Dont dare use the "D" word

The announcement on March 31 (US time) that secretary Paulson is going to regulate the United State's financial markets with changes to it not seen since the Great Depression leaves me with a thought that has been running rat wheels in my mind ever since the current "Credit Crunch" kicked off.

Midway through last year, the Fed began sticking its filthy little hands in dikes all across the financial backbone of the USA by propping up institutions who had lent too much money to those who now cannot pay and to keep the wheels of commerce greased by trying to increase liquidity in the credit market-so we can do business with each other.

Now I am skeptical at the best of times as to State involvement in anything, let alone interfering in capital markets and don't have the foggiest whether the announcement by Paulson is going to change anything in the future at all.



Latest on global financial fallout

German watchdog eyes $600 bln global bank losses: report Reuters
Overhaul of Wall Street regulation doesn't address current crisis Int' Herald Tribune
International Financial Panel Urges Bank Disclosures on Risk Exposure Wall Street Journal
G7 to press big banks to reveal extent of credit crunch losses Times Online
US prepares to give Fed sweeping oversight powers Taipei Times
Ghosts of the Great Depression Business Spectator
US Fed to be grilled over massive support to financial system MercoPress
World Bank cuts East Asia growth forecast Channel News Asia
East Asia Economies Pressed by Inflation The Associated Press

The 1933 changes didn't stop the bear market in the 1970s, it didn't stop the sharemarket crash of 1987 or the tech bubble bursting in 2000 or the current credit crisis because of dodgy lending and investment practices related to that lending.

The interventions by the Fed and its global equivalents, to shore up credit liquidity is the main rat on the wheel in my mind.

What have these interventions stopped?

One can only speculate but one can do that with a largish amount of surety.

During the Great Depression, when faith in financial markets at the time was at an all time low there simply wasn't any intervention by the State apparatus to ameliorate what happened on that infamous day in 1929 when Wall Street threw a woopsey and capitalism jumped out of tall buildings in the financial districts around New York and around the world.

Have interventions in financial markets by State backed funds globally stopped some sort of 2008 crash from happening?

Probably, but not to the extent of 1929, but it is clear that it would have been a crash of some serious nature had there not been intervention.

Another question I have running through my head is, how long will the squillions of taxpayer dollars pumped into the economy stave off the inevitability of a bigger blowout?

That is harder to answer. In order to know better one would have to know the losses involved in the Sub prime loans and associated sub prime bonds, and we are no closer to knowing that than knowing if Hillary Clinton is going to be the Democratic Party leader or if Barry Obama still loves his preacher.

The vexed question of the massive derivatives market also looms in the minds of investors:

Large amounts of risk, particularly credit risk, have become concentrated in the hands of relatively few derivatives dealers, who in addition trade extensively with one another. The troubles of one could quickly infect the others. On top of that, these dealers are owed huge amounts by nondealer counterparties. Some of these counterparties, as I’ve mentioned, are linked in ways that could cause them to contemporaneously run into a problem because of a single event (such as the implosion of the telecom industry or the precipitous decline in the value of merchant power projects). Linkage, when it suddenly surfaces, can trigger serious systemic problems.

"Derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction. The dangers are now latent--but they could be lethal".

[Warren Buffett 2003]


Warren Buffett aside, I don't think anyone fancies the Fed's chances of shoring up the derivatives market should the dominoes start to topple.



Warren Buffett has always
feared the massive derivatives
market.

What is clear is this scenario has at least the rest of the year to fully play out and further State intervention should be carefully applied only if is really going to work and not because the Fed needs to be seen to be doing something.

Hold onto those gold bars and keep the cash under the mattress, you just might need them.


Essential related reading from Share Investor

The Global Economy looks bad now? But wait there's more
Global credit squeeze: There is no free lunch
Current Credit crunch a blessing in disguise
Lenders must come clean over losses to restore faith in credit markets
Watch for dead cats bouncing
Global Market Meltdown: I can smell the fear from here
Warren Buffett's The Intelligent Investor
Global Market's dropping and your portfolio
Global Market Meltdown: What is Warren Buffett doing?
A sensible approach to global market volatility

Visit Everything Warren Buffett-for everything Warren Buffett

C Share Investor 2008

Wheres the Love?

Government cost to business hasn't been ameliorated by today's quadrangle of
State interference that kicked off, appropriately, on April 1.


I cant help myself talking about it, politics is intrinsically linked to investing and business and in New Zealand our economy is hugely influenced by what the government of the day does to it more than most global economies.

The introduction and trumpeting today by our Labour government of 4 things that "they are proud of" that will "help business" has less to do with helping business but more to do with election year and keeping control over the economy and its participants.

The much ballyhooed 3% cut in corporate tax rates, taxpayer handouts to business for research and development, employer contributions to Kiwisaver and the lift of the minimum wage to 12 bucks all run against each other in their purpose and execution.

The over hyped tax cut and R & D subsidy for our corporates hides the fact that Kiwisaver, the associated paper work and the lift in wages easily dwarfs the meager 3% cut already.

Include all the other government imposed costs to business over the last 9 years, like higher ACC, energy and carbon taxes and nonsense like employer funded maternity leave(what is wrong with the family paying, a novel idea I know, but just an idea) and an extra weeks leave for workers and even the blind, deaf, dribbling and Labour voters(OK maybe that is a stretch) can see how far behind business is.

The tax cut would have to be at least down to a 25% rate to get business back to where it was in 1999, in terms of costs and return of capital.

