Since that post I’ve thought further about the practice of global trading currencies, securities, futures and financial instruments and have found that my attitude would better be described as abhorrence. Financial trading is actually a betting game with huge financial stakes for the players, which has huge but mostly hidden impacts on the lives of the rest of us – the 99.9% who don’t play these markets.

I was talking with a friend who in recent months has been making a comfortable living out of a scientific and business pursuit of online sports betting. I found myself reflecting on whether his income process was useful or damaging to society. My answer was “neither”.

I cannot for the life of me find anything in his new career that makes the world better. At least in Lotto a percentage of the stakes goes to community developments. Personal private-sector betting merely moves money around between winning and losing players, with the bookmaker taking a cut. At the same time, though, my friend is not actually damaging society. He’s not a problem gambler, and has systems built in that prohibit his activities from harming his family financially.

When I think of the money traders (commonly called “Wall Street”), I do not feel the same level of tolerance. Or any tolerance whatsoever. I may be wrong, but … I think they’re a blight on society, and that their departure would make every economy in every country more productive.

As with sports gambling, any damage they do among themselves is none of my concern really. These traders choose to play their game and accept that they will win some and lose some as they spend their day speculating on what will go up and what will come down in price. Some traders are bound to get into personal difficulties and probably affect the lives of their families, but apart from that, there’s no wider damage.

But unlike sports gambling, global financial traders DO have an impact on the way economies operate. With their betting they can influence the value of currencies: if they have enough funds the richest of them can outbid reserve banks and force exchange rates to move against the wishes of sovereign states. Although I don’t properly understand how it works, short selling of stocks or financial instruments can and often does artificially destroy the value of those assets. In other words, the activities of these gamblers actually affects the outcomes of what they are gambling on.

America being what it is (the land of the brave), there will always be a group of people there who are self-motivated to use whatever means they have to make easy money at the expense of others, without doing anything productive or useful at all. And the free enterprise-driven regulatory framework within which they play will always protect them. So I cannot see these trading leeches ever being eliminated unless capitalism collapses totally.

But my abhorrence of the money-market men is one reason why I support a global Financial Transaction Tax, a tiny percentage tax which would be placed on every financial transaction in the world. It may add a few dollars to my own personal banking each year, but just imagine how much money it would reap for the whole of society – and how much it could moderate the amount of betting going on among Wall Street traders – if every multi-million dollar transaction they do every day was subject to this tax!

Perhaps that would mean that these trading leeches would, however unwillingly, actually be contributing something to society for a change.

Isn’t it amazing how quickly we forget how grim it looked and sounded back then, when American banks such as Lehmans and other ginormous corporations went under or were bought and/or propped up by the US government, and it looked like the next Great Depression would happen?

It was just over three years ago now, but in the meantime various bailouts and much money-printing helped keep the wheels of commerce and consumerism spinning – at least for a while longer. And while they keep turning, we are led to believe that the problem is over. We may have a mild recession, we’re told, but the system will right itself in time and we’ll be able to get back to economic growth and raising our so-called standard of living.

I read this book aiming to understand a little better how it happened, and hoping to gain a view on how the capitalist system that the US has bestowed (or inflicted) upon the western world must be changed to turn things around to a sustainable system rather than business as usual which is merely delaying the inevitable.

You see – and I don’t want to sound like I’m bragging – I was one of those who sort of saw it coming, back before the experts were saying that “in hindsight the GFC was bound to happen but no-one could have predicted it beforehand”. It was in fact predictable, and this book shows how the storm gathered. Greed, irrational optimism and adherence to a credo that “values (particularly of real estate) always rise” combined to make most of us blind to what the dark clouds were telling us.

The author of The End of Wall Street is not an expert business reporter but simply a thorough researcher with a good reporter’s way of simplifying complex facts and parallel developments into a consistent, readable narrative. Not that I understood it all – but then not many people back then seemed to fully understand what the Wall Street traders in stocks, equities, securities, bonds, mortgage swaps, CDOs etc were actually doing. But I think I’ve got the gist of it now, thanks to Roger Lowenstein.

