Labour's $1 billion train set now worthless

[MisterD]

The reserve bank can take none of the credit for our banks being in a relatively strong position.
They are Aussie owned so ultimately the reserve bank has FA control over them,

Er no, they want to trade here, they have to abide by the regulations set by the Reserve Bank. They key one with respect to the current crisis, is that they be adequately capitalised...the RB basically went round when it was obvious to those in the know what was about to happen and said "lay in some more cash reserves, pronto"...

[trustme]

I guess I take a more global view, the aussie banks that by & large own our banks have soared up the list of viable profitable banks, from being relative minnows in world terms they are now mostly in the top 20. That happened because unlike many of the big boys they had little exposure to the sub prime market & other smoke & mirror schemes, they have remained in a sound state when many others have failed & that was not due to the peripheral tinkering of the reserve bank. I don't rubbish what the reserve bank did, but it is not what makes our banks strong , there are far bigger issues at play.
It is like saying Holden is OK they are making a profit [ I doubt it ] & ignoring the fact that GM is all but bankrupt, the problem is not Holdens profiability but GM's lack of it.

[Lovecuba]

When I am sitting at the head of my 1380 tonne (trailing load 800 metres long) train heading around the Kaikoura Coast I often wonder how many of my Mates would not survive if that load was on the road?

[trustme]

Every time I tried to use rail they fucked it up.
I use road transport now, reliable, cost effective , user friendly, I never found rail to be any of those so you & your mates will have to keep running the gauntlet. Sorry.

[peasea]

A billion dollars on an old trainset, that's a bit hard to choo.

[SPman]

Never had any trouble with rail - except once in the mid 70s, when we bought a digger in the South Island to be delivered to Auckland and it was eventually found, 4 weeks later in Gisborne!
Get used to rail, when fuel goes up again and stays up, (couple of months...) it will be the heavy transport of the future.
Decent suburban rail is great, cheaper, quicker and less stressful than road.... to bad they haven't got it in Auckland.

[Manxman]

i tend to agree with this, it is a shame we sold it in the first place.
it was then asset stripped, then pissed about with, and now we have to pick up the bits and start again.

Yeah, but at least we got a coupla America's Cups from it..