Struggling? Here's why (My mark in the sand)

[Oscar]

Hey I didn't say all banks, I said most were insolvent, I think ASB and Commbank are a couple of the safest that's why I'm with them. However nearly all banks extract lots of fees for pathetic reasons to fund their excesses. I'm still waiting to see how well Kiwibank is run, and considering credit unions aswell, but the functionality of ASB is an advantage. The reason why I'm with them... I've been with them since I was 5, they came to my school to sell their wares. And I've only just started to realise the evils of our current banking systems through reading... and reading, and reading. And only recently have I been using more of the banks functionalities because I've swapped between countries and am heading off again soon.

General media = Head + Sand. Sorry, but they only report anything about the economy long after the horse has bolted. They even blatantly talk about trying to maintain the public confidence... ie. keep YOU in the dark, so people in the know can make or save money before you. The government does the same thing. Only report a recession long after it has happened. I'll go find a graph that is very easy to understand and will show you how long ago many people knew this was happening and yet your beloved general media were another 18 months behind.

Edit again: The graph I've attached shows the ASX200 it started to collapse back in 2007. That was when everything was starting to collapse, yet your mainstream media was only reporting economic issues in late 2008. That means that people were knowledgeable and informed about the problems in banking and insurance and the property bubble way back then, and your mainstream media either had no idea, or didn't want to alarm you, or were purposely keeping you in the dark so that they could keep their friends in the winning seats.

The best sources for information for me have been marketoracle.org, and www.larouchepac.com - I learnt from them in person in Melbourne about the insolvency of the banking system back in early 08. They said the system had passed the point of no return in 2007. I didn't know how much to believe back then, enough to keep all my money in cash at that stage.

Err...the media have been reporting the impending slow down in both the NZ and Aussie economies since 2006. It was accepted by most experts that NZ could not maintain that level of growth for much longer. The discussion centered on not if, but when and if it would be a hard landing or a soft one.

I don't know what you mean by "mainstream media" but National Radio has had that sort of info for ages.

[vtec]

That's an awful lot of assumptions going on there.
Insurers and Police have a vested interest in recovering stolen vehicles, which is why both have specialist units set up to do it.

Notwithstanding that, what people think about the process (particularly the criminals) is not particularly relevant is it? And it's a huge stretch to say the system condones criminal behaviour - do you have one scintilla of proof?

My proof is just personal experience. [edit]Insurers have an interest to recover stolen vehicles yes, but that doesn't help the people who are paying for it being stolen in the first place, recovered cars by insurer's only add to the insurance company coffers. They don't help the insured public getting reamed. The police have a specialist car theft unit? Really? I haven't seen one skirrick of evidence of this. When I had a car stolen a few years ago. The only help I got from the police was a form sent for me to fill out the details about the car about 3 months after it was stolen.
What goes on in peoples heads is very relevant to their behaviour yes.

Wrong again.
It has realised no losses at all.
It has suffered a drop in value, based on the market, but there is no loss until these investments are actually sold.

Leaving aside that fundamental flaw in your argument, what funds are you talking about?
The NZ Govt is a net debtor, so any surpluses are used to retire old debt.
If you're refering to the ACC, EQC or NZ Super - see above, no loss until sold...

Hahaha, I remember watching on the news in Aussie they were talking to this group of housewife stocktraders in October after a few big falls, and you know what they said. You don't actually make any losses unless you sell them. Well I promise you that they see themselves on the TV in their head saying that every night as they go to sleep. Hahaha. 40% of the worlds wealth has been wiped out by this crash. There is going to be no bounceback for many of these losses. In fact there are going to be many investments that become worthless and with no possibility of ever being worth more than zero... but hey, if you haven't sold it, you haven't realised your loss.

Why are they thieves?
Because you're stupid enough to pay?
Taking advantage of the feeble minded is not theft.
Find another bank and stop whining.

They're thieves because you have to use a bank these days, and they are all run hugely innefficiently and really quite corruptly with their bonus schemes encouraging psychopathic behaviours. And their high salaries encouraging a culture of don't change a good thing or say anything that might jeopardise it. Their fees are price gouging and change regularly with no notice. And they do price match between them. And yes so far I'm stupid enough to pay. Soon there will be better options though. If enough people wise up, especially people with power and with public interest at heart, I'm hoping theres a few left. The accounting bollocks that has gone on by executives at the banks has pointed to huge profits that they have then been able to extract with bonuses, where really the profits were far more meagre and now that the encouragement of irresponsible lending/borrowing (which they used to create fancy financial products like securities and derivatives that they could sell to hedge funds but which they were also buying as they were flying up in price) offering twisted financial advice to the public, has finally broken down and they are now having to make massive writeoffs. Of which there are far more to come.

