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The Persuader
My personal blog, started in 2006. No paid or guest posts, no link sales.
Archive for the ‘globalization’ category
03.01.2023
Hat tip to Stefan Engeseth on this one: an excellent podcast with author, historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari.
Among the topics he covers, as detailed in the summary in Linkedinâs The Next Big Idea:
âą AI is the first technology that can take power away from us
âą if we are not careful, AI and bioengineering will be used to create the worst totalitarian regimes in history
âą Be skeptical of technological determinism
We should be wary nowânot after these technologies have been fully realized.
I also checked into Business Ethics today, a site linked from the Jack Yan & Associates links’ section (which dates back to the 1990s). The lead item, syndicated from ProPublica, is entitled, âPorn, Privacy Fraud: What Lurks Inside Googleâs Black Box Ad Empireâ, subtitled, âGoogleâs ad business hides nearly all publishers it works with and where billions of ad dollars flow. We uncovered a network containing manga piracy, porn, fraud and disinformation.â
This should be no surprise to anyone who reads this blog; indeed, this should be no surprise to anyone who has had their eyes open and breathes. This opaque black box is full of abuse, funds disinformation, endangers democracy, and exposes personal data to dodgy parties. As I outlined earlier, someone in the legal profession with cojones and a ton of funding and time could demonstrate that Googleâs entire business should be subject to a massive negligence lawsuit. The authors of the article present more evidence that Google is being up to no good.
An excerpt, without revealing too much:
Last year, a marketer working for a Fortune 500 company launched a multimillion-dollar ad campaign âŠ
Over the next few months, Google placed more than 1.3 trillion of the companyâs ads on over 150,000 different websites and apps. The biggest recipient of ads â more than 49 million â was a website called PapayAds. The company was registered in Bulgaria less than two years ago and lists one employee, CEO Andrea De Donatis, on LinkedIn âŠ
It seems impossible that 49 million ads were legitimately placed and viewed on PapayAdsâ site over the span of several months ⊠âI donât have an explanation for this,â he said, adding that he does not recall receiving payment for such a large volume of ads.
I doubt this is isolated, and the story elaborates on how the scheme worked. And when Google realized its ads were winding up on inappropriate websites, the action it took was to keep doing it.

On a more positive note, I found out about Radio.garden in December on Mastodon (thank goodness for all the posts there these days, a far cry from when I joined in 2017) and have since been tuning in to RTHK Radio 1 in Hong Kong. I had no idea they even gave NZ dollarâUS dollar exchange rates as part of their business news! The interface is wonderful: just rotate the planet and place the city of your choice within the circular pointer. It works equally well on a cellphone, though only in portrait mode there. Youâd be amazed at what you can find, and I even listened to one of the pop stations in Jeddah.
My usual suspects are âfavouritedâ: KCSM in San Mateo, Sveriges Radio P1, and RNZ National here. I might add Rix FM from Stockholm but I seem to have grown up a little since the days when its music was targeted to me.
Itâs now been added to our company link list. Sadly, a few dead ones have had to be culled today. But I must say Radio.garden has been one of the best finds of 2022. Almost makes you want to surf to random sites again like we did in the 1990s.
Tags: 2022, 2023, advertising, AI, Doubleclick, ethics, fraud, Google, Hong Kong, Jack Yan & Associates, LinkedIn, online advertising, podcast, radio, Radio New Zealand, Stefan Engeseth, Stockholm, Sweden, technology, transparency Posted in business, culture, design, globalization, Hong Kong, internet, media, New Zealand, politics, Sweden, technology, USA | No Comments »
01.11.2022
Dave Troyâs analysis of the Elon Musk takeover of Twitter makes for interesting reading, since Troy has actually spoken to Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and has a bit more of the inside track than most.
For starters, Troy reminds us that Dorsey trusts Musk, in order to keep Twitter away from Wall Street investors. Dorsey has said this publicly in a Tweet. He believes this acquisition is about ideology, so Musk doesnât care if Twitter doesnât make moneyâor at least, money will come if the technology is opened up and they can charge for other things built on top of it. Getting data on all of us helps Musk in a big way, too.
