Posts by Gareth Ward
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'eliminate our dependence on foreign oil'
What I particularly love about this line is how it's trotted out as a solution to oil prices, as if good ol US oil comes out easier and cheaper than Russian. And is not sold on an international market.
It's a possibly valid line from a national security POV but that's not really the issue at the moment. -
"Did Hitler use P?"
I burst out laughing at what I thought was a very good Python-esque joke-title.
Then realised that actually WAS the cover line.
And laughed some more... -
One factor which will be having some sway, although it's hard to say how much: to general shock and amazement, Peters has been a reasonably good foreign affairs minister,
Indeed and I feel a little (very little) sorry for the guy - I think if we looked a bit closer into the funding arrangements of many of the other parties we would find similar murky arrangements. But his handling of that has been appalling in terms of respect for the constituency he obstensibly serves...
And points to Mr Key for efficiency - where Winston was taking cheques from people with a vested interest in his area of responsiblity, at least John cut out the middle man and just became one of those people himself </tongue-in-cheek>
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I could have stomached Helen sticking with the "bunch of allegations over a number of areas and being run by multiple agencies - I'm going to stand the Minister down until those agencies have all reported" etc etc.
Instead they went off on an out-and-out defence of him and made accusations when they didn't like the outcome. -
Labour's tainted by association, not by deed
Not to me - they're associated by deed now in terms of their actions in the Priviledges Committee and the House. I thought it was all well played by Labour up until those points....
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He is denuded of his moral high-ground
While his moral "high" ground is absolutely rather low, it still strikes me as being relatively higher than Labour's after the last couple of weeks.
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Lyndon, this was Russell Norman's explanation of the debt/gift piece to Gordon Campbell after the report was released:
Norman : It was in relation to a gift, actually. One of the points that had to be resolved was whether a gift had in fact occurred. Because one of the [Brian Henry and Winston Peters’] arguments was that there was no gift - because Brian Henry never enforced the debt. So the committee agreed that there was no debt, but that nonetheless the gift to Mr Henry was of benefit to Mr Peters. Because it was a benefit in terms of ongoing access to legal services that he was able to gain – and in particular, the benefit he would gain if he won the Tauranga electoral petition. Which was a largely political [benefit], but still real.
Campbell : And besides, even if one accepted in this case that an agent [Henry] had solicited the gift and discharged the debt, wouldn’t their capacity to do so come down, at the end of the day, to a belief by the donor that they were acting on behalf of Peters ?
Norman : That’s one element. There’s also the element that there has to be benefit to the politician.
Campbell : You mean, as aside from the benefit to the party ? Because as you know, Peters’ argument was that he was only the nominal head of the Tauranga petition. He was merely the guy whose name was on the paper and therefore -
Norman : Yes. [laughs] The ‘titular head’ was the term used.
Campbell : Therefore, the argument goes, New Zealand First was the true beneficiary, as reflected in Owen Glenn’s own confusion on this point.
Norman : And Henry [had] added that even more than New Zealand First, actually there were National Party people involved [ in instigating the petition] But even so, there was clear benefit to Mr Peters in the view of the committee
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__yes, I would say, sexist, in the sense that just because Sarah Palin has different views than Hillary Clinton does not mean that she lacks substance.
Ummmmm, what? How in gods name is that sexist? Comparing two people of the same gender and finding one lacking in substance is sexist?
Well we can only hope that Fiorina ruins McCain like she ruined HP... -
Lehman wasn't seen as having a risk of causing domino failure in the financial system.
There's plenty of discussion in the US around this point - if Bear Sterns were "too interconnected to fail", then how is Lehman not? General consensus seems to be that it's a combination of the measures the Fed put in place to mitigate the flood of cheap financial instruments and teh fact that they had to be seen to take a moral-hazard stand at some point.
__I am putting my money into scones.__
Do you want to securitise those scones?
Ha. We've taken the highest risk/return components of the scone (raisins) and bundled them with historically more stable sprinklings, cookie dough and cake icing to create a much better risk/return performing (and cholestorol-inducing) CDO. Collaterised Donut Obligation
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While the makeup of the Government's deficit has some effect, the general concept of spending your way through a recession is based on the size of that deficit.
As such a low tax, low-ish (but bigger than tax take) spend is roughly equivalent to a higher tax, even higher spend. If the deficit from National or Labour is $x billion then at the broadest stroke I believe the expansionary effects are similar.I have no doubt there are dozens of highly trained economists spitting coffee over their keyboards as they read this but the nuances of the impacts from different deficit makeups are not something I've got a great handle on (deficit as % of tax take, nature of private vs public spending/saving etc)