Which bank are you with, there's some credit card schemes for purchases in foreign currency that don't have exhorbitant fees attached. Is that how you got your cheap international transfers. I wanted money not stuff though.

[reofix]

wow brian and i thought you guys were extinct!!!! then out of the backwoods wanders a fully fledged conspirational ... jargon spouting fuckwit

[elevenhundred]

Everyone needs to HTFU

NZ is a shit load better than a lot of other countries, people just have no perspective

[vtec]

Err...the media have been reporting the impending slow down in both the NZ and Aussie economies since 2006. It was accepted by most experts that NZ could not maintain that level of growth for much longer. The discussion centered on not if, but when and if it would be a hard landing or a soft one.

I don't know what you mean by "mainstream media" but National Radio has had that sort of info for ages.

Even now, you get them trying to delude people into thinking it's all going to be business as normal in a year or two's time. Maybe National radio is onto it, I don't listen to radio. I do watch the news. You just said slowdown. That doesn't mean a recession or a depression. A slowdown compared to what we have is like a housefire compared to the recent bushfires they've had in aussie.

I was looking at property prices in 07 in NZ, and I worked out how much it would cost to maintain a mortgage even a much smaller one than most people had. Everybody was relying on their properties going up in value 10% per annum. And everybody thought they were going to get rich on their properties. Only thing was more and more people like me noticed that there could no longer be buyers for these properties as maintaining the mortgage was becoming stupid. If a trend is unsustainable it won't be sustained. It got to a point people realised this. I was having arguments with people in late 07 about the sustainability of property price increases being unsustainable. But often people only hear/believe what they want to (I'm not immune to this either).

[Skyryder]

If you don't like it - don't fucking buy it.
It isn't compulsory in this country.
As for tax payers bailing them out: NZ taxpayers haven't paid a bean to an insurer or bank.

The worst thing about this country (and that's not that much wrong with it), is the whiners.

Yep your are right. Funny how that never occured to you under Labour.

So now it's my turn. Get used to it.

There has been a long and sustained campaign by the far right to portray New Zealand in a poor light. Without going into the details of this the end result is that now many New Zealanders have and extremely poor concept of our traditions and way of life. We came from working class origins where the concept of a fair days pay for a fair days work was the accepted norm. This changed during the 51 wharfies strike in which our army was used as a strike breaker by Sid Holland. This sore was the beginning of the divide where we once worked as a Nation........together. Not any more. To me the second division was the Wine box affair. This epitomized corporate greed and was a result of so called free market where companies were plundered of assets and the employees left to fend for themselves with only a pittance in welfare. This attitude is still alive and well in NZ today.

That a man who has never contributed to our society by way of meaningful employment, who was caught lying to the New Zealand public and now pretends to have New Zealand’s best interests at heart, is our Prime Minister, suggests to me just how gullible the NZ public has become and our own lack of self respect as nation. Key is the epitome of the ‘me’ society but what most have not realized is that Key is the ‘we’ and that does not include ‘you’: that is most on here at KB. Might take some time for this to sink in but sink in it will............make no mistake.


Skyryder

[Oscar]

Yep your are right. Funny how that never occured to you under Labour.

So now it's my turn. Get used to it.

There has been a long and sustained campaign by the far right to portray New Zealand in a poor light. Without going into the details of this the end result is that now many New Zealanders have and extremely poor concept of our traditions and way of life. We came from working class origins where the concept of a fair days pay for a fair days work was the accepted norm. This changed during the 51 wharfies strike in which our army was used as a strike breaker by Sid Holland. This sore was the beginning of the divide where we once worked as a Nation........together. Not any more. To me the second division was the Wine box affair. This epitomized corporate greed and was a result of so called free market where companies were plundered of assets and the employees left to fend for themselves with only a pittance in welfare. This attitude is still alive and well in NZ today.

That a man who has never contributed to our society by way of meaningful employment, who was caught lying to the New Zealand public and now pretends to have New Zealand’s best interests at heart, is our Prime Minister, suggests to me just how gullible the NZ public has become and our own lack of self respect as nation. Key is the epitome of the ‘me’ society but what most have not realized is that Key is the ‘we’ and that does not include ‘you’: that is most on here at KB. Might take some time for this to sink in but sink in it will............make no mistake.


