A Networked World

Reality checks and data points

2009-12-17T10:43:08+13:00

This piece from CIO.com is a nice reality check and the general principles apply to everyone, not just IT people. Retire? How About Never?

Overall, the recession has had far more of an economic impact on late-middle-aged adults. In an April Pew Research Center study of 2,969 adults aged 50 to 64, nearly 75% said the nation's economic problems are making it difficult to afford retirement.
Click here to find out more!

Nearly two-thirds of those surveyed in that age bracket said their 401(k) accounts or individual stocks have been clobbered, with two in 10 claiming that their investments have lost 40% of their value and another four in 10 saying nearly 20% to 40% of their retirement funds have been erased.

I have never believed that I would be able to retire, not just because I could not save enough to do so, but because I have known half my life that when the moment came to kick back I would be doing it with millions of other boomers whose removal from the "productive" economy would shrink that economy and make it too small to support us.

I've also been pretty much convinced that rule number one of investing is "never give your money to someone else to play with on your behalf, never, ever, no, I really mean it, never"

So I have paid off my mortgage and I'm building an urban homestead where we are aiming to be able to live, not just survive, on about $200 a week in current dollars.

While most of the rest of my peers have spent their lives trying to get rich enough to retire, I've spent mine learning to live poor.

My wife is a teacher on a 4 year contract and she has 2 years to go. Here's how I rate that contract.

Chances of it being renewed on similar terms - 20%
Chances of being significantly cut on renewal - 40%
Chances of not being renewed 20%
Chances of being bought out before the end 20%
Chances of surviving any of those otucomes, pretty good.

Now eher are some more data points.

56 year old family member on contract for a company that provides training to large insurance and financial companies. Unpaid for several months, yesterday asked me for a loan to get through Christmas
58 year old CFO for several medium sized north American companies. Laid off in march, 10 months on global search for new job. Nothing
58 year old former exec and successful business man. Lost his company 3 years ago, still no job and about to run out of money

Just people close enough to hear about their actual problems and 2 of those in the last 4 days. Interestingly, all three are still in denial about their real situation, still looking for the silver lining that tells them all is going to come back to what they fondly believe is normal.

Economic recovery? Not close.

This thing hasn't even cleared its throat yet and as the CIO peives goes on to say, "there is no place to hide in this economy"

Too good to be true

2009-12-15T08:10:51+13:00

I have a rule. If someone calls me or comes knocking at my door with a special deal for anything - anything at all - I send them away or hang up on them. And that goes double for the deals that are too good to be true. Like this.
Crossed lines: phone scam dudding small business

For Mr Holroyd it began late last year when a well-dressed man in his 30s appeared at his car parts and plumbing business in Ingleburn offering a package of cheaper phone calls with the added incentive of $5000 worth of free equipment for the workshop.

Mr Holroyd signed up and took delivery of a phone system and a bandsaw that did not work, and an air compressor that did.

Two months later he took a call from Macquarie Bank telling him he was in arrears and owed them $30,000. Mr Holroyd, who was not even aware he was in business with Macquarie, pleaded for more information. Finally he discovered that the documents he signed had left him tangled in a lease agreement with two other companies he had never heard of, who had taken out finance with Macquarie.

There is no suggestion that Macquarie had engaged in any wrongdoing, although the bank was unmoved by Mr Holroyd's predicament. It hired the debt collection agency, which came banging at his door.

Which bit of "we will give you $5,000 worth of equipment as a sweetener for a cut-price phone deal" failed to ring any of this bloke's warning bells? How does he imagine the world actually functions? Does he believe in magic?

These scammers are no different from the Nigerian money scams or the NZ Finance company scam or most superannuation scams, they offer something for nothing. Whenever anybody tells me that something is free I know they are lying to me and that's pretty much the end of the conversation.

Nothing is free. Somebody always pays and the problem is that everyone involved in these deals, including the banks, don't actually care who that is. It can be you, it can be the slaves that work in some Northern Marianas sweatshop, it can be the whole communities living in the midst of vile pollution that shortens their lives and damages their genes, it can be our grandchildren who will find their climate untenable. But somebody always pays. Without exception, ever.

What these con artists depend upon is that you and I are basically corrupt, we all want something for nothing and if they tie it in the appropriate bow we will look away long enough for them to profit.

I don't actually blame the scammers that much, there is plainly a market for their business, if nobody ever accepted anything for "free" it would stop.

We need to teach our kids from kindergarten the simplest of rules; if it looks too good to be true, it is, someone is laying to you and someone, probably you, is going to get hurt. How hard is that to learn?

