Heather du Plessis-Allan: I'm not convinced the Commerce Commission study will lead anywhere

For once, we have a Commerce Commission study that isn’t going nowhere.

Nicola Willis says she's going to do what the Commerce Commission has recommended in the banking study out today - and she'll do all 14 recommendations.

This is a little surprise, isn’t it? Because we have got very used to these studies coming out and pretty much nothing of any substance being done. We've had the petrol study, the supermarket study, the construction industry study - I was a little cynical about the banking study, but I was wrong.

Frank Newman: Payday loans

Central government is currently reviewing consumer credit law.  That has awakened media interest in the scandalous Payday Loan industry, which has grown exponentially in recent years with the arrival of overseas companies setting up shop (quite possibly because of the light handed regulatory environment of the non-bank lending sector and the low level of financial literacy in New Zealand).

Payday loans are short-term unsecured loans of small amounts intended to get the borrower though to the next payday, but generally they have a maximum term of a month or two. According to the website of the lenders, typical examples are paying for groceries, power bills, vehicle breakdowns, and the like. The reality is there are probably a host of other reasons why desperate people end up at the doorstep of these usurious lenders. They usually start out of small amounts – just a few hundred dollars, and every lender has different terms, but they do have one thing in common – outrageously high interest rates: 500% per annum is not unusual.

Mike Butler: Daylight Robbery in 2011

How South Canterbury Finance was taken down, how finance companies failed, the new round of privatisation, the Air NZ bailout and train set repurchase, KiwiSaver fee rip-offs, and Chinese attempts to buy NZ dairy farms, all feature in an 80-page new section of a revised version of investigative journalist Ian Wishart’s 2001 book “Daylight Robbery”.

A legal notice is posted on the copyright-ISBN number page stressing that the book “contains very serious allegations relating to named individuals” some of which have been made under parliamentary privilege. Readers are urged to remember that some allegations of fraud made in the book remain unproven until a court has ruled upon them.

Mike Butler: The savings group that promotes government spending

Has anyone else spotted the self-defeating recommendations in this week’s Savings Working Group report, “Saving New Zealand: Reducing Vulnerabilities & Barriers to Growth & Prosperity”?

With full drama, the report asserts that in a financial sense “it’s as if we are standing on top of a cliff that may collapse dramatically, or crumble slowly.” The financial crumbling cliff that the savings working group describes is the level of national indebtedness. With net foreign liabilities at 85 per cent of gross domestic product, New Zealand has borrowed too much overseas. The working group says that our debt level is similar to the troubled countries of Europe, and notes that Australia has net foreign liabilities of 58 per cent.

Mike Butler: U.S. bailout rort uncovered

For those who are sceptical of the Obama administration’s bailout of some United States banks, here is a snapshot of some of the rorting that is going on within that bailout. Forbidden Knowledge TV set out “A Clear Explanation of Naked Banksterism” as a video clip and a transcript, which I reproduce here, with acronyms deciphered and financial institutions described: