The £166 trillion timebomb: ex-King Mervyn warns unprecedented debt will trigger the next financial meltdown
Zardoz Greek
zardos777 at yahoo.co.uk
Sat Feb 10 05:05:09 GMT 2018
--- On Sat, 10/2/18, Tony Gosling tony at cultureshop.org.uk [PEPIS] <PEPIS-noreply at yahoogroups.com> wrote:
> From: Tony Gosling tony at cultureshop.org.uk [PEPIS] <PEPIS-noreply at yahoogroups.com>
> Subject: [PEPIS] The $321 trillion timebomb: ex-King Mervyn warns debt may trigger next meltdown
The £166 trillion timebomb: ex-King Mervyn warns unprecedented debt will trigger the next financial meltdown
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-5364469/Ex-Bank-governor-warns-debt-trigger-financial-crash.html
The £166 trillion timebomb: Former Bank governor King warns debt will trigger the next financial meltdown
Lord Mervyn King was governor of the Bank of England as crisis hit
He warns it is essential to tackle global debt pile which stands at £166 trillion
King says private sector debt to GDP is now higher than before crash
By James Burton For The Daily Mail
Published: 08:50 AEDT, 8 February 2018 | Updated: 19:57 AEDT, 8 February 2018
A worldwide debt binge could trigger the next financial crisis and tip Britain back into recession, former Bank of England governor Lord King has warned.
Households, companies and governments have borrowed ever-greater amounts of money since the Great Recession, egged on by central bankers who cut interest rates to record lows.
But with inflation returning as growth picks up a decade on from the crash, investors are braced for steep rises in interest rates.
Fears over higher rates have sent financial markets into a tailspin in recent days – leading to the biggest one-day points fall of all time on Wall Street.
Former Bank of England governor Lord King said it was essential to tackle the global debt pile, which stands at £166trillion
+1
Former Bank of England governor Lord King said it was essential to tackle the global debt pile, which stands at £166trillion
And experts are now warning that higher rates will push up the cost of servicing the world's mammoth debts, with potentially devastating consequences.
King said it was essential to tackle the global debt pile, which stands at £166trillion, according to the Washington-based Institute of International Finance.
'The areas of weakness in the current system are really focused on the amount of debt that exists, not just in the US and UK but across the world,' King said.
'Debt in the private sector relative to GDP is higher now than it was in 2007, and of course public debt is even higher still.'
Although European and US banks have far larger reserves to draw on today, he warned banking disasters in less tightly regulated countries could create a global shock causing panic.
International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde also sounded the alarm last month and researchers believe China is a danger.
Benn Steil and Benjamin Della Rocca of the Council on Foreign Relations said a meltdown is rapidly approaching, saying: 'Given our evidence that China is shovelling new loans to companies with the least ability to pay them back, we think China is heading towards a debt crisis.'
Markets have swung wildly as investors grapple with the return of inflation as the global economy takes off and normality returns in the West after sluggish growth.
The recovery has been welcomed, but it is expected to spark a jump in wages and rising prices.
To keep this under control, banks will have to hike interest rates and Peter Tutton of Stepchange Debt Charity warned: 'Even a modest rise in interest rates could tip people who are just about managing into difficulties with mortgage payments and unsecured credit commitments.'
Read more: http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-5364469/Ex-Bank-governor-warns-debt-trigger-financial-crash.html#ixzz56g8VGIC1
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> Date: Saturday, 10 February, 2018, 0:35
>
> Citizen Thiel
> Internet Oligarch Peter Thiel: Bilderberg Banker, Or Economic Warfare Commandant?
> [see below]
>
> The $321 trillion timebomb: Former UK bank boss warns debt may trigger next meltdown
> 9 Feb, 2018 7:18pm
>
> http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11991445
>
>
>
> The Dow Jones industrial average plunged nearly 1,600
> points
> Monday as two days of steep losses for U.S. stocks
> brought an end
> to a period of record setting calm in the market. /
> AP
>
> Daily Mail
>
> By: James Burton
>
>
>
> A worldwide debt binge could trigger the next
> financial crisis,
> warns former Bank of England governor Lord King.
