As I sit in my office looking at the main road I can’t believe the volume of traffic at 11am.

Where do so many cars come from.

Our population hasn’t doubled overnight in Auckland has it??

And where can they all possible be going?? They should either be at work, at a Christmas party or on holiday already, not consuming fossil fuels in central Auckland.

In fact some of the lyrics of the song are quite poignant:

Well we know where we’re going
But we don’t know where we’ve been
And we know what we’re knowing
But we can’t say what we’ve seen
And we’re not little children
And we know what we want
And the future is certain
Give us time to work it out

We’re on a ride to nowhere, come on inside
Taking that ride to nowhere, we’ll take that ride
Maybe you wonder where you are, I don’t care
Here is where time is on our side, take you there
Take you there

In other words we say and act like we have purpose but we haven’t actually figured anything out yet and in typical gen X fashion, I don’t really care about you, just myself.

So as you drive around this Christmas take some time to think about where you are really going.

Do you know and do you care?

As always Stay Safe ~ Dean Letfus @ www.MassiveAction.co.nz

I sometimes use examples of situations in Fiji to try and encourage us to be thankful.

I have in the last 2 weeks however found plenty of opportunities to be thankful right here in NZ.

Like all of us, I am looking at what I have to do to batten down the hatches and that usually involves losing money somewhere. Thanks to some buyers never completing I had already lost more than enough money for one year as you know, so the thought of adding to it is not at the top of my list.

However in the last 2 weeks I have met a man who had 70 properties, got rolled by the banks and has ended up with 150K equity in one.

I met a lovely couple who through dishonest business partners watched their 13 million dollars worth of property vanish to zero.

I could go on with other examples but the point is that no matter how bad your situation might be….

Get the point??

Choose to have a good day today in spite of what might be going on.

Stay Safe ~ Dean Letfus @ www.MassiveAction.co.nz

I happened to catch the Britney Spears doco last night. It was advertised and stated during the doc that it was “setting the record straight” and “showing what Britney’s life was really like”.

Well we are all still waiting. It’s sad that American success creates such vacuous lives that this was considered uncovering the real Britney.

Please understand I’m not attacking Britney, I’m commenting on the media’s promotion and delivery of this item.

The facts are that Britney was off her head on drugs, exposing herself publicly and behaving so badly that she lost her kids.

None of that was explained or uncovered. There was no attempt to identify and heal her pain. Her family and minders simply keep her working her backside off so that she is too busy to feel bad. The fact that her dad and all the hangers on make a fortune out of her hard work was strangely ignored as well.

Her closing statement about being like a “karate kid” was as shallow and inane as the entire documentary. What a sad sad waste of a potentially wonderful life.

Raewyn and I were left feeling so sad for her wasted life so far and reminded of how unhelpful great wealth can be when it is in the hands of people without purpose, vision or principle.

Stay Safe ~ Dean Letfus @ www.MassiveAction.co.nz

I can’t help but laugh every time I watch the news lately. Today National announced it’s redundancy assistance package and it was basically exactly what they said it would be. So on TV3 they reported that it was what they had promised, but (pro left) TV one had to have Labour ranting on about who it wouldn’t help.

It is becoming a dilemma for the media to find ways to attack National because they keep doing what they said they would.

It’s sad that we can’t simply say “Good on you” for keeping your word. We could celebrate having a good government occasionally.

Anyway onward and upward. We continue to have more mixed news generally but we now have positive cashflow available in New Zealand and today I even got one offered to me in Oz!!

So we again can get banks to pay us to own property. I don’t think it will last long but we should all be celebrating that something extinct has been resurrected for our benefit!!

Stay Safe ~ Dean Letfus @ www.MassiveAction.co.nz

PS: Rpoger Douglas’ comments are also pertinent regarding all this:

From Hansard yesterday. Roger Douglas tells it like it is:
Hon Sir ROGER DOUGLAS (ACT) : ACT welcomes this Taxation (Urgent Measures and Annual Rates) Bill as a small step in the right direction. This bill is in marked contrast to what we saw from the Labour Government over the last 9 years—a Labour Government that refused to adjust the tax brackets or to index them. As a result of that we saw a marked increase in the average amount of tax paid by average wage earners, so much so that low-income workers did not receive a real increase in wages during those 9 years after taking tax into account.