That way, business could afford to fund R & D from cashflow instead of another army of extra State funded bureaucrat's handing out taxpayer money to those they see should get our money-I mean these people picking business winners? I doubt many of them can remember their PIN numbers let alone pick good businesses.

What is missing from today's election focused "take more it and give some back" approach to business is a bold statement to business, especially small business, the back bone of this country, that the country values your contribution and we are going to reward your entrepreneurship.

State attached funding via R & D subsidies and other quasi government welfare schemes, extra business expense and paperwork isn't a good way to show that we love business.

I fear the present administration doesn't like the independence and confidence that self employment or owning your own business brings and are doing everything they can to inextricably link business owners quest for economic freedom by weighting business and therefore the economy down with cost and bureaucracy.

A 3% company tax cut isn't going to cut it for those hard working individuals who own companies and in fact bypasses those who are sole traders entirely.

Its time to show business we love them.

Not the opposite.


Related Political Animal reading

Labour's State Control Out of control

c Share Investor 2008

Blue Chip's Mark Bryers at top of shaky pyramid

Mark Bryers, architect of the Blue Chip pyramid
scheme, in better times.

Securities Commission - What we do
Commerce Commission - Fair Trading Act
Bryers has clear conscience - Stuff.co.nz


From the Blue Chip website (more)

At Blue Chip, everything we do is about helping our customers to build the future they want. Here are some of our clients’ stories which explain how Blue Chip has helped make a difference".

Gordon and Margaret Taylor

"At our stage in life we need our investments to be making money - not losing it!"

The column inches given over to discussing the Blue Chip fiasco would rival the length of a million toilet rolls stuck end to end and reaching to the moon and back.

Like alot of financial collapses though, investors or the public don't seem a hell of a lot wiser as a result of all the chatter.

In Blue Chip though, what is clear is that Mark Bryer's and his management built a pyramid scheme where he was at the top while his investors pumped cash into keeping him there.

Like every pyramid scheme of the past the only people who make money are those at the top and those that get in then get out first. Bryer's is still worth more than NZ$70 million according to the National Business Review.

These arrangements can go well when economic conditions are good but in this case, when the "asset", real estate, being invested in starts to lose its over inflated value, those at the bottom of the pyramid are going to lose.

Many have lost their life savings after either being greedy, trusting or naive. I recall going to an investment day at the Ellerslie Racecourse some 4 years ago, all the banks, share options people,brokers, finance companies, gold sellers etc were there.

So was Blue Chip.

While many of the above mentioned were quite "pushy" in their sales patter, I distinctly remember the Blue Chip people meet my quick gaze at their stand and from then on the push to buy was relentless, aggressive and quite slick-and their lawyers were there!

I felt decidedly uncomfortable with everything about their pitch but can understand why some caved into their charms.

But I digress.

The fact that property deals were arranged so that overly large deposits on overinflated unbuilt housing was paid directly into Blue Chip coffers and not into the normal trust situation and signed off by buyers after getting "advice" from Blue Chip's own lawyers, should at least raise the ire of the Securites Commission who have so far been deathly silent on this matter.

In my humble opinion, at the very least the Fair Trading Act has been breached and action needs to be taken. The Commerce Commission, who agonize over the likes of The Warehouse sale saga haven't made a public statement. The Fair Trading Act(1986) basically states that you cannot hide or be untruthful about what you are selling or be devious or sly in hiding the nature of what is being purchased; i.e. small print is not an out for the dodgy seller and it should have been crystal clear about what those Blue Chip real estate buyers were signing.

Like others have been saying though, I suspect we have only seen the tip of the pyramid uncovered, and just like an iceberg most of what lurks underneath is looking decidedly crooked.

I fear though, that Mark Bryer's and his merry bunch of tuggers at Blue Chip will get away with this errant behaviour and not even get a lick of a taste of the anguish that they so clearly deserve, and their former clients are now suffering from.

It is time for the talking to stop and action to start, lets not let another economic vampire go free.


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Money Managers Saga-3 story wrap
Money Manager's First Step gives investors the middle finger

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c Share Investor 2008

Fitna the Movie: Dutch Politician's film about the Quran(UPDATED with replacement video)

The mad Mullahs, junk Jihadists and irritated Islamists have threatened death on the staff of LiveLeak, where I posted a copy of the Film "Fitna" on Friday ,( go here and click on video for explanation by LiveLeak) and they have removed the film as a result.

The making of the movie, which tells it like it is, has been widely condemned by Muslims around the world but its the thrust of the message that Muslims have for the West that lays largely intact and free from similar condemnation by those same people.

That the non believers are infidels and must be wiped off the face of the earth.

Geert Wilder's film had been  generously posted on youtube but has been removed because of pressure from Mad Islamists.

Luckily I have found another copy at Clipser and posted it again. Cross your fingers it doesn't get taken down .

Film originally posted on LiveLeak.com

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LiveLeak Video
Reaction to Muslim cartoons defended by some
Cartoons depict Muslim faith for what it is
Jihad and Understanding
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c Political Animal 2008

Earth Day: Turn on,tune out, buy some candles

In the interest of sanity,reason, intellectual honesty and beating Al Gore to a bloodied death with a chunk of Antarctic ice smuggled into the country up the arse of a whale sympathetic to my cause, I propose a ying to the preposterous yang of something called "earth hour" which starts in New Zealand first at 8.00pm (NZ time).