>
>
>
> Households, companies and governments have borrowed
> ever-greater
> amounts of money since the global financial crisis,
> egged on by
> central bankers who cut interest rates to record
> lows.
>
>
>
> But with inflation returning as growth picks up a
> decade on from
> the crash, investors are braced for steep rises in
> interest rates.
>
>
>
> Fears over higher rates have sent financial markets
> into a
> tailspin in recent days, leading to the biggest
> one-day points
> fall of all time on Wall Street.
>
>
> Given our evidence that China is shovelling new loans
> to
> companies with the least ability to pay them back, we
> think China
> is heading towards a debt crisis.
>
>
>
> And experts are now warning that higher rates will
> push up the
> cost of servicing the world's mammoth debts, with
> potentially
> devastating consequences.
>
>
>
> King said it was essential to tackle the global debt
> pile, which
> stands at £166 trillion ($321t), according to the
> Washington-based
> Institute of International Finance.
>
>
>
> "The areas of weakness in the current system are
> really focused on
> the amount of debt that exists, not just in the US and
> UK but
> across the world," King said.
>
>
>
> "Debt in the private sector relative to GDP is
> higher now than it
> was in 2007, and of course public debt is even higher
> still."
>
>
>
> Although European and US banks have far larger
> reserves to draw on
> today, King warned banking disasters in less tightly
> regulated
> countries could create a global shock causing
> panic.
>
>
>
> International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde
> also sounded
> the alarm last month and researchers believe China is
> a danger.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> also today.........
>
>
> Citizen Thiel
>
> Internet Oligarch Peter Thiel: Bilderberg Banker,
> Or Economic
> Warfare Commandant?
> https://www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=20583#20583
>
>
> By Matt Nippert. Visuals by Mike Scott. Design by Rob
> Cox.
>
> http://www.nzherald.co.nz/indepth/national/how-peter-thiel-got-new-zealand-citizenship/
>
>
>
> Peter Thiel is an internet oligarch who believes in a
> stateless
> world free of regulation or limits on human endeavour.
> He made
> millions on PayPal, and billions on Facebook.
>
>
>
> He lobbied New Zealand Cabinet ministers and public
> servants,
> presenting himself as our exceptional angel of venture
> capital.
>
>
>
> He was secretly granted citizenship, but within months
> of his
> “solemn vow” appeared to move on. He has barely
> seen since and has
> recently been buying up real estate while selling down
> his local
> technology investments.
>
>
>
> What remains are his boltholes in Queenstown and
> questions over
> whether political pressure played any part in his
> granting of
> citizenship.
>
>
>
> Thiel declined to be interviewed for this story, but
> issued a
> brief statement about the saga saying, “I believe in
> New Zealand”,
> and noting that he’s invested $50 million in New
> Zealand tech
> companies.
>
>
>
> This story is, instead, based on dozens of interviews
> and hundreds
> of pages of documents sourced under the Official
> Information Act.
>
>
>
> This is the story of Citizen Thiel.
>
>
>
> PART ONE: CRUSH
>
> true
>
>
>
> Queenstown: Thiel has a long affinity with the South
> Island’s
> high-rolling tourist town, first visiting more than 20
> years ago.
>
>
>
> It was 1995 when Peter Andreas Thiel first visited New
> Zealand. He
> was 28 and the German-born naturalised American was
> yet to found a
> single company. The billionaire-to-be would have been
> indistinguishable from the hordes of middle-class
> tourists also
> enjoying the thrills of Queenstown.
>
>
>
> Thiel was drawn to the region’s adventure tourism
> industry at
> least partly out of his disdain for government
> regulation. In his
> only local public speech to date, at an Auckland
> University
> conference in 2011, he spoke of his white-knuckled
> ride on the
> Shotover Jet as being among “all the crazy things
> you can do in
> New Zealand that you can’t do anywhere else, risky
> things that are
> probably not allowed [elsewhere]”.
>
> true
>
>
>
> Thiel was taken with Queenstown’s adventure tourist
> industry, and
> has talked glowingly about his experience on the
> Shotover Jet.