This bill restores the tax threshold position of 10 years ago for those who are on 21c in the dollar or those who are on low to middle incomes. It does not restore the relative position of those on the 33c or 39c index. In other words, those on the higher income are still in a relatively poorer, or worse, position than they were 10 years ago. The arguments that have been put forward by the Labour speakers in relation to the bottom tax rate of 12.5c simply do not hold water. If we analyse the people who pay only 12.5c we find that around 90 percent of that group actually come from high-income families. They are the wives or the husbands of high-income earners. They are the children of high-income earners. What the Labour Government did in its tax legislation of last year was to encourage income splitting so high-income earners who had the capacity to do that said “Thank you very much Labour” and the poor suffered, and the low-income and disadvantaged paid for that.

A real negative of this bill, however, is its failure to flatten the tax scale and, thereby, its failure to gain the opportunity to promote growth in this country. But when we talk about tax we are really talking about Government expenditure because taxation, in the end, is all about expenditure. What a Government spends, a Government must take from the public to pay for that expenditure. If the Government takes $50 billion, it has to tax $50 billion. If it takes $100 billion, it needs to tax $100 billion. We need to recognise that, and we need to pay a lot more attention to it.

The Government is, in fact, no different in that respect from any household in New Zealand. It is therefore important and vital that any dollar the Government takes from taxpayers is spent effectively and that a dollar spent by a Government returns to the nation at least as much as it would have returned had it been left with individual New Zealanders. We know with absolute certainty that that did not occur under a Labour Government over the last 9 years. The fact is that over the past 9 years core Government expenditure increased by $18.2 billion, over and above inflation. This increased level of expenditure cost every New Zealander on average $1,000 per month or $12,000 a year.

I have listened to the speakers from Labour cry wolf about how they want to help the poor and the disadvantaged, but over the last 9 years they took $18.2 billion in extra taxation from average New Zealanders or $1,000 a month. The fact is that had we left that extra $1,000 a month with low-income families in particular, they would be a whole lot better off than they are at the moment. The fact is that Labour spent that extra tax, that extra $1,000 per family, on dubious programmes and failed social experiments that have not benefited New Zealand households by anywhere near the $1,000 a month it took from them. Labour would have been far better to leave the money with them. For families, that $1,000 per month represented books for children, meals in restaurants, carpets, clothes, and extra savings. For the economy it represented lost jobs in shops, factories, and service industries right across the country. That $1,000 that a Labour Government took from, on average, every household in New Zealand over the last 9 years was in large part redistributed via, as I said, dubious programmes. A large percentage was spent on extra bureaucrats and the bureaucracy. New Zealand’s living standards over the last 50 years have slipped from third to 38th and in no small part has that been because over the last 50 years much of the money that we have taken from individual New Zealanders has been largely wasted on poor programmes.

One of the things we need to do if we are to get through the recession we are in, and if we are to grow and to catch Australia over the next 20 years, is ensure that Government expenditure bears fruit and returns to the nation at least as much as it would have had the money remained with individuals. In these circumstances, it is a nonsense to pretend, as Labour speakers have, that reducing waste, for example, is somehow seeking heartless efficiency at the expense of equity. The fact is that waste consumes resources that would otherwise be available to improve equity levels throughout the community. The fact is that every dollar of waste—and we saw billions of dollars wasted by the previous Labour Government—that can be eliminated is a dollar that is available for another programme, in particular to help the disadvantaged, rather than there being a cost imposed on them.

So how should we mark this particular legislation? At best I believe it is a work in progress. Having said that, it is not bad, given that the Government has been in office only 1 month and the fact that it inherited a pretty damned awful fiscal situation. But the fact is that marginal tax rates in this country are too high, particularly for families. Although I support the aims of the Working for Families package, it was delivered in a terrible way and the marginal tax rates that it imposed are creating a situation where growth will not occur. We have too much wasteful private sector effort once again being devoted to devising ways around New Zealand tax laws. Mind you, the Labour Government in its last Budget helped the affluent to do that.