My proposal is this. At 8.00pm sharp, when the dolphin loving, Volvo driving, mung bean eating, bearded female, non smoking, non drinking, Leo Dio loving, vegetarian, hairy arm pitted, sandal wearing , finger pointing, lesbian school teachers are sitting in the dark with all their lights out for an hour, playing with the insert appropriate expletive here next to them, I will turn on every light, appliance and electrical device that I can lay my meat eating, chain smoking, 6 litre V8 Holden driving hands on... for two hours.

Even if this Global warming-or Climate Change, as they are now calling it,because the planet is actually cooling-was true, turning the lights off for an hour is actually what is going to happen for real if these climate change junkies get their way and have windmills dotted all over the place and they stop us from using lovely black coal, gas and oil to keep us alive. This is their intention.

In New Zealand, David Parker, Minister for "Climate Change" , bogey men and tooth fairies, proposes that we only build "renewable" power sources from this day on and forget about real sources of energy like hydro and gas.

We do however export coal to other countries and import the same from Indonesia, do those carbon miles get you a new power station when you get to a billion points?

I'm relaxed now in the knowledge that I am going to do my bit tonight to save our collective sanity. If you are flying across Auckland's North Shore, I think you might be able to spot me.

I will be the one with my feet up on the Brazilian rainforest timber table, in the living room, watching BBC4s "The Great Global Warming Swindle", the house humming, with a power surge so immense, I will be able to supply energy to all those lesser folk in their houses with all the lights turned off.

Do the earth a favour then, engage your brain before turning off those sparkly, modern, gas and oil fired wonders, your lights.

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c Political Animal 2008	Great Global Warming Swindle & Global Governance (2 DVDs)

Fitna the Movie: Dutch Politician's film about the Quran

What is with the Dutch and their wish to end their lives by abusing the great Allah?

A controversial movie? not sure about that. If one tells it like it is how can the film be controversial, isn't it more like the subject matter that critics should be more upset about?

That is, the Muslim religion is violent,abusive, murderous and has expansion on its mind, at any cost.

These sorts of "events" tend to galvanise people on one side or the other but they do serve to do two good things. To tell the truth, and get people talking about the "muslim issue".

Very important considering the Jihad that the West has out on it and the appeasement by our local politicians in this country to some of the creeping Islamic cultural demands that New Zealand Muslims have their hands out for.


Film originally posted on LiveLeak.com

Related Political Animal reading

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c Political Animal 2008

Sky City share volumes sets tongues wagging

Related Quote

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Quote data provided by Reuters


Reuters story on SKC - NZ's Sky City CEO sees year of consolidation, then expansion (March 25, 2008)


With volume of Sky City Entertainment[SKC.NZ] shares traded on the NZX at over 8 million today and around 5 million yesterday one would have to ask why the large volumes changing hands? The average trading volume is just over 1.2 million shares.

Answer, I don't know for sure, but I'm going to speculate again.

Clearly the number one stab in the dark would be a share price so low it would have to be about 6 years ago that it traded at the present level of NZ$3.48 and it has got out the bargain hunters and institutions.

Number two punt is a mystery buyer getting a controlling stake-although talk of anyone kicking the tyres of the company is long gone, for now.

Three, Unitab as it was around 3 years ago, now Tattersalls[TTX.AX], from Australia topping up their 0.5% shareholding that they already have in the company.

Fourthly, and probably most likely, Commonwealth Bank[CBA.AX], who dumped Tattersalls stock on March 7 (PDF disclosure) and who is also a biggish player in SKC.

Just to hedge my bets, a combo of all four is also part of my playbook!

The coming year is going to be a tough one for Sky City, But new CEO Nigel Morrison has restructured and redefined a number of casinos in this part of the world. The giant Crown Casino in Melbourne but one of them.


Disclosure: I own SKC shares


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Sky City sale could be off
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Sky City Casino Full Year Profit to June 30 2007
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c Share Investor 2008

Hallenstein Glasson Australian expansion needs expert execution

Hallenstein Glasson [HLG.NZ] net profit for the 2008 half-year after tax fell 6.6 per cent from $9.9 million to $9.2 million, in line with the company's January market guidance.

The results are mirrored in an overall decline in sales of 2 per cent, with group sales for the six months ending February 1 falling from $100.7 million to $98.5 million.

The company has done spectacularly well for so long but in the last few years sales and profit have been stagnant.

It seemed reasonably clear that profit wouldn't continue to climb as rapidly as it has done in the past, because much of it came from focusing on cost reductions in the business and the company now runs a lean mean retailing machine, fixed costs like rising labour expenses and leases aside.

The expansion of women's clothing chain Glassons across Australia is a priority for new Hallenstein Glasson chief executive Shayne Quanchi, who is based in Melbourne herself.

The focus on expansion across the Tasman before stalled growth in New Zealand is seriously looked at, could be of some concern to shareholders.

Even though Quanchi is a 20 year veteran of retailing in Australia, doesn't mean she can make the Kiwi style Glassons chain a rocking and rolling OZ success.

Its competitors there are way more savvy, generally part of the big conglomerates like Coles/Wesfarmers, David Jones, and the like and the differences between similar targeted customers that Glassons has here and its competitors in Australia are vast in their sophistication, choice options and pricing.

Don't get me wrong, Hallensteins is a great company and has done well in New Zealand for generations but the road to Australia for many New Zealand companies and their expansion plans, is littered with the corpses of battered balance sheets and zombie like shareholders who have had their wallets picked.

Clearly Australia is an opportunity for the company in which they can continue to expand but the story so far there has been disappointing when compared with the operations of the New Zealand unit.

One good and important aspect of the result is that gross margins have been maintained and that is no mean feat in the present retailing environment.