Skyryder

Meaningful employment?
What an incredibly stupid comment.
Please name one member of the former labour cabinet that ever worked for a living....



You need a user name change - how about "Left wing sore loser"?

[vtec]

Skyrider - Thanks for the insight to John Key. I don't really know much about him at all apart from the fact he is part of the educated (and rich) elite. So far I haven't been able to fault him with what he's done though. I have a sinking feeling you are right.

How did he lie to NZ? I was in Aussie all last year. We don't touch the news much there.

[Timber020]

ACC isnt well managed but its a better system than the lawyer and insurance cash grab that we would be left with otherwise. Its easy to bag something thats not working well, but its quite another to find something that works better.

Changing it will just make Lawyers and Insurance companies alot richer with more power to screw us over. I lived and worked in the US and couldnt believe how screwed up it all was, then in aus you could see it heading the same way, not as bad but there insurance council (or whatever it was) was trying to extend there powers.

[vtec]

ACC isnt well managed but its a better system than the lawyer and insurance cash grab that we would be left with otherwise. Its easy to bag something thats not working well, but its quite another to find something that works better.

Changing it will just make Lawyers and Insurance companies alot richer with more power to screw us over. I lived and worked in the US and couldnt believe how screwed up it all was, then in aus you could see it heading the same way, not as bad but there insurance council (or whatever it was) was trying to extend there powers.

Too true, is much better than the lawyers etc. My brother and his wife both working as physiotherapists. Told me that most of their "productive" time was taken up with people milking ACC. And as pain is totally subjective, there's no way to prove that they weren't in pain, and thus were unable to remove them from the sickness benefit. Unemployment figures are another fudged stat trying to fool the productive public into working to support the bloated financialised leech economy. As is inflation.

The justice and law system is another thing that needs fixing. There is no way lawyers should get the money that they do. Again all to do with invented exclusivity. Justice is only for the rich. If lawyers were public servants with fixed salaries and the legal simplified so that people could represent themselves... do away with the pomp and righteousness, then there could be a legal system for average joe aswell. These are just ideas, I can't guarantee they don't have flaws.

[Oscar]

Skyrider - Thanks for the insight to John Key. I don't really know much about him at all apart from the fact he is part of the educated (and rich) elite. So far I haven't been able to fault him with what he's done though. I have a sinking feeling you are right.

How did he lie to NZ? I was in Aussie all last year. We don't touch the news much there.

He fucked up ACC estimates by $1.5b...no, wait a minute that was Labour.
Lesse now, his limo was caught speeding and he blamed it on his bodyguard...nope, that was Helen Clarke....er..I know he gave a signed piece of art to a charity, but had some else do it...nope that was Helen Clarke, too.


I give up, what did he lie about?

[vtec]

He fucked up ACC estimates by $1.5b...no, wait a minute that was Labour.
Lesse now, his limo was caught speeding and he blamed it on his bodyguard...nope, that was Helen Clarke....er..I know he gave a signed piece of art to a charity, but had some else do it...nope that was Helen Clarke, too.


I give up, what did he lie about?

bahahaha... Yeah labour was pretty shit, vote buying bribing thieves. I never voted for them. always used to be a national supporter. But after seeing the failures and corruptness of capitalism as it stands I wasn't up for voting National either. I just abstained but was looking very keenly at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_and_Ben_Party

[puddytat]

Meaningful employment?
What an incredibly stupid comment.
Please name one member of the former labour cabinet that ever worked for a living....



You need a user name change - how about "Left wing sore loser"?

And that is even stoopidaaaa

[Oscar]

bahahaha... Yeah labour was pretty shit. I never voted for them. always used to be a national supporter. But after seeing the failures and corruptness of capitalism as it stands I wasn't up for voting National either. I just abstained but was looking very keenly at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_and_Ben_Party

So if you didn't vote - why are you complaining?

[vtec]

So if you didn't vote - why are you complaining?

Damn it Oscar another simple answer for you. Because nobody with power or in any position to gain it was worth voting for. But I still think NZ is great in many ways, it's just pretty fucked in many too. Just because I didn't vote doesn't mean I don't care. I very obviously care by all the posts I've put up here today. I didn't like either National or Labour policies, but didn't see a viable alternative.

Abstaining is a form of protest.