ATTENTION MAYOR PRENDERGAST AND COUNCIL

Attention

Mayor Prendergast and Council

CEO Garry Poole

CFO Neil Cherry

In March of this year I restated my on going concern that we were headed for financial disaster. This was based on my analysis of financial information that is available to the public and my experience watching the markets and historical evidence. I’m not the only person to have warned of the coming crisis. Your response to my concerns was to increase rates and further shift the commercial rates onto the residential rates bill.

In 2006 I stated that the property market was over inflated and that we were setting rates on the wrong assumptions. This met with derogatory remarks and was dismissed as doom and gloom. Your response this year was to continue to spend without any concern for those who pay your wages. A further response by Council in one case was to vote a fifty percent increase to a Council director and increases for other Council directors well above the wage and salary increases of ratepayers who are required to pay for this Council largess.

Given that we are now in the most serious economic crisis since the last Great Depression and that the dollar has fallen by forty percent, the biggest fall in its history, there should be a swift response in “The Public Interest” to this crisis. To start with, the director who received the 50 percent increase along with all other directors, should have their fees reduced to the lower level that was paid to all directors in the last triennium while we consider a strategy to bring all LATES back into Council.

We now need an emergency strategy to bring costs down so they are manageable for the ratepayers. Giving the Council representatives on LATES and TRUSTS such extravagant directors fees was very wrong and you are now obligated to bring these fees back to a much lower level.

Cr Pepperell

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From: Bryan Pepperell
Sent: Tuesday, 20 May 2008 6:44 p.m.
To: Kerry Prendergast; Councillors (Councillors); Garry Poole
Cc: 'Neil.cherry@wcc.govt.nz'; Ernst Zollner; 'dave.burgess@dompost.co.nz'
Subject: The Slump of 2008/2009

Councillors

I am increasingly concerned about what is happening to the economy and how we can mitigate the effects to the ratepayers. Once again I ask you for your plan to deal with this economic crisis.

Cr Pepperell

From: Bryan Pepperell [mailto:Bryan.Pepperell@wcc.govt.nz]
Sent: Wednesday, 12 March 2008 5:53 p.m.
To: Kerry Prendergast
Cc: GRP: Councillors
Subject: Economic collapse and your response

The evidence is now coming to light that we are about to have an economic collapse, if it has not already happened. Given that reality what is your plan?

Today I was on the streets talking to people in business. Car repair people tell me that suits are unable to pay the excess on insurance claims and cars are being left with claims going back to insurance for settlement. When suits can’t find $250 -$300 for excess we are in trouble,

Personally I think we should be saying no to big projects in order to hold rates. None of you have experienced economic collapse and most of you are paid too well to relate to struggling ratepayers. We should do an economic health check before we proceed further.

Bryan

Soros warns global boom is over

By Steve Schifferes BBC News economics reporter

George Soros on why he believes the UK is in a fragile position

Billionaire investor George Soros has given his gloomiest assessment of the state of the US and world economies.

He told BBC business editor Robert Peston that the "acute phase" of the credit crunch may be over but effects on the real economy are yet to be felt.

He warned the "financial bubble" of the last 25 years could be drawing to an end and the post World War II "super-boom" era could also be over.

He predicted a "more severe and longer" US slowdown than most people expect.

And he said that the UK was worse-placed than America to weather to coming economic storm, because it had such a large financial sector and has had the biggest increase in house prices.

Economist: Housing slump may exceed Depression
Boston Globe via AP ^ | April 22, 2008 | John Christoffersen

Posted on Wednesday, 23 April 2008 4:13:55 a.m. by GQuagmire

NEW HAVEN, Conn.—An influential economist who long predicted the housing market bubble cautioned Tuesday that the slump in the U.S. housing market could cause prices to fall more than they did in the Great Depression and bailouts will be needed so millions don't lose their homes.

(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...

IMF cuts US growth forecast, warns of global slump

By Barry Grey
12 April 2008

Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the author

The International Monetary Fund’s biennial World Economic Outlook report, issued Wednesday, forecasts a US recession that will drag the global economy down with it.

The report, issued in advance of this weekend’s spring meetings in Washington of the IMF and World Bank, together with a conference of the Group of Seven industrialized nations’ finance ministers, paints a far more dire picture of the state of the world economy than those put forward by government and central bank officials in the US and Europe.

It states that financial problems which erupted last August in the US subprime mortgage market “spread quickly and unpredictably” and caused “extensive damage.” It describes the resulting financial crisis as the biggest since the Great Depression.

Recession: The global slump of 2008/9 has started

Author: Countervalue

12 May

We are living in a country that has so obviously had its economic, democratic and legal systems deliberately and deviously corrupted and destroyed

From: Telegraph

The avalanche of bankruptcies has begun. Six US companies of substance have defaulted on bonds over the past fortnight, against 17 for the whole of last year.

As a “non-believer” in the instant rebound story, I am not easily shocked by gloomy reports. But the latest note by Standard & Poor’s - The Bust After The Boom - gave me a fright.

The sick list is varied, though most for now are victims of the housing crash: Linens ‘n Things, ($650m), Kimball Hill ($703m), Home Interiors ($310m), French Lick Resorts ($142m), Recycled Paper Greetings ($187m), and Tropicana Entertainment ($2.49bn).

Monday, May 19, 2008

Peak Oil: Everything is going to change

Connecticut Post Online

By Connecticut State Rep. Terry Backer

There is little government can do about the price of oil. That is not what people want to hear. Yet it is a fact. The U.S. government and all the states have no "Plan B." They continue to rely on a delusional "Plan A" — more oil and cheaper oil all the time. Politicians, generally asleep at the wheel on this issue, have been shocked into trying to do something about the current and future problems arising from oil costs. They are spinning around looking for someone to blame, dazed by the precipitous rise from $50 per barrel last January to $126 this past week.