What the traders and banks were in fact doing was speculating on the value of anything they could get their hands on or could imagine mathematically (particularly future values), and more often than not with no inkling of the value or riskiness of those things. The name of the game was not owning anything but rather moving money, IOUs, stocks, bonds, mortgages, sliced mortgage securities, and other intangibles around between themselves, collecting a percentage along the way with each transaction along with any capital gain.

They made the hamster’s treadmill spin faster and faster (going nowhere in particular, of course) until, one day, it seized up. Perhaps a bearing broke or a spoke snagged. The Wall Street traders and banks were left with nothing tangible, nothing of intrinsic value, and no way of borrowing money to pay for the stuff they had in their hands or the debts they owed when the treadmill snagged.

Now we’re seeing something similar in effect, though different in substance, in the Euro crisis. All bailout plans are merely attempts to keep the hamster’s treadmill moving, short-term ways of keeping cash moving around by borrowing from anywhere and using the period of time before repayment is due to work out some way of doing it again to keep the lenders happy.

Anyone who publicly says what is pretty obvious – that this cannot be sustained even in the medium term – is considered an unwanted pessimist or doom-merchant. The goal of the wheel-greasing process is to maintain enough confidence among consumers and money dealers to see the system through another day, week or month. The horizon appears to be little further than this.

My view remains as I wrote in August in this post, that it’s the change of tide we should be reacting to, not the waves. The tide is coming in and we’re the children on the beach trying to build defences and diversion channels to stop the individual waves from destroying our sandcastles. In the end, the tide will win.

As Roger Lowenstein concludes, the lessons are there for the learning, and if we don’t learn them and make the changes necessary to our capitalist system, we will continue to get it wrong.

I won’t argue the merits of his salary in his particular setting, apart from agreeing with sentiments in the scores of letters which filled the opinion pages of The Press. So many people in that quake-broken city are hanging on by a thread, financially and emotionally, and the rest of the country is being reminded ad nauseum of the need for restraint in wage expectations and government spending.

This decision is an insult to all except the upper clique of officials and corporate bosses who increasingly are losing contact with the rest of the population.

Executive salaries have bothered me for years. I’ve tried to keep an open mind, aware of the arguments of supporters generally along the lines of (a) you have to pay what the market demands, and (b) you suffer from wealth envy. But it just doesn’t wash.

1. The “market demand” argument is run by the people who benefit most from it. The “market” for senior executives is small and created by the senior execs themselves. They maintain it by bidding each other up. Each new position is filled by someone who is already in the clique but who demands or expects more money. The whole thing must be unsustainable – you just cannot keep bidding up the rewards at a rate faster than the underlying rate of economic growth without the system ultimately falling apart through its own illogicality or a rebellion by “the masses”.

2. That so-called market is rarely tested. With most workers, excessive wage demands lose you the job. The labour market works pretty efficiently, be it fairly or because of ruthless control from the bosses. But when hiring a new senior executive no-one seems to have the guts to say, we can get someone else if you demand too high a salary. There really is no effective market for the top dogs, so they cannot justify it through “market forces”.

3. One would like to believe that quality senior executives would see job satisfaction, their leadership status and the knowledge that they are useful as part of the reason they take on such positions, not just the pay. Many people do outstanding work of great benefit to society without the motivation of being paid an obscene fortune to do it.

4. In Christchurch in particular, the recovery process is clearly reliant on many people in leadership positions going the extra mile without expecting big money in return. That’s how the city will rebuild. It’s insulting and depressing to the ordinary people who are making this extra effort that their leaders are seen to be doing it mainly for the money.

5. In Marryatt’s case, it has long been known that he desperately wanted the job anyway. He and his supporters reportedly fought tooth and nail to retain his position. It’s not as if the council needed to give him a big pay rise to keep him.

Hopefully someone with greater understanding of finance and stock markets, and who knows how to count in billions, will be able to help me out.

There are two parts to the election debate about whether or not to sell 49% of five NZ state-owned enterprises – the economics of it, and the ideology underlying private sector versus state sector ownership of large infrastructure businesses.

The incumbent National party is going to the electorate with the policy of selling 49% of the enterprises (Air New Zealand, a coal miner and three electricity generators) into private hands.