>
>
>
> Thiel — now worth $3.7 billion and with deep links
> to Western
> intelligence agencies, the Trump administration and
> the Silicon
> Valley firms dominating the internet — seemed, in
> 1995, to still
> be in search of a purpose. Around this time the
> Stanford graduate
> changed jobs from judicial clerk to securities lawyer
> to
> derivatives trader.
>
>
>
> Three years later he’d find that purpose,
> co-founding online
> payment company PayPal to set himself up to make a
> small fortune
> that he’d later leverage into a large one.
>
>
>
> According to his 2012 book Zero to One, his purpose is
> more than
> making money and extends to escaping limits of both
> the human body
> and social rules. An interest in lifespan extension
> (including
> transfusing blood from the young), musing whether
> freedom was
> compatible with democracy, and support for artificial
> island
> habitats free from the constraints of traditional
> government and
> laws have led critics to caricature him a Bond villain
> for the
> internet age.
>
> true
>
>
>
> PayPal: Co-founded by Thiel in 1999, he made $75
> million when the
> online payments firm was sold to eBay in 2002.
>
>
>
> And, as with most caricatures, underneath lies a grain
> of truth.
> Thiel says in Zero to One that his first company
> sought to do far
> more than simply make online transactions easier.
> “PayPal had a
> suitably grand mission — the kind that post-bubble
> sceptics would
> later describe as grandiose. We wanted to create a new
> internet
> currency to replace the US dollar.”
>
>
>
> Zero to One sketches out Thiel’s vision of
> technology enabling a
> world post-government, and is broadly shared by
> PayPal’s other
> founders — a group of young men who grew into a new
> generation of
> technology oligarchs.
>
>
>
> Elon Musk went on to create Tesla and SpaceX; Reid
> Hoffman started
> LinkedIn; Steve Chen founded YouTube. As their
> influence grew this
> crew would become known as the “PayPal mafia”.
>
>
>
> While the other members of the PayPal mafia were
> spreading their
> wings and priming their rockets in the United States,
> Thiel took a
> short detour and sought to formalise his relationship
> with New
> Zealand.
>
>
>
> His application included two years of tax returns, the
> disclosure
> of two reckless-driving convictions in February 2000
> (officials
> ruled these were minor and wouldn’t count against
> his
> application), and a schedule of assets as part of a
> listing of his
> net worth.
>
> true
>
>
>
> Thiel made more than $1 billion from a 2004 investment
> of $750,000
> in Facebook. While he’s since cashed out his shares,
> he still
> serves as a director on the social media giant’s
> board.
>
>
>
> Incomplete redactions show Thiel was by this point
> rich from
> PayPal — sold to online retailer eBay — but not
> yet super-rich.
> His declared net worth at this point ran to only nine
> figures. His
> $750,000 punt in 2004 on a small start-up called
> Facebook was yet
> to level him up to the realm of the world's
> billionaires.
>
>
>
> But in the end, only a relatively small slice
> of wealth was
> needed to nudge Thiel’s application over the line.
> The
> points-based visa he sought awarded him eight for his
> age — young
> migrants being preferred — and four for business
> experience.
> Applicants are allowed to pump up their score by
> setting aside
> funds to invest and awarded one point per $1 million.
> Thiel was
> just one point short.
>
>
>
> Correspondence from his advisers talked about the
> possibility of
> investing the required million into vineyards or
> property, and
> Thiel himself indicated on his application form he had
> a
> particular interest in the South Island.
>
> true
>
>
>
> Damper Bay: His $13.5m purchase of a 193-hectare
> section on the
> shores of Lake Wanaka first brought Thiel’s
> citizenship to notice
> as his new status meant the deal did not require
> Overseas
> Investment Office approval.
>
>
>
> As it turns out, that $1m tagged for investment ended
> up stashed
> in a term deposit for the required two years. And, of
> all the
> financial institutions in all the places he could have
> chosen to
> park this money, documents show he opted for the
> National Bank’s
> provincial branch in Whanganui.