Like other retailers, such as Briscoe [BRG.NZ] and The Warehouse Group[WHS.NZ], they are going to struggle this year, as consumers, especially in New Zealand, slow their spending because of increased taxes, petrol and mortgage costs.

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c Share Investor 2008

NOW Couriers look likely to deliver for Freightways

New acquisition NOW Couriers should help Freightways
continue to dominate the growing Auckland delivery market.


News yesterday that the New Zealand courier and document information management company Freightways [FRE] is to buy the small Auckland courier company Now Couriers for around NZ$11 million should be welcome news for shareholders.

Not only that, the faith Freightway's management have in the long-term future of their business with this purchase, during the current economic downturn and associated credit crunch is a positive move, when every other business in New Zealand seems to be talking gloom and doom.

Freightways as a whole, has managed to ride out the economic slowdown and increased business costs very well. It has still managed to grow revenue and profit slightly over the last year.

Their core courier business seems to be one of the most resilient divisions and Auckland especially seems reasonably bullish.

NOW has 40 contracted owner drivers servicing greater Auckland, and is at the budget end of the market, so it compliments Freightways other brands: Sub 60, Castle Parcels, New Zealand Couriers, Post Haste and several other brands.

Management want to keep the latest acquisition separate from the others as it wants to differentiate it from its other nationally focused brands.

I like the way management have had a partnership with NOW for several years, got to know the company well and then bought control. Too many companies rush into these sorts of acquisitions and that is where things can go horribly wrong. Freightway's management clearly have a good understanding of this business and that way the price they paid for it is more likely to be relevant to its earnings, prospects , and its long term future.

Their track record on "bolt-on" acquisitions is extremely good.

CEO Dean Bracewell has been a diligent head and the tough outlook for the New Zealand economy looks to be something he looks forward to with relish.

The future outlook by Bracewell is tempered by comments of influences from the local economy and that they are well positioned to grow when economic conditions are rosier.

He expects the core package delivery businesses to perform "soundly" and its fast growing documents division to be strong over the coming year.


Related Share Investor reading

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Disclosure: I own FRE shares


c Share Investor 2008

Marketing vs Content

During the last 7 months or so since contributing in a serious way to this blog, I have learnt a number of things.

1. Its bloody hard work
2. Don't ever underestimate how intense competition can get
3. Loyal readers are why I continue
4. Marketing can be more important than content (even though I hope I have
improved my content over the last 7 months)



Marketing such as this, helps push products that
have little real benefit for the consumer but sell
more because of the appeal of its advertised image.


While the first point maybe obvious to those seasoned writers who have been doing this for years, and business leaders should know instinctively the second point. Point number three is more of a personal nature but it is the importance of marketing that I wish to principally discuss here.

When one thinks of the triumph of marketing over content, ones interest naturally leans to the granddaddy of all when it comes to marketing, Coca Cola.

The advertising of the sugar, water, caffeine and CO2 concoction has been filled with much mystique and hype since the product began and hasn't ceased in this way in the product's 100 plus years of existence.

The origins of Coke's marketing success comes from those traveling charlatans who used to go from town to town in the USA, boasting of the properties of the latest elixir that would "cure all".

In the case of Coke it started as one of these types of elixirs but it at least had a bit of a pick me up quality to it, from the sugar and caffeine, and other substances in its earlier guise.

The early backers seized on this traveling salesman mystique and it has been used and refined over the years to the point where Coke is the most recognised brand in the world, and has been for many years.

A huge amount of marketing dollars were used to push the fizzy water over the last 100 years and the ploys used to keep the drinks mystery and image have been many and varied.

During the company's boom years of the 1940s, American soldiers were supplied with the sweet brown stuff by Coca Cola wherever the war took them and the image that Coke was the epitome of fighting for the "American dream" was then cemented in the minds of not just Americans, but many other countries that fought side by side them.

Clever marketing on Coke's part.

The fact that this product, if consumed in large quantities, can, make you tubby, rot your teeth and has no benefit to the body in a nutritional way is largely forgotten because the consumer is constantly bombarded with images of attractive, athletic, young people enjoying the "Coke lifestyle".

A whole host of dangerous and worthless products from Cigarettes to most home cleaning products, are successful because of great and or constant marketing.

It is a masterstroke of marketing an image for a product that has no real benefit to its consumers.

I know, they say consumers these days can see past the hype and can tell quality but the coke test proves that millions just cant or chose to ignore the realities.



The world's most successful brand, Coca Cola, achieved
its longevity not through its magnificent product but
from expert marketing and branding.


While I'm clearly not comparing my writing to Coke's success, I do wonder sometimes about lesser quality product succeeding over the hyped up marketing of the likes of my mate from the Tarawera empire, Phillip MacCallister, who's marketing budget must surely be bigger than my mortgage payments, which are quite considerable!

The Share Investor Blog isn't being advertised on Google, but I probably should. I don't spend any money on marketing but I do spend time trying to get it out there for free so people can read it.

I think it is relatively interesting, and its content of a sufficiently good quality. It is getting a steady increase in readership as the months go by, but I still think it deserves better numbers when I compare it to other websites of a similar nature with larger audiences.

My ignorance of the importance of marketing before I started the Share Investor Blog is clearly apparent to me now. Here was I thinking, in my best Kevin Costner impression, "if I write it they will come".

How hopelessly wrong I was.

The importance of marketing cannot be underestimated, especially when it comes to a new business venture. While it is fine to have a wonderful product, that is not always enough. People actually have to know you have a great product.

Those people at Sony had a superior product in the Betamax Video player in the 1980s but the competition had more marketing muscle but an inferior product.