Initially the rationale was to raise $7 billion (or $8b, one minister said) and to use it to retire that much debt. That seemed pretty clear-cut. As the election campaign got underway, and noting the trouble in overseas debt and equity markets, the number got revised to several alternatives depending on which National minister was talking, with the most common figure now $5b – $7b. A good enough estimate – what’s a mere $2 billion between friends? (Or does this mean National is really just guessing? Well, of course they are to a degree – how can anyone calculate how much you can sell anything for on an open market?)

Then the fudging began. In order to make the policy look more attractive, National framed it as selling some assets so as to fund other new assets (presumably ones that would otherwise not be built). These new assets – about $1b worth I believe – will include better facilities for schools and better roads. So, that’s $1b less for retiring debt, so we will need to borrow more to cover that gap.

Then National decided to make the sales proceeds into a fund for election sweeteners. First off the block was nearly half a billion for irrigation schemes, which will benefit farmers and then hopefully trickle down to the rest of us. So that bit of public asset sales revenue will go to the benefit of a few. Other recipients from the same fund are promised elsewhere.

In summary, a significant proportion of the funds raised by selling 49% of five state assets will now NOT go to retiring debt, so the National party needs to borrow more or cut a few billion off public services to achieve its target of getting back to surplus within its timeframe.

If I’m wrong in my logic and calculations, please someone tell me.

The other thing I may be wrong about, but would welcome correction, is the question of who will buy the shares. We’re talking about $5 – $7 billion that needs to be raised or, apparently, it’s not worth the sales going ahead. And National is sure that the large majority of the money will come from Kiwis. My questions are:

1. Is there $5b – $7b floating around in New Zealand, outside of the share market, looking for companies to invest in? If so, where is it?

2. If a hunk of that money is to be supplied from part of what Kiwi shareholders already hold in the New Zealand share market, what is the point of moving it from the existing NZ companies to these new ex-state assets? How will that help boost investment in local business and development? Or if locals will need to borrow to buy shares, that puts our (private) borrowing in an even worse state when we’re being encouraged to save more and reduce debt.

3. I assume that such large sums of money could come from Kiwisaver providers, the Super fund, iwi and other large NZ investment funds. But that would mean that most individual “mum & dad investors”, who National is boasting will love to buy shares, will in fact only own shares indirectly, as part of funds they have no control over.

4. Getting back to fundamentals, how many New Zealanders will be able to afford shares in these assets on the open market? There can be no financial concessions to Kiwis because that would reduce the amount raised, so the government will be aiming to get top dollar from everyone. Only the wealthy investors of this country, with money to spare, will be able to afford any significant holdings in the sold assets.

5. As with the similarly contentious issue of the sale of NZ farms, the top money is overseas. In any open market where the seller is after as much money as possible, the buyers will be the ones with the most money. And it won’t stop at the initial public offering; in time the initial buyers will want to sell, especially if the price is right, so eventually non-Kiwis will own pretty much all of the 49%.

For those not familiar with the week-by-week progress (or lack of it) in planning for post-earthquake Christchurch, the list of majorly contentious issues includes unavailability of insurance, access to the partly demolished CBD, saving heritage buildings versus widespread demolition, delays in decisions on land status, payouts for red-zoners, and where displaced families will live.

Now there’s a relatively new one: how will the new CBD look and function, with residents and developers at odds over the draft plan put forward by the city council.

The council plan, developed from thousands of submitted ideas from across the community, sees greener spaces, fewer cars, restrictions on building heights and, over all, a planned and more people-friendly “look and feel”.

Developers say some of the proposed regulations would be too onerous and restrictive on the people who are expected to fund the rebuild – the CBD property owners and investors – and many will take their payout money elsewhere leaving no-one to finance and build what the populace wants.

Letters to the editor show a big divide: those supporting the free market solution of letting investors do what they want, and those who say this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to design a city that suits people.

Sadly, both are talking past each other, and I see few published opinions that seek to balance the two views, so here goes.

I may be wrong, but …. I believe the larger businesses and landowners with the money and the community-minded residents actually need each other.