>
>
>
> The choice of an out-of-the-way bank seems to speak to
> Thiel’s
> tightly-guarded privacy. Bank workers in Whanganui —
> hardly a tech
> mecca, with an agricultural economy and population of
> barely
> 40,000 — would have been unlikely to pick their new
> client as an
> offshore dotcom multimillionaire.
>
>
>
> This preference for discretion didn’t end there. In
> a New York
> Times opinion piece explaining why he was bankrolling
> defamation
> action against a gossip site he stated: “The defense
> of privacy in
> the digital age is an ongoing cause." Last year
> his lawyer lobbied
> New Zealand's Department of Internal Affairs to
> redact information
> from material released under the Official Information
> Act.
>
>
>
> And, shortly after news of Thiel’s surprise New
> Zealand
> citizenship broke in January 2017, Jeremiah Hall of
> San
> Francisco’s Torch Communications acknowledged
> questions for Thiel
> about the issue.
>
>
>
> “I’ll be back in touch if we have any comment,”
> he said.
>
>
>
> He did not get back in touch.
>
>
>
> In the 12 months since, the Herald has 10 times
> asked
> questions of Thiel — about his citizenship, his
> shrinking holdings
> in Kiwi software firm Xero, why he appears to have
> ghosted New
> Zealand, ties between his firm Palantir and local
> intelligence
> agencies, and even the celebrity classic, “What do
> you think of
> New Zealand?” And 10 times he again did not get back
> in touch.
>
>
>
> But on the eve of publication of this story —
> a year and a day
> after questions were first asked about this saga —
> Thiel broke his
> silence with a short statement.
>
>
>
> true
>
>
>
> Peter Thiel
>
>
>
> “I believe in New Zealand, and I believe the
> future of New
> Zealand’s technology industry is still underrated. I
> look forward
> to helping it succeed long-term.”
>
>
>
> Thiel has stayed in touch with the country with short
> visits every
> few years, but it was around the 2008 United States
> presidential
> election that he took a serious focus on
> Middle-earth.
>
>
>
> Thiel’s horse in United States politics at this time
> wasn’t nearly
> as successful as Trump would be eight years later.
> He’d initially
> backed Ron Paul for the Republican nomination, and
> after the
> libertarian outsider tanked in primaries he switched
> to party
> candidate John McCain. But McCain also tanked and
> Democratic
> candidate Barack Obama swept into the White House.
>
> true
>
>
>
> John Key: Thiel was enamoured with the National
> government, and
> met the Prime Minister in 2010 to expound on his plans
> to boost
> the New Zealand tech sector.
>
>
>
> Where one window to government closed in 2008, another
> opened.
> Days after Obama’s victory, a fresh-faced financier
> named John Key
> took control of the Beehive. Thiel liked what he
> saw.
>
>
>
> Rod Drury, whose cloud software company Xero is the
> biggest winner
> from Thiel’s brush with New Zealand, says his
> keystone shareholder
> was then disillusioned with the United States.
>
>
>
> “If you know Peter, and if you’ve tracked him for
> years like I
> have, he was always into small government. He really
> likes that,
> compared with the US at the time, we were pretty much
> a
> free-market economy, fairly lightly regulated. You can
> imagine the
> affinity he’d have with that,” he says.
>
> true
>
>
>
> Rod Drury: Xero founder and chief executive Drury
> counted Thiel as
> one of his earliest and most significant investors.
>
>
>
> Drury acknowledges a closer examination of the
> National Party’s
> platform would likely see them placed on the left wing
> of the
> Democratic Party, but he says Thiel was more
> interested in the
> general direction the country seemed to be going.
>
>
>
> This affinity escalated into a courtship that
> would see
> multiple meetings with Cabinet ministers, lawyers from
> a high-end
> law firm shuttle from Auckland to Wellington to lobby
> Internal
> Affairs, and bold statements made about rerouting
> rivers of
> Silicon Valley capital and the establishment of a
> high-tech
> incubator in Auckland.
>
>
>
> By the end New Zealand — or at least some
> officials in
> Internal Affairs — were smitten. But even Drury
> acknowledges we
> may have been naïve.
