Author Archives: Deirdre

If not me then who? A personal reflection

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New Economics Party Membership Form

If not me then who?

I’ve been thinking about why this project started. What on earth would motivate a woman of 73 to start a new political party?  Shouldn’t I just be enjoying life at that age, playing bridge, knitting for my grandchildren and travelling. During the winter of 2011 I had had a Skype call from Richard Sanders, an ecological economist in Brisbane. He was worried. His concern was that things aren’t getting any better and that Transition Towns won’t solve everything. He said: “Even if your town becomes self sufficient in food and energy, what are you going to do when the raiders come over the hill?” We talked and together decided that until we are all free, no-one is free. Although in transition towns we have traditionally said to politicians: “A pox on all your houses, we will take leadership here locally to prepare for life here after peak oil”, I have realised that national policies and international policies are just as vital as constructive local action for resilience.

If one is sick we are all sick, if one is poor we are all poor

I was in a classical music concert in Waikanae on 20th August, a Sunday afternoon, and dreaming away happily. I had nearly completed a nine-week e-course on evolutionary spirituality and was contemplating my future from the point of view of my evolutionary impulse, defined in the course as ‘the part of me that wants to make the world better’. We had all been mulling over the vexed question of our life’s work in the world. Since the phone call from Richard Sanders I had been wondering whether I wanted to stay working for my local transition town group and local timebank or get into something national? For me it was time to move back into national issues. What would I do? A few projects came to mind.

So on the way home from the concert it became clearer. When my husband left the car to buy some fish I sent the following text to Laurence Boomert:  “Sounds a weird question but I just sat in a concert thinking if I could vote in the coming election or not. I wondered about the possibility of a Collapse Party.”  Back came the text:  “Have written a draft manifesto and was thinking of standing for Wellington Central.”  So it was all on.

During the next few weeks we brainstormed on names, started working seriously on a manifesto and floated the idea among friends and colleagues. Soon it came clear people would rather it was just a pressure group. The Green Party members wanted to help but couldn’t if we were to be a party. Tricky. So for a while we called it a Working Party on New Economics in case we dirtied our hands with politics.  Maybe the thought was “Politics is a dirty activity only for liars”?

If we want a world without babies we should just go on – business as usual

At one stage we thought if we wrote policy and drew attention to it, then parties could all help themselves and adopt it. But of course they won’t. How naïve! Then somehow, I can’t remember how or why, we switched right back, and jumped in. It was back to a political party and we ended up with quite a conventional name.

So the idea of a political party had surfaced for months, but was quickly dismissed as stupid. Yes I had played leadership roles before, but a political party? That is different. And back came the answer from the course “If not me, then who?” Well I had written a book on new economics, or at least the money side of it, and I had once been a city councillor, I had been a professional campaigner (for ASH in the 1980s) and had stood for the Values Party in 1975 and dabbled in the Green Party and the Alliance from time to time, even stood for local bodies as a Green candidate twice.

But there are all sorts of reasons why it shouldn’t be me. I have a husband of 86 and we don’t travel far from home. We have a big garden and home to care for. I had eczema very badly last year and could hardly walk for the splits on my feet. But it is under control now. I have had heart trouble. But I have just had two cataracts replaced and now I can see without glasses, so that no longer is an excuse. Those are my limitations.

But something happened inside me and I just jumped in. I have written most of this website, with suggestions and short pieces from others, and it is just a draft to discuss at our first get together in Turangi, 14 April, 2012. Because we have so little time to solve these Very Big Problems I have shamelessly cut and pasted from all sorts of sources, so if you recognise something as yours please take it as a compliment. Thank you for your contribution. I have no aspirations right now to be in Parliament, but will do whatever I can to advance the policies in any way you want me to.

Many of you will be able to contribute your specialist knowledge. Mine is only one glimpse of the truth. To create a new economy on a war-like footing needs a whole army of highly motivated pioneers. We need those with knowledge on banking, investment, new business models, cooperatives, credit unions, new models of ownership for a start. We need those who have worked in economic think tanks, those who have worked in Treasury, the Reserve Bank, or those who have traded in derivatives. We need those who know about climate change, those who campaign against free trade and those who know that income tax is an illogical tax. We need those who have no particular knowledge on economics but just want to help somehow. Is this you?

One theory is that there are four general types of people required to be an effective group. We need conscientious people who just want to help, to be given clear instructions. We need directors who work out who will do what and organise it to be done. We need visionaries who can see the rocks ahead. We need carers, those whose role is to care for others in the party.

If you are one of these people can you please ask yourself the question “If not me, then who?”

Environmental campaigner Bill McKibben has written:

“We definitely need art and music and disciplined, nonviolent but very real anger. Most, we need to tell the truth, resolutely and constantly. Fossil fuel is wrecking the one earth we’ve got. It’s not going to go away because we ask politely. If we want a world that works, we’re going to have to raise our voices.”

So stop waiting for someone else to fix the economic system that is killing our planet. There is no one else. It is you and it is me. If you want to raise your voice, go to Get Involved on the menu now and jump in! There is nothing to be lost and Life to be gained.