Residents and town planners who seek to design spaces and facilities that will make for stronger and healthier communities simply do not have the money to do it. Nor do they legally own the land on which their dream will be built. The people who hope to live in the kind of ideal city environment suggested by the draft plan can only do so if they have jobs to pay for it through rates and consumer patronage. And this can happen only if those who have the money to invest in buildings for businesses see a financial return.

Big business must expect certain incentives to stay and get involved. But the people pushing the business side of this dispute do also need to get down off their high horses and realise one key factor – if the CDB that they rebuild is not attractive or friendly to the people of Christchurch, they will be wasting their money anyway.

They need to listen carefully to what ordinary punters are saying, and consider their own involvement in that light. Otherwise current trends of small businesses moving to the suburbs and shoppers buying from suburban malls will simply continue, and the city will remain hollowed out for decades and provide no incentive for investors.

Hopefully the current stand-off between CBD investors and council planners will cool down and each will see the need for the other if the city is to rebuild successfully. The right sort of investors and developers will seriously consult with their potential customers and shape their thinking to develop building solutions that make the city attractive enough to win over the populace. And environmentally minded citizens and planners will work with developers as partners, not adversaries, to show them what will and will not work and why; and be thankful that someone is prepared to put hunks of money back into their beloved city.

It is, in fact, a classic case of market forces at play. Developers must accommodate and plan for their potential clientele, while residents, as consumers and citizens, must rely on funders to give them the choices they want.

All Black jerseys? Indeed, this is thing that seems to be worrying most Kiwis! Seeing the media coverage it’s getting here is the sort of thing that makes political and media commentators roll their eyes and ask, despairingly, “So much for our small-town priorities!”

And yet there is good reason for us ordinary folk to blog and tweet and facebook about Adidas’s pricing policy. It’s something we feel we can actually do something about.

Most of us are swamped intellectually if not emotionally when trying to get a picture of what’s going wrong with global finances and the inexorable rise in social anarchy (and the extent to which they are related). We’re as disconnected from those emerging realities as are the people rioting in Britain are from community participation and wellbeing.

What we can understand is the global marketplace for pop-culture goods such as All Blacks clothing (and branded clothing in general), and we can see how global marketers such as (in this case) Adidas can try to manipulate consumers.

And just as we understand that, so we also know how to hit back, using global IT media to force the marketers to think again, to see how attempts to manipulate can backfire and do more economic damage than the gains from charging premium prices.

And I may be wrong, but it’s entirely possible that the power of global corporate marketing may even be one cause of the other two big issues of the day.

In the end, of course, the construction was washed away and we settled back to swimming or ice creams. (Unless, that is, the sandcastle is constructed above the high tide mark. But then where’s the fun in that?)

Watching the temporary fixes being set up in recent months in many of the world’s most powerful economies to avert or postpone debt crises has much the same feel about it. Watching the short-term, narrow-focus reactions of our own consumption-addicted citizens, and of many politicians and business leaders, to the adjustments makes us look more like the children than the grown-ups in this game-changing drama.

America’s shameful political confrontation this week over its unthinkable debt situation is the ultimate in wake-up calls. But what do we in New Zealand learn? We worry that interest rates may go up a bit, or the cost of milk may rise, or some other relatively minor effect. We see the waves approaching and build little protective walls (if we care at all), but we still refuse to see the tidal advance.

Economies around the world are becoming less stable by the month, but we continue on our merry way in the hope and expectation that the little adjustments our governments make will sort it all out or at least protect our little castles. Our leaders feel happy if they can divert the waves one by one hoping that the citizens are not disconcerted by the real global picture – at least until after the next election.

The metaphor of waves and tides applies equally to climate change, which advances even more slowly than economic collapse. Weather events become a little more extreme each year, small ecological changes are seen over observable periods of time, but still in everyday living these seem like series of waves to be deflected and we cannot see the tide advancing.

So we tinker with policy decisions such as emission trading systems and carbon taxes, recycling and energy saving. Meanwhile populations at large, encouraged by the mantra that economic growth is everything, see such initiatives as obstacles to progress. We cannot see the larger picture – the tide coming in – over a longer time period.

Pessimistic, yes. But societies based on both corporate capitalism and environmental disinterest will, if there is no commitment to change but only to tinker, eventually be washed away. And it will be a painful process.