Troy posits that Musk believes we need to be on other planets, so we shouldnât help the poor in our quest to get off this rock; but another interesting one is that he believes in a multipolar world order, something Vladimir Putin has talked about. Musk believes in rule by technocracy, Troy theorizes, not by politics. He also believes Musk is a sociopath.
All this is quite fascinating to read. Taking Troyâs words on Putin, Musk and Dorsey sharing the same vision:
All seem to think a âmultipolar worldâ is a good thing, because after all, shouldnât Russia get to do its thing and not be bothered by anyone else? Thatâs âfree speechâ and opposes âcancel culture,â right? So yeah, thatâs aligned with Putin. But Putin himself doesnât support free speech; his government censors wildly, but it does support speech that breaks the hegemony of the Western elites. As do Musk and friends. This is internally inconsistent.
Because of these shared values, Troy foresees Musk teaming up with D. J. Trump at Truth Social and Kanye West at Parler to control the information space.
It points to a pretty dark outcome and a polarizing world, but one which has been brewing for a long time.
We could talk about the failure of neoliberal economics and, therefore, the western hegemony. With all the figure-massaging by China when it reports its GDP, thereâs still no denying that the country has risen vastly in mere decades. And Putin has said as much about wanting to fight back against western hegemony.
Itâs incredibly easy to fall back on âthem and usâ as a concept. Dictators might find it easier to make their positions official (even if there is internal dissent that is driven underground), while the west can broadly talk about diversity while not truly breaking ranks with the neoliberal order. Our Blairite government here is positioned as such while having a social veneer (and a modicum of restraint) based on history and market positioning, while the Opposition will make things that much harder and is more blatant at wanting to do so.
I would have once said China had the potential to be an outlier, raising its educational standards and embracing Confucianism, which has its foundations in free thought and liberalism, balanced with preserving a relationship between state and subject. Perhaps with Hu and Wen things could have gone that way. Under Xi Jinping the aims have changed, and at least one China-watcher I know (who knew Xiâs father and knew of Xi from 1982) tell me that they foresaw this.
Iâm not going to make any bold predictions myself, but the world looks like a place that wonât become multipolar but bipolar, and Twitter is one tool that is going to accelerate this trendâbuilding on top of what Facebook and Google have already done by forcing users into silos. Meanwhile, Baidu et al will no doubt reflect the official positions of their governments.
Tags: 2020s, 2022, Aotearoa, Baidu, China, corruption, cult, culture, dictatorship, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, information, Jack Dorsey, Kanye West, neoliberalism, New Zealand, politics, propaganda, Russia, social media, Twitter, USA, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping Posted in business, China, culture, globalization, internet, New Zealand, politics, technology, USA | No Comments »
21.10.2022
The below was originally posted in Lucire. We have made it to 25 years of age there, and rather than reinvent the wheel, this little pieceâas well as the one I uploaded yesterday hours after we turned exactly 25âreflect how I feel upon reaching this milestone.

Olivia Macklin, photographed by Josh Fogel, make-up by Beth Follert, hair by Erika Vanessa using T3 Micro, styled by Karlee Parrish, and photography assisted by Nick Sutjongdro. Click through to see full credits.
Today we decided to upload a story about Olivia Macklinâthe actress who youâll have seen in Netflixâs Pretty Smart last year and, before that, the US remake of Kiwi series Filthy Richâin part because itâs so unlike what happened on day one of Lucire 25 years ago.
Here is a wonderful story about a well connected, theatre-trained Hollywood actress, shot beautifully in the US by an outstanding team there, with me doing the writing and interviewing.
The story has already run in our print editions.
The fact we even have print editions is something remarkable to me, and if I hadnât made the decision to do so in the early 2000s, spurred on by a mixture of desire and naĂŻvetĂ©, I couldnât even type that previous paragraph.
The fact we have a group of generous and talented colleagues around the world is also not lost on me. I know I am very fortunate to have them around me.
While itâs not the first time that Lucire has been published in something other than English, I take some pride in seeing our story in French, a language I have learned since I was six. That, too, is vastly different to where we were in 1997.
