adult working New Zealanders over the age of forty are invested in the share market.
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only rich people own shares?
If you look at the Household Savings Survey, half the population has negligible net worth (of any sort). 20% of the adult population owned shares, and these are concentrated amongst the richest.
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Andrew: if you check their source - a list of "The World’s Ugliest Elections" in Foreign Policy - they think we're "dirty" because of... Googlebombing John Key?!?
That might be the silliest thing I've read all year. And ...
National Party supporters retaliated, causing a search for “Labour-funded lackeys” to turn up a link to a pro-Labour newspaper.
No it doesn't. But the idea was mentioned once in this story by Colin Espiner. The author obviously thinks The Standard is a newspaper.
Indeed, it appears that Foreign Policy's expert researcher seems to have assessed New Zealand on the basis of two Espiner articles on Stuff.
The other is Minnows lash out at campaign launches, which provides both the Peters quotes and the supposed justification for this claim:
Third-party politicians, whose support is usually required to form a governing coalition, have been responsible for much of the campaign’s vitriol.
And this is a publication that trades on its authority.
Still, I'm sure Colin will be amused.
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I'm not so sure; that would require a management culture interested in investment rather than asset-stripping, and willing to sacrifice short-term gains for longer-term returns.
Yup. Most of my arguments are predated on a rosey view of 'what could be'. Unfortunately reality often proves to be the opposite.
FWIW - I don't believe in a free unregulated market because it just encourages 'rape' and pillage. I'm also old enough to remember the bad old days when the Govt owned Rail, NZ Post (Telecom), and MOW and nothing got done (it was the Unions fault, right?).
Try selling back to 40% after that
Yes, it'll be interesting to see what the Govt do with our 78% shareholding in Air NZ. If the govt tries selling that down the price will plummet (even more).
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Why haven't the people said "enough!" and stuck the lot of them in jail?
There's a lot of ppl pinning those hopes on an Obama Administration.
They're electing Obama, not Castro.
And throwing the capitalists in jail doesn't work, coz they eventually get released and return, zombie-like. Look at Russia.
You need to execute them. With spades.
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Rich: superannuation, life insurance and managed funds are all likely to have a substantial share component, just through intermediaries, that's all. That's also 2001 data. After the bull market we've just had in property and shares, things are likely to be quite different.
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But seriously, isn't it weird that 'we' are arguing over whether the State (through it's Super Fund) should be buying into the NZ sharemarket when it's the Nats who are saying 'Yea' and Labour saying 'Nay'??
John: Seriously, my weird-o-meter broke a while back. Sorry for sounding like a broken record, but this is not a good time to be a fiscal conservative who can tell (or at least care about) the difference between bullshit and chocolate-dipped manna from heaven.
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Stephen:
Out of interest, how do you know?
Standard power law distribution. I've been digging through statsNZ looking for some neat figures, but sadly can't find any yet. But here's some scary data: According to SOFIE wave 2 (2004), 716,000 kiwis (24.4% of the population) owned financial assets, with a median value among them of $5,200 (spreadsheets here). But we know from RBNZ data (XLS) that NZers owned at least $44 billion in financial assets in 2004. That value combined with such a low median suggests we have a very uneven distribution of financial wealth.
Unfortunately, they don't have a convenient breakdown of asset ownership by oncome class (and if they did, they'd do it by quintile rather than a more detailed distribution). but the information clearly exists; it was collected, and it has been used in their report on the distribution of household wealth. The latter has some truly scary statistics, BTW: the top 25,000 families (2.5% of the population) collectively own about an eighth of NZ's net worth. And that masks the real story - that its lumping together the long tail of the power distribution.
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Are you sure Kyle?
That's not me you're quoting. So I'm probably not sure :)
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Danyl: KiwiSaver will certainly be changing this dismal picture, though it won't all be going into stocks (KiwiSaver providers will run a mixed portfolio). But while it will broaden indirect owneship, its not going to change the overall picture for a long time yet.
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Out of interest, how do you know?
I don't know about overwhelmingly rich people, but it's not rocket science to say that shares will be much more likely to be owned by people who are richer than those who don't own shares.
Government intervention to prop up or boost or anything that leads to general increases in share prices is certainly likely to help richer people, and not so likely to help poorer people.
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Oh, and they're doing another waveof SOFIE at the moment (you may remember the whining in the news over the last few days), though I don't know whether it includes the asset questions or not. But we should be getting newer data sometime in the next few years.
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but it's not rocket science to say that shares will be much more likely to be owned by people who are richer than those who don't own shares.
Thinking of my brother in law specifically, that statement was true a few months ago, but no longer.
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Yes, I saw that 'dirty elections' piece linked from Kiwiblog.
Am I an idiot for being disappointed that, rather than say "this is absurd, false, and insulting to my country to be lumped in with Zimbabwe and Nigeria", he used it as an excuse to say "Liarbore is teh evil and even the nasty liberals in the US think so!!!!"?
I mean, I know he's a Nat, but false is false, and I don't think its in anyone's interest to have NZ's electoral integrity smeared.
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Thinking of my brother in law specifically, that statement was true a few months ago, but no longer.
Yeah, there will be lots of exceptions. As was pointed out, a bunch of people working minimum wage will have signed up to kiwisaver and will therefore probably own some shares. Possibly even three or four.
But in terms of amount of money on average invested in the stock market, there's a curve that goes up on average as incomes go up.
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I retaliated by warning him not to go hiking alone in the bush in NZ, since lack of mammalian competition had led to rats growing to enormous size to fill the niche normally occupied by foxes and the like, and these enormous "bush rats" were known to attack lone trampers in packs.
Hmmm... 50% of Americans would see through that story. Changing size in response to environmental factors smacks of evolution. Surely NZ rats, like US rats, are sized in accordance with God's plan, independent of the presence or absence of foxes.
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ha!
When you're that funny on your first post Mr Webber, you're a welcome addition to PAS.
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OK, but getting back to my original complaint: there is a difference between a) the majority of shares being owned by rich people (probably true), and b) the majority of share owners being rich people (which I doubt). If your policy aim is to put the boot into the rich, the scale of collateral damage is vastly different depending on whether b is true or not. Most of the evidence proffered in this thread addresses a, not b.
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Hmmm... 50% of Americans would see through that story. Changing size in response to environmental factors smacks of evolution. Surely NZ rats, like US rats, are sized in accordance with God's plan, independent of the presence or absence of foxes.
Ah, but wouldn't a wise God design bigger rats for more spacious countries?
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