Well not really…

But I do think this orgy of consumption around Christmas is a pointless and painful waste of time. It simply stores up even more foreign debt that will have to be serviced and eventually repaid.

We simply can’t afford to keep spending the way we have. The charts below show why. We need to reduce our consumer spending to reduce our imports and drag that current account deficit back closer to 4-5% than the 8-10% range it is in now.

I was simply stunned to see the pictures of shoppers thronging to the malls on Boxing Day, as Stuff reports. There is an illusion of a deal which means people spend just as much as they would have without the sales, but get more things they don’t really need. It’s still stuff we don’t need.

I watched another

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Link FestHedge Fund Link FestIn case you have been reading up on bank failures and bail outs all week and missed much of the news on the hedge fund industry here is a link fest out to many of the events which recently occurred in the industry:Citadel, TPG-Axon Stumble Toward Worst Year in Hedge-Fund SwoonBloomberg - USA19, the worst first nine months of a year since Chicago-based Hedge Fund Research Inc. started tracking the data in 1990. Investment gains are being ... Worth Interviews Hedge Fund Guru David EinhornMarketWatch - USAIn the case of Lehman Brothers, one of those short sellers is David Einhorn, the head of hedge fund Greenlight Capital. Last May Einhorn stated publicly ... ...

New Zealand businesses often have a tough time competing against larger Australian rivals.

Our corporate history is littered with failed New Zealand attempts to break into the Australian market, while large Australian companies have done well here, often buying and running dominant companies in New Zealand and increasing their profits.

The Warehouse, Telecom and Air New Zealand are the most recent examples of our corporate failures across the Tasman. Only Michael Hill comes to mind as a success.

Australian-owned media companies Fairfax (the owner of Stuff, TradeMe and the former INL chain of newspapers), APN (New Zealand Herald) and the banks (ASB, ANZ, BNZ, Westpac and National) have all done extraordinarily well since buying into New Zealand, particularly over the last five years as they profited from dominant positions in a relatively fast-growing economy.

So most assumed that when Woolworths bought the Progressive supermarket operation in 2005 it

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