That was great graffiti on the corner of the Terrace and Salamanca Road in Wellington today.
   Despite National’s fuzzy explanations saying that the party will not sell Kiwibank should it get into office, I reckon most Kiwis don’t believe them.
   Nor should they have reason to.
   For some of us, National’s obsession with privatization in selling off Kiwi interests to foreigners exceeded Labour’s during the 1980s in pursuit of creating a chasm between rich and poor in this nation.
   It’s a pretty standard part of the Labour–National playbook.
   And with this global credit crisis, it’s important to have banks in this country that are investing in the interests of New Zealand, not the whims of foreign shareholders. That’s why we need some banks that are domestically owned, trying to make a return for New Zealand interests.
   The Kiwibank advertising on New Zealand TV screens at the moment, while corny, plays to patriotism, but the underlying message is far more important.
   Foreign-owned banks in New Zealand such as the ANZ have made $3·23 billion off Kiwis last year, run so that their Johnny Foreigner shareholders can make money. Their investments are made to help foreign interests, not to help our own.
   While I am a globalist at heart, recessions are no time to be wasting money abroad when we need to look after ourselves first.
   For one of the very few times in the last nine years, I agree with Dr Michael Cullen, the Finance Minister, when he says that savings do need to be built up domestically. I also agree with Australian PM Kevin Rudd when he says our current woes can be traced to a cycle of greed and the short-term vision of the American financial system.
   The latter has been a consistent theme at Medinge since its founding.
   Meanwhile, I see that the Dow Jones has dipped below 10,000. A few years ago, I said that if the Dow ever got over 10,000, we’d be waiting for a market correction. For most of this decade I have felt like a complete moron making that call. But when the crap hits the fan, maybe I wasn’t wrong, or maybe I was plain lucky.
   I don’t profess to know all the ins and outs of the stock market, but I do comment from my little corner and at some of the underlying forces.
   In an age when rhetoric and style have become valued over substance and performance—something I have tried to redress through our companies and through the Medinge Group—creating growth from hot air couldn’t be a continuous venture. Posted by Jack Yan, 07:43  permalink

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