Twenty-five years ago, I keenly watched the statistics as visitors came to see a website I had built with my own code, using what were then pretty clever techniques to ape the feel of a glossy printed fashion magazine. But I didnât have any new stories lined up because my enquiries to designers werenât getting any replies.
Nowadays, I have a sense of the stories to come as we plan quite a few numbers ahead.
I enjoy balancing the needs of print and web around the world and know I am blessed to be able to do something I love.
Iâm grateful to all those who have worked on Lucire and stayed on the side of good, building up a magazine brand which, I hope, stands for something positive in this world. You know who you are.
Iâve spent half my lifetime building it up so far, and know it could be even greater.
Iâm no Mystic Meg so I donât know whatâs to come, nor would I want to hazard a guess. But where we are now was not something I could have even guessed in 1997. Given such a big leap forward to 2022, I wonât even attempt to contemplate 2047 just yet. I simply remain hopeful.
Tags: 1997, 2022, actress, anniversary, Aotearoa, California, celebrity, French, JY&A Media, language, Los Angeles, Lucire, New Zealand, photography, publishing, USA, Wellington Posted in business, culture, globalization, internet, media, New Zealand, publishing, technology, USA, Wellington | No Comments »
10.01.2022
Finally, a happier post. For many years (since 2004), my dear friend Stanley Moss has been publishing his Global Brand Letter, which is not only a wonderful summary of the year (or the last half-year, since he often writes every six months) in branding, but an excellent record of the evolution of culture.
He has finished his latest and, for the first time, he has allowed me to host a copy for you to download and read (below). I commend it to you highly. Keep an eye out for future issues, while past ones can be found on his website at www.diganzi.com.

Tags: 2021, branding, culture, friends, Stanley Moss Posted in business, China, culture, design, globalization, interests, internet, marketing, media, publishing, technology, UK, USA | No Comments »
28.11.2021
Jane Pendry in the UK Tweeted this in response to a Tweet about Amazon, and I had to reply:
Jane helpfully elaborated:
You read correctly: Amazon is just as dodgy as the others I’ve criticized publicly. Just that I hadn’t got around to them on this blog, because there had been a lengthy dialogue and I wanted to get more facts. But above is where I’ve got to so far, and it seems I’m not alone.
Tags: 2010s, 2021, Amazon, Big Tech, crime, customer service, ethics, law, Twitter, UK, USA Posted in business, globalization, internet, technology, UK, USA | No Comments »
13.09.2021

Ford’s Brazilian line-up, 2021. Once upon a time, there were locally developed Corcels and Mavericks; even the EcoSport was a Brazilian development. Today, it’s Mustang, a couple of trucks, and a rebadged Chinese crossover.
We heard a lot about the demise of Holden as GM retreats from continents at a time, seemingly in a quest to be a Sino-American player rather than a global one. Weâve heard less about Ford shrinking as well, though the phenomenon is similar.
Fordâs Brazilian range is now the Mustang, Ranger, Territory (which is fundamentally a badge-engineered Yusheng S330 from China with a Fordized interior), and Bronco. Itâs beating a retreat from Brazil, at the cost of tens of thousands of jobs (its own, plus associated industriesâ) in a country that already has 15 per cent unemployment.
Their reasoning is that electrification and technological change are driving restructuring, which seems plausible, till you realize that in other markets, including Thailand where thereâs still a plant making Fords, the company is fielding essentially trucks, the truck-based Everest, and the Mustang.
Ford warned us that this would be its course of action a few years ago, but now itâs happening, it makes even less sense.
Say itâs all about (eventual) electrification. Youâd want vehicles in your portfolio now that lend themselves to energy efficiency, so that people begin associating your brand with it. Trucks and pony cars donât fit with this long-term. And I still believe that at some point, even before trucks commonly have electric powertrains, someone is going to say, âThese tall bodies with massive frontal areas are using up way more of the juice Iâm paying for. We donât need something this big.â
Letâs say Ford quickly pivots. It sticks a conventional saloon body on the Mustang Mach-E platform (which, letâs be honest, started off as a Focus crossoverâthe product code, CX727, tells us as much) in record time. Would anyone buy it? Probably not before they see what the Asians, who donât abandon segments because they canât be bothered working hard, have in their showrooms. Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Mazda, and countless Chinese marques, have been building their goodwill in the meantime.