Trouble is, apart from trying to avoid or minimise personal debt, I have little idea what ordinary folk can do about the economic situation, except to keep our eyes open and hope for the emergence of more business and political leaders who can put real sustainability into practice ahead of the growth imperative.

While acknowledging that many big ticket items are in short supply here (e.g. only two smallish car yards, one appliance retailer), and that occasionally some ordinary items have been short when I’ve needed them (e.g. no shop stocking white tennis socks on the day I’d run out), generally Motueka offers me an impressively good selection of the basics.

When more is needed, Nelson and Richmond are only a 30-40 minutes drive away and the selection of shops there would satisfy all but the most fastidious of buyers, I imagine. And of course, there’s the giant global shopping mall called the internet.

But I’ve firmed up now on a personal strategic policy of buying locally whenever possible and affordable. And there’s one good reason for this – it’s in my own best interests.

The maxim goes: The more I buy locally, the better those shops do and the more likely they are to still be in business when I need them.

The inverse is an even more convincing argument: Every time I choose to buy in Nelson or on the internet when I could have bought the same or similar in Motueka, I make it harder for a local businesses to survive, so the less likely that business is to be around when I need them.

It is in my interests to support them because I want to be part of a town which houses sustainable businesses that offer me solutions to my basic needs. When they thrive, my life gets better – they offer me more choices and better quality products and services so I don’t have the hassle of driving out of town to get them.

Every time I choose to top up my petrol tank in Nelson because the cost per litre may be 3 cents less (the sort of average we’re used to), I lessen fractionally the viability of our two High Street gas stations here. If, then, one went under it would be me that suffered as much as their owners because I will have lost an option into the longer-term future.

When I buy a book over the internet to save a few dollars and get it more quickly than it can be ordered in, I make it fractionally harder for my nearby stationer to survive; and if he went then so would so many other products he so usefully makes available to me at strolling distance.

I’m not going to name and single out any particular local businesses that I want to survive for my personal future benefit, and therefore will patronise whenever possible, but locals here will know and understand these examples.

If I need a new computer modem (as I did recently), I’d rather buy from the one local computer shop than save $15 getting one on the internet or spending that $15 on petrol to travel to Nelson to buy one for $10 less at Harvey Norman. The local computer shop now has a tiny extra chance of surviving and becoming even better – plus I got the local tech guy to help install it properly.

If I need new jeans or a sweatshirt, I’ll make sure that at least I try the local menswear retailer first and only consider a trip to the city if he has nothing at all suitable – which is in fact a rare situation. Likewise shoes – the choice available locally is surprisingly good and buying there helps that situation to continue (rather than forcing the retailer to cut down on his range if sales aren’t sufficient to sustain his offering)

I could go on; I trust you’ve well and truly got the picture by now. Even if I have to pay a little more on some purchases (and this isn’t all that often the case anyway), I would rather do that and help make the commercial activity of the community stronger, because in the long run it will make Motueka a better place for me to live, and certainly make me less reliant on driving to the city to buy what I need.

That’s what I call real commercial sustainability.

If this is the case, then I guess I can put in my tuppence worth. I believe the bulk of tax should be levied at a moderate rate across all sectors and all methods of wealth creation, including wages, business profits, GST and capital gains. (The remainder of tax should be gained from social engineering efforts such as taxes on fags, alcohol and petrol.)

I recognise that initially there will be winners and losers if such a strategy is implemented. Winners would be the individuals and companies that already pay taxes and don’t have access to clever ways of avoiding it – they should gain some relief as the tax net widens. Losers would be the people who have relied on no tax on capital gains in order to become wealthier, often with little actual productive effort on their part.

The most obvious losers will be those who make money out of property investment, including many landlords. And you can see this is the case because the main opponents of a capital gains tax policy are the associations representing landlords and property investors. They say there’s nothing in the game for many of their members if they cannot make tax-free money from capital gains.

But I’m very confident that, although there will be some early negative impacts on the rental and housing markets, these will be ironed out within a year or two as everyone adjusts to a new, fairer reality. Market forces – supply and demand – will ultimately force this adjustment. Whatever price changes will be necessary in order for the rental market to continue to operate will bed in and landlords will adjust their calculations.

