Posts by BenWilson
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Hard News: Only what we would expect a…, in reply to Rich Lock,
You might have a point. I think I didn't really make the point I was trying to, though, that it's easy to be intimidated by people who should be better than you at something just because they're highly rated in a country like the US. I blame my kiwi-ness rather than my Zen, for opting for a line that got the job done without needing to humiliate someone.
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It's all drip pots, all the time...
No instant? Ouch. When I worked in a corporate environment, I got sick of drip pots and instant, and sick of paying for the good stuff downstairs. A one-cup plunger saved me. Then it enslaved me.
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My own gut feeling on sales of assets is that they would only make sense for assets that the government really had no business being in. For instance, they could own a chain of fashion stores. If so, I'd actually rather they didn't, that the business was sold and the proceeds used elsewhere. If it was also possible to shoot the Minister who purchased them, the bullet could be paid for from the sale.
It's still quite hard to think of a clear underlying philosophy on why they shouldn't own fashion stores though. Keith spoke of natural monopolies as things they should be in, but I think that's only part of the story. Schools aren't natural monopolies, but I think the state should own a lot of them, just so that everyone has access to free school education if they want it.
Also, there's plenty of unnatural monopolies that are harming our economy. Our supermarket chains, for instance. There's a case for government taking a controlling stake, just so that the profits from our skyrocketing food costs are returned to us. I'm not actually suggesting this, just pointing out that it's not potential for monopolization that is the sole factor in whether we should be owning something as a nation.
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Hard News: Because it's about time we…, in reply to Paul Campbell,
there will not be a 'flat white'
LOL, and only ask for a short black if you actually want Mike Tyson to bash you up.
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But I will repeat the advice I have given before, which is that ultimately it is a lot less frustrating to learn to drink bad coffee in the USA than to try to find good coffee.
When in Rome? Fortunately in Rome, the coffee is really good.
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The polls at the moment point to Labour losing the next election's race to form a coalition. But if MMP works as advertised, Mr. Key might find the day after polling that he hasn't won the electoral mandate he is after either.
Oh I'm damned sure it's going to be a lot closer than current polls suggest. You only get one term where you can blame everything on the previous government. So far absolutely everything they have come up with has actually been a consequence of the energy crisis and the global financial meltdown. Labour is only one hardening-up away from a massive poll bounce.
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In any case, there's might be little point in talking about the virtues of a partial sell-off when National could well hand off the remaining 51% in short order.
Word. If you're selling 25%, why not 100%? Once the entire debate boils down to the terms used by portfolio managers, without any consideration of the issue of control over the nation's actual destiny by targeting key infrastructure classes, there's no real argument against liquidating everything we own, if it's not looking profitable one day.
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Which is part of Key's argument. We have a high level of debt and sooner or later we will have to deal with that or pay higher interest rates.
Only, we don't have a high level of debt. If "we" is the Government, that is. Private debt is high, but selling the power companies isn't going to contribute one cent to reducing my debt, unless they also put the power prices down, which "we" the Government will have less power to do than before. Even if a controlling stake is kept in the power companies, all of a sudden their stock prices becomes an important factor, and the market will demand its returns or that will crash. Which will mean we lose even more money, as "our" shares will have shit themselves. The solution will be charging more, which will be easily done since the government will still have the monopoly.
Private debt is a problem here, sure. But it's not going to lead to the nation's credit being downgraded. It will lead to individuals being downgraded, if they fail to service the debt. If they service it fine, the opposite tends to happen.
Key asks us to "trust me" when he says we will be downgraded. Could we perhaps ask where he's getting that idea?
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Thanks Keith for posting on this. I agreed with all you said, and I'm glad I'm not crazy in thinking that there's been a total flip-flop on the value of balancing books by National and it's support. I distinctly remember howls of outrage when Cullen kept producing surpluses. The fact that these surpluses have disappeared into the global financial meltdown is misdirected as Labour's irresponsible mismanagement. What tosh.
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Just discovered that Keith has made us an appropriate thread for this. Suggest we all move there.
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