How The Media Uncritically Enables The Growth Of Super(annuation) Parasites

19 May

I fear there are no words to adequately express my contempt for the so-called “journalists” in our mainstream media.

So I won’t even try.

See for yourself, dear reader, whether my headline is apt, or no.

Here is Sid Maher & Joe Kelly of The Australian (my bold added):

Levy hike deferral ‘to cost $55bn’

INDUSTRY super funds have warned that Tony Abbott’s planned two-year delay in increasing the superannuation guarantee will cost workers a combined $55 billion in lost retirement earnings over seven years.

The warning from the Industry Super Network came as business groups split over the Opposition Leader’s budget reply speech…

[...seven paragraphs of diversionary bullsh!t posing as "reporting"...]

Industry Super Network chief executive David Whiteley said the proposed delay in the compulsory increase would result in a cumulative impact of $45bn less in super savings in the system over the next seven years.

“The figure rises to $55bn when the Coalition’s proposed abolition of the low-income earners’ superannuation concession is also taken into account,” he said.

ISN economists had estimated the delay would yield short-term budget savings of $1bn per annum over the next seven years but reduce super inflows by more than $5bn per annum.

Er… Sid? Joe? Hello … anyone home?!

How exactly did the Industry Super Network come up with those figures that you have reported parrotted from their press release, oh so authoritatively?

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

Did the ISN show you their modelling?  Their assumptions?  Their raw source data?

Did you not see a big red flag waving when you read their press release (er.. you did read it, right?), claiming that the decision would “reduce super inflows by more than $5bn per annum”?

Did it not occur to you that these folks make their “living” from the fees they plunder off those “super inflows”?

Is it at all possible that the “economists” of the ISN are little more than completely full of sh!t, rent-seeking societal parasites,  who have concocted some very convenient, nice-big-round-multiples-of-five numbers ($55bn, $45bn, $5bn) — forecasts, no less — for no other reason than to pressure Coalition politicians into changing policy, hoping to ensure that they do receive their long barracked for, extra super “inflows” / income stream?

“Given the enormous cost to [our much-anticipated income stream boost] … ISN urges the Coalition to reconsider its plans.”

Oh yes, one last question.

Where (and when) did the ISN’s blonde Campaign Manager last take you boys out to lunch?

Screen shot 2013-05-19 at 5.36.26 PM

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Ship Of State Wrecked On The Rocks Of Usury

19 May

Shipwreck-Arbutus-near-the-Dry-Tortugas-National-Park

The waters were always crystal clear. The rocks below, easy to discern. We even had a map to guide us.

We simply failed to keep watch.

And allowed treasure-hunters to reinterpret our map.

Roger Fenton (1565-1615) was a Fellow of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge University, rector of St Stephen’s in London, and one of the translators of the 1611 King James Bible. He declared that “Not until sixteen hundred years after Christ did interest find any defenders.” The following excerpt* is from his “Treatise On Usury” (London, 1612, pp. 2-3; 48-49); my bold emphasis added:

“…many Christians of reformed Churches being urged to flee persecution, and to convert their goods into money, yet lacking skill to employ the same in a strange country; tender hearts thought it a pity that usury in such a case were not lawful; and nimble wits began to search, if the matter might not be so handled, and qualified by cautions and limitations, that some such thing as we call usury might be practiced. For such is the subtlety of Satan, that if he cannot hinder the growth of good corn, yet tares shall grow up with it. He thought that when men were so busied about the reforming of those gross abuses of superstition; that then was the only time to begin a new seed-plot of usury, of sacrilege, of liberty and profaneness in the other extreme. Which vices, howsoever they were little feared or thought upon in those days; yet by our time we may easily perceive to what ripeness they have grown, which then were but as seeds under the ground…

“He that turns himself into an angel of light can set so fair a gloss upon a work of darkness, that the iniquity of it will hardly be discerned. He can so cunningly twist good and evil together, that the appearance of usury shall be presented without a show of injustice.

“…the gain of usury is a sweet gain, without labor, without cost, without peril… it is so pleasant and profitable a sin. This advantage then has the devil gotten against us in the practice of this sin; that usury being a trade so gainful in respect to others; so easy, so cheap, so secure without all labor… being also so common… it has bewitched even the consciences of those who are most tender in other matters…

“As usury is a sin in itself… so it is branded by the Holy Ghost for a sin of that nature and degree which does make shipwreck of conscience: the continuation of which sin cannot stand with the grace and favor of God.

