Monthly Archives: November 2011

PM should stop protecting Banks

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PM has to stop protecting Banks, says candidate

 Friday, 18 November 11

 

John Key should stop protecting Banks, according to the New Economics Party candidate, Laurence Boomert.

“More important than the teaparty scandal is the austerity measures that National will be implementing as our debt crisis lands next year. ACT of course, even if they don’t get into Parliament, will be prodding them for more heartless cuts to government spending.”

“Our country is going down the same path as Greece. There has been more borrowing under National than ever before and if nothing changes we will, like Greece, be reduced to being slaves of the banks.”

“Banks have benefited from a usury-based money system which can only increase debt exponentially. Banks create credit and then charge interest on the debt so the debt has to increase. And of course recently since the carry trade it has all escalated to grotesque proportions.

“Globally we are in a right pickle now. We have to realise the ‘Age of Usury’ is coming to an end. Attempts to rescue indebted country with more debt will only delay the day of reckoning”.

“The banks got us into all this mess and our Governments have been silent allies. When the people finally wake up to it all and start disbelieving experts like Don Brash and the IMF, we will finally get an economic system that doesn’t collapse. ”

 

For further comment phone Laurence Boomert 027 258 8807

https://neweconomics.net.nz

 

 

Change the Money System to combat climate change

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Tuesday, 15 November 11

The New Economics Party candidate for Wellington Central, Laurence Boomert, said that along with other policies, redesigning the money system would be a powerful way of combating climate change.

Reacting to a recent International Energy Agency report which said ‘on planned policies, rising fossil energy use will lead to irreversible and potentially catastrophic climate change’, he said that all international climate change conferences had broken up because governments were scared economic growth would falter.

“So we need an economic system which doesn’t require incessant growth on a finite planet. It is time we asked the right question. The force that requires us to gobble up more and more of the planet and turn it into goods is a structurally unsound money system and it needs to change”, he said.

“We design our money as interest bearing debt money. This type of money requires economic growth or the whole house of cards will collapse, as it is doing in Europe right now”, he said.

The IEA report said emissions globally jumped 5.3% in 2010 he said and on current path we are all committing mass suicide.

He said the New Economics Party would introduce a carbon tax on coal, oil and gas at source and not wait till it is burnt into the atmosphere. “The potential buyers of Solid Energy would have to be frightened if our party was in power.”

 “We would limit expansion of airports, impose an aviation fuel tax, and reduce our oil country’s imports by 4-6% a year. Motorway building would cease overnight and we would only focus on improving our current roads and the coal would remain in the hole.”

 

For further comment phone Laurence Boomert 027 258 8807

 

 

 

 

Kim Hill interview with Raf Manji

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You can listen to this excellent fifteen minute interview on the money system here.

This is a very clear exposition of the monetary system and fractional reserve banking.
He also touches on timebanking and other form of alternative currencies as well as the Occupy movement
Raf Manji is a former London investment banker who moved to Christchurch and founded the independent policy development space, the Sustento Institute .

The Sky is really Falling, says candidate

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Media Statement

11 November 11

The Sky is Really Falling, says candidate

The sky is falling and nobody is planning for what New Zealand would do in the case of a full economic meltdown, said Laurence Boomert, Wellington Central candidate for the New Economics Party.

“Here we have Italy now in deep trouble, and the New Zealand politicians are blithely promising bright and happy days”, he said. “There isn’t a country in the world that will be untouched by this debt crisis. Next it will be Spain, France and USA. Because we are all tightly linked, what happens overseas is very much our election issue,” he said.

“It is time to think outside the square and work to invent an economic system not dependent on  growth. If it wants to create jobs, Government needs to focus on supporting small and medium sized businesses that want to introduce healthy innovations. Small and medium sized businesses create most of the jobs not the Telecoms of the world”, he said.

Boomert said it is time to work on alternative complementary currencies that work at all levels including at a national level. When small businesses join barter networks, Government should allow their GST and income tax to be paid in their currency.

He said government should be actively involved to support our business sector in designing and implementing business-to-business currencies such as ones operating in Uruguay, Switzerland and Austria.

For further comment phone Laurence Boomert 027 258 8807

 

European debt crisis and oil affordability

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Well it looks as though it wouldn’t be much fun being the next Prime Minister of either Greece or Italy right now. It is a poisoned chalice. Who wants to introduce austerity measures and remain electable? Any concerned citizen can see what is coming for New Zealand when our trading partners are in this sort of trouble.

Richard Douthwaite, the green economist from Ireland, has written the most amazing chapter in FEASTA’s book Fleeing Vesuvius. He explains the connection between declining oil supplies and the trend of rich countries to run deficits. Taking Ireland as an example, he lists the cost of mineral fuel imports, the value of exports and then works out the fuel cost as a percentage of export earnings. It rose from 2.4% in 2001 to 7.6% in 2008. Exports are the only means by which the country can earn the money it needs to pay the interest on its overseas borrowings.

He explains that a country that runs a deficit on its trade in goods and services for several years will find that its firms and people get heavily in debt because a dense web of debt has to be created within that country to get the purchasing power, lost as a result of the deficit, back into everyone’s hands.

After a careful explanation, one of his conclusions is that it is dangerous and destabilising for any country, firm or individual to borrow overseas and net capital movements between countries should be prohibited. This is rather startling, but when you think about it foreign capital creates problems when it enters a country and when it leaves the country. When it comes in it boosts the exchange rate, thus hurting firms producing for the home market by making imports cheaper. It also hurts the exporters, reducing their overseas earnings when they convert them into national currency. As a result, when the loan has to be repaid, the country is in a weaker position to do so than it was when it took the loan on.  And managing borders obeys one of the laws of Nature.

The late Rod Donald, former co-leader of the Greens, used to go on and on about the balance of payments in New Zealand and I can see why. Both the National Party and the Labour Party seem to be taking our country into more and more debt. We have borrowed around $40 billion in the last three years.

Someone should work out our trend over the last few years. We need to find a list of the fuel cost as a percentage of export earnings and the ratio of total external debt to exports.