>
>
>
> PART TWO: COURTSHIP
>
>
>
> Thiel came on heavy in the two years ahead of his
> audacious and
> ultimately successful bid for citizenship in 2011. He
> visited the
> country three times during the period in a whirlwind
> of lobbying,
> business deals and public relations.
>
>
>
> He met no fewer than four senior members of the
> Cabinet —
> including the Prime Minister — to present his case
> for
> turbocharging New Zealand’s tech industry, arranged
> his first
> business investment (five years after first being
> granted an
> investment visa), started buying real estate, and gave
> his first
> and, so far, only interview with New Zealand media.
>
>
>
> The formal part of his bold quest saw his lawyers Bell
> Gully
> travel from Auckland to Wellington in late 2010 to
> hand-deliver a
> letter from Thiel to the Minister of Internal Affairs
> with his
> truly exceptional request.
>
>
>
> “In the course of pursuing my international
> business
> opportunities, my travel, personal philosophical
> commitments and
> benefaction, I am happy to say categorically that I
> have found no
> other country that aligns more with my view of the
> future than New
> Zealand,” Thiel wrote.
>
>
>
> “It would give me great pride to let it be
> known that I am a
> New Zealand citizen.”
>
>
>
> The letter was accompanied by a note from his lawyer
> making it
> clear his client’s application would require the
> Minister to
> exercise rare discretion under “exceptional
> circumstances” rules,
> as Thiel was not intending to live here and sought
> unprecedented
> “citizenship at large”.
>
>
>
> “Mr Thiel’s principal place of residence cannot be
> described in
> the context of the ordinary rules,” Thiel’s
> lawyers said.
>
>
>
> In mid-2010, Thiel had incorporated Valar Ventures, a
> limited
> partnership which he said in his letter was intended
> to “become an
> active player in New Zealand’s venture capital
> industry”. The
> fund’s name is a reference to the mythical beings
> who created the
> world in The Lord of the Rings. Its first major target
> was Xero.
>
>
>
> The accountancy software company was floated in 2007
> and, three
> years on, the local sharemarket still didn’t know
> what to make of
> this ambitious company burning cash which saw
> profitability as
> only a medium-term objective. Its share price was
> languishing
> close to its $1 launch.
>
>
>
> Drury, the company’s energetic founder and chief
> executive, says
> Thiel’s representatives came knocking in early
> 2010.
>
>
>
> “They came to our offices, we met them a few times,
> they seemed
> impressed. So we took distance out of the equation and
> said,
> ‘Well, shall we come up and meet Peter?’”
>
>
>
> That trip to San Francisco to pay homage to Thiel’s
> court was,
> recounts Drury, “one of the most exciting meetings
> that I’ve had”.
>
>
>
> Drury says he doesn’t share Thiel’s libertarian
> views but is
> laissez-faire when it comes to ideology.
>
>
>
> “They’re quite intense those guys, those PayPal
> guys. They’re
> really seen as royalty in the global tech scene. And
> he’s
> incredibly bright, and he’s always been a
> contrarian. He’s one of
> those people [who will] always stretch you,” Drury
> says.
>
>
>
> Recounting the mood at the time, Drury conveys the
> impression of a
> starstruck nation.
>
> true
>
>
>
> Playing the Trump card: Thiel speaking at the 2016
> Republican
> Convention crowning Donald Trump as the party’s
> ultimately
> successful candidate for the United States
> presidency.
>
>
>
> “Everyone was so excited to see him. I think we were
> so flattered
> that someone of that status in the technology industry
> was even
> interested in New Zealand."
>
>
>
> In October 2010, Xero announced Thiel had tipped $4m
> into the
> company.
>
>
>
> Drury describes this development as a “massive
> deal” that was
> instrumental in growing his company into the
> multi-billion-dollar
> business it is today — and said Thiel began looking
> locally,
> unsuccessfully as it turned out, for more Xeros.
>
>
>
> During this period Thiel seems to have made a
> conscious effort to
> court the new National Party Government, meeting Key,
> Finance
> Minister Bill English, Minister of Economic
> Development Gerry
> Brownlee and Minister of Science Wayne Mapp.