“…Let some of those tender consciences who are so urgent to call for warrant out of the book of God for every ceremony and form in the Church, seek a warrant for this their practice (of usury), which so nearly concerns them, and let them seek it at the oracle of God, who has not left it, as he has many other things, to the discretion of the Church, or wisdom of the Commonwealths; but has vouchsafed to determine it in his own book to our hands: to set down an express law against it in Exodus; to renew that law again and again in Leviticus and Deuteronomy; to ratify and confirm it with no other words than he himself used at the publishing of the whole moral law…

“Since it has pleased Almighty God thus fully and exactly to express his will for our resolution in this point; let us not be ready to flee from his express word to human interventions — I mean those devised distinctions which favor the service of Mammon more than the service of God; which favor the things that be of men, to wit, the profit, the ease, the security, the sweet gain of interest; a trade which flesh and blood must needs affect and be greatly inclined unto.”

See also “Money Has To Serve, Not Rule!” – Pope Francis Is Right

* Source: Usury In Christendom: The Mortal Sin That Was, and Now Is Not, Michael Hoffman (2013)

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Don’t Get Scroogled

18 May

Supposedly a leaked, internal-only Microsoft parody:

 

This, from Microsoft?

Er …

KettleCallingPotBlack%5B1%5D

 

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“Money Has To Serve, Not Rule!” – Pope Francis Is Right

17 May

From the Age (my emphasis added):

francis-620x349

Vatican City: Pope Francis has denounced the global financial system, blasting the “cult of money” that he says is tyrannising the poor and turning humans into expendable consumer goods.

In his first major speech on the subject, Francis demanded Thursday that financial and political leaders reform the global financial system to make it more ethical and concerned for the common good. He said: “Money has to serve, not to rule!”

I suggest that, if ‘Frank’ is frank about his rhetoric, that he begin by carefully, prayerfully, and conscientiously reexamining ‘his’ church’s teaching, right back through its entire history, on the key question of Usury.

He might like to purchase Michael Hoffman’s “Usury In Christendom: The Mortal Sin that Was, and Now Is Not” to save him spending an eternity in research purgatory.

When ‘Frank’ humbly recognises that he, along with all his preceding “Infallible’s” since the Renaissance, are — by practice and decree of the church in its first millennia and a half — all flagrant heretics on the question of Usury, then this blogger might begin to take his preaching seriously.

In the meantime, I will continue pontificating my own “vision” for an alternative “money” system. One that would indeed “reform the global financial system to make it more ethical and concerned for the common good” -

Imagine A World With No Banks

The People’s NWO: Every Man His Own Central Banker

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Clairvoyants Revelling In A Financial Kama Sutra

17 May

Barnaby Joyce writes for the Canberra Times (my emphasis added):

Budget bottom line? Theatricality trumps actuality

The Budget is defining for politicians. They preen and pose and the building fills up with tribal acolytes. But it is after all, theatre. It is not actual it is a budget.

Everyone has an opinion, and you can as well, as it is an amorphous interpretation that you can get as wildly wrong as you like without any ramifications to you personally.

Actuals, as opposed to budgets, they are real. CEOs, accountants, shareholders live and die on actuals. If you “fudge” as an accountant and the partner finds out, you are out. If you cannot get the account to reconcile, say so, stay back and get help, but do not fudge it as it is the cardinal sin of accounting.

Budgets are more wishful thinking, sometimes pure romance. So accountants – dour, colourless characters that we are – get joy out of actuals, but budgets are more the indolent afterthought.

Anyone can play budgets and many positions are possible with clairvoyants revelling in a financial Karma Sutra, but in actuals only one position is right.

Well by the time you read this, which I am writing on Tuesday night, the Budget will basically be an item of ridicule and all will be waiting for the election this time with a fear to match the frustration.

The forward face value of our debt is in excess of $370 billion and that is from a Government Treasury whose claim to fame in the past is that they are consistently and miserably wrong, underestimating the problem, leaving the Treasurer with the time to gloat over an undeliverable promise. The unethical issue of getting the forecast wrong is that the alleviating action is put off and massive debt hurts those who never caused the problem. How on earth do we pay this money back, what is for sale, whose job is safe?

