thinking: relating- celebrating :-)

The parliamentary elections in NZ last year will be remembered for having the lowest voter turnout since 1887

At the time a lot of commentators opined that this was the result of Labour Party voters staying away in droves because they knew they couldn’t beat John Key & the Nats.

“A total of 3,070,847 people were registered to vote in the election, with over 2.2 million votes cast and a turnout of 74.21%^[4] – the lowest turnout since 1887.^[5] The incumbent National Party, led by John Key, gained the plurality with 47.3% of the party vote and 59 seats, two seats short of holding a majority.”

Except that low voter turnout and “too close to call” elections are also happening in the UK, Australia and other places. Political parties now are so au fait with focus groups and polling that they have swapped a genuine passion for change and inclusive public policy thinking for facsimile results and so end up holding cardboard elections.

Many voters see through the card board characters and have lost faith in the voting process.

Somehow PM John Key has interpreted this as a big win* and is now proceeding on an idealogical path of asset stripping and other exploitation of natural resources.

Have a look at Partial privatisation numbers ‘don’t add up’

“Sustento director and economist Raf Manji said. It was admirable for the Government to lower debt, but the numbers around selling stakes in energy firms to do so did not add up, he said.

New Zealand debt servicing was at record lows and the energy firms were trading well, returning between 5 and 11 per cent, he said. It looked like the nation was heading into a prolonged period of low interest rates, he said.

“It’s never been so cheap for the Government to borrow money and the demand for Kiwi debt has never been higher. If the New Zealand Government was a business, there would be absolutely no reason why it would be selling.”

Diluting the public’s hold on the firms would risk lower investment in power generation infrastructure and higher prices, he said. No more important public good existed than energy, as it was essential to people and businesses, so it was dangerous to raise the firm’s focus on profits.”

Rafs Sustento website is over here and he is on twitter here @rafmanji

One Big Voice would be very useful in helping to change the governments mind about those asset sales. I’m old enough to remember Capital Markets and the BNZ fiasco / bailout.

Shortly after that the heroes scurried off to Switzerland to roll around in the cash they got from the NZ government. It is another story for another day but please excuse me when I say John Key is a former money market trader and a leopard does not changes its spots.

“1989: Government reduces its share to 51% by selling 34%; with 30% sold to Capital Markets Ltd, and the remainder to the general public”

It is time to make politicians accountable.

What to do about this?

A local Grey Lynn based project is helping to make it easier to to make your elected representative more transparent, accountable and responsive to you, the people that put them in power. It is called One Big Voice and it represents a new way for citizens to show politicians what we really care about.

“Have you ever felt you weren’t being listened to?

Governments have vast economic and political resources which means they set the agenda. The average citizen on the other hand has one vote, no real voice and few other ways to exert any influence over what goes on in the world. In short, if you don’t have the means to make yourself heard your needs are often overlooked or ignored altogether.

That just doesn’t seem fair to us so we’re on a mission to help place the power to shape the world back into the hands of the people. Yep, we know it’s a ridiculously grandiose ambition but we really want to help make the world a better place to be for everyone.

To get the ball rolling we’ve chosen to focus on improving the quality of communication between voters and their elected representatives.”

or you can watch the video below.

The team says

“We’ve researched our idea, figured out how to make it work and finally we’re at the stage where it’s ready to build. So far we’ve donated our time for free, that’s what you do with love projects, but to develop it further and start coding in earnest we need financial support.”

Pop on over the One Big Voice page on indiegogo and login with your Facebook id to get involved.

You can find OBV on twitter at  @oneBIGvoice or on http://www.facebook.com/oneBIGvoice

P.S Your question is- OBV looks just like Standup which is another excellent changemakers project They also would love your support as they need to find a new name for Standup.

“we believe we can come up with an even more descriptive and unique name for our organisation using ‘the power of the crowd’ Feeling creative? Suggest some other names for us>>> Help us choose a cool new name ”

Last year a couple of big finance stories caught my attention. I had just seen the movie Inside Job .