The system, I am afraid, is seen to be increasingly unfair. This particular legislation will help that but it will not overcome that problem. The tax scale is far too progressive, which is a disincentive for people to work harder and increase their income. If we are to create a structure for growth we will have to do a lot more than we are doing at the present time.

I will finish by saying that in a global economy New Zealand’s tax system needs to be as competitive as possible. If it is not, we will continue to slide as we did for the last 9 years under a Labour Government.

Following on from Saturdays blog I had a call yesterday from an Australian developer I know.

He said that the interest rate cuts in OZ had meant he was back to selling property at almost “normal” levels already after 6 to 8 weeks of no activity.

So inject the right action, (bank and Rudd policies) into a receptive vessel, (The Oz economy) and you get immediate results.

This is what we are meant to be like in our own lives too, identify a problem, get the right resource to address it AND THEN TAKE THE ACTION REQUIRED TO GET A RESULT.

My broker and I are seeing increasing amounts of people who are ignoring the reality of their situation for example and waiting till the hammer falls, when taking the right action could easily avert and then solve the problem. Like visiting the dentist, we all have to face things we don’t like, but we always feel better when we come out the other side.

So if you have issues to address in your life get the help you need, find the answers, then take a deep breath and take some Massive Action and get yourself sorted out so you can live to fight another day.

And if your situation is good then do 2 things:
1. Be very thankful and
2. Look for those who need help and share your skill with them.

Stay Safe ~ Dean Letfus @ www.MassiveAction.co.nz

As I said the other day you need to be true to yourself. In a society of course the “truth” of that society, what it really believes, will come out by itself because it is just “is”.

A good example of this is to compare New Zealand to Australia.

In New Zealand you have to beat bad news to death with a stick for 12 months before it starts to lie down.

Compare that to Aussie. They are having the same global issues, the same interest rates and finance dramas as us right?

But basically they are wired to be positive and to overcome issues so today Westpac in OZ announces

“Westpac economists said in a research note that the rise housing finance in October signalled the start of a recovery for the housing market.

“While it was only a modest rise in October, we see it as the beginning of a recovery,” Westpac said.”

So their true beliefs in themselves come out in their policy and in their news.
This is why I keep going on about how important your attitude is. IF we could get enough people willing to believe in the good, willing to push through and obtain their goals, willing to encourage those around them to look up and live, we could affect our media, our news, our politicians. We can change the treasure of New Zealand from a sad negative victimised mindset to one of expansion and success.

I’m trying, will you join me??

Stay Safe ~ Dean Letfus @ www.MassiveAction.co.nz

Sometimes when we look at a problem or situation it can overwhelm us. I often find myself saying to Raewyn, “breathe in, breathe out”, which is my way of saying, “You are stressing unnecessarily here”.

Sometimes we literally do need to stop, breathe in, breathe out, calm down and start to look at the situation a bit more rationally.

A few of us may be a bit too far the other way, we relax in the midst of disaster and take too little action. But in the main we tend to over react to things without having really thought through the options and planned a productive way forward.

And it’s not always bad things that elicit this response. I was talking to a mate this week who mentors other business people. He told me about a client of his who had a huge growth year in his business about 4 years ago. His client was so excited by the increased turnover that he “reacted” quickly by employing a number of additional staff and generally gearing up for his newly enlarged company.

Because he didn’t “breathe in and breathe out”, he ended up losing control of many core processes in his business through not being able to manage effectively a large group of untrained staff.

So the next year his turnover doubled and he lost a fortune. He has spent the last couple of years trying to dig himself out of the hole and the current downturn may finish him off. Why??

Because he over reacted to positive change in his business and took wrong steps, or at least too large a steps.

So whatever comes your way learn to say to yourself, “Breathe in, breathe out”, “What is really going on here and what is the best way forward?”

Stay Safe ~ Dean Letfus @ www.massiveaction.co.nz