It is interesting
how situations can be given different interpretations according to who is
interpreting it or for what purpose they are interpreting it.
An example of
this is the Global Financial Crisis (or GFC for short). Ever notice how this
phenomenon is described as a recession by anyone trying to explain their inability
to improve their business performance or that of the country while those who
are trying to kid us they have made a difference tell us ‘things are looking up’?
But one thing is
for sure; the GFC is not all bad – at least not for all people. Take the banks,
for example. To look at their performances you wouldn’t know there was anything
amiss with the economy at all. If KPMG’s latest Financial Institutions
Performance Survey can be trusted, the last year was one of the most profitable
for bankers in recent times. Combined net profits of banks in NZ last year
amounted to $3.3B compared with $2.77B in 2010. That is an improvement of more
than 20 percent.
So the banks are
doing very nicely thank you while the rest of us are seeing our income stalled and
prices rising and have to dip into our savings to make ends meet.
But don’t worry;
Jianqi is going to sell our top performing State Owned Assets to pay for our
health and education. But wait a minute wasn’t education going to be funded by the
great charter school scheme? That’s the
great plan where McDonald’s Secondary Modern and the Coke Adds Life
Intermediate both start churning out a whole new generation of burger flippers
and people with no teeth.
Of course the
stars of last week’s blog are doing very nicely as well during this ‘downturn’.
Figures released by the casino company in February of this year show its profit
for the six months ending December 31, 2011was $78.8M. In the previous year it made
a profit of $123M and expects this year to reach $140M. It is easy to see why
they want more machines. Revenue from their slot machines increased by a
whopping 17 percent. It’s harder to see
why they NEED them though.
What was that somebody
said about ‘harm’? Don’t talk rubbish. I have it on good authority (SkyCity CEO,
Nigel Morrison) that Lotto is more harmful than pokies, although given he runs
no Lotto games and a shitload of pokie machines, he might be just a tad biased,
don’t you think? However in addition to being biased, our Nige is also stupid
and he doesn’t do his homework. Had he bothered to check before opening his
independently operating gob, he would have found some very handy and
interesting figures in the Gambling Helpline New Zealand Report which show that
in 2010 NO problem gamblers contacted the Helpline due to their problems with
Lotto and in 2011 only six had a problem with Lotto. On the other hand... there
is a fist and it should leave Nige with his ears ringing and fully informed
about the more than 800 people who contacted the Helpline after having problems
associated with their use of gaming machines, casino tables and cards.
Admittedly most of those on the gaming machines are accessing pub ones. However
it doesn’t take a genius to work out that if pub machines reduce in number
while SkyCity ones increase, then the problem gamblers are going to migrate to
SkyCity in ever increasing numbers.
So it seems, somewhat
ironically, that the financial crisis is affecting everyone except the money
people. Am I the only one smelling putrefying rodent flesh here?
We bailed out a
load of finance companies when this all kicked off and the insurance companies
following the Christchurch earthquake. It is hard to find out exactly how much
this has cost but the scheme was originally designed to ‘guarantee’ $133B of
deposits. It would appear that the fund has actually paid out at least $2B.
That amount of money if added to our health budget would have given us around
another 14 percent to spend or 20 percent more for education. It gets really crazy when you consider that
bailout fund was also guaranteeing a further $131B. How about guaranteeing
expenditure on things that actually matter to most of us, eh?
However we are
unlikely to get that with a gnome like Jianqi who, let’s remember also took up
an appointment with the Federal Reserve before becoming our PM. (How handy was
that?). Thus he is in a perfect position to understand what it is like in the
real world (Yeah!). With a mere $50M to his name, Jianqi really knows what a
struggle the last few years have been for the rest of us and sees no problem in
taking our shilling (or $411,510 p.a. plus allowances) for his troubles.
It’s a wonder to
me that he can actually tell when the economy improves. It is hardly likely to
make any difference to him either way.
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