>
> true
>
>
>
> Bill English: The then-Finance Minister also met Thiel
> in May
> 2010, but officials say no records of what was
> discussed exist.
>
>
>
> English confirmed a May 2010 meeting, but said no
> records of what
> was discussed existed. Official Information Act
> requests to the
> Prime Minister’s Office regarding the meeting with
> Key were not
> answered — but the then-Prime Minister told
> Parliament in 2013
> he’d met Thiel on “a few occasions” and
> described the relationship
> as “cordial”.
>
>
>
> In early 2011, Thiel’s camp made contact with the
> New Zealand
> Venture Investment Fund (NZVIF), seeking to partner
> with the
> taxpayer-funded body to invest further in local tech
> firms.
>
>
>
> NZVIF staff also made the pilgrimage to San Francisco
> that August,
> and a deal was inked in December to set up a $40m
> fund. Of this,
> Thiel was supposed to kick in $15m and the Government
> $20m, with
> Stephen Tindall and handful of other smaller local
> investors
> making up the difference.
>
>
>
> Crucially, the deal included a generous buy-back
> clause, allowing
> Thiel and his private-sector partners to split losses
> with the
> Government if the fund tanked, but collect all the
> profits if it
> did well. The clause had been standard in NZVIF deals
> — intended
> to encourage the development of local venture-capital
> markets —
> but its inclusion with the Valar fund would later
> raise questions
> in Parliament and help see the clause retired from
> use.
>
>
>
> While this was being finalised, Nathan Guy replied to
> Thiel’s
> letter, advising him to submit a formal application to
> officials
> who would draft a report for the Minister’s
> consideration.
>
>
>
> That report from officials highlighted his
> connection to
> ministers, especially Key. Thiel wasn’t just giving
> a talk at
> Auckland University that June, he was “presenting at
> a conference
> in Auckland in July (along with the Prime
> Minister)”. Thiel didn’t
> just donate $1m to the Christchurch earthquake
> recovery, he made a
> donation “facilitated by Mark Weldon, chief
> executive of NZX, on
> behalf of the Prime Minister”.
>
>
>
> Thiel stated an intention to help establish a
> technology incubator
> in Auckland and set up a landing pad in San Francisco
> to assist
> New Zealand companies breaking into the United
> States.
>
>
>
> Largely on the basis of these non-binding intentions,
> that single
> earthquake donation and the relatively modest $4m
> invested to date
> in Xero, along with another — failed — Pacific
> internet cable
> company, officials concluded he was an exceptional
> philanthropist
> and investor and recommended his application be
> approved.
>
>
>
> “It is interesting ... I think the Minister may go
> for it,” one
> official emailed to another at the time.
>
> true
>
>
>
> Gerry Brownlee: The then-Minister for Economic
> Development also
> met Thiel during his whirlwind of government lobbying
> in 2010.
>
>
>
> Peter Dunne was Minister of Internal Affairs when news
> of Thiel’s
> citizenship broke a year ago, but he was not at the
> time of the
> application. He wouldn’t have gone for it.
>
>
>
> Speaking from his Khandallah home, Dunne admits he
> initially
> didn’t know who Thiel was when the news broke. But
> after becoming
> aware he was a “person of significance”, Dunne
> immediately
> reviewed the citizenship file. His copy, of course,
> was
> unredacted.
>
>
>
> Now retired and transitioned from his trademark
> bowties to an
> open-necked collar, Dunne is relaxed and frank in
> saying he is
> unconvinced by the case made by officials.
>
>
>
> “I looked at the documentation the Minister
> would have
> received, which basically said, ‘These are the facts
> and, by the
> way, we recommend it’. I thought, ‘I can’t quite
> see how you to
> get to this conclusion on the face of the fact he’d
> been in the
> country only 12 days.’”
>
>
>
> The 12 days became a minor national scandal for some
> when it was
> belatedly revealed — after having been initially
> redacted at the
> request of Thiel’s lawyers until the Ombudsman
> forced its release
> — and showed the billionaire had failed to meet even
> 1 per cent of
> the typically required 1350 days of in-country
> residence in the
> five years prior to being granted citizenship.