In fact if you want to help us get 500 members before April 2014, here is the membership form for you to download, fill in and post with your sub.

Deirdre

 

Christchurch currencies needed for reconstruction

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Media Statement

4 Nov 2011

Let Christchurch City Council issue a Christchurch dollar, says candidate.

According to Laurence Boomert, Wellington Central candidate for the New Economics Party, the best thing the government could do to help Christchurch recover to allow them to create a range of interest free local currencies.

“Here we have a cost of up to $30 billion for the Christchurch rebuild. It is time to think outside the square,” said Boomert.

The Council could reduce its expenses in NZ dollars, and if local businesses play their part, then the labour part of local infrastructure repairs could easily be paid with a local currency. Boomert said there is a huge component of local labour and there should be no need to use precious national dollars for that.

CERA, the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority needs to play its part. It is already empowered to override any existing legislation, so that should also be true for the legal tender law. CERA could declare the Christchurch Earthquake Dollar legal tender, and then have the City Council issue the money by spending it into circulation. He said it would involve legislating to ensure that the Christchurch dollar would be acceptable for paying rates.

It would be essential that the Chamber of Commerce and other business associations should be on board and we call on them to do so. Since local businesses are hurting as a result of the earthquake, anything that increases turnover should find their support.

Boomert said the Council could persuade locally owned businesses to accept the Christchurch Earthquake Dollar and in this way money could be kept in Christchurch.  The notes could have pictures like the old cathedral and other landmark buildings on it.

“A local currency keeps money in the area and usually circulates faster, doing more good,” said Boomert.

For further comment Laurence Boomert  03 525 8229/027 258 8807

 

 

ANZ records $1billion dollar profit from New Zealand

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ANZ Auckland. None of the directors lives in New Zealand

Not a single director of ANZ is a New Zealander. Today it was announced that ANZ made  $1 billion profit and of course it was sent to Australia.

So looking at their website we find their board comprises seven men and one woman. Two live in Sydney, four in Melbourne, one has homes in both Sydney and New York and one lives in Singapore. They have backgrounds in law, accountancy and one was an ex Reserve Bank of Australia Governor. No surprises there. And of course they are on the boards of other companies like CocaCola and one was an advisor to Goldmann Sachs.

Bernard Hickey was on Closeup TVNZ tonight explaining how their margins have widened. People are paying higher mortgages and investors are getting lower returns. But this isn’t all. A look at their website shows they are dealing in derivatives like spots, options and forwards. Then there are spot minors, forward majors etc. All sorts of “financial instruments”  that not even bankers understand themselves sometimes. This calls for a financial transaction tax.

And of course there is the small matter of fractional reserve banking and the fact that private banks create and control the money supply. No wonder their buildings are the biggest in each city. No wonder they make record profits when the country is in a recession.

Our policy is that “We would require corporations that choose to operate in more than one country to charter an independent local subsidiary in our country with majority ownership here.”

The TV item said that 95% of profits from our banks now go overseas. How can we maintain any national integrity when we are controlled by overseas owned banks? This issue must be a priority of any self respecting government.

A main assumption of Prefu just fell over!

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The supremely optimistic Polyanna style Pre-election Fiscal Update released by Treasury had three assumptions. One was that there was an “orderly resolution of the Greek debt crisis”.

But with the Greek Prime Minister just announcing that there would be a referendum on the bailout package and the markets responding by panicking, it is abundantly clear that Treasury’s assumption just flew out the window (to change the metaphor).

So the major political parties will go on debating the finer details of their different policies while Rome burns (well Athens actually) and France and US and New Zealand and all those who trade in our connected world.

When we have a financial system based on issuing money supply as interest bearing debt why are we surprised when the debt compounds? Why are we surprised when everyone is in debt? It is time to understand that we have come to the end of economic growth on this planet and we need a new economic system which works for everyone.

 

Deirdre

Petroleum imports now $7.7 billion a year

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The NZ Herald on Thursday Oct 27, 2011 reported that our imports of petroleum (read crude oil) climbed 22% to $7.7 billion in the year.

Not an election issue of course. After all the National government, and presumable Labour if they miraculously were elected, thinks it is business as usual. Import oil and one day maybe the price will go down?? What are they really thinking and what do they really know about the global oil situation?

I had some difficulty finding an annual figure for crude oil imports because a search revealed monthly imports and sudden rises like 53% rise in Aug 11 was explained away by saying we have large, irregular shipments of crude oil arriving at Marsden Point and some months the imports are low. However I finally found a figure for the whole year, authoritative and three days old only.

$7.7 billion is more than twice what we spend each year on law and order, it is nearly half the health budget. If the cost of importing oil goes on increasing at the same rate the price would equal the health budget in three years’ time.

In fact if it keeps rising by 22% a year, by 2016 the cost of crude oil imports will be $20.81billion which will be approaching what we spend on social security and welfare.