We all know what happened to Betamax.

My lesson learned!


**Footnote: Look for an exciting new permanent addition to the blog over the next 2 months. Legal reasons prevent me from telling you more.


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c Share Investor 2008

Iraq Liberation still the right course

The Iraq Liberation was a necessary evil and there has been much said about it and even more written. Those that denied that a Liberation was necessary are hiding the truth.

Clearly mistakes were made in going into Iraq, more troops and firepower were needed initially then after the major hostilities ended quite quickly more troops needed to stay. That is a fact bourne out by the success of the current "surge". I think still more troops are needed but we can go on and on about those things without a resolution so I'm not going to start.

Iraq is a much better place now, than before Saddam, and there is ample proof to back that up.

The 10s of thousands of Iraqis murdered and tortured each year by Saddam and his men has stopped, just one glaringly obvious example! Some of us forget that.

Bush is doing a job that should have been done many years ago and while he isn't perfect, I believe history will judge his decision to go to the Middle East, the correct one.

The USA must not back down now. It will be seen as weakness by the enemy they are fighting. Muslim terrorism.

Any sign of weakness will be punished, from now until many years in the future.

c Political Animal 2008

Christopher Hitchens | March 20, 2008, The Australian

AN anniversary of a war is in many ways the least useful occasion on which to take stock of something like the Anglo-American intervention in Iraq, if only because any such formal observance involves the assumption that a) this is, in fact, a war and b) it is by that definition an exception from the rest of our engagement with that country and that region.

I am one of those who, for example, believes that the global conflict that began in August 1914 did not conclusively end, despite a series of fragile truces, until the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

This is not at all to redefine warfare and still less to contextualise it out of existence. But when I wrote the essays that go to make up A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq, I was expressing an impatience with those who thought that hostilities had not really begun until George W. Bush gave a certain order in the spring of 2003.

Anyone with even a glancing acquaintance with Iraq would have to know that a heavy US involvement in the affairs of that country began no later than 1968, with the role played by the CIA in the coup that ultimately brought Saddam Hussein's wing of the Baath Party to power.

Not much more than a decade later, we come across persuasive evidence that the US at the very least acquiesced in the Iraqi invasion of Iran, a decision that helped inflict moral and material damage of an order to dwarf anything that has occurred in either country recently.

In between, we might note minor episodes such as Henry Kissinger's faux support to Kurdish revolutionaries, encouraging them to believe in American support and then abandoning and betraying them in the most brutal and cynical fashion.

If you can bear to keep watching this flickering newsreel, it will take you all the way up to the moment when Saddam, too, switches sides and courts Washington, being most in favour in our nation's capital at the precise moment he is engaged in a campaign of extermination in the northern provinces and retaining this same favour until the moment he decides to engulf his small Kuwaiti neighbour. In every decision taken subsequent to that, from the decision to recover Kuwait and the decision to leave Saddam in power, to the decisions to impose international sanctions on Iraq and the decision to pass the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, stating that long-term coexistence with Saddam's regime was neither possible nor desirable, there was a really quite high level of public participation in our foreign policy.

We were never, if we are honest with ourselves, "lied into war".

We became steadily more aware that the option was continued collusion with Saddam or a decision to have done with him.

The President's speech to the UN on September 12, 2002, laying out the considered case that it was time to face the Iraqi tyrant, too, with this choice, was easily the best speech of his two-term tenure and by far the most misunderstood.

That speech is widely and wrongly believed to have focused on only two aspects of the problem, namely the refusal of Saddam's regime to come into compliance on the resolutions concerning weapons of mass destruction and the involvement of the Baathists with a whole nexus of nihilist and Islamist terror groups.

Baghdad's outrageous flouting of the resolutions on compliance (if not necessarily the maintenance of blatant, as opposed to latent, WMD capacity) remains a huge and easily demonstrable breach of international law. The role of Baathist Iraq in forwarding and aiding the merchants of suicide terror actually proves to be deeper and worse, on the latest professional estimate, than most people had believed or than the Bush administration had suggested.

This is all overshadowed by the unarguable hash that was made of the intervention itself.

But I would nonetheless maintain that this incompetence doesn't condemn the enterprise wholesale.

A much-wanted war criminal was put on public trial.

The Kurdish and Shi'ite majority was rescued from the ever-present threat of a renewed genocide.

A huge, hideous military and party apparatus, directed at internal repression and external aggression was (perhaps overhastily) dismantled.

The largest wetlands in the region, habitat of the historic Marsh Arabs, have been largely recuperated.

Huge fresh oilfields have been found, including in formerly oil-free Sunni provinces, and some important initial investment in them made. Elections have been held, and the outline of a federal system has been proposed as the only alternative to a) a sectarian despotism and b) a sectarian partition and fragmentation. Not unimportantly, a battlefield defeat has been inflicted on al-Qa'ida and its surrogates, who (not without some Baathist collaboration) had hoped to constitute the successor regime in a failed state and an imploded society.

Further afield, a perfectly defensible case can be made that the Syrian Baathists would not have evacuated Lebanon, nor would the Gaddafi gang have turned over Libya's (much larger than anticipated) stock of WMD, if not for the ripple effect of the removal of the region's keystone dictatorship. None of these positive developments took place without a good deal of bungling and cruelty, and unintended consequences of their own.

I don't know of a satisfactory way of evaluating one against the other any more than I quite know how to balance the disgrace of Abu Ghraib, say, against the digging up of Saddam's immense network of mass graves. There is, however, one position that nobody can honestly hold but that many people try their best to hold. And that is what I call the Bishop Berkeley theory of Iraq, whereby if a country collapses and succumbs to trauma, and it's not our immediate fault or direct responsibility, then it doesn't count, and we are not involved.