On the big picture, the Baby Bonus is gone and we have no real idea what the National Disability Insurance Scheme is going to cost, nor what Gonski really means in detail as far as cost is concerned.

On things you probably may not hear, big business will be forced to go monthly on PAYG. This will move the cost down to suppliers who will be under the pump to pay sooner. If you want to get someone on a 457 visa, the application charge will now be more than double, at $900. Why? No real reason for this apart from the fact they are running out of money.

There is confusion as to what on earth the message is, saving while spending in unnecessary areas and getting further into debt. What is the big plan that can stand in the here and now without relying on heroic projections? The levy for NDIS is projected near $3 billion for a cost which some have estimated at near $20 billion a year. Our terms of trade will have to be on the optimistic side to say the least as commodity prices are currently weakening.

I have to admit New England got a few promises more than most electorates, making my job harder there, but the question is how does one deliver a promise in either opposition or more pertinently when we have no money. Promises should not be confused with delivery. This is a question that I do not believe sections of the media will delve into with much intent, preferring the colour of the announcement over the complexity of the delivery.

Complexity is hard to distil down to a line but a very good indicator always is the debt. For Canberra, as I have stated so many times, debt is the canary in the coal mine and Canberra should be more observant of this issue than any other city in Australia. Departments know the problems for them are directly correlated to the size of the debt for the incoming government. When the Greens, Labor and independents decided that prudence should be put aside, then with it goes stability and security for the city of Canberra.

The final analogy I would say about this budget is the overwhelming feeling in the building of irrelevance in the Government’s papers and following discussions. It was an anticlimax that happened in the corner without any of the gravitas or attention of previous budgets. Australia does finally get to the TV to switch off the politics; they have done that.

Hear hear!

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Barnaby And Windsor Clash In Corridor

16 May

Go the biff!

From The Land (h/t Michael Anderson @irontracktor):

2022353

TENSIONS between Independent MP Tony Windsor and Queensland Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce flared up in a robust exchange in the parliamentary press gallery in Canberra on Wednesday.

As politicians walked the press gallery discussing the previous night’s budget, Mr Windsor and Senator Joyce unexpectedly crossed paths, sparking a brief but fiery exchange.

Senator Joyce had earlier used parliamentary privilege to try and link the $4.625 million sale of Mr Windsor’s family farming property to Werris Creek Coal, a subsidiary of Whitehaven Coal, and corruption allegations against former NSW Labor Resources Minister Ian Macdonald.

Relations between the pair are already strained with Senator Joyce challenging for Mr Windsor’s New England seat at the upcoming federal election, in a bid to enter the Lower House.

Senator Joyce said he was “accosted” by an angry Mr Windsor who told him to “say it outside”.

Mr Windsor was referring to the comments Senator Joyce made in a three-minute speech in Senate debate on Tuesday on Mr Windsor’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (EPBCA) Bill, which is linked to water protection measures for coal and coal seam gas (CSG) mining projects.

Senator Joyce said the Bill – which has already passed the Lower House – would be supported by the Coalition and Mr Windsor was one of its “grand architects”.

“Minister Macdonald was the minister in NSW when Mr Windsor sold his place for a very good price; for a very good price,” Senator Joyce said in the Senate debate.

Mr Macdonald is currently the subject of a high profile corruption investigation in NSW over allegedly corrupt mining deals.

“But it is a question we rightly want to ask: how do you manage to sell your place for such a good price?

“How do you manage to get three times what it is worth?

“I do not know. Do you know? How do you? It is such a great trick.”

…

Speaking to Fairfax Agricultural Media, Senator Joyce said his political foe was “highly sensitive about the sale of his land to a coal mining company which he made an extremely good price for, a bit less than $5000 an acre”.

“He’s so sensitive about it that he wants to accost me as I walk through the corridors of parliament house and he did it in front of people,” he said.

“Everyone can attest to it, I walked past Mr Windsor and in an agitated state, he asked if I would take something outside.

“At the start I thought he wanted to fight me, which I thought was a bit beyond his age.

“I think it’s fair enough Mr Windsor answers questions about this… it seems peculiar… he’s terribly sensitive about it.”

Read more here.

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“In A Few Years Time We Will Be Like Ireland”

15 May

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