Itâs why two decades ago, I warned against DaimlerChrysler killing off its price-leading brand, Plymouth. You never know when recessionary times come and you want an entry-level brand. Before the decade was out, that time came, and Chrysler didnât have much it could use without diluting its existing brandsâ market perceptions to have some price leaders.
Ford retreating from B- and C-segment family cars, even CD- and E-segment ones, means itâll find it difficult to get back into those markets later on. A good example would be the French, who donât find much success in the large saloon market generally, and would find it very hard to re-enter in a lot of places.
I realize the action isnât in regular passenger cars these days, but the fact that Fiat, Chevrolet and Volkswagen still manage to field broad lines in Brazil suggests that the market still exists and they can still eke out some money from their sales.
Itâs as though the US car firms are giving up, ceding territory. And on this note, Ford has form.
In the 1990s, Fordâs US arm under-marketed the Contour and Mystique Stateside, cars based on the original European Mondeo. I saw precious little advertising for them in US motoring press. As far as I can tell, they wanted to bury it because they didnât like the fact it wasnât developed by them, but by Fordâs German-based team in Köln. âSee, told you those Europeans wouldnât know how to engineer a CD-segment car for the US.â The fiefdom in Dearborn got its own way and later developed the Mazda-based Fusion, while the Europeans did two more generations of Mondeo.
In the 2000s, it decided to flush the goodwill of the Taurus name down the toilet, before then-new CEO Alan Mulally saw what was happening and hurriedly renamed the Five Hundred to Taurus.
It under-marketed the last generation of Falconâyou seldom saw them on forecourtsâand that looked like a pretext for closing the Australian plant (âSee, no one wants big carsâ) even though by this point the Falcon was smaller than the Mondeo in most measures other than overall length, and plenty of people were buying similarly sized rear-wheel-drive saloons over at BMW and Mercedes-Benz.
The Mondeo hybrid has been another model that you barely hear of, even though the Fusion Hybrid, the American version of the car, had been on sale years before.
Think about what they gave up. Here, Ford once owned the taxi market. It doesnât any more as cabbies ultimately wound up in Priuses and Camrys. Had Ford fielded a big hybrid saloon earlier, Toyota might not have made inroads into the taxi market to the same extent. Ford almost seems apologetic for being in segments where others come to, and when challenging the market leaders, doesnât put much effort in any more.
Objectively, I would rather have a Mondeo Hybrid than a Camry, but good luck seeing one in a Ford showroom.
Maybe Fordâs smart to be putting all its resources into growth areas like trucks and crossovers. Puma and Escape have appeal in the B- and C-segment crossover markets in places like New Zealand. Theyâre fairly car-like now, too. But to me thatâs putting all your eggs into one basket. In countries like Brazil and Thailand, where Ford doesnât sell well resolved crossovers in these segments, itâs treading a fine line. I look at the market leadership it once had in cars, in so many places, and in 2021 that looks like a thing of the past. Moreâs the pity.
Tags: 2021, Brazil, business, business strategy, car, car industry, China, electric cars, Ford, history, JMC, marketing, strategy, Thailand, truck, USA, Yusheng Posted in business, cars, China, globalization, marketing, USA | 1 Comment »
31.07.2020
At some point as a young man, my Dad worked at a bank. He had a formal understanding of financeâdespite his schooling being interrupted by the SinoâJapanese War and then by the communist revolution, he managed to get himself a qualification in economics, and had some time working for a bank.
I was taught all about promissory notes, bills of exchange, cheques, honourable accounts, balance of payments and foreign exchange as a teenager. He impressed on me why certain things were sacrosanct in banking, the correct way to draw a cheque, and why the Cheques Act 1993 in this country was a blight on how bills of exchange were supposed to work. Essentially, I grew up with what might have been a 1950s or 1960s idea of what banking is, things that were still mostly observed by New Zealand banks into the 1980s and the 1990s.