As a person who tries to express a generosity of spirit to all people, I nevertheless find it hard to extend that to tax freeloaders – those who use all the facilities that taxpayers are funding (and often demand more) while actively seeking ways to avoid paying their share of tax.

GST was introduced in the 1980s largely as a way of stopping people using their businesses to pay for all their living expenses, so paying little tax. Its introduction was accompanied by a drop in personal and business income taxes, so the tax burden was spread across a wider group of wealth accumulators and decreased from those who had no way of avoiding it. That was fairer.

But there are still large numbers of people who get into often non-productive activity (like house trading and renting) principally because they can write so much (often all) income off against losses but be confident they can make a heap of money in capital gain at sale time. Sure, it’s a great lark for them, and I’m not surprised that they would hate a CGT and campaign against it, but their arguments are not based on fairness.

The only other tax that’s talked about that I would like to be considered more seriously would be one on financial transactions. This would target the freeloaders who make money out of shifting money around, which surely must be one of the most parasitic of all never-get-your-hands-dirty occupations.

I don’t love being taxed. But I do enjoy and appreciate a country and society which provides so much that I could not afford myself – the roads, great hospitals, medical subsidies (yes, I’m getting on), good schools, parks, financial support for the elderly and unemployable …. the list goes on.

I see tax as a large-scale version of the membership fees I pay each year for my great local tennis club. It’s an expense I could do without, but when paid it provides me with a share of facilities which I can enjoy while playing my favourite social sport. Some of what my subs are used for does not directly benefit me – things like facilities for the juniors, or subsidies for some social events I don’t attend. But it’s all part of the package and, like my income tax, I would rather pay it than be a freeloader who wants to play at the courts without paying.

Furthermore, a tax level of 15%, which appears to have been suggested, would not be a serious dampener on most activities that accumulate wealth through capital gains. If you sell a property for $100,000 more than it cost you a few years earlier, then you would still come away with $85,000 of it – that’s not bad at all. It would hardly stop me from pursuing that line if that was my choice of income earning.

A few other comments on the CGT.

It’s been pointed out, and I agree, that we should be on same footing as our main trading partners, most of whom have such a tax. John Key sounded really pathetic when he thumped on about a CGT here forcing our producers to take their business to other countries like Australia. Duh! They have a CGT too! And they don’t find it too hard to administer. (But then they’re Aussies, John, much cleverer than us, eh.)

Secondly, I have to say good on Labour for showing some real guts in going down this line. After a clear policy on no state asset sales, this is now one other fundamental difference to stand against National policy. The more Labour can show the guts to come up with strong policies that are significantly different, the more likely I am to consider voting for them.

And of course, also good on Greens, who have advocated a CGT for years and are finally seeing it being advocated by a major party.

For most of us it’s a question of what can be done to reduce the harm being done. I have no time for the hard-right view that people must be responsible for their own choices so let the free market reign and the stupid suffer. Two reasons:

1. Some people are genuinely so financially challenged that an extra expense, such as a dentist’s bill or the repair of a car that’s needed to get the breadwinner to work, is yet another last straw. The notion of “personal responsibility” in such cases is a comfortable middle-class attitude.

2. Almost invariably one consequence of being trapped in a loan/debt cycle is the detrimental effects on other people, usually family and long-suffering or gullible friends who, in turn, are eventually affected financially.

Watchers of Coronation Street will recognise how loan-shark debt can get you into an inescapable hole to the detriment of others. Joe the plumber is dragging down poor, trusting Gail and in the process risking the loss of friends with his attempts to wheedle quick money out of them. Yeah, Joe is stupid, but who among us has never looked or fallen for a quick solution to a deeper problem?

Back home, as with problem gambling and drinking, some form of regulation or legislation on lending businesses is necessary, not just to help the primary person affected but also their friends and families.

Most of us (again with exceptions in the form of libertarian ideologues) accept that letting anyone drink as much as they like without sanction will have wider reaching consequences.

Likewise, lenders of last resort need to be regulated to prohibit their worst practices, such as indecipherable loan contracts and monstrous interest rates.