Nonetheless, the thing that most repels people when they contemplate Iraq, which is the chaos and misery and fragmentation (and the deliberate intensification and augmentation of all this by the jihadis), invites the inescapable question: What would post-Saddam Iraq have looked like without a coalition presence?

The past years have seen us both shamed and threatened by the implications of the Berkeleyan attitude, from Burma to Rwanda to Darfur.

Had we decided to attempt the right thing in those cases (you will notice that I say attempt rather than do, which cannot be known in advance), we could as glibly have been accused of embarking on "a war of choice". But the thing to remember about Iraq is that all or most choice had already been forfeited.

We were already deeply involved in the life and death struggle of that country, and March 2003 happens to mark the only time that we decided to intervene, after a protracted and open public debate, on the right side and for the right reasons. This must, and still does, count for something.

Christopher Hitchens is an author and commentator for publications such as Vanity Fair, The Atlantic Monthly and Slate.

Rod Duke's Pumpkin Patch gets bigger

Further to my idle speculation about who it was who bought the 6 million shares in Pumpkin Patch Ltd [PPL.NZ] yesterday. I clearly got it wrong, Jan Cameron, ex Kathmandu and Carmel Fisher, from Fisher Funds were not buyers.

Who would have thought, Rod Duke, the owner of listed retailer Briscoe Group Ltd [BGR.NZ], picked up enough shares to take his total holding to 8.4 % of the company. He wont rule out buying more in the future.

He bought his shares as a personal holding not linked to Briscoes and sees the company one of the best in the game at what they do. I would have to agree of course.

It is good to see one of our leading retailers recognising quality and getting in behind this Kiwi icon with his big fat wallet.

As a matter of interest, there was some moving of the deck chairs at Fisher Funds. Their PPL holdings since 24.01.08 were transferred to other holders or nominees on and off market and they purchased 430,000 shares since that same date up until 21.o2.08. The share price at that time was substantially higher than the last weeks 1.50-1.62 range.

Clearly, given global market conditions, the share price has still got room to move.

Downwards.

Disclosure I own PPL in the Share Investor Portfolio.


Pumpkin Patch @ Share Investor

Share Investor Q & A: Briscoe Group CEO Rod Duke
Pumpkin Patch Ltd move downmarket
Long Term View: Pumpkin Patch Ltd
Pumpkin Patch's North American Downsizing a Prudent move
Digging at Pumpkin's Profit
Long vs Short: Pumpkin Patch Ltd
Pumpkin Patch Buyback shows Confidence in the Future
Pumpkin Patch takes a hit
Pumpkin Patch ripe for the picking
What is Jan Cameron up to?
I'm buying
Why did you buy that Stock? [Pumpkin Patch]
Rod Duke's Pumpkin Patch gets bigger
Buyer of large piece of Pumpkin Patch a mystery
Pumpkin Patch a screaming buy
Broker downgrades of PPL lack long term vision
Pumpkin's expansion comes at a cost
Pumpkin Patch vs Burger Fuel
Pumpkin Patch profits flatten
New Zealand Retailers ring up costs not tills

Discuss PPL @ Share Investor Forum

Download PPL Company Reports

Buy Pumpkin Patch Clothing

From Fishpond.co.nz



Buy Bird on a Wire: The Inside Story from a Straight Talking CEO & more @ Fishpond.co.nz





c Share Investor 2008

Reaction to Muslim cartoons defended by some

Lampooning an appropriate subject is fair game

Related Political Animal reading

Cartoons depict Muslim faith for what it is
Jihad and Understanding
Having a multiple Muslim


I was prompted to post this because of two anonymous opinions expressed (scroll down past my post) to comments I made about the wonderfully funny cartoons by the Danish artist who lampooned the Muslim religion, for being violent, cruel and nasty and how those cartoons were vindicated by the nasty, violent,cruel and murderous reaction to them across the Muslim world.

Surely the threat of murder on someone who disagrees with what you have to say about them is reprehensible and therefore the religion that supports such threats is a violent, cruel, filthy and inhuman one that should be condemned at every opportunity.?




One cartoonists reaction to the violent outbursts across the Muslim world
to the original Dutch cartoons.

To have an idea of where I am coming from, I recommend a book By Mark Steyn, America Alone: The End of the World as we know it (see book review below), a brilliant book that outlines the threat the Muslim faith is to a civilised Western world.

America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It By Mark Steyn List Price: $27.95 Price: $18.45 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Ships from and sold by Amazon.com 50 new or used available from $13.50 Average customer review:

Product Description

In this, his first major book, Mark Steyn--probably the most widely read, and wittiest, columnist in the English-speaking world--takes on the great poison of the twenty-first century: the anti-Americanism that fuels both Old Europe and radical Islam. America, Steyn argues, will have to stand alone. The world will be divided between America and the rest; and for our sake America had better win.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #940 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-16
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 214 pages

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Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap
It's the end of the world as we know it…

Someday soon, you might wake up to the call to prayer from a muezzin. Europeans already are.

And liberals will still tell you that "diversity is our strength"—while Talibanic enforcers cruise Greenwich Village burning books and barber shops, the Supreme Court decides sharia law doesn't violate the "separation of church and state," and the Hollywood Left decides to give up on gay rights in favor of the much safer charms of polygamy.

