Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (71190)	2/22/2011 7:09:29 PM
From: Maurice Winn	3 Recommendations Respond to of 218913

It's quite bad in Christchurch. In money terms, something like $6 billion damage, plus loss of income while they rebuild, so it's a substantial problem for a city of about 400,000. In death terms it's a major event for NZ though only about 100 people so not a huge loss like a war, or the Mount Erubus plane crash. Financially for New Zealand, it will be about break-even because reinsurers offshore will pay about $2 billion or $3 billion of the total [give or take a bit]. Authorities are already doing their "I'm the big shot in charge" thing - telling relatives of victims to go away. It's a lot of fun for the authorities. Since it's not their family in trouble, they can afford to take their time with "due process". Never let a crisis go to waste = use it to consolidate power and gain benefits. After the last earthquake, they took ages to let people get on with their lives. The mantra "We can't be too safe you know" ignores the cost to those who don't have the benefit of the cushy number as a member of officialdom. For a few years, they'd just shut roads for a day while they conducted languid investigations of road accidents. Now [probably because some of them or their friends got caught up in the huge traffic jams] they try to be a bit less inefficient. It's a pandemic in NZ now. "Safety you know". It really annoys me to hear it while they happily leave umpty thousand living in the calderas of Taupo and Rotorua without even warning them that one day, the existence of Taupo and Rotorua will cease and not when the sun becomes a red giant but with a 1:10 chance of being in any particular lifetime which is quite dodgy odds. Not to mention hundreds of thousands at sea level along the east coast with little in the way of tsunami monitoring, warning and evacuation systems. Mqurice