>
>
>
> Information released by Immigration NZ shows his
> fleeting
> appearances during this period were typical. In the
> three years
> after he was awarded his investor visa in 2006, he
> spent six days
> in New Zealand. In total, during the 16 years prior to
> Guy
> awarding him a passport, his combined stay in the
> country amounted
> to fewer than five weeks, or around the same length of
> stay as a
> single visit by an typical backpacker.
>
> true
>
>
>
> Not a Dunne deal: Peter Dunne, Minister of Internal
> Affairs at the
> time Thiel’s citizenship became public, says
> questions remain over
> his predecessor’s decision.
>
>
>
> Dunne’s opinion of Thiel’s bid is: “Give me
> citizenship: I want
> the passport, but don’t expect me to put in an
> appearance.”
>
>
>
> Asked what he’d have done if he’d been in the
> chair in 2011, Dunne
> said: “To me, had the application come across my
> desk for
> consideration, I’d have said no.”
>
>
>
> But he wasn’t the one occupying the Minister’s
> office. That was
> Guy who, in the days after his decision was revealed a
> year ago,
> pleaded ignorance.
>
>
>
> “I don’t recall this specific application,” he
> said.
>
>
>
> Dunne is unable to understand Guy’s decision to
> approve Thiel’s
> application. “I can only speculate. As I say, the
> documentation
> gives no clue. Whether it was the prospect of
> investment from Mr
> Thiel, or whether there was some form of political
> pressure, I
> don’t know.”
>
>
>
> For its part, Internal Affairs denied their former
> minister’s
> suggestion that its advice was subject to political
> interference.
> “The Department is satisfied that it tendered robust
> information
> and advice on what the minister of the day had to
> weigh up in
> making a decision on whether or not to grant
> citizenship.”
>
>
>
> The senior official who wrote the recommendation in
> 2011 has since
> retired from Internal Affairs and moved to Australia.
> He did not
> return repeated calls or emails from the Herald.
>
>
>
> With a signature, Guy approved Thiel’s request
> application on June
> 30, 2011, and a month later, in a private ceremony at
> the New
> Zealand consulate at Santa Monica in California, the
> technology
> billionaire swore on the Bible to become Citizen
> Thiel.
>
>
>
> An award of citizenship is effectively permanent and
> is granted
> without subject to conditions. It allows voting and
> residence
> rights and the ability to run for office, and can only
> be revoked
> under extreme circumstances.
>
>
>
> Thiel’s lawyer used almost religious language
> in explaining
> how important his client considered this moment.
>
>
>
> “Mr Thiel has advised that citizenship is
> irrevocable. It is
> the public recognition of a hallowed bond. For that
> reason and
> others, he is prepared to make this solemn allegiance
> to thereby
> embrace and contribute to the life, history and
> culture of New
> Zealand.”
>
>
>
> PART THREE: GHOSTING
>
>
>
> With passport in hand, the eye of Citizen Thiel began
> to wander
> almost immediately.
>
>
>
> Six months after the Santa Monica ceremony that had
> made him a
> citizen, the mission listed on Valar Ventures’
> website — which had
> previously billed itself as having been “founded to
> help grow New
> Zealand into a hub of technological progress” —
> was rewritten to
> remove references to the country that had just gifted
> him his new
> nationality.
>
>
>
> Valar was instead given a global mandate and would go
> on to make
> investments in Brazil and Australia. The fund invested
> in
> precisely one new company locally after 2011 —
> retail software
> firm Vend. The investment used funds from a mixture of
> private and
> public sources through the NZVIF joint venture.
>
>
>
> While publicised numbers around Thiel splurging
> capital locally
> look impressive — $4.5m initially in Xero and
> Pacific Fibre, $15m
> into the NZVIF partnership, another $22m into Xero in
> late 2012,
> with tens of millions more in 2013 — the headlines
> overlap.
>
>
>
> Thiel’s initial $4.5m in local investments was
> included in the
> NZVIF deal as his initial contribution. The latter
> Xero and Vend
> investments also included co-investors and government
> cash from
> its matching contribution to the NZVIF partnership.
