Ho, ho, ho!
Yes, here comes the guy from the North Pole in his red suit again. But as you prepare for the festive season and summer holidays, remember you're not allowed to have too much fun. Your Reserve Bank Governor is trying to engineer a recession to rein in inflation after all. And if we spend too much money that won't help his cause.
Oh forget that. It has been another long and turbulent year so we all deserve to let our hair down. At least a little bit.
As we wish all our contributors, readers, listeners and viewers a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, here are our annual Interesties Awards. This is where we take a mostly light hearted look at the year that was.
So without further ado, and with a decent dollop of recency bias - favouring recent events over ones earlier this year - here they are.
The "Cool the Jets" Grinch Award: Reserve Bank Governor Adrian Orr.
The Scream/Freddy Krueger Back to Haunt Us Award: Inflation.
Chart of The Year: The valuation of cryptocurrency exchange FTX.
FTX valuation history pic.twitter.com/tPoZt3qq8h
— Trung Phan (@TrungTPhan) November 9, 2022
The Services to the Vegan Cause Award: FTX Chief Executive Sam Bankman-Fried. As reported by Bloomberg as Bankman-Fried is held in a Bahamas prison ahead of likely extradition to the United States to face wire fraud, money laundering and campaign finance charges.
Here's Bloomberg after detailing grim conditions in the Bahamas prison;
One person said Bankman-Fried’s relatives called the prison Tuesday night to ask whether vegan meals could be delivered to him.
The Blink and You Missed Them Award: Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng.
The Mea Culpa After Painting Himself Into a Corner Award: Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Philip Lowe.
After hiking interest rates this year Lowe acknowledged the RBA spending much of 2020 and 2021 saying they wouldn't do this until 2024 was a mistake.
The Potty Mouth of Parliament Award: Jacinda Ardern.
The Generator of the Political Headline of the Year Award: Christopher Luxon for this gem on a Thomas Coughlin NZ Herald article; Christopher Luxon U-turns on U-turn, acknowledging he ‘misspoke’
The Grifter of the Year Award: Donald Trump. Even though he was late to the NFT party...
i’ve wondered what a marvel movie produced by qanon would look like
— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) December 15, 2022
now i know pic.twitter.com/JcvhwsjTqO
The Jurassic Park Return of the Dinosaur Award: Winston Peters.
The I'm in Power for as Long as I Want to Be Award: Xi Jinping.
The Warmonger Award: Despot Vladimir Putin.
The Causing a Share Market Trading Halt Political Gaffe Award: Wayne Brown.
The Public Relations (PR) Services Award: The NZ Herald for coverage of Max Key.
The I'm Still Not Quite Done With You Yet Award: COVID-19.
The Services to Their Shareholders Award: New Zealand's big four, Aussie owned banks with their combined annual dividends of $4.2 billion this year.
The Getting Acrophobia Award: People with home loans.
The Finally Putting Away the Limbo Bar Award: Savers with bank deposits.
The Big Inflating Balloon Award: New Zealand's now $29.7 billion annual current account deficit.
The Lurking Around a Dark Corner Ready to Kneecap Us Award: Recession.
66 Comments
The " We back our man / No we dont / Yes we do " award goes to the NZRU for their love-hate relationship with All Black coach Ian Foster ...
The " Screw you guys , I'm taking my ball and going home " award goes to Spark , for dumping their grand plan to dominate live television sports coverage ....
The " Narcissistic of the year " award goes to Gurav Sharma ...." Gurav who ? " , you ask ... exactly !
To a point , Sky are living in the last century ... but ... we're still paying to use their service in this century .... and , they've seen off the opposition ... well , who'd have thunk it , Spark were doing so well until they realised that the Sky's the limit ...
The " Dog & Lemon " award goes to My Food Bag ...the market was sold a pup just 18 months ago , and the share price has collapsed from $ 1.85 , to 39 cents ... the only food in that bag is lemons ...
... a salient lesson for investors ... never go out on a Lim ...
Right on the Money award: The Prophet
Couldn’t hit a barn door award: ANZ
Financial Support from the Property Industry award: Tony the Comb
Lost my voice award: Ashley Church
The last man into the lifeboat award: TTP
Hostile takeover of a comments section award: Team DGM
The " I only have one gear , reverse " award goes to Poto Williams ... a genuinely nice person , but completely out of her depth as police minister , sacked from that portfolio , now announced her retirement from politics next year ...
The " I dont care what you think , I do what I want " award goes to Nanaia Mahuta ... barrelling ahead with her 3 or 5 waters , co-governance , and even an underhand attempt to entrench some of it , regardless that the cabinet had said " No ! " ...
The " Teflon Coated " award goes to Nanaia Mahuta , see above ... she got away without a single censure or reprimand ... I am impressed !
Ha-ha :) Llama, your comment conjured up images of two well gagged commenters staring each other down intensely. All those things we are no longer allowed to say, all those comments that now get deleted! When times are tough its much much harder to outrun ones past. Right now, I think my nemesis is distracted by a housing downturn that he always anticipated on interest.co, yet an epic "down-trou" for him in real life....
Dr Klaus Schwab's aka "The Darth Vader Voldemort Dr Evil Lookalike" for Engineering the New World Order since 1971 while using a gigantic list of Global Youth Leaders, Corporates and the SUPER Rich to Control Stakeholders into the Hands of a Few..... Award goes to:
Jacinda Ardern and Nanaia Mahuta
----
And here's a reminder of the Global Reset vision when the pandemic hit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJTnkzl3K64
Barry Crump's Kindness Engineering BS Award:
Jacinda Ardern's Labour Government
The 5 seconds from 0:50 mins in is GOLD.
... that prison is renowned for rats , maggots & cockroaches in the cells ... poor sanitary conditions ... overcrowding ....
I have a sneaky feeling that vegan meals are not on the menu ... still , no harm in asking ... ha haaaaa .... the guards probably need a good laugh ....
International political try-hard award must surely go to one Monsieur Macron.
Zelensky shows up in jeans and a tight-fitting t shirt - so Macron starts doing the same to emulate the look.
France loses the WC final and he's storming the pitch quicker than a Celtic fan, ready to insert himself into everyone's commiserations and ensure he is photographed consoling their star player (who clearly didn't want a bar of it). Not to mention the cringeworthy locker-room speech.
Just two examples of a man who has literally no shame in exploiting any situation to his political advantage.
Let's not forget his appearance at Putin's clearly-compensating-for-something dinner table either.
The ‘laughing all the way to the Reserve Bank’ award goes to Adrian Orr.
Failed in all aspects of the role and gets a shiny new contract with a whopper of a payrise and an extra few years on the job. He may as well take his pants off on live TV at the next press conference as he’s got tenure 🤣
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