Today [Wednesday, July 29] I opened a new business account at TSB, with whom I had banked personally since 2007, as had Jack Yan & Associates. I will be closing the account at Westpac, because itâs clear to me that they donât believe in the fair dinkum banking values that my father taught me. By the time you read this, the closure should be a fait accompli, as I donât wish them to put up more obstacles than they have already.
Westpac held my mortgage on the old house, of which I had paid off 88 per cent before I sold it. I began my banking relationship with them in 2006, for reasons I wonât go into here. My parents had banked âon the Walesâ when they were new immigrants in 1976, and stayed with them for some time.
Very early on, I noticed how confusing their statements were. You can contrast theirs to everyone elseâs in Aotearoa, and believe me, I know: Iâve banked with a lot of people. Trust Bank, Countrywide, POSB, National, ANZâall the usual suspects that a Kiwi growing up in the 1970s through to the 1990s will have encountered. No, in itself thatâs not a reason to leave a bank, but they seem to exist in their own bubble.
I got caught out once or twice on not getting a mortgage payment sorted because of the confusing statements. And there was one time that Westpac decided to be relentless about it, by setting a bot on me. The bot would call at various hours hounding me to sort this out, with a pre-recorded message, and if you hung up, it would call again. And again. And again. Never mind that you havenât had a chance to enquire with the bank as to what was going on. This amounted to a breach of the Telecommunications Act, and I put this to them before the activity ceased. And no, in itself thatâs not a reason to leave a bank.
You are stuck with the buggers, and over the years Iâd make the payments. As many of you know, some of our companiesâ income comes from abroad, which I always regarded to be a good thing, since it helps with foreign exchange and this countryâs balance of payments. Twice, I think, I needed a top-up because a client was slow to pay, and I would clear that within 30 days. As interest rates changed (the mortgage was floating), the bank would, from time to time, send a letter saying I could reduce my mortgage payments and still keep to the payment schedule, and in 2010 I took them up on it.
As some of you know, in 2015 Dad was diagnosed formally with Alzheimerâs disease and eventually I became his full-time carer as his condition worsened, with predictable results on my work. But hey, Westpac has all these posters around their branches with Dementia New Zealand logos telling us how great they are, and how they can help. Since Dementia New Zealand wonât acknowledge or respond to my complaint about this (Dementia Wellington, on the other hand, had), let me publicly say that this is bollocks. My experience tells me that it appears to be a feel-good exercise that counts for nowt for a bunch of arrogant twats in Australia.
My branch was great. They were decent, hard-working and friendly people, and many of them stayed for yearsâalways a good sign. But outside of the branch is where youâll find the rot.
In 2019, my partner and I found a home we wanted to purchase. After Dad went into a home in July 2018 I had begun renovating the old place anyway. The new house was a step up, and by the time we factored in all the costs, we would need to borrow under 20 per cent of the total purchase price.
Westpac wanted to see the balance sheets, as was their right to, and Iâll say now that they werenât rosy. Of course not, not when youâve been a caregiver. However, by this point I had got back in the saddle, and I could show them contracts that we had secured.
Apparently this wasnât good enough for that 20 per cent. The fact I had been a caregiver and had an account at a bank which had a Dementia New Zealand endorsement carried absolutely no weight.
The mortgage officer said that according to the balance sheet, I couldnât even afford the mortgage. Turns out he didnât know how to read a balance sheet and the âMortgage repaymentsâ line therein. And no, in itself thatâs not a reason to leave a bank.
Apparently, the fact my income was coming from abroad was a concern. Yet it was never a concern for Westpac in 13 years when I was paying the mortgage with that foreign income. Earning foreign exchange for your country and helping with its balance of payments are, seemingly for Westpac, a bad thing. I suppose it would be to greedy Australian bankers, who love to see a weakened New Zealand subservient to other nations. If you adopt this viewpoint when examining how Australian-owned publications here behaved (Iâm looking at The Dominion Post from that era), then it actually all fits neatly, given their editorial bias. And no, in itself thatâs not a reason to leave a bank.
I know some of you in banking will be going, âBut there are the anti-money-laundering requirements,â which I get, but what about the idea of an honourable account? Other than what I outlined above, I was a good customer, and every other bank will tell you the same: I kept honourable accounts. But maybe honour isnât a thing for Westpac.