I guess the theory is that if we assume all is going to be business as usual, then we will all benefit from more transport. Somehow all this expensive oil will bring jobs and prosperity…. dreams are free I guess.

What are the real political issues this election?

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Well I sat through The Nation this morning on television, really had to hold myself in the seat because I was so bored. Reflections on the leaders, the campaigns really had little to offer other than saying Labour was on the front foot because they were realistic enough to tell us they would raise the pension age to 67.

So what are the real election issues? In my view they are the Greek bailout with a further loan, the Occupy Wall Street international movement, our borrowing of $300m a week so we can pretend all is well and we can maintain our lifestyle for ever, the Thailand floods and the price of food.

So why on earth would I pick those issues? I pick Occupy Wall Street because the world is waking up to the fact that our banks have been allowed to get so big and deal in such crazy sums of their exotic ‘financial instruments’ that Governments deem them too big to fail. People are waking up that the banks rule the world, particularly Goldmann Sachs, JP Morgan, Barclays and Bank of America.

Secondly I pick the Greek bailout because it is only going to last for six months and each time there is a bailout the politicians in France and Germany become less and less re-electable.  You can’t solve a debt problem with more debt. The relevance for NZ is that we are going further and further into debt with our borrowing programme and we just might end up like Greece ourselves.

I picked the Thailand floods because of the relevance for our rice prices and the critical nature of climate change in the future of our economy. Yes I am not just talking about more extreme weather events for our grandchildren to suffer, but I am talking here and now there is damage to our economy. Import costs rise every time there is a crop failure somewhere in the world. And climate change is going to affect the income we get from our agricultural exports too.

Why is the price of food so critical? Because whether or not people link it with crop failure or with rising prices of oil which affects the price of fertilisers, pesticides, agricultural practice and transportation they sure know when food prices rise. A professor at New England Complex Systems Institute Yaneer Bar-Yam is working on the relationship between food prices and political uprising and maintains the relationship is strong.

There is another issue and that is the sale of state assets. I will deal with the relationship between that and our policies in another blog entry some time soon.

Regulating the Banks

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During the 1980s and after the banks were successively deregulated. According to David Korten who saw the same thing happening in the US: “This deregulation shifted the focus of the money/banking/finance system from investment in real wealth creation to a focus on using money to make money through unproductive speculation, arbitrage, usury, deception and market manipulation.”  Financial institutions which were not subject to banking rules, such as hedge funds and private equity funds started to make huge returns.

Roger Douglas deregulated our banks as one of the first acts of the Lange Douglas Labour Government in 1984. The system’s priorities shifted from funding productive investment to financing speculation.

According to a 1996 speech by the Governor of the Reserve Bank: “All controls on  credit, foreign exchange and out-bound overseas investment were lifted in 1984, and the New Zealand dollar was floated early in 1985. Banks were freed from any quantitative limits on their lending growth. The requirement for banks to hold deposits with the central bank, or to hold specified investments in government securities, was abolished. Banking, previously the exclusive preserve of one government-owned institution and three foreign-owned banks, was opened up to full competition. The licensing of those authorised to deal in foreign exchange was discontinued. Competition between currencies was given some scope in that contracts could be denominated in any currency (though taxes must still be paid in New Zealand dollars, and the Customs Act prohibits the importation of other currencies intended for circulation).

In January 1996, the banking system was further liberalised when the Reserve Bank commenced a rather different way of conducting prudential supervision. Instead of reporting on a confidential basis to the central bank, banks were required to issue detailed quarterly public disclosure statements, which must be audited twice-yearly by external auditors. Instead of limiting their exposure to individual counter-parties to some central-bank-specified percentage of capital, banks must simply disclose how much risk concentration they have in their portfolio at end of quarter, and at peak intra-quarter. Instead of complying with detailed guidelines on internal controls, directors must simply attest, in the quarterly disclosure statements, that the internal controls are appropriate to the nature of the banking business being undertaken.”

Interest-rate and other controls have been removed and regulatory and legislative distinctions between different institutional groups have been reduced.

Deregulation contributed to rapid growth in money market activity, the development of a sizeable secondary market in government securities, the introduction of a wider range of financial instruments, including forward contracts, options and interest and exchange-rate futures, and the growing use of such devices to hedge interest-rate and exchange-rate risk.

And what certainly added very considerable risk to the financial system was the widespread practice of securitising residential and other loans. What was seen by some observers as a powerful innovation enabling credit risk to be diffused across a multitude of financial institutions turned out to be the source of enormous danger. Loan originators had little incentive to ensure borrowers were creditworthy because they had no intention of holding onto the risk. They passed that risk on “down the chain”, with successive financial institutions clipping the ticket as the risk was passed from hand to hand but holding no exposure to the potential default. There was no transparency or accountability in the credit chain, and significant parts of the process were largely unregulated.

So banks are now involved in managed funds, insurance of all types and brokerage functions.

With the global financial crisis it is clear that this whole process must be reversed.We must:

  • Prohibit trading in securities with borrowed money
  • Prohibit financial institutions from trading for their own accounts in securities they sell to the public.