The lack of security from market investments has been underlined recently with global sharemarket plunges reflecting dramatic losses for retirement savings funds, the Auckland Regional Council fund for public transport and stormwater and Environment Waikato’s investment fund.

As markets have faltered and failed the extent of our reliance on them has become more apparent.

People who have saved through personal superannuation schemes and investments in shares have suffered large losses in the value of their financial assets. Some reported losses are as high as 30% with assets now typically worth 15% less than they were at the start of 2008.

No investment has been immune. International share prices have fallen, finance companies have crashed (about half New Zealand’s approx 70 finance companies have failed in the past couple of years) while property prices have fallen and most predict at least a 15% drop in capital values on property over the next year.

Those looking to maximise returns on their money are left with the banks but even the big banks need government guarantees on investments and interest rates have fallen sharply in the latter part of this year.

National’s sack-at-will bill is a shameful attack on working New Zealanders.

The new government is proceeding at pace to remove employment rights for workers in small workplaces for the first 90 days of employment.

At any one time this proposed law will affect around 100,000 workers. They will have their rights to be treated fairly removed and can be sacked without reason or the chance for a fair hearing.

Losing this right to be treated fairly means a dramatic shift in the power relationships in the workplace. Any worker seeking promotion, a better job, or better pay will think twice because their employment will be uncertain at best for the first 90 days. Every worker changing jobs becomes casualised for the first 90 days at least, and then another 90 days elsewhere perhaps and then again…

National knows this law change is hugely unpopular and knows it’s best to get it done quickly with as little public scrutiny as possible. Best to do it when people are distracted and opposition is less likely to be organised. Burying it in the rush to Christmas is smart politics but appalling democratic process. There won’t be select committee oversight or the chance for public submissions.

It seems there is some kind of reversal of logic at work over the financial crisis. We are now being told it’s not really the bankers and the financial markets that are responsible for the crisis and the disaster about to befall us. Instead it’s our own fault!

The new version of the global meltdown has the culprits being ordinary people who can’t pay their bills. We have over-consumed apparently, lived beyond our means and the subtext is that we deserve everything we have coming to us. Stupid us – how could we possibly have blamed those nice men in suits?

This was subtly played out on TVNZ’s Sunday programme last night. It followed a woman made redundant from Lane Walker Rudkin in Christchurch. The various commentators pontificated about how tough it was going to get but none of them questioned the arcane system of markets, greed and inherent stupidity at the heart of capitalism.

Watch carefully over the next while and this view of who is to blame will gain greater momentum as those responsible for the crisis use their power and wealth to change perceptions of who is responsible. In the end the system will throw up a few sacrificial scapegoats and then move on as quickly as possible.

Our local “bad apples” are the likes of Rod Petricevic, and the owners of Hanover Finance. I’m not suggesting these people are blameless but that the whole rotten system which puts profits ahead of people is at the heart of the problem.

New Minister of Finance Bill English is asking for help.

Within a few days of being appointed Minister of Finance he said he wanted the private sector to come to the government with their plans for infrastructure development. He didn’t say this was because the government had no ideas of its own but that was the subtext.

National is keen to push so-called public private partnerships for infrastructure development but English realises this approach is unlikely to be picked up readily by the private sector. New Zealand is small and the “revenue streams” from the user pays aspect of PPPs (such as road tolls) are unlikely to be large enough to make the investment attractive to the private sector.

Most PPPs are developed with borrowed money and the private sector pays higher interest rates than governments. This will be exacerbated in the current credit crunch. Then there is the matter of who takes the risk. The argument in favour of PPPs says the private sector takes the risk away from taxpayers and will suffer the loss if the project fails. This is demonstrably false. No government can allow a major infrastructure project to fail and inevitably it is always the taxpayer or ratepayer who foots the bill in the end.

Yesterday in the local dairy I saw the headline “Hang ‘em” shouting from the front page of the Truth newspaper above the photos of the two young men found guilty of the murder of three-year-old toddler Nia Glassie.

It will be a common response to the horrific torture and murder of the little girl and has been whipped along by the likes of Sunday Star Times columnist Michael Laws who blames Maori and what he calls the “brown underclass”.

There is never any excuse for abuse of children and it’s natural for us to want long prison sentences for her killers. However, unless we clearly see the context in which she was killed then we will condemn other children to similar abuses.

So before the image of the smiling toddler in happier times fades into the memory mists with other abused and degraded children we owe it to her and other vulnerable children to understand the context in which she was tortured and murdered.

As Nia Glassie lay dying in hospital last August the New Zealand Herald published figures related to child abuse among Maori. Social issues reporter Simon Collins reported that Maori children were more than twice as likely to die from child abuse as other children but that this was a relatively recent development.

In 1987 child abuse deaths for Maori were on a par with the rest of New Zealand. From 1978 to 1987 the number of children aged 0 to 14 per 100,000 killed was 0.92 for non-Maori and 1.05 for Maori.