Never mind. We approached two mortgage experts who worked tirelessly for us, and whom I heartily endorse here. Lynne Russell, an old friend of mine, was the first I approached. And Stephanie Murray was referred to me by a good friend from school. Both ladies went to second-tier lenders, told us that the foreign income was the problem, and proceeded to get us the best deal possible. Stephanie won out because of the interest rate, and she noted that the lender, Avanti Finance, was quite happy because I had a good credit rating. But while most Kiwis were enjoying home loans at around the 4 per cent mark, ours was nearer 11 per cent (and this was the lower one). Stephanie, and later my own solicitor, noted that my problem was not unique, and they had clients who were also earning money from abroad who the banks shut out. This is a grand mistake in my book, because these are the very people we should be rewarding and encouraging. Youâve heard of export earners, right, banks? We usually talk about them in positive, glowing terms. Turn on the news. Get schooled.
We still had renovations to do. At least Westpac would give me a top-up to get that sorted, surely. After all, we had already engaged a builder and he needed money for materials.
Um, no. Westpac shut off that avenue completely. From memory they could give me a couple of grand, and that was it. This was despite my having a six-figure mortgage that I had whittled down to around a fifth, a relatively small five-figure sum. At all other times, it was fine, even when I enquired about purchasing a car. But not any more. And no, in itself thatâs not a reason to leave a bank.
Harmoney came to the rescue there and we were approved within 24 hours. Interest rate: 14·55 per cent.
I had set up the direct debits with Avanti using my honourable (or so I thought) Westpac account.
Except Westpac had one more trick up its sleeve. They seemed intent on making sure we would never move, so, without notice, they doubled my mortgage payments. They kept going on about how I was falling behind. No one at the branch could explain why, not even one of their most senior staff. If I hadnât caught one of the debits, I would have defaulted on an early payment to Harmoney. Fortunately, I spotted it in time, and pulled some money from a TSB account to plug the gap.
And no, in itself thatâs not a reason to leave a bank.
But all together, they were reasons.
We sold the house, discharged that mortgage, and thanks to my very talented partner and her skills in money management and property investment, we managed to get our finances in order. I won’t elaborate on this since I regard this part as private, but let’s say Westpac should have had faith in us since we carried out what we proposed we do.
It was only when the Westpac mortgage was discharged that the bank apologized for doubling my mortgage payments and gave a reason for doing so.
Remember that letter in 2010 which said I could reduce my payments without affecting things? Turns out that affected things, and they wanted to grab what they could to make up for lost time. Not that they thought it was important to tell me any time between 2010 and 2019. They only played this at a customerâs most stressful point, and buying a house is one of the most stressful things you can do as an adult.
So much for me being such a massive risk to Westpac. We told them our game plan to get to where we are today, and we carried it out to the letter. Two well educated, well qualified and intelligent people. Yet we were viewed with suspicion from the first moment we said we wanted a new home. So how do they treat people with less education or with a shorter history? If they are the Dementia New Zealand-friendly bank how do they treat those who haven’t had to deal with dementia? The branch was awesome and did right by us but as they’re not the ones approving things, then I can only expect that others are treated far, far worse.
I felt they only apologized because they had thrown everything at us and realized we had a greater resolve.
This experience teaches me that if youâve kept up a decent history with Westpac, earned foreign exchange, and helped with your countryâs balance of payments, then they will shit on you. Since sharing parts of this story on Twitter, Iâve heard of similar unreasonable treatment by Westpac toward hard-working New Zealanders. The moment they learn you need them, youâre on their radar, and they will block every avenue you normally would haveâavenues that you exercised literally just months before, like the top-up. Because why have a customer who is freed of their grasp? Thatâs just not good for business. Better to keep them impoverished and not let them move to a nicer home. Better to let them know whoâs really in charge. And, ladies and gentlemen, that explains a great deal about why foreign ownership can be troublesome in so many quartersâand why Iâm happy to take this account to TSB. Thanks to Kerry Gribben and Panith Ear at TSBâs Wellington branch for sorting me out and making it totally painless. And Kerry was a total pro in not slagging off a competitor, especially given where he once worked (he didn’t tell me, but he knew a lot about Westpac’s processes!).