If you think this can't happen, you haven't been paying attention, as the hilarious, provocative, and brilliant Mark Steyn—the most popular conservative columnist in the English-speaking world—shows to devastating effect in this, his first and eagerly awaited new book on American and global politics.

The future, as Steyn shows, belongs to the fecund and the confident. And the Islamists are both, while the West—wedded to a multiculturalism that undercuts its own confidence, a welfare state that nudges it toward sloth and self-indulgence, and a childlessness that consigns it to oblivion—is looking ever more like the ruins of a civilization.

Europe, laments Steyn, is almost certainly a goner. The future, if the West has one, belongs to America alone—with maybe its cousins in brave Australia. But America can survive, prosper, and defend its freedom only if it continues to believe in itself, in the sturdier virtues of self-reliance (not government), in the centrality of family, and in the conviction that our country really is the world's last best hope.

Steyn argues that, contra the liberal cultural relativists, America should proclaim the obvious: we do have a better government, religion, and culture than our enemies, and we should spread America's influence around the world—for our own sake as well as theirs.

Mark Steyn's America Alone is laugh-out-loud funny—but it will also change the way you look at the world. It is sure to be the most talked-about book of the year.

About the Author
Mark Steyn's writing on war, politics, the arts, and culture can be read around the world from the Atlantic Monthly to The Australian. In the United States his column appears in the Chicago Sun-Times, the New York Sun, the Washington Times, the Orange County Register, and other newspapers. He is also National Review's "Happy Warrior," a columnist for the New Criterion, and resident obituarist for the Atlantic Monthly. In Canada, he is senior columnist for the country's newest political magazine, the Western Standard, and literary correspondent for the country's biggest-selling general interest magazine, Maclean's. In addition, he appears in many other publications, from the Jerusalem Post to Hawke's Bay Today in New Zealand. Born in Toronto, he lives in New Hampshire.

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Customer Reviews

One of the best I've read
After a couple pages of reading, I grabbed a highlighter and marked large chunks of each page, then passed the book on to my son. It's so important to understand the demographics involved in the current world situation and Mark Steyn makes it so enjoyable a read.

Repetative but insightful
By the time I was half way through the book, I was getting tired of it. The information is insightful and thought-provoking but very repetative. I felt like the book should have been a short story length but someone decided to make it novel length instead.
While it is possible to verify most of the information the author cites in the book, it would have been nice if he had included some of his source material for further research.
Overall very good information but not the best writing style for me.

Americans are the only intelligent, strong people in the world?
It is an interesting read and Mark Steyn is a very good writer.

I enjoy his newspaper columns and pretty much agreed with everything he wrote until he went down this Neo Conservative path to support the foolish second war against Iraq, then when virtually the entire world opposed the US - go it alone war against the people in Iraq, Steyn falls into this defensive line of reasoning that the entire world is wrong, especially weak, dying Old Western Europe and America, implied led by the wise Neo Conservatives are right and must face the evils of the world alone.

Yes, Mark Steyn is on target when he shows idiot PC multi culturalist in the West as... idiot, PC multi culturalists who really don't know much about the real world, haven't studied true history, know nothing about Islam, the brutalities of the Third World and fall into reflex PC responses that "THE WEST" and AMERICA are to blame for all the problems in the world and if certain Muslims groups, Muslim nations do horrible brutalities, no one in the West can blame them, we must blame ourselves.

Mark Steyn is of course right when he warns the West, especially Western Europeans that they have to resist mass Muslim immigration and giving in to the demands of Muslims within their borders. There are no making deals with Islam when it senses weakness and looks to take over schools, neighborhoods, countries, continents.

The main problem with Mark Steyn's America Alone, is a problem that I see with most Jewish Neo Conservatives:

They put out the lie that they - and only they alone are fighting the terrorists, opposing the Islamic extremists and they use brutal smears to attack anyone that doesn't accept their whole program including the foolish Iraq war - Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 - it wasn't an Islamic extremist state. There were no WOMD.

Steyn and most Jewish Neo Conservatives simply ignore all the populist, nationalist and true Conservatives in Europe, the West who have been resisting the Muslim invasions, Islamic extremism in their countries for a long time - the Front National in France, Swiss People's Party, the British National Party, Pym Fortuyn, Pat Buchanan, the Rockford Institute, these patriots get no mention or support from Mark Steyn and the Neo Conservatives because they do not support Israel unconditionally - worse, these patriots are smeared as NAZIs.

But, this is just one point.

America Alone is a well written book and Steyn does a very good job of showing the stupidity of those in the West who aid and abet the Islamic invasion and terror against Westerners in the West.

Related Political Animal reading

Cartoons depict Muslim faith for what it is
Jihad and Understanding
Having a multiple Muslim


C Political Animal 2008

Dr Cullen needs to intervene in OCR

The New Zealand Government is happy to intervene where its citizens don't want them
but when it comes to the precipitous economy in relation to lowering interest rates,
Michael Cullen gets blisters on his hands from sitting on them.

Original story from Share Investor Blog

I'm not an interventionist by any stretch of the imagination but our monetary system, for better or worse, is, and so is the present regime that presides over the country's books, the New Zealand Labour party.

The interventionist approach in regard to the Reserve Bank and through the official cash rate(OCR) has led NZ INC, courtesy of drunken overspending and overtaxing by the aforementioned regime, to the highest interest rates in the "developed" world.

The Mike and Helen show has put the country in a very precarious position, given the uncertainty over the global economy and the "credit crunch"(2 days in a row, sorry) has slowed the wheels of commerce globally.

