Plenty of those types up this way, manipulating the market by forming investment consortiums to bank land reserves at exorbitant sales prices paid with the hope that future sales will vindicate the gamble taken.

It is just like a game of monopoly although played out in real time with real money.

Well glad that I hung up my tape years ago and I'm no longer involved in any complicity around the dirty business going ons in the mortgage lending and real estate industry.

Ponzi schemes can sometime pay off with unexpected results ensuing.

Quite a few years ago there was a character here on the Sunshine Coast who started an investment scheme titled Money Exchange.

Based upon spiels and sort of promises made of making investments on short term money exchanges “read leveraging” the operator curried favour by joining local clubs and in one case making substantial donations to one of the local yacht clubs.

Unfortunately for him his run for fortune was short lived as the coppers closed in on him and eventually he was brought to account and was sent off to gaol for 10 years.

At the time I was doing a rural property valuation up Maleny way for a young copper and during our discussion I asked him about a recent farm sale close by.

His reply with smirk, "Oh he's the operator of that investment scheme Money Exchange.
Some of the boys did very well out of that. In and out quickly” is the best bet if you want a win”."

Ironically for all concerned, the operators has invested all of his 'profits' into real estate on the Sunshine Coast which unexpectedly experienced rising property values due to a temporary boom in real estate so the investors who had written off their investment upon the collapse of the scheme received an unexpected windfall when all the properties supposedly held in trust were sold at markedly increased values resulting in most of those investors receiving most of their monies back.

His mistake - not lodging the titles for the properties purchased in the investment company name rather than that of he and his wife which by so doing indicated intent to defraud.

By so doing fraud was proven however if he had had all the properties purchased registered in the company’s name in trust such prudent action may have reduced his term of imprisonment.

However the bounty on offer was too much for his greed as his largess extended to purchasing his and her Porches as well as a new nice large cattle property all of which further confounded his crime.

So I guess, as in the Asian way, Karma eventually played out its hand and normality was restored.

While much discontent was shipped to the continent now known as Australia, mostly it's as if grievances have crowded into the 'G' and there played out in a sport called cricket.

Then also during two worldwide wars, the sporting types fronted up to ensure that sport and cricket might continue (well that is one reflection of the process of support and alliance in two immense wars).

While cricket was taught early in places like Dogura, it seems not enough, so that by the time of the PNG Independence, the sporting of rivalry with respect for the 'opposition', was still too elementary.

Thus, PNG has elected to derive its own, organically, as is in the conversation on another page in this blog.

https://www.pngattitude.com/2022/12/the-desperate-deadly-streets-of-moresby.html

So this is a pitch for more wickets, less wickeds.

If the MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground or 'theG') was a patch on PNG Attitude, there would soon be a grandstand" named in honour of one of our contributors, Bernard Corden. But it would likely be always cordened off.

Go on, get into 2023.

Bernard suggests that we are all living within a giant Ponzi scheme that is on the imminent point of collapse.

I’m not sure about the Ponzi part but the point of collapse is entirely believable.

Charles Ponzi was a businessman who lured people into a fraudulent scheme that paid earlier investors profits from money provided by later investors making them think that the profits were coming from a legitimate business.

A Ponzi scheme works on the idea of maintaining the appearance of a sustainable business that doesn’t exist.

As long as new funds are coming into the scheme and most of the investors still believe in the non-existent assets they are supposed to own the scheme can persist.

Ponzi schemes are similar to pyramid schemes but usually offer victims the chance to make money by recruiting more people into the scam.

Eventually, however, both schemes will collapse when the investors realise what’s going on. By then, of course, the initiators will have fled with the money.

Gullible investors in Papua New Guinea, where Ponzi and pyramid schemes are rife, will be familiar with the way it all works.

Neo-liberalism, as Chris suggests, is a different kind of scam altogether. It works on the myth that continued economic growth is possible and that there are no such things as finite resources and that their unbridled exploitation is not harmful to either people or the planet.

That’s why it is so much more dangerous than things like Ponzi and pyramid schemes.

While those kinds of schemes damage gullible and greedy individuals the scam that is neo-liberalism has the potential to damage us all, probably irrevocably.

Just like the pushers of Ponzi and pyramid schemes know what they are doing will hurt people so do the pushers of neo-liberalism.

None of them care.

The Ponzi/pyramid scheme pushers just want to make off with their ill-gotten gains.

The neo-liberalism pushers seem to think they can still continue making their obscene profits before everything comes crashing down. They think they’ll be long dead before the ultimate planetary catastrophe occurs.

A few of them, perhaps greedier and with bigger egos, actually believe that their money will enable them to buy their own survival while the rest of us perish.

These ones are busily building fortress-like enclaves in their own countries or in places like New Zealand ready for the big collapse.

As a group, the neo-liberalists are the most execrable kind of human being imaginable.

If you think about it, you probably know who they are. If you don’t, Forbes magazine maintains a list of them.

Both Chris and Paul provide useful summaries of the geo-political threats that surround us but I’d like to suggest that, as serious as they are, they pale into insignificance compared to the existential threat that neo-liberalism represents.

Given our geographical location most of these threats are too far away to have any real impact on us. And anyone who thinks China is going to invade us is decidedly uninformed and lacking in understanding.

Provided we keep our noses out of it all, be careful with our liaisons and control nutters like Peter Dutton and Richard Marles and their mates in the Australian Strategic Policy Institute we should be right.

The catastrophe that neo-liberalism is causing is a different kettle of fish. When that explodes there will be nowhere to hide.

A remote island off Antarctica, an oasis in the heart of the Sahara Desert, some lost island in the South Pacific, a bunker in Arizona, a deep cavern on the Nullarbor Plain or an eerie in the Papua New Guinea highlands, none of these will be safe.

A good synopsis, Chris, and one that identifies many of the apparently insoluble problems that the world now faces.

Dictators inevitably suffer from believing what they hear from their own echo chambers and sycophants that they gather around themselves.

Any opposition is dispensed with and provided, gratuitously, with poisoned underpants, poisoned door handles and poisoned pellet emitting umbrellas.

Closer to home, we have been treated to examples of Conspiracy theories and outof control gun ownership in the US not to mention Australia. We sure can't preach to those who are suffering these some problems.

The picture in the window of the world is starting to clarify. The majority of so called world leaders are in fact mere pawns in the 'Great Game' and don't really have any idea of how to stop the merry-go-round in order to get off and smell the roses.

The media, as you so rightly point out, are complicit in this ongoing fracas and have become addicted to selling advertising space by concentrating articles on the tragic and sensational at the expense of informing and educating the public.

Education curriculums have been warped and morphed into propaganda machines to suit frustrated minorities and not build holistically educated populations for the future.

I read recently that the world nearby, is basically at the same 'hair trigger' point as was Europe prior to World War I. If this is the case, all it will take is a slip up somewhere, serious enough to start another world conflagration.

The only question is 'why?'

The answer is obvious. We are selecting and electing political leaders who can't cope and contemplate taking effective action when they may well be judged and dismissed at the next election by the frustrated, powerless masses who haven't got enough, water, food and shelter.

President Zelensky of Ukraine currently stands out as an effective leader. Yet he isn't continually allowed to have enough weaponry to end the war.

Why? Because those who are supplying the weapons don't want to create another power base they can't then control.