I had to choose a New Zealand bank on principle. The Cooperative Bank was on the radar, and they were really friendly, though I thought their charges were a little high and TSB looked better capitalized on the figures I could find. However, my respect goes to Brian Batchelor at the Wellington branch for being thoroughly professional. It would have been nice to have gone there, since Medinge Group banks with Coop in the UK, and a mate of mine who did some contract work for them says that our Cooperative (a different and unrelated entity) are genuine about their promises to customers.
Kiwibank didnât even reply to emails when we were trying to get a mortgage, and rejected all PDFs and ZIP files I sent their despite them saying their email systems could accept them. They just gave up all contact, so I figured they didnât need the business. And I hear they donât do foreign exchange anyway, which is just bizarre for a state-owned bank that should be encouraging foreign exchange in these economically tricky times. SBS had no nearby branches (technically, Blenheim isnât that far but you canât drive there without an amphibious car). Sometimes, you just go back to what you know.
Today (Friday), the day I am posting this. Westpac accounts shut (despite a massive queue at Lambton Quay). Really nice young chap behind the counter. Except I have 35 cheques on which I want the duty refunded. He didn’t know how to do that and wrote down the helpline number. I called that. Eighteen minutes later, the rep there didn’t know how to do that and referred it to my branch. I really need them to pay me back the NZ$1·75 on principle and then I will consider the matter closed.
Tags: 2000s, 2010s, 2019, 2020, Alzheimerâs disease, Aotearoa, Australia, balance of payments, banking, dementia, economics, entrepreneurship, family, finance, foreign exchange, foreign ownership, media, media bias, New Zealand, property, TSB, Wellington, Whanganui-a-Tara Posted in business, globalization, New Zealand, Wellington | No Comments »
22.06.2020

I said it a long time ago: that the Carlos Ghosn arrest was part of a boardroom coup, and that the media were used by Hiroto Saikawa and co. (which I said on Twitter at the time). It was pretty evident to me given how quickly the press conferences were set up, how rapidly there was âevidenceâ of wrongdoing, and, most of all, the body language and demeanour of Mr Saikawa.
Last week emerged evidence that would give meâand, more importantly, Carlos Ghosn, who has since had the freedom to make the same allegation that he was set upâcause to utter âI told you so.â
I read about it in The National, but I believe Bloomberg was the source. The headline is accurate: âNissan emails reveal plot to dethrone Carlos Ghosnâ; summed up by âThe plan to take down the former chairman stemmed from opposition to deeper ties between the Japanese company and France’s Renaultâ.
One highlight:
the documents and recollections of people familiar with what transpired show that a powerful group of insiders viewed his detention and prosecution as an opportunity to revamp the global automakerâs relationship with top shareholder Renault on terms more favourable to Nissan.
A chain of email correspondence dating back to February 2018, corroborated by people who asked not to be identified discussing sensitive information, paints a picture of a methodical campaign to remove a powerful executive.
Another:
Days before Mr Ghosnâs arrest, Mr Nada sought to broaden the allegations against Mr Ghosn, telling Mr Saikawa that Nissan should push for more serious breach-of-trust charges, according to correspondence at the time and people familiar with the discussions. There was concern that the initial allegations of underreporting compensation would be harder to explain to the public, the people said.
The effort should be âsupported by media campaign for insurance of destroying CG reputation hard enough,â Mr Nada wrote, using Mr Ghosnâs initials, as he had done several times in internal communications stretching back years.
Finally:
The correspondence also for the first time gives more detail into how Nissan may have orchestrated [board member] Mr Kellyâs arrest by bringing him to Japan from the US for a board meeting.
Nissanâs continuing official position, that Ghosn and Kelly are guilty until proved innocent, has never rang correctly. Unless youâre backed by plenty of people, that isnât the typical statement you should be making, especially if itâs about your own alleged dirty laundry. You talk instead about cooperating with authorities. In this atmosphere, with Nissan, the Japanese media duped into reporting it based on powerful Nissan executives, and the hostage justice system doing its regular thing, Ghosn probably had every right to believe he would not get a fair trial. If only one of those things were in play, and not all three, he might not have reached the same conclusion.
