Notwithstanding the issue of wider economic commonsense - the deposit guarantee was required, though there should have been a ban on new lending for finance companies.

Ironically SCF does set one good precedent - the capital owner lost his money too. It should be mandatory that whenever a finance company goes bankrupt all money paid out of the company in profits to owners should be returned to the company (with all profits placed in trusts still accessable for this purpose) and placed in the pool of money to refund investors. Thus placing a deterrent on risky (greed motivated) behaviour by the companies.

It is the ever-widening income gap led by the corporates and coddled by Right-leaning governments which will be the paramount disaster.

This government is nurturing an elite and not considering fairness and equity. There is a big "populace" or "workforce" out there to be manipulated, or managed like a herd of cattle for the benefit of an elite ... fairness and equity are not issues.

PM Key has admonished that tradesmen will not be able to charge inflated rates when their skills are in demand, but on the same hand he has had nothing to say about Wall St bankers, AND THEIR LIKE, making $50 million dollar fortunes from services which are construed as being unique as household savers and investors lose their homes. Similarly, nothing is said about the cartel of corporate CEOs and directors being remunerated in the order of millions of dollars per annum for their services.

We still do not know what interest rate George Kerr's Torchlight Fund recieved for an investment which was bailed out by the Government ?

The reconstruction of Canterbury's infrastructure and buildings, and the preservation of the finance sector will both be managed in a way that will benefit the elite and disregard the lesser people if the present government has its way.

Is Mila worried that the payouts may diminish the Maori settlements trough?

Why doesn't this whinger get the giant chip off her shoulder !! Every time she features it's to moan and every time she twists the article so it becomes about race.

Too right, the whole SCF bailout is disgusting. People gambled their money and lost. Sad, but that's the risk that everyone knows about. If I go and blow my money at the casino will I get bailed out? Our education institutions are struggling, we have schools who can't afford the basics, terrible overcrowding in some of our hospitals - that is, if you can get admitted and not sent home on the basis that you're to wait a week until near death and come back again when you're sick enough to warrant a bed in the corridor. Few are calling calling Hubbard and his cronies incompetent slugs sucking up taxpayer dosh because their bets went wrong. Nope, we get the 'poor old man' stories and all this sympathy. If it were Maori, imagine the hate-filled screeching and talkback rants. John Key and his mates spent years deciding not to allow Tuhoe their rightful ownership of the Ureweras, but spent, say, five minutes deciding to bail out the likes of SCF. How disgusting.

The responsibility for the finance company crashes lies with government - their acceptance of speculation in property (residential and farmland) across decades is the cause.

When Douglas allowed foreign capital/finance to flow through local banks to borrowers (without applying a CGT) he caused our private foreign debt blowout (to $150B today to homeowners and farmers). We have spent 20 years bidding up the price of local land assets with this borrowed money. All assisted by allowing foreigners on higher income to buy homes and farms as well.

It's not profligate government spending that has us with the high foreign debt but the legacy of that disastrous policy course.

And yet no one has yet acted to face up to this problem - so it will continue (Bollards move to require banks to have more long term and local funding notwithstanding and the move onm depreciation are not nearly enough). The crossover impact of the speculation on the real economy in farming has been perverse as farmers are left unable to afford to invest capital of their own to transform their industry and add value to their products. The rest of us subsidise the government investment in R and D and bear the cost of the dairy industry pollution of our waterways while they struggle on until they reach their happy place, when they retire and reap a large untaxed capital gain.

Perhaps if Maori were to argue that the $1B promised for Treaty settlements was based on land values at that time, and the comparable land value of today could be well over $5B, then government might then re-consider whether encouraging speculation on land by not taxing profits was

And why not, the iwi have done better with their money than the finance companies that those saving for retirement trusted.

Here again the government's practice of taxing the inflation component of interest income pushes savers (especially after the 1987 crash) to the riskier option (and where there is no CGT, there is always greater speculation and greater riosk of loss).

The government is to blame for so much of the economic mess, and yet there are no clear proposals to change much.

A CGT would fund tax changes allowing for a tax on only half of intereast income (a broad assumption that half the rate is to inflation proof the stored saving). Of course the government rules out the option of a CGT - coz its class is the one that is called "capitalist". Just ask the PM.

Excellent article, important insight

Karlo Mila for Prime Minister.