>
>
>
> And this partnership fund itself languished and
> didn’t even meet
> half its billed potential — the NZVIF joint venture
> was initially
> touted as worth $40m, with Thiel contributing $15m —
> but he ended
> up tipping in just over $7m.
>
>
>
> Thiel’s financial structuring uses multiple
> entities, and the
> terms of venture capital deals are notoriously
> secretive with hard
> numbers and details of third-party investors not made
> public, so
> the extent of his investment into local tech companies
> is
> difficult to confirm and has been redacted from
> official
> documents.
>
>
>
> A spokesperson for Thiel said the billionaire’s
> total investment
> to date in local tech firms was $50m.
>
>
>
> Meanwhile, offshore, Thiel was running into some
> challenges. His
> hedge fund Clarium Capital Management lost the house
> on a large
> and wrong bet on oil supplies collapsing. Outside
> investors fled
> and by 2011 it was one-twentieth the size of its peak
> with barely
> a couple of hundred million of Thiel’s own capital
> remaining.
>
>
>
> But all was not lost. Facebook was edging towards a
> public listing
> that would allow Thiel to exit and crown one of the
> most
> spectacular deals of the internet era. The $750,000
> investment
> he’d made in in 2004 was largely cashed out
> following the 2012 IPO
> for more than $1.3b.
>
>
>
> If Thiel was growing increasingly distant from
> New Zealand,
> Xero’s Drury says he still noticed the halo effect
> from his
> celebrity shareholder. “It’s always hard to
> measure these sorts of
> things absolutely, but having Peter involved was a
> massive deal
> for us.”
>
>
>
> Thiel sat for a time on the company’s US advisory
> board as it
> sought to break into the world’s biggest market, and
> provided
> introductions to new partners and investors in Silicon
> Valley.
>
> true
>
>
>
> Drury: The Xero founder says Thiel’s involvement was
> crucial in
> turning his company into a multi-billion-dollar
> business.
>
>
>
> When Thiel became involved, Xero was loitering on the
> start-up
> crossroads to success or failure and had a share price
> of just
> $1.50. The company’s stock went on to pass $40, and
> the company is
> now one of New Zealand’s largest with a market
> capitalisation in
> excess of $5b.
>
>
>
> “Look back to 2010. It was an incredibly important
> time for us and
> he provided a huge amount of value. And now, at 1.2
> million
> customers, 1800 staff all over the world? That was a
> key time.
> We’re incredibly grateful for his support.”
>
>
>
> The support for Xero — from which various Valar
> vehicles would
> make hundreds of millions of dollars in capital gains
> as the share
> price surged — is the most tangible legacy of
> Citizen Thiel.
>
>
>
> Re-reading Thiel’s letter today, with the benefit of
> hindsight, it
> seems other non-binding claims made during his bid for
> citizenship
> are less fulfilled. Valar Ventures has been inactive
> in this
> country for years. Its New Zealand website resembles
> digital
> tumbleweed. The Auckland technology incubator never
> eventuated.
> Thiel’s touted involvement with the San Francisco
> landing pad for
> Kiwi companies reportedly ended once his three-year
> sponsorship
> deal expired in 2013.
>
>
>
> The Herald could find no other charitable giving by
> Thiel in New
> Zealand since that $1m earthquake appeal donation and,
> given the
> opportunity to provide details, Thiel’s
> representatives did not
> respond.
>
>
>
> And in hindsight, that million-dollar donation
> doesn’t seem
> entirely selfless. It occurred while officials were
> mulling
> Thiel’s application, and the application explained
> the donation in
> such a way to avoid it being seen as an attempt to
> influence
> decision making.
>
> true
>
>
>
> Thiel: A speech at Auckland University in 2011 remains
> the sole
> public appearance Thiel has made in New Zealand.
>
>
>
> “Our client has been approached on behalf of the
> Prime Minister to
> play a role in the offshore initiatives in relation to
> the
> Christchurch Earthquake Fund. It is anticipated there
> will be
