The selling of New Zealand by our prime minister   19 Sep 2014

Author’s Note: this is a work of fiction, at least I hope it is, but like all fiction there may be elements of truth.

It was a dark and stormy night (naturally). Gathered around the massive rosewood boardroom table at a Goldman Sachs’ type bank headquarters in London sat the heads of some of the world’s most influential banks, oil companies, mining companies and chemical and pharmaceutical companies.

Placed in front of each guest is a bottle of Oval Swarovski Crystal Vodka, Royal Salute 50 yr old Chivas Regal Scotch or Hardy Le Printemps Cognac plus $400 dollar bottles of Kona Nigari Water beside crystal glasses. There are no pads of paper, pens, recording machines or cell phones.

Though known to each other through long association in the multi-national company world, they have asked me to keep their names a secret so I will refer to them only by initials: GS, JPM, BOA, DB, ML, IMF, WB, ROT, WP, ANA, SHE, MOB, NEW, RIO, DOW, MON, ELI, MER, plus additional members of Bilderberg and the Trilateral Commission.

There were many others who will not be called to participate in the conversation but will listen and implement the decisions. They had coffee and Coca Cola bottled water.

JPM: We had tremendous success with the Labour government of the 1980’s selling us New Zealand assets at fire sale prices and many of us enjoyed the profits over the next 20 years.

ROS: We’ve also seen the so-called rich/poor gap widen tremendously since then which suits our purposes and our desires.

GS: Yes, it’s good to see the standard of living of the middle and lower classes being reduced and wages and salaries turning into exportable corporate profits.

ANZ: Even though they could not come to this meeting, unfortunately, I think we should all toast the remarkable success of New Zealand’s Business Roundtable in helping us achieve our goals. Having mostly foreign or foreign controlled companies as members has made it easy for us to influence them but their effectiveness was more than we ever imagined.

All: Cheers, cheers.

MON: However, there is much to be done. For instance, even though successive governments have let us fill New Zealand’s grocery shelves with over 750 genetically engineered foods, they still won’t let us grow GE foods there and that means our herbicide and pesticide profits are only a third of what they could be.

MER: And their ridiculous Pharmac is buying billions of dollars of generic medicines. Those billions should be going into patented drugs.

ANA: There are large deposits of oil offshore. At over 2500 metres it is too deep for our current technology but it won’t be long before our technology catches up. We plan to drill to 1500 metres in the deepwater of the Gulf of Mexico and if that works drilling to over 2000 metres off New Zealand should be feasible.

RIO: New Zealand has quite a few resources we’d like to get our hands on like coal, gold, rare earths in the seabeds, etc. but most of the areas we’d like to explore are tied up in national parks and reserves or with major legal hoops to jump through like the Resource Management Act. And we must prevent any action on climate change that affects our profits.

IMF: We agree, it’s time to open up New Zealand again and get their assets transferred to the major multi-nationals who can exploit them properly.

GS: Well, the financial industry is ready to facilitate the transfer of assets. We made billions out of Rogernomics. What we need is to get control of the New Zealand government.

WP: From our successful experience I would submit that the prime minister of New Zealand has major influence. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if we could get the right person elected as prime minister he mostly likely could get the laws passed to sell the assets to our ready purchasers and open up the marketplace to almost total control by the companies we here, tonight, represent.

ML: Interestingly enough, I think we’ve got just the right guy.

MER: Who do you have in mind?

ML: Perhaps its best to keep his name under wraps at this stage, but we recently instructed him to close one of our London trading offices and move it to Ireland for tax purposes. He was very effective. He had to fire hundreds of staff members but did so efficiently and without fuss. Our employees call him ‘The Smiling Assassin’ or ‘Shonkey’ but to us at headquarters he is just ‘our man.’

GS: I think I know who you mean. We recently consulted him on the best way for us to get the contract to sell New Zealand’s electricity assets.

MER: How would we go about it?

WP: As you know we have almost 150 years experience in New Zealand, so if I may make a suggestion. It would not be difficult to use our resources to convince a sitting MP in a safe tory seat to step down. We could put your man in that seat, use our influence and those of our partners to push him into the leadership position and then get him elected as prime minister.

JPM: Then after he gets elected we could convince him to pass a law giving overseas corporations the right to make unlimited campaign contributions. That should keep him in place as long as we need him. After all, once the assets are in our hands there is no way New Zealand could get them back.

NEW: Yes, and after he’s opened up the reserves to mining....

ANA: And the oceans to deep sea oil drilling!

GS: And sold productive, income earning assets like the electricity companies, we should have the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement ready for him to sign.

MON: Yes, once that’s signed we will have more or less total control of commerce in New Zealand and enjoy our profits until the assets run out.

ELI: We must make sure there is a clause in the TPPA allowing us to sue the New Zealand government if they allow any impediments to sales as well as our purchases of New Zealand companies and assets. We’re readying a suit against Canada under the North American Free Trade Agreement which should be ultra lucrative for us and teach the Canadians not to get in our way again.

DB: We’ll also need to convince him to borrow billions every year. I think he’ll be happy to do that because it will make the economy look good even though it will really be in recession. I would guess that about $9 billion a year would do the trick.

IMF: We’re ready to help. After all, we’ve helped move assets into foreign corporate control in many countries around the globe. Once New Zealand reaches unsupportable debt levels then your man can appeal to the IMF. We can then impose the normal IMF requirements to sell off all assets and reduce pensions, social support, health support, etc. That will open up even more opportunities for our friendly corporations to fill the voids.

DOW: So, is that our plan? Are we all agreed?

All: Agreed. Agreed. Agreed.

© Charles Drace 2014

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