Keeping up with followers

2009-12-14T09:40:02+13:00

Gandhi said that he had to hurry to keep up with those who followed him, but I doubt that NZ PM John Key sees himself as another Gandhi, if only for the dress issues. While his Government keeps yapping on about catching up with Australia, more and more actual, you know, evidence is building that the long steady flow of people finding life better across the Tasman is coming to an end. Number of Australians migrating to NZ doubles in 10 years

The number of Australians moving to New Zealand has nearly doubled in the past decade, official immigration statistics from Canberra reveal. The latest figures show 14,352 Australians made the big move in the 2008-2009 financial year.

The previous year, the number stood at 14,160, whereas in 1998-1999, just 7468 migrated to New Zealand.

[..]This year's report shows the number of Australians who left the country for good was the highest ever.

But, but, wait. No, if they come here that would mean they think they have more chances here than at home. That doesn't suit the discourse needs of those wanting to change everything here.

Just over 81,000 emigrated during the financial year - an increase of about 5.3 per cent over the 2007-2008 year.

The report said most were young and skilled workers.

Business New Zealand chief executive Phil O'Reilly said many people coming to New Zealand were chasing a particular job or opportunity that they could no longer find in Australia.

Others, he said, were New Zealanders who had moved across the Tasman to work and were now returning home.

"Infrastructure and mining opportunities over there have been slow, and if you've got a trade or better, it's much more likely that you'll get a job here even during a recession."

Mr O'Reilly said having many young people choosing to come to New Zealand to find jobs was only a temporary trend.

Ah, the get out of jail free card. Of course, just a blip. Our big brother will always be so much better than us, we'll just have to try harder.

The challenge New Zealand employers faced was to get people to stay and to get them to think of it as a career as opposed to a job.

Hah. Businesses treating their employees as costs rather than assets is the first problem he and his mates have to solve there.

"You're more likely to leave your job if you don't like it.

Umm. Old hat. The days of getting narked and walking out are about gone. We have 16% unemployment here and not much better in Aussie. Moving country is now a serious decision and taken on the basis of broader considerations than just getting a better job.

[...] Statistics New Zealand figures show that in the year ending in October, 21,200 residents moved to Australia either permanently or long-term. In the previous October year, that figure was 34,600.

Migration to Australia has been trending down since the figures for the year to December 2008 showed 35,600 people had shifted over.

Look at the shrinkage, 30% fall in less than a year? Something big is going on. Pay attention guys.

Right now 80% of NSW is drought-declared and another 14% precarious as they face a record hot dry summer. The drought is getting worse year by year and shows no sign of abating, just as the climate change "believers" said it would. Some time soon the "oh shit" moment is going to become the norn across the Tasman and our biggest problem will be coping with 100,000 NZ'ers returning home in a drove.

Catch up to Australia? No thanks.

Do we still have the leisure to be "creative"?

2009-12-14T08:20:35+13:00

As usual, Johnnie points to some interesting ideas that kick me off. Change and diversity

Jack Ricchiuto has some thoughts on how change happens in networks.
...the possibility space for change opens up when we connect different people who can begin resonating together around shared stories, opportunities, and dreams. It’s a process of liberating people from the confines of clusters of sameness and ideological colonialism so they can move toward more diverse connections and pragmatic alignments.
The phrase clusters of sameness resonates for me and I think organisations often clog up with those. He continues:
the fusion of difference and resonance is a powerful approach because in that space, people move away from trying to change each other, which opens the space for the possibilities of creating innovative.. changes.. Resonant listening to one another’s differences allows us to join in both-and innovations that could never be possible in an either-or constrained world

I agree about the processes, but I think the crucial thing that gets left out of all this is that there is no way to steer the process towards a "desirable" (for whomever) outcome, nor can we determine the result in advance.

We live in a control-oriented mindset, change that we do not initiate frightens us and we try to reassert whatever control we thought we had, change that we do initiate gets out of control very quickly and we waste more resources trying to get back in control.

In every case we resist any change that we don't think we can determine in advance. But we live in a real world where change is permanent and uncontrolled. Hell I remember writing in an essay in high school something to the effect that "in order to maintain a constant relationship with a constantly changing world, we have to change, constantly".

I thought it was pretty cool then and I still agree with its foundation, the only thing I'd add is that the constant relationship is itself impossible, that changes too.

The whole idea of change management is a crock. Change, like shit, happens. Our biggest problem is that we are not inclined, nor do we learn, nor are we taught as part of our education, to understand, adapt, participate in or benefit from the changes that happen. Still less are we able to abandon changes that are short term wins but long term failures.

