Play the game

In the leafy suburbs a high-shine SUV lets out a clutch of children in the muted greys and elegant burgundies of the best private schools.

It's a dime-a-dozen scene with a brazen twist. You see, behind the bespoke eye-wear, the driver owes money - a lot - and in an elite school community, there's no getting away from your creditors.

While clever lawyers and watertight trusts keep these children at school, others - classmates even - have had to don the piled Polartech of public schools.

But it's water off a croc's back when your liquidator's official non-secured creditors list is four A4 sides of 10 point type. You get kind of used to keeping eyes front, while former colleagues, business associates and employees falter on the periphery.

It's the same kind of assumed nonchalance that gets you through all those meetings where you swear black and blue on the solvency of your business - right up until the answer phone kicks in for good.

It's the same kind of mettle that's behind your lawyer's letters to countless creditors telling them why you're with-holding payment for their crappy services/product.

It's beyond confidence.

New Zealanders like to think of themselves as an egalitarian lot. Playing fair is etched on the collective psyche. So it grates when people don't play the game. Bare-faced lies are hard to swallow.

The unceremonious bursting of New Zealand's housing bubble has provided many a good tale of fast property developers in even faster cars going belly up, only to leave everyone else paying the price.

Home-ownership is almost a rite of passage here, although economic and social commentators predict a shift away from the Kiwi quarter acre dream. It's increasingly unobtainable. Expressed as a percentage, home-ownership has 'slumped' to around 65%, down from the halcyon days of 85% plus, and is trending down.

But for a while there, things were buoyant - inflated. People made good, even the clichéd mum and dad property investors, with their negative gearing and number 8 wire approach to tenants.

Every builder had a "spec. house" on the go, and group housing companies smoothed concrete and rolled out pre-cut joinery like Subway sandwiches. Of course it had to give.

But it's inexcusable to deliberately take others down with you. There's trying to trade your way out of a hole, and then there's pulling a fast one.

We need businessmen and women to take on the risk of pumping the economic turbines, don't get me wrong. And it doesn't always work out, granted. But commissioning work around town days before the liquidator's notice hits the papers whilst giving personal assurances about the business' ability to pay, well, that's something else.

No wonder people are aggrieved. No wonder out-of-pocket creditors took matters into their own hands with a neighbourhood letterbox drop - a look who's moved in type expose.

And no wonder the object of their derision ran straight to the lawyers to shut it down with threats of defamation fired into the offenders' inboxes. Such righteous indignation is all part of the show.

What recession?

31,700 Goldman Sachs employees are about to receive the largest employee bonuses in the company's 140-year history. With an estimated average end-of-year payout of more than US$700k each, it's a great time to be part of the firm's remuneration fund.

But what about the trillions of dollars poured into Wall Street bailouts by American taxpayers? What about the global surge of unemployment, mortgagee sales and business collapses? What about the G20 summit calling for restraint within the financial services industry?

It's business as usual in the capital and money markets, and Goldman Sachs is not alone. JP Morgan Chase and other Wall Street investment banks are collectively forecast to pay out a record US$140billion in bonuses this financial year.

Ironically, the very solutions to alleviate the collapse of the financial markets have cleared the way for an even more lucrative playing field. Market rationalisation, public rescue packages and government guarantees have excited investors. Secondary debt markets are hives of activity, with investment banks clipping the ticket on every trade.

Have we learned nothing off the back of the worst financial meltdown since the Great Depression of the 1930s?

Stephen Learner, a campaigner on financial issues for the US Service Employees International Union says it's both absurd and obscene.

"The same guys who crashed the economy and got bailed out by taxpayers are now giving themselves even bigger bonuses than before they crashed the economy."

For the favoured few, it's a case of: "What recession?" But the vast majority, the ordinary folk around the world, have endured a much tougher time, with many commentators warning it's not over yet. And certainly, if current Wall Street activity is anything to go by, we may yet slide back into the economic abyss.

The old regimes are alive and kicking with parasitic resilience. The sub-prime mortgage collapse was just a symptom. The real issue is the continued commoditisation of equities and securities, where financial houses reward the next bright young thing for coming up with new ways to interpret the rules and regulations - pushing the envelope with dubious hedge funds and doubtful debt securities.

Stock markets are played like a marionette, with market analysts from a handful of elite banks yanking the strings to encourage activity - any activity, up or down, - it's all about the number of trades.

And too many of us fall for it. It's greed, plain and simple.

Closer to home, there are personal stories of sacrifice and loss. Where real people have invested their life-savings in high-risk investment schemes, seduced by promises of crazy rates of returns - often backed by nothing more than a property developer's vision of a gated community in the South Pacific.

These are the stories that make the headlines - the David and Goliath hallmark of journalism. But what we don't hear about is the 'every day' operations of the capital and money markets - the name of the game and our place within in it.