If you were watching television earlier this week you would most likely have seen Auckland Mayor John Banks talking tough on rates. “The people out there are hurting”, said the Mayor. “In these tough economic times the council must make tough decisions to keep rate increases to affordable levels.” The bold mayor said the council were going line by line through the city budget to cut spending and thereby save the people from double-digit rate increases.

Here was the feisty mayor of New Zealand’s largest city standing up for the kiwi battlers struggling with rising food (and until the past few weeks) petrol prices and threats of redundancy as the economic crunch arrives.

One could almost hear the murmurs of “Bravo John” in living rooms around Auckland. At long last here was a conservative mayor of a right-wing National/Act dominated council looking out for the more vulnerable families. Even the notoriously-feral right-wing councillor Aaron Bhatnagar chimed in for the media spotlight saying the council had to cut spending in these tough economic times to make sure rates were reasonable.

Unfortunately it was all a carefully constructed myth. When the television cameras had packed up and the dust had settled Auckland City Council voted to make its most dramatic cuts to future spending in the lowest income areas of the city while protecting pet right wing projects to benefit businesses and the wealthy.

Last week I sent an email to an old mate, Hone Harawira.

I said I wasn’t encouraging the Maori Party to do any agreement with National but if they were determined to do a deal they should extract some meaningful concessions. I rushed off six points that would make a significant difference to New Zealanders living on low incomes and would therefore disproportionately make real gains for Maori. The points I made were these:

1. A commission of inquiry into Tomorrow’s Schools: This major reform has NEVER been evaluated these past 19 years despite it producing the long tail of underachievement (in reality “long tail of poverty”) and a host of negatives for Maori children and families in low-income communities.

2. Restructuring the funding mechanisms for children with special education needs. All governments have had their heads in the sand over this for too long despite there being some easy to understand changes which are needed in how the funding is delivered and which would make a significant difference for kids with special needs. Probably this would need to be handled under some sort of independent review.

3. Reducing class sizes in schools in low-income areas: The logic of this is inescapable. New Zealand First actually included this in their election policy mix so perhaps it deserves a mention as a farewell for Winston Peters.

Today the Maori Party meets with Prime Minister elect John Key to talk about a working arrangement whereby the Maori Party would gain some policy concessions and perhaps a ministerial role or two in return for backing National on confidence and supply. See related story.

The benefit for Key is in building his parliamentary majority into a safer 70 while in the longer term seeing the Maori Party as an on-going ally to avoid National becoming more than a one-term wonder.

But the bigger benefit for National has nothing to do with the “synergy” Key says there is between the two parties. There isn’t. Instead Key sees the looming economic crisis and the need for political cover for what are likely to be a series of very unpopular, harsh policies, which National/Act will visit on the country.

We all know the pain from the crisis will not be felt by those who caused it – the bankers, money traders and sundry other leeches – but by wage and salary earners with the hardest hit being disproportionately Maori.

To achieve this Key will offer greater autonomy and resourcing in Maori health, education and social welfare. National/Act will see this as breaking down the monolithic nanny state while Maori would see it as enacting tino rangatiratanga as guaranteed in Article Two of the Treaty.

It’s been a delight to see the reaction in America and around the world at the election of Barack Obama to the US Presidency.

After twenty five years of harsh neo-liberalism and eight long years of George Bush’s warmongering alongside endless and unashamed transfer of wealth to the rich, the relief at Obama’s victory is palpable.

American filmmaker Mike Moore described it as “a stunning, whopping landslide of hope in a time of deep despair.”

Obama positioned himself as a change-maker. His line about George Bush having been digging a hole for eight years and now handing the shovel to John McCain resonated well.

Coupled with this is the election of the first black President. It has been deeply moving for a generation of Americans who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s at the height of the civil rights struggle. We’ve all seen endless repeats of a clip from Martin Luther King’s famous “I have a dream” speech in which King dreamt of a time when a man would be judged not by the colour of his skin but by the content of his character. Obama’s election is being portrayed as the dream coming true.

Obama is a powerful orator. The only person I’ve seen who’d come close would be George Galloway who delivered a stunning address without notes in Auckland last year.

It’s easy to see why National has left it till the last week of the election campaign to announce its policy on schools. It’s all bad news.

There will be an immediate 25% increase in state funding for private schools with a total increase of 75% in coming years. For a school like Kings College where John Key is now a parent the increase will be from $1,620,723 in 2008 to $2,836,265.

There will be no 25% increase in funding for public schools. National will restrict their increases to the rate of inflation. This is where National sees its educational priorities. Rather than allocate funding to cash-strapped public schools, National has made its priority to look after the wealthy.

Unlike public schools, private schools can demand school fees and can pick and choose the students they want. They are barely accountable to ERO and are not required to report on the spending of their government funding.

I have little interest in private schools. However, if parents want to choose a private school to provide a socially or religiously cleansed environment for their children then this should not be subsidised by taxpayers.

The extra money would be far better spent for New Zealand children where it is really needed. Overcoming the long tail of underachievement in education should be the highest educational priority. This would mean funding educational need rather than using the crude decile funding system to allocate resources.