Marie Hazledine-Barber

NEW ZEALAND COAT OF ARMS

Regulation in the NZ Financial Market?

Ponzi schemes alive and well. Is  the NZ Government sudden urgent sense for regulation like the old saying  ‘shutting the door after the horse has bolted’?

The following article by Brian Gaynor New Zealand Herald in the business section dated Tuesday March 9th  2010

titled  ‘Hanover house of cards doomed to fall’

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10630196

Every New Zealander should read this.

Has the government gone mad allowing ex board of directors from Hanover that lost millions of dollars of ordinary New Zealanders start up again. To continue the same pattern not unlike a Ponzi scheme. They are Eric Watson and Mark Hotchin doing the same thing with FAI Money (formerly FAI Finance)

Regulation should be such that these failed Board of Directors of Hanover should be barred from access to operation taking Kiwi Saver funds etc..or any managed funds of any sort.

This includes Don Brash and Auckland Mayor John Banks involved / are on the Board of Directors of Huljich Wealth Management a Kiwi Saver Fund for the following events :

During the Securities Commission probe, discovery finds Mr Huljich Managing Director of Huljich Wealth Management, rewrote its investor statements for retirement fund returns after previous returns did not show Mr Huljich had made two payments in periods ending March 2008 and March 2009 as compensation for investment decisions he made. A Ponzi act.

Mr Don Brash and seemingly Mr John Banks say in that time, a whole years worth of time, they were not informed and did not know. Lame excuse as one would think as a Board of Director of ANY company one would make it their business  TO KNOW WHAT IS HAPPENING IN THE BUSINESS …….. and not take a year to find out.

The untidy behaviour like a ragged military flag the torn fabric represent the many New Zealand people who struggled, worked hard whose savings/ retirement funds are at risk and or have been lost: one example by Hanover.

So why bother is the question to save as the two examples given in this article.

Savings? How -Where? With What?

A customer enters a car sales yard with a basic knowledge of a car, knows how to drive it , has a degree of trust and faith in the sales person and the reputation of the company. There is no expectation for a customer to have a degree in mechanics, studied the industry for years and be qualified to follow through with the purchase.

In the financial market with the angst of KIWI SAVER the constant catch words are “customer responsibility” customers should understand the products which are presented: many are in a complex dossier of words that would take either a lawyer or preferably a qualified person with a commerce degree to even understand the basics.

The question is: The New Zealand Government had boldly stepped out to announce that people should choose, take self responsibility for their savings and future retirement and not save by compulsory means for Government Superannuation, answer KIWI SAVER: however with recent rorts, financial institutions misleading the public with untrue accounts of performance already emerging, to the willing “want to save for my retirement “ the customer/investor ( who do not have a commerce degree) who is going to repay the investor their money saved lost on the stock exchange, portfolios gone sour, fraud, mismanaged managed funds, bonds losing value? The Government?

What about the older population that have saved for years, where did the consolidated fund go? Or those that lost everything at the hands of failures by the professionals and financial institutions, mis – managed funds. Is it just ‘tough luck’ ? Or is it the customer did not read enough, understand enough, maybe it was their fault they did not have a commerce degree!!!

To regulate, put in a ‘watch dog’ is just like opening a new pack of expensive cards of over-paid bureaucrats. For such a small populated country a simple percentage of money earned should go into a government superannuation fund that is held, not spent/squandered by the government, that earns interest. Just like a bank.

Ain’t a mechanic and don’t have a commerce degree, perhaps granny was right, put it under the mattress, might not earn interest but at least you have not lost everything.

( Whistlers Mother painting by James McNeill Whistler 1871 )

Granny

Keep it in the Bank?

New Zealand had the National Superannuation, dumped into the Consolidated Fund that seem to vanish like a ghost out the back door. Then Kiwi Saver, the question is where does that money go.?

It is swallowed up by a extraordinary tapestry of portfolios that once one retires would they still be active, healthy or slide into the financial abysses as many financial institutions have of recent.

Portfolios sold between one company and another, tracking “your saving” is worst than a drunken mystery tour in a bus.

Financial houses of the managed funds many unqualified or even understand the market and are/were commission driven and driven by greed and over inflated egos’.

A lot of New Zealanders would like to save, even a clean up of the financial market place, who would trust them, let alone the fact many New Zealanders wages are so poor there is not the money to save.

Playing with numbers creating ‘average’ representation of income for those ( many thousands of families) are below the average earnings it is no wonder the country is becoming poorer by the day.

If the top earners are looked after and the working people are shut out in the cold what is the expectation of the psychology of the social fabric.?

The ordinary people understand the corporate director, or franchise owner, or the man who owns the business takes the risk and should be rewarded as such, however not to the point of million dollar bonuses, government rorts that in the civil sense go unpunished, greed that impoverishes the back bones of the country which is the working man.

Is New Zealand turning into a sweat shop country? The underbelly of society in New Zealand is poverty, hungry children and crime, violence and crimes of family abuse, child abuse, surely some spawned from frustration, stress, a country inept to care for the special needs people, the elderly, the disabled and importantly the contributor to the wealth of the country the working man.

New Zealand has every opportunity to show case a country rich in natural resources, demonstrate that a financial national programme for superannuation that cannot be squandered by successive governments, is it not better to have a modest percentage of interest on that money than as recent events have shown like a pack of cards fold by the rotten hand dealt by financial institutions.

Kiwi saver? Is a rort, put it into the bank or as granny did under the mattress. Why give your hard earned cash to some-one you do not know to “save” for you, use your money to expand or prop up a company, rather than the company expand by its’ own merits on the foundations good business.

In today’s climate the real question is :

“Could you afford to leave a thousand dollars on the street and walk away and trust it is there the next day?”