Until we are prepared to concede our ignorance, focus on redressing our lack of knowledge and demanding a better, less hyped, more rigorous system; then we will continue to be at the mercy of the financial market leviathans - for our sense of well-being, our jobs, the roofs over our heads.

It all spins on their dime.

Heave to

Finance Minister Bill English says New Zealand will need to borrow $250million per week for the next four years (give or take) to stay afloat.

Interest payments alone are a bit wince-inducing, if you can get your head around all those zeros, and then there's the principal... I wonder, is it time to fly the coop and free-range in Oz?

But therein lies the rub.

If our middle-aged, middle earners keep fleeing, how on earth are we to afford 'New Zealand'? Who will pay the mortgage?

It's a big issue for a little country struggling to achieve critical mass in the desirable demographics. New Zealand has an hour-glass figure trending top-heavy with the aged. For a comparatively young nation, we're awfully matronly.

Our socio-political hope is that ex-pat desirables will heed the call of home, especially once they start nesting. But anyone over 20 who has contemplated a trip "home" often prefers the idealization to reality. Bedrooms are always smaller, beds even more so, and then there's the thorny issue of what to say.

Has New Zealand got the pull of the vitally attractive, or is it the nostalgic, sensible, comfortable option?

Well, if our current account is anything to go by, we need to start leveraging the former, and the global recession provides the perfect window.

A decent lifestyle is still pretty cheap here. But that's not enough. Successful, professional, over-achievers, the entrepreneurial movers and groovers, the seriously cashed-up - eventually, they'll want more than beer and bangers on the barbie. The need for self-actualisation will win out.

And this is where New Zealand's real opportunity lies. The world-weary wunderkind are tired of the old regimes.

The abitrary nature of capital markets has never been so exposed, where jumped-up Maserati driving, cut-throat razor shaved twenty and thirty somethings are left to play with the global economy; swarming around hedge-funds and frenzy-feeding off currency speculation. It's gambling for private school boys.

So let's not go down that track. Let's not trot along behind the big boys on our short, chubby toddler legs crying, "Wait for me".

Let's position ourselves as a start-up up-start - a great place for getting away from the BS and trying something new - something fresh and vital - authentic and organic.

Every day, New Zealanders are doing great things, and like attracts like. So it's time we got over the cultural cringe and made more noise. The desirable demographics need to see NZ as the new business frontier.

There are so many cool things going on that are the preserve of sub-cultural cliques. We need to mainstream these stories. It's a challenge for our tradtitional media who are myred in out-moded concepts of newsworthiness and blinded to all but their respective competitors' coverage of the same predictable news packages.

There's a growing awareness New Zealand is on the verge of something if we could only get it together. A Gladwellian 'tipping point' is what's needed, so heave to everyone. Shout out.

Our mortgage repayments depend on it.

Doing the iPod shuffle

Find your sound with Alpha 96.1 FM - surprisingly good student radio even if it is targeted at Gen Y males.

Yes, after three weeks of 12 hour plus days, the student team behind the Alpha concept has come up with the perfect programming for this Gen X female.

Busting out of my demographic profiling and leaping a whole generation, not to mention my gender straitjacket, this listener is digging fresh play-lists, minimal ads, and only the occasional DJ gaff.

Apparently, the quintessential Alpha male is a twenty-something, male accountant about to make his mark on the world - an interesting, if somewhat contradictory idea.

The programming concept is to channel said quintessential male's iPod - on shuffle. It's like, "pick and mix, only sweeter".

Nice insight - good territory.

The students' audience targeting is a bit light on the psychographics - user attitudes, behaviours and beliefs/values etc. But hey, they seem to have a clear idea of what's on the iPod - a bit of retro mashed up with a bit of now, minus the (overly) commercial "crap" - if not, whose iPod.

Artist integrity is paramount. "Selling out" is a sin (still). Think: Kings of Leon post 2003. Yeah, I know. Bad, huh?

And apparently, if you're a 40 year old woman chatting to a twenty-something chick, you're screaming "lezza", according to Tamsin, or Hendo or Kendall, or some such.

Makes me feel a tad creepy just listening in - like if they knew I was out there it would provoke much high pitched OMGing!!!!

Past-it suburban lezza stalks NZ Broadcasting School's student station... Hmm, scatter and scream, girls.

But just when the self-conscious seniors among us might start feeling like proverbial mutton chops getting on the DL with lamb tenderloins, there's this introduction explaining The Clash: "one of the original 'rock, punk' bands of the seventies".

And then, if that cute little mangling wasn't enough, the DJ chose Rock the Casbah.

Um, excuse me - screaming "sell out"! It's only the most mainstream of all Clash tracks - a little eighties earner for a band well used to top-shelf living.

Huh!

So thanks, Alpha, from those of us who remember the tunes the first time they spun the decks and cassette tapes, and who have continued to appreciate the good sounds of today.

It's a shame the party has to end come November.

Big ups and all that to a great little station that will definitely leave a gap in the local soundscape.

www.alpharadio.co.nz