A Sony Portable Play Station arrived by courier today. I suggested it go to somebody who could use it - Kipp/Monty - but the Boss thinks we should keep it. Admittedly it says for age 6 and up, but that doesn't mean a thing to me as my techno age is minus 12. The technology usually defeats me as I expect common sense. For example I find it hard to understand that start means stop!!. On one phone Christine had, Send apparently meant Receive - you pushed Send to answer it!!.
More play of the play money type. The big G20 economic conference in the UK seems to have come up with some solutions - maybe.
Gordon Brown, for all his faults, has impressed. At least the British have bought shares in the Banks etc so they could control them and not just given them money which was the American idea.The Yanks I assume thought it sounded too much like Socialism but I think they have now seen the error of their ways and have introduced the dreaded S word into their economy.
Basically I hate debt and tend to favour competition but am Keynesian enough to realise that sometimes debt is required and that unbridled capitalism is often just that - unbridled. So at times it needs to be held in check by Government regulation.
The current system that seems to have developed is; when their are profits to be made it is the capitalists who take the profits (mainly the top executives - not the shareholders). And when their are losses the taxpayer has to pay and pick up the pieces.
This is what my worry is with any privatisation of ACC. Although as a monopoly it needs competition the problem is with a possible 70-90 year business time frame, ongoing for hundreds of years into the future, private firms may not be around to honour their obligations over such a long time.
As for the Government attack on the organisation, almost every neutral commentator (including the conservative NZ Herald) says it is a political beat up. As for criticism of their investment performance - they are odd in that they make all their decisions in house and incredibly have out performed all other groups (including the NZ Super Fund) and made money (about 2%) in the past 12 months. I wish they had been managing my money.
