Archive for the ‘Business/Investment’ Category
Live by the ethical assumptions of your market – or change your soul?
Liars Poker and The Big Short author Michael Lewis responds to the SEC’s fraud charges against Goldman Sachs on Bloomberg … The Bond Market Will Never Be The Same After Goldman First para: If you happen to be sitting on the Goldman Sachs bond-trading floor life must feel horribly unfair. You did nothing worse than […]
Dean Letfus: the reputation he deserves?
Someone emailed me a link to an article by property economist Gareth Kiernan of Infometrics in which he sets out to debunk (pull the legs off) arguments proffered by some self-proclaimed ‘property experts’ like spruiker Dean Letfus in defence of the tax treatment of property investment. …So I don’t buy into the whole “social service” […]
SEC says “FRAUD”
So the SEC says Goldman Sachs defrauded Its own investment ‘clients’ and cooperated with Paulson & Co to effectively weight the bets against them — bundling bad debt then betting against the bundle. Engineering failing investments to sell to ‘the little people’, retail investors or ‘pigs’ is a time-honoured (but dishonourable) tactic on Wall St. […]
Andrew King back into the fray
I saw Andrew King speaking up again in the NZ Herald recently. Good on him. He’s also fighting the good fight for oppressed landlords (in some circles they’re being painted as villain of the month/year/generation) in comments threads on interest.co.nz — that bastion of reasoned argument (now, where is that sarcasm emoticon when I need […]
Rear vision mirror?
Quite a nice comment over the weekend from fellow Cassandra financial advisor/columnist Brent Shearer who points out this comment isn’t completely true 100% of the time… “NZ has a dreadful record … for staying silent when speaking up is the responsible thing to do. How many people knew about … Bridgecorp, Nathans, Capital + Merchant […]
Window dressing — Time to pay the piper?
I know and respect both of the former cabinet ministers Doug Graham and Bill Jeffries who, it was announced today, will face civil and criminal charges brought to bear by the Securities Commission in relation to the Lombard Finance collapse. There’s no doubt their role as window dressing was an act of ‘exchange’ — they […]
A likely story?
Accountants to blame, say Feltex Five Monday Apr 12, 2010 | NZ Herald The five former directors of Feltex Carpets are blaming their accountants for irregularities in financial statements. Well, it’s possible, I guess …
The amazing restorative powers of Snake Oil, oops, US tax liens – and a canine love story?
The repeated sabre-rattling (‘legal threats’) by Shaun Stenning and Dean Letfus sparked by David Whitburn’s critical blog on the NZ Property Guru’s [sic] promotion of US tax liens recently reminded me of an earlier incident involving marketing US tax liens as ‘investments’ to guileless New Zealanders … It led to an undignified outcome for another […]
Top 10 NZ property investment books – Auckland City Libraries
Auckland City Libraries Readers Services team picks: The top 10 titles on New Zealand Property Investment in 2009. I’m chuffed that four of the top ten are published by Empower Leaders Publishing. (Cool.) Congratulations to all the authors on the list…
And the spin goes on … Shaun Stenning’s latest
Here’s Shaun Stenning‘s latest effort to get the genie back in the bottle … by (again) threatening legal action and spinning a yarn about how copyright works. It’s interesting to see how he operates. Read the full letter here (160k PDF) for yourself and see how plausible you find it. Background: A bunch of very […]
What the scammers rely on … Believers
THE BELIEVERS: How America Fell for Bernard Madoff’s $65 Billion Investment Scam by Adam LeBor It was in luxurious Palm Beach, by the manicured lawns and Olympic-sized swimming pool, that financier Bernard Madoff ravaged the world of philanthropy and high society he had strived so hard to join, vaporising the assets of charities, foundations and […]
Shaun Stenning: Monkey or Organ Grinder?
The recent flurry of legal threats (well, threats of threats, really) from Australian Geekversity internet marketing ‘guru’ and travelling salesman Shaun Stenning and local property spruiker Dean Letfus seeking to suppress negative comment about their joint activities (and, apparently, really embarrassing photos on Facebook) has got me thinking. Judging by accounts of Shaun Stenning’s unpublicised […]
