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| Michael Cummings. |
Why is Michael Cummings the editor of Australian owned Fairfax Manawatu
Standard daily news paper scared of Kim Dotcom and the Internet Party?
We know
he is pro-Key, pro-National, pro-Judith Crusher Collins; this is so very
obvious by the fact that he keeps them off the front page unless the news is
good.
His latest editorial [Saturday the 29th of March
2014] is not simply an opinion piece but is clearly a rant against ‘entrepreneur’
Kim Dotcom because he dares to challenge John Key by starting a political party.
And Cummings leaps onto the National band-wagon of muck raking and smear campaign into
the legitimate investment behaviour of Kim Dotcom via of his ownership of a
signed copy of Mein Kampf…
This is doubly strange when you consider that owning a copy
of Mein Kampf is not illegal and in fact our own parliamentary library has a
copy available to all members of Parliament…I can picture Judith Collins and
Paula Bennett deeply studying Mein Kampf to find new ways to solve the
worsening state of our welfare and justice systems. There are maybe hints in there
about dealing with Communist Chinese milk companies owned by friends…who knows.
But why is Michael Cummings taking part in a ‘synchronized
journalistic denigration and outright character assassination’ of Kim
Dotcom?
Is he [Michael] just another media purchased link in
the chain of leaked CIA info about the one guy the US and Hollywood wants to jail or imprison
without trial as they are legally allowed to do? We must never forget that John
Key broke the law in an attempt to allow the US to totally ignore our laws with
impunity. He was found out, and then put his own guy in charge of the GCSB,
changed the law and said ‘What a good boy I am’. And our little small city
editor thinks that was heroic! No editorial was penned about how undemocratic
Key’s and the GCSB, SIS and Police behavior was. Yet Cummings states, no doubt
with tongue in cheek, that “We hold our political leaders to very high
standards”, really, has the Manawatu Standard run any in depth stories
on how John Key made his money, ripped off NZ’s foreign currency exchange
rules, and took that money off to a tax haven, made a mint out of the collapse and
the defrauding of US housing and international loan markets by the various companies to whom
he sold his services.
Looking at the History of John Key in relation to his
financial abilities here are some facts and figures regarding his major employer
Merrill Lynch and their
general performance…
Key's first job
was in 1982, as an auditor at McCulloch Menzies, and he then moved to be a
project manager at Christchurch-based clothing manufacturer Lane Walker Rudkin
for two years.
Key began working
as a foreign exchange dealer at Elders Finance in Wellington, and rose to the position of head
foreign exchange trader two years later, then moved to Auckland-based Bankers
Trust in 1988.
In 1995, he
joined Merrill Lynch as head of Asian foreign exchange in Singapore.
That same year he was promoted to Merrill's global head of foreign exchange,
based in London,
where he may have earned around US$2.25 million a year including bonuses, which
is about NZ$5 million at 2001 exchange rates. Some co-workers called him
"the smiling assassin" for maintaining his usual cheerfulness while
sacking dozens (some say hundreds) of staff after heavy losses from the 1998 Russian financial crisis. He was
a member of the Foreign Exchange Committee of the New York Federal Reserve Bank from
1999 to 2001.
In 2001, he
headed back to New Zealand
to fulfill a long held ambition to stand for Parliament for the National Party.
It was fortunate that he did because Merrill Lynch
went into free-fall:
In 2002, Merrill
Lynch settled for a fine of $100 million for publishing misleading
research. As part of the agreement with the New York attorney general and other state securities
regulators, Merrill Lynch agreed to increase research disclosure and work to
decouple research from investment banking. A well known analyst at Merrill
Lynch named Henry Blodget wrote in company e-mails in which
Blodget gave assessments about stocks which conflicted with what was publicly
published by Merrill. In 2003, he was charged with civil securities fraud by
the U.S. Securities and Exchange
Commission. He settled without admitting or denying the allegations and was
subsequently barred from the securities industry for life. He paid a
$2 million fine and $2 million disgorgement. The CEO at that time,
David Komansky, said, "I want...to
publicly apologize to our clients, our shareholders, and our employees,"
for the company falling short of its professional standards in research.
In 2004
convictions of Merrill executives marked the only instance in the Enron investigation
where the government criminally charged any officials from the banks and
securities firms that allegedly helped the energy giant execute its accounting
fraud. The case revolved around a 1999
transaction involving Merrill, Enron and the sale of some
electricity-producing barges off the coast of Nigeria. The charges surrounded the
1999 sale of an interest in
Nigerian energy
barges by an Enron entity to Merrill Lynch was a sham that allowed Enron to
illegally book about $12 million in pretax profit, when in fact there was
no real sale and no real profit. Four former Merrill top executives and two
former midlevel Enron officials faced conspiracy and fraud charges. Merrill cut
its own deal, firing bankers and agreeing to the outside oversight of its
structured-finance transactions. It also settled civil fraud charges brought by
the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, without admitting or denying
fault.
In 2002 Merrill
Lynch settled for 10 million civil penalties as a result of improper activities
that took place out of the firm's Fort Lee New Jersey
office. Three financial advisors, and a fourth who was involved to a lesser
degree, placed 12,457 trades for a client Millennium Partners in at least 521
mutual funds and 63 mutual fund sub-accounts of at least 40 variable annuities.
Millennium made profits in over half of the funds and fund sub-accounts. In
those funds where Millennium made profits, its gains totaled about
$60 million. Merrill Lynch failed to reasonably supervise these financial
advisers, whose market timing siphoned short-term profits out of mutual funds
and harmed long-term investors.
More recent
Controversies with Key as PM were:
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| Michael's hero: John Key. |
During the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, Key was a
proponent of Hosni Mubarak's government, citing his support of Israel and refusing to call for his
resignation. When asked if Mubarak should step down, he said "no".
In 2011, Key was
caught up in a controversy over the purchase of government limousines which he
denied knowledge of initially but later reports surfaced his office was aware.
He was accused of being dishonest and eventually apologised, calling the deal
sloppy.
In October 2011,
Key made a statement where he claimed Standard and Poor's had said at a meeting
in the prior month that "if there was a change of Government, that
downgrade would be much more likely", this claim was contradicted by
S&P after Key's credibility had been called into question. His untruths
about the Dot Com mansion raid, the statement that he had never heard to Dotcom
when he lived in his electorate. And his shady appointing of his school friend
to the 400 thousand dollar job as the boss of the GCSB by breaking all the
standard appointment processes.
“We hold our political leaders to very high standards” said our
small town editor…yeah right. What he really meant was, ‘He holds some
political leaders to very high standards…mainly if the are Labour, Green, NZ
First, Mana and now Internet Party…National, Act and United Future are all OK
why because Key says so…
I see little difference between John Key and Kim Dotcom,
both bought their political positions, Key has never door knocked, he brought
a safe seat by tossing out a sitting member, politics for him is a hobby, he
doesn’t give a hoot about the voters, and yet our small town editor fawns over
him like he was the Queen. When the Manawatu Standard editor publishes the
real story of the rise of John Key rather than the Public Relations doctored
version. Only then should we listen to, read or believe his election campaign
speeches or ravings on behalf of his National Party heroes.
