I would recommend watching this Yale lecture by the guy running their endowment.

I see alot of parralels between the Yale story and our own. Over the history of the endowment every stock market crash caused THE FEAR which led to them selling equities buying bonds and missing out on the recovery.

They shifted to LOTS of risky assets and at the height of the boom the MORONS(read National party) made large claims against the paper value of the portfolio (remember Cullens EVIL surplus). The University spent ALOT more based on the paper value and the govt got angry at Universities for being so damn rich and forced them to spend more on student support.

Now post crash do you think their endowment is going to repeat the mistakes of the past and shift its portfolio into less risky assets?

It is obviously too much to ask to expect the government to buy low and sell high but could they at least avoid buying high and selling low?

i know they wont actually be selling but making smaller contributions to the super fund when assets are cheaper?

Actually i agree with the hard-left, if we had put that super fund money into education and insulation and health and rehabilitation and....... instead of into financial markets.....

Its not like we are Norway putting aside all our petro dollars, i reckon we don't owe future people ANYTHING. Just consider how amazing cellphones will be when we start drawing money from the Cullen fund...

Survivors it's time to start stockpiling food and munitions.

Sorry completely off topic but i had to share

If you want to know what Gordon Copeland REALLY cares about watch the United Future party political broadcast from the 2005 election.

"Child poverty in New Zealand is currently running at 20 percent... we have been involved in implementing the working for families package which is going to reduce that to a mere 4 percent" - Copeland

i am definitely adding him to my list of despicable socialists trying to redistribute wealth from hard working kiwi's to those lazy unproductive children who add nothing to the economy.

Many(read- not me) who would seriously consider voting for ACT as an economically and socially 'liberal' party are being put off by the 'outing' of ex-mp anti-asian and anti-gay sentiment. This voter segment may instead waste their votes on the unviable Libertarianz if they can't decide between whether economic freedom (read- taxcuts) are more important than all the other freedom's: civil-unions, prostitution, drug reforms, right not to be assaulted, resistance to DMCA type legislation etc. that the Green party(read- me) stand for.

The libertarian in me tends towards the view that people are as entitled to waste their time and money on such services.

However we could benefit from far stricter controls on the promotion of such 'premium' text content so at least the vulnerable mentally deficient members of our society are more aware of what they getting themselves into.

Perhaps a 'sin' tax as per gambling/ tobacco etc. on such services.

And how about some economic nationalism? don't you hark back to the good old days when it was kiwi's ripping each other off? (many providers off-shore and less accountable)