What was very interesting to me was the idea that economists and other academics in the finance world had been utterly compromised by the global financial meltdown.

The other story concerned Wachovia bank laundering $400b of blood money but more on that one later.

In fact they (academic economists) have been completely implicated in the demise of the system yet those very same people were reappointed to high ranking roles by the Obama administration. So point 1 – same old, same old means the same results which is privatise assetts – socialise losses and that bailout was US$700b.

(Add both numbers together and that is $1100b and that is thought to be a tip of the iceberg read of that problem.)

Follow the money. $700b is a very big honeypot and what has happened to that money?

The Four Horseman Film attempts to answer these questions and more. Accountability and public policy results?

“Four Horsemen is the debut feature from director Ross Ashcroft which reveals the fundamental flaws in the economic system which have brought our civilization to the brink of disaster.

23 leading thinkers –frustrated at the failure of their respective disciplines – break their silence to explain how the world really works.

The film pulls no punches in describing the consequences of continued inaction – but its message is one of hope. If more people can equip themselves with a better understanding of how the world really works, then the systems and structures that condemn billions to poverty or chronic insecurity can at last be overturned.

Solutions to the multiple crises facing humanity have never been more urgent, but equally, the conditions for change have never been more favourable.”

Update: In NZ? – listen to this interview from Kim Hill show today (5th of May 2012)

The Four Horseman is currently showing in New Zealand at the Docu Edge Film festival

Ann Pettifor interview is 30 mins but well worth watching. It is not in the film. Key answer from Ann: “We have to regulate & control the banks” – Keynes & Roosevelt had the right tactic back in the 30′s.

Another related story from April last year

“How a big US bank laundered billions from Mexico’s murderous drug gangs As the violence spread, billions of dollars of cartel cash began to seep into the global financial system. But a special investigation by the Observer reveals how the increasingly frantic warnings of one London whistleblower were ignored”

That large banking group in the paid $US150 m in fines recently for money laundering something like 400 billion $ of drugs money. $150m is a large fine but compared to $400b & all of the other similar cases that didn’t get prosecuted – it is a slap on the hand with a wet bus ticket. ( My calculator can’t cope with that but as a percentage $150m/400b – its a rounding error!)

‘More shocking, and more important, the bank was sanctioned for failing to apply the proper anti-laundering strictures to the transfer of $378.4bn – a sum equivalent to one-third of Mexico’s gross national product – into dollar accounts from so-called casas de cambio (CDCs) in Mexico, currency exchange houses with which the bank did business.

“Wachovia’s blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations,” said Jeffrey Sloman, the federal prosecutor. Yet the total fine was less than 2% of the bank’s $12.3bn profit for 2009. On 24 March 2010, Wells Fargo stock traded at $30.86 – up 1% on the week of the court settlement.

The conclusion to the case was only the tip of an iceberg, demonstrating the role of the “legal” banking sector in swilling hundreds of billions of dollars – the blood money from the murderous drug trade in Mexico and other places in the world – around their global operations, now bailed out by the taxpayer.’

Another version of that story is over here - Cocaine smugglers laundered billions through Wachovia bank

“Somehow, the major banks in the United States have gone from serving as the main bulwarks of credit and entrepreneurial pluck to the moral equivalent of a James Bond villain.”

Turns out the GFC was an opportunity for some big finance houses to rort the public finances as well as actively engaging in eye-popping financing of criminal activities. In little old New Zealand I don’t remember any of these stories even making the news.

I can remember the Savings & Loan crisis of the 80′s but these more recent stories are much more significantly disturbing. The finance system is completely broken and the sooner we change it the better.