This dastardly duo seem quite pleased that an excuse like the global credit crunch has come around because they are now on a PR offensive to blame any current or future New Zealand downturn on it and not themselves, where the bony finger should be pointing.

The sensible among us know that high interest rate were here 3-4 years ago and then we though a credit crunch was a new chocolate bar bought on time payment.

Like Al Gore's science fiction movie "The Inconvenient Truth", we also know, like that movie, the M and K show lacks consistency and truth. When it comes to the economy we can all remember the Labour Party taking the accolades for the nearly 4% growth we had for a nano second, but they now blame the downturn and any possible downturns on other circumstances.

You cant have it both ways.

Now this government's profligate taxes and spending(they go hand in hand) has put its citizens in such debt that we even outrank those nasty Americans for our debt levels. This debt is primarily in real estate and servicing the high interest debt that bought it.

Higher house prices meant more borrowing on the increased equity, because taxes are so high we had to borrow to survive.

So guess what, now things are in reverse, because of that debt we are in potentially a worse condition than America.

They at least borrowed to buy other sorts of assets beside houses, while we sunk most of ours into houses and plasma TVs.

While we haven't had the extreme reckless lending like America's Sub Prime loans, we have got many thousands of kiwis who have borrowed more than they will be able to service when the shit hitith the fan.

Its hitting now.

NZ$40 billion of mortgages will be refinanced this year alone at close to 10% and others will be higher, the time for intervention is now.

The OCR should have been cut at least a year ago but now there is urgent need for it. An emergency cut to bring it into line with other nations suffering from the sub prime fallout would be a key move in the right direction.

There is no use sitting on your hands waiting "to see what happens" according to Alan Bollard, the Reserve Bank Governor. Decisive action needs to be taken because inflation is the least of his/our worries now.

Like I have said before the OCR is a poor way to maintain an economic system, it doesn't serve its purpose well, but it is all we have at present.

A progressive cut over this year, down to below 6%, starting with a .75 point basis cut will send a good message to the market and business, that lending rates will be somewhat dampened and business will be stimulated when it needs it.

Our socialist government are intervening in every other part of our lives, including the private business world but for the life of me , when we really do need intervention, Micheal Cullen just sits on his calloused hands and blames others for our countries current mis- fortunes.

Get off your arse and do something history boy.


Essential related reading from Share Investor

Alan Bollard's indecision over OCR a worry to NZ INC
Share Investor Friday Free for all: Edition 13 - first story

Global credit squeeze: There is no free lunch
Current Credit crunch a blessing in disguise
Lenders must come clean over losses to restore faith in credit markets

c Share Investor & Political Animal 2008

Buyer of large piece Pumpkin Patch a mystery

A sizable chunk of Pumpkin Patch
was traded today, leading to speculation
as to who the purchaser might be and why.


Like other global markets New Zealand's NZX rallied today(19 March NZ time) by 1.4%.

Not as spectacular as the Dow's 400 plus points or Asian markets 3% plus rises but many of our stocks did well.

There are more months of bad news to come so don't forget what happened earlier this week please.

I must point out to readers of Share Investor that I noticed a stock that finally got bought in serious volumes today after being beaten down to its IPO price earlier this week.

Pumpkin Patch Ltd [PPL.NZ], the children's clothing retailer and manufacturer, hit $NZ1.5o yesterday and one or several sizable players got some serious action in the company to the tune of over 6.7 million shares. A very large daily amount for this company and the current thin liquidity of trading in NZX stocks in general at present.

Who the buyer was can only be speculation at present but there are several I'm willing have a stab at.

My first pick would be Carmel Fisher's Fisher Funds, who already have a sizable chunk north of 5% of the company and would clearly see the company as a steal considering the current price and the price they paid for the bulk of their chunk in the company.

A close second horse would be Jan Cameron, the former owner of the high fallootin outdoor lifestyle retailer Kathmandu and a recent large purchaser of shares in Postie Plus Group(PPG), another more "down market" New Zealand retailer.

Pumpkin Patch, like Kathmandu, is a strong, high margin, brand in its market/s and it would fit her investing profile for good companies bought at excellent prices.

Of course another outside guess would be an as yet unknown player getting a foothold in the company to launch some sort of bid for the retailer. I hope not.

3.6% of the company's shares were traded and the buyer got their stake at NZ$1.60.

The shares were up by 11c to $1.61.


Disclosure I own PPL shares in the Share Investor Portfolio.


Pumpkin Patch @ Share Investor

Pumpkin Patch Ltd move downmarket
Long Term View: Pumpkin Patch Ltd
Pumpkin Patch's North American Downsizing a Prudent move
Digging at Pumpkin's Profit
Long vs Short: Pumpkin Patch Ltd
Pumpkin Patch Buyback shows Confidence in the Future
Pumpkin Patch takes a hit
Pumpkin Patch ripe for the picking
What is Jan Cameron up to?
I'm buying
Why did you buy that Stock? [Pumpkin Patch]
Rod Duke's Pumpkin Patch gets bigger
Buyer of large piece of Pumpkin Patch a mystery
Pumpkin Patch a screaming buy
Broker downgrades of PPL lack long term vision
Pumpkin's expansion comes at a cost
Pumpkin Patch vs Burger Fuel
Pumpkin Patch profits flatten
New Zealand Retailers ring up costs not tills

Discuss PPL @ Share Investor Forum

Download PPL Company Reports

Buy Pumpkin Patch Clothing

From Fishpond.co.nz



Buy Bird on a Wire: The Inside Story from a Straight Talking CEO & more @ Fishpond.co.nz




c Share Investor 2008