Tags: 2010s, 2018, 2019, 2020, Bloomberg, Carlos Ghosn, corporate culture, coup, crime, deception, email, Hiroto Saikawa, Japan, law, media, Nissan, Renault, Renault Nissan Mitsubishi Posted in business, cars, culture, France, globalization, leadership, media | No Comments »
02.06.2020
From Bob Hoffmanâs The Ad Contrarian newsletter of May 24: âtwo weeks ago a study by the ISBA and PcW that reported that half of every âprogrammaticâ ad dollar is scraped by adtech middlemenâ and âAccording to a paper written by Fiona Scott Morton, an economist at Yale University, Google pockets about 40Âą of every online ad dollar before it ever gets to a publisher. Not just search dollars, not just programmatic dollars, but all online ad dollars.â Just one more reason I refuse to sign these:

Iâm not part of the 90 per cent. And the bastards at Google are rich enough. Let them share it with illegal content mills as they are peas in a pod. Another solution for legitimate publishers is dearly needed.
At least there’s been some sort of work with the commissions agencies take in other media, and that’s typically at 15 per cent here. Google is taking the piss with its automated systems.
We know the US doesnât have the balls (or funding?) to take them on at this point, but how about other sovereign territories in which Google operates? Surely they have to comply with our laws, too?
Tags: 2020, advertising, Bob Hoffman, business, Google, online advertising, publishing Posted in business, globalization, internet, publishing, technology, USA | No Comments »
26.05.2020
When I ran for office, there was often a noticeable difference between how I was treated by locally owned media and foreign- owned media. There are exceptions to that ruleâThe New Zealand Herald and Sky TV gave me a good run while Radio New Zealand opted to do a candidatesâ round-up in two separate campaigns interviewing the (white) people who were first-, second- and fourth-pollingâbut overall, TVNZ, Radio New Zealand with those two exceptions, and the local community papers were decent. Many others seemed to have either ventured into fake news territory (one Australian-owned tabloid had a âpollâ, source unknown, that said I would get 2 per cent in 2010) or simply had a belief that New Zealanders were incapable and that the globalist agenda knew best. As someone who ran on the belief that New Zealand had superior intellectual capital and innovative capability, and talked about how we should grow champions that do the acquiring, not become acquisition targets, then those media who were once acquisition targets of foreign corporations didnât like what they heard.
And that, in a nutshell, is why my attitude toward Stuff has changed overnight thanks to Sinéad Boucher taking ownership of what I once called, as part of a collective with its Australian owner, the Fairfax Press.
The irony was always that the Fairfax Press in AustraliaâThe Age and The Sydney Morning Heraldâwere positive about my work in the 2000s but their New Zealand outpost was quite happy to suggest I was hard to understand because of my accent. (Given that I sound more like an urban Kiwi than, say, the former leader of the opposition, and arguably have a better command of the English language than a number of their journalists, then thatâs a lie you sell to dinosaurs of the Yellow Peril era.) A Twitter apology from The Dominion Postâs editor-in-chief isnât really enough without an erratum in print, but there you go. In two campaigns, the Fairfax Pressâs coverage was notably poor when compared with the others’.
But I am upbeat about Boucher, about what she intends to do with the business back in local ownership, and about the potential of Kiwis finally getting media that arenât subject to overseas whims or corporate agenda; certainly Stuff and its print counterparts wonât be regarded as some line on a balance sheet in Sydney any more, but a real business in Aotearoa serving Kiwis. Welcome back to the real world, we look forward to supporting you.
Tags: 2010, 2010s, 2013, 2020, Aotearoa, Fairfax Press, journalism, local government, mainstream media, media, media bias, New Zealand, news, newspaper, politics, publishing, racism, SinĂ©ad Boucher, Sky TV, social media, The Age, The New Zealand Herald, The Sydney Morning Herald, TVNZ, Twitter, Wellington, Whanganui-a-Tara Posted in business, globalization, media, New Zealand, politics, publishing, Wellington | No Comments »
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