Of course there is more to the story;

“By 2007 the trade in derivatives worldwide was one quadrillion (thousand million million) US dollars – this is 10 times the total production of goods on the planet over its entire history,” says Stewart. “OK, we’re talking about the totals in a two-way trade, people are buying and people are selling and you’re adding it all up as if it doesn’t cancel out, but it was a huge trade.”

The Black-Scholes formula had passed the market test. But as banks and hedge funds relied more and more on their equations, they became more and more vulnerable to mistakes or over-simplifications in the mathematics.”

Tim Harford writes Black-Scholes: The maths formula linked to the financial crash

“The equation is based on the idea that big movements are actually very, very rare. The problem is that real markets have these big changes much more often that this model predicts,” says Stewart.

“And the other problem is that everyone’s following the same mathematical principles, so they’re all going to get the same answer.“*

….

“Not all of those subsequent technologies, says Scholes, were good enough. “[Some] had assumptions that were wrong, or they used data incorrectly to calibrate their models, or people who used [the] models didn’t know how to use them.”

Scholes argues there is no going back. “The fundamental issue is that quantitative technologies in finance will survive, and will grow, and will continue to evolve over time,” he says.

But for Ian Stewart, the story of Black-Scholes – and of Long-Term Capital Management – is a kind of morality tale.”

*According to a friend this idea about finance models being trapped in their thinking mode is a key one. ( Thanks to Raf Manji for comments below) Raf’s site is Sustento go there for more smart insights 

“The problem with all these models is they don’t price in liquidity (i.e.. the ability to shift volume at a certain price). When everyone wants to exit the building at the same time, there is a crush!

It’s very similar with financial policy making. They work from theoretical models, which might have some validity on paper or in small, closed situations but don’t hold up amidst the rampaging and unpredictable hordes of humanity.

This is what I meant by saying policymakers are operating out of the same toolbox and, therefore, can never find or consider solutions that might actually work.”

As many of you know I have been working on re-development of a significant NZ government related website which focuses on the roll-out of ultra fast broadband over the next few years.

That site Crown Fibre Holdings finally went live a few weeks ago. I’m very proud of the great design work that has been done on a project of such national significance. In replacing the old site the CFH team and my team wanted to re architect the site and improve usability so that it was much easier to reach out to the key sectors.

I’m delighted that the content and the thinking has progressed along and like all great projects there are some more changes to come.

Crown Fibre - Website by dialogCRM

For the WordPress geeks out there the site is a custom theme which uses lots of video and for government related entities – yes – it is running on a Microsoft IIS server.

Individually and collectively as a group there has been a great deal of effort put in to make the website work on as many levels as possible. It is a learning system and I hope and trust it will become a showcase for all the NZ communities it seeks to represent and engage with.

But wait !- there is more. I’m fascinated by all the debates going on – all day, every day on twitter and other forms of media. Comes a time though -when some straight talking is needed.  I work in marketing and communications and so I organise or help with various events and conferences. I much prefer organising parties  and concerts but conference events have their place as there is no substitute for face to face in real time.

With any project what we are really looking for is for real street level moments of truth. One of my tag lines is “ideas into action”. Yes we need the talk – but we also need to share from our hearts about what moves us and what connects us and what makes a difference and that is ultimately measured in actions.

I was delighted to have Poutaua and Nikolasa Biasiny-Tule as presenters at #WordCampNZ 2012 as our keynote speakers only last week. They believe in speaking the truth with love and humour and it shows.

The clip below comes from another event that I hadn’t seen before today. We have video still coming from #WordCampNZ however here are Nik & Taua’s slides Nikolasa & Potaua Biasiny-Tule – DigitalM?ori & WP Magazine Stylz but watch the video below first.

The conversations we have about ultra fast broadband are important. We need to have more of them and we need to be present and really listen to each other.

As always let me know what you think – are we doing enough to be inclusive and enabling with our ultra fast broadband policy ?and the roll-out? – what more can and should be done?

Please also follow @DigitalMaori over at TangataWhenua.com for more from them.