For me, this is about opening space so that we can explore experiences fully, without the pressure to problem-solve.

I'd love that to be true but I think we are running out of the lleisure we've had to be purely creative. The number and urgency of problems that we are going to have to solve, on a personal and daily basis, as well as a community and national one, is getting bigger, faster. Those of us, like me, who have had it damned easy all our lives and had the luxury of being able to invent, innovate and think about the world rather than get our hands dirty in it are going to spend the rest of those lives working much harder for much less money and often less return of all kinds.

With dwindling resources, the small problems that we simply threw some money at are going to become harder to deal with and the big problems such as climate change and PO are starting to cause medium sized problems such as landslips and crop failures that just wont go away. We've had 2 generations of cruising on the capital, from here on we will be paddling like hell to stay afloat.

If anything we need tools like open space and theatre sports as a form of rapid prototyping; spaces where we can bring hard problems, trial a bunch of possible solutions and take them away to work on them.

Is Google building a 3D map?

2009-12-11T12:08:46+13:00

OK, maybe its not, but I think somebody is.

For the last couple of nights, around 11PM (NZDST), while sloshing in my spa pool, I have spotted 3 satellites flying in exactly the same formation in a circumpolar orbit.

Two of them side by side in the lead, I would guess about 10 miles apart and a third following about 40 miles behind (I may be out by a factor of 10 given the other variables) in an isoceles triangle. Seeing them all in the same formation on two different nights argues for deliberate, to maintain that relationship for more than a few seconds they have to be in exactly the same orbit and exactly parallel tracks.

Any ideas?

Catching Australia

2009-12-09T09:17:40+13:00

We've had a lot of hot air expended here lately about the pressing need to "catch up with Aistralia", apparently, unless we do so, dire things will happen. We even had the former, slightly dotty head of the National party (and ex Reserve bank chief - oops) Don Brash, issue a draconian prescription of "soak the poor and protect the rich" the other day as a way to get there.

But we left Australia a couple of years ago because it has huge food and water security problems on the horizon and a multiculutural population that is not especially well integrated. In places like Sydney there are a number of culturally predominant suburbs that could easily become enclaves. As the pressure comes on I expect to see more conflict and at the extreme end, a Somalia of the south is possible. NOT something I'm interested in catching up with.

In the meantime things are not so rosy across the Tasman. Two men burned defending property from bushfire

Strong westerly winds and temperatures reaching 40 degrees raised fears that rural properties would come under threat and prompted a total fire ban in the area.

The RFS said about 90 fires were alight across the state on Tuesday and more than 1,600 firefighters were on the ground.

Every region of NSW was under a high to catastrophic fire danger for Wednesday.

Obviously we need more bushfires, we are falling Waaaay behind there. Then there is Aussies much vaunted economy. Ooops. Export boost turns to slump: blows out deficit to $16b

AUSTRALIA was one of the few countries to enjoy increased trade during the global financial crisis. But the boost could be shortlived: a slump in exports in the September quarter has blown out the current account deficit to $16 billion.

The fall in exports, alongside a jump in the volume of imported goods, means that official growth figures to be released next week are likely to be weaker than previously predicted.

Economists are unsure of where the September quarter growth will land, with estimates ranging from negative to as high as 1 per cent, but yesterday's balance of payments report by the Bureau of Statistics suggests it is likely to be at the lower end.

Lower end eh? Tsk. Since Australia is pour biggest export customer, that's not looking good. How are we ever going to catch them if they keep that up? Oh, you mean catch them as in catch a falling piano?

And while the pollies squawk on about the gap causing ever more of us to export ourselves to the land of milk and, er, well, sand and bushfires, the rest of us seem to have figured out that that might not be the best option. China tops migration queue to Australia

For the first time, more Chinese have settled across the Tasman than Kiwis and Britons, traditionally the biggest sources of migrants.

Despite tensions that have marked recent relations between the two countries, Chinese migration in the four months to the end of October rose to a record 6350.

Over the same period 4740 Kiwis landed as permanent or long-term arrivals, part of a diminishing stream that saw the transtasman exodus slow by 47 per cent in the 12 months to the end of October.

Could it be that China should be trying to "catch up" with Australia to reduce the number of Chinese emigrating there? And what, exactly, would that mean? I thought Australia was busy trying to catch up with China, or something.

There's a kind of morbid fascination watching a bunch of highly paid people in a moral panic trying to figure out how a small, fertile, well watered, remote, sea locked nation should "catch up" with a huge, dessicated, infertile chunk of rock. But frankly we have better things to do with our scarce money than waste it on this kind of idiocy, after all, we already have "reality based" shows where people get voted off islands or something, we don't need the same thing being played out in our key institutions.

Alan Cocker pretty much has it right. Future prospects - NZ out in front

The coverage of the first report of the Don Brash-chaired 2025 Taskforce, the date by which the taskforce hopes we will have closed the economic gap with Australia, had all the elements of the horse race.

It even came with a handy graph which showed the Aussies increasing their lead, particularly and ironically after New Zealand had a harsh dose of economic medicine in the decade after 1984 - medicine which the members of the economic taskforce, some of whom led the economic policy approach of that period, felt had not been strong enough.

However, there are other frames that journalists might use in covering this issue. Another popular one for journalists is the "wrongdoing exposed" frame.

For example, individuals, politicians or bureaucrats are wrongfully or wastefully spending taxpayers' money.

This taskforce is the result of political bargaining; it has been demanded of the Government by the Act Party as part of the coalition agreement and is budgeted to cost taxpayers $477,000 up to June 2012.

This seems a lot of money for yearly reports, the first of which left the Prime Minister "unimpressed".

However, perhaps the journalists are just presenting the wrong horse as winning the race.

The taskforce appears to take a very narrow "economic growth" focus. Some of the evidence for Australia's lead seemed to be odd. Australians, we are told, consume more alcohol. This is normally construed as a negative.

We also own fewer cars and have smaller houses and so we are perhaps more environmentally responsible.

Australians also drink more fruit juice, an odd statistic for the taskforce to put in front of us, as Australia is generally hotter. However, these snapshots of difference might reflect circumstances under which the taskforce is able to meet and collate its evidence.

All five members were only able to meet as a group for the first time two months ago so there has been a time constraint on greater deliberation and gathering supportive argument.

Our transtasman neighbours undoubtedly have a need for more fruit juice and, vitally, water. Australia may well be "the lucky country" but not when it comes to water. Their Bureau of Meteorology tells us that it is the driest inhabited continent with one of the most variable rainfall climates in the world.

Normally it will have about three good years of rainfall and three bad ones in a 10-year period. The Australian government research entity CSIRO has projected increases in Australian temperatures of between 1C and 6C by 2070 and this would lead to greater evaporation and water stress. As perhaps a foretaste of things to come, in 2006 Australia suffered from its worst drought in years.

This is not the only threat to the Australian way of life and economy. Australia also suffers from salinity of its agricultural soils brought about by European farming methods. By 2050 this is expected to affect 17 million hectares of Australian agricultural land with an enormous potential loss of production.

Because of the harshness of their interior the majority of Australians cling to the coastal fringe of their island continent. According to a report to the Australian Parliament at the beginning of November, rising sea levels as a result of global warming posed a threat to 750,000 Australian homes. That equates to more than half of New Zealand's total housing stock. There is another frame used by journalists, called the "reality check frame", which might in this case be the more appropriate frame.

It is used by journalists with issues that demand a closer look at the veracity of statements made or information given.

A reality check of our future compared with that of Australia may indeed conclude that in terms of a changing global climate and future sustainability, New Zealand is out in front by more than a nose.

Some days I despair of the media

2009-12-04T09:43:27+13:00

Read this and tell me if I'm nuts. House prices too high, warns expert

Auckland's house price surge has prompted a warning that over-valuations are creating a bubble that will burst and cause a painful property recession.

Barfoot and Thompson's November figures, out yesterday, showed a 23-month price high in the city of $550,217 although the number of sales was fairly low.

Institute of Economic Research principal economist Shamubeel Eaqub said the trend could have far-reaching and damaging effects.

"House prices are showing renewed over-valuation," he said. "This will intensify as interest rates rise. A correction in the housing market is necessary to reduce the economy's vulnerability to house price movements. The sooner there is a change, the less the likelihood of a larger and more painful recession further down the track."

Prices were now near the previous peak, suggesting valuations were also becoming very stretched.

"While prices are rising, sales volumes are slowing after adjusting for seasonal patterns," he said.

So, while prices have reached their all time high again, the number of houses being sold is falling. Lets take a limit case; 3 houses only are sold in the city during December. All three sell for exactly a million bucks. Will we see a headline saying that the average house price in Auckland has now reached a million? And will there be further warnings about an unsustainable bubble?

A bubble happens when two things align, too much money in circulation and a mania for a single type of object (tulips, houses, gold - anything in relatively, but not absolutely, limited supply).

We had a housing bubble and, as it deflates, there will be periods when the prices rise again for a variety of highly local reasons - including someone sells their Brisbane house at last and moves back to NZ where they buy a bit over the odds just to get the family settled etc.

But the fact is that banks are not lending if they can avoid it, people are feeling unsafe as their jobs look increasingly shaky and aren't going to take on new debt, in fact they are trying to unload their overpriced assets when they can.

I have a mate who was looking for an apartment in the city. The news reported a few weeks ago that real estate prices were rising again and 2 days later about 400 properties hit the market.

Tell you anything?

Apparently not our ever-boosting media who seem to see their job as "keeping our chins up" in tough times, mostly so we don't look down and, like Wile E. Coyote, realise that there is a gaping hole under our feet.

Bunnies.

Mega

2009-10-29T09:52:57+13:00

Lomania

The sooner this guy self destructs, the better for us all. Tamaki's 700 'sons' swear oath of loyalty

The leader of Destiny Church, Brian Tamaki, who not long ago anointed himself bishop of the church he founded, has now proclaimed himself the church's "spiritual father" and designated the male members of the church as "spiritual sons".

At a special service during the church's annual conference in Auckland at the weekend, about 700 male members of the church swore a "covenant oath" of loyalty and obedience to Mr Tamaki and were given a "covenant ring" to wear on their right hands.

A church document describes the covenant as "a solemn oath of commitment that is binding, enduring and unbreakable. You are bound to covenant ... Covenant is an irrevocable, undissolvable oath of commitment".

There's another word for that kind of relationship; slavery. And if these 700 "sons" don't wake up to their "father's" serious ego problem, they will become his shock troops next.

There's a time to stop this dangerous crap, and it is now, before it gets out of hand. He has feet of clay like the rest of us, someone needs to dig them up pronto, although he is as cunning as a fox, he already has the antidote in their veins.

"You will hear all sorts of statements and opinions but you must be
prepared to ignore them and consistently hold him in the same high
regard no matter what you hear."
Somewhat surprisingly, the protocol says that Mr Tamaki is human and does make mistakes.
However, the sons must "be prepared to defend against any problems arising out of his mistakes.
A
loyal man is supposed to 'cushion' the effect of a mistake on Bishop
and to protect him. NEVER intentionally expose his weakness."

Now, we know that he knows that there is something under the covers. All that matters is what that something is.

Jim Kunstler asks the question

2009-10-28T08:28:22+13:00

While he can go over the top a bit, Kunstler is definitely on my team when it comes to the reality-based life. And once again, in Self-jiving Nation he asks the question that nobody else seems to have thought of:

I'd like to know what folks imagine we are recovering to. To a renewed orgy of credit-card spending? To yet another round of suburban expansion, with the boys in the yellow hard-hats driving stakes out in the sagebrush for another new thousand-unit pop-up "community?" For a next generation of super-cars built to look like medieval war wagons? That's the "hope" that our officials seem to pretend to offer.

Exactly, the talking heads all talk about this recovery, but its always a recovery "from" the crash and never, ever, about what our lives and communities and economies will look like once we have "recovered".

It's completely inconsistent with any reality-based trend-lines, by the way.

When the Australian Government commissions a report that says nearly a million homes are in direct danger of rising sea levels and that it should consider compulsory acquiisition and demolition of some homes as an option, the destination of the recovery looks a lot less sunny than most of the discuission would have us assume. Make evacuation plans

Urgent action to cope with the impact of rising sea levels needs to start now, including improving evacuation routes for coastal communities during extreme storms and flooding.

As well, a sweeping federal parliamentary report calls for an overhaul of the building code to make homes more resilient and for the legal liability for future property losses to be sorted out.

Warning that ''the time to act is now'', the bipartisan report brought down last night states that thousands of kilometres of coastline have been identified as at risk from the threat of rising sea levels and extreme weather events caused by climate change.

The only note of compulsory cynicism I can muster for this one is that, coincidentally, the coastline is disproportionately owned by the wealthiest members of society who would probably be handsomely bailed out by such legislation.

A few years ago they were squawking about their properties being protected and told they would have to suck it up and take the hit because the community could not afford to protect coastal landscape to that degree. Looks like they may have found a good fairy after all.

Love my daughter

2009-10-19T16:06:37+13:00

Check out her small business here.
Summer 09/10 Collection Gallery - Mardle NZ Designer Womens Fashion

Mardle's inaugural collection is small but irresistible!

With a style nod to French illustration this mini-series of prints on our 'perfect' tee is a combination not to be missed.

Then buy a tee and help her keep her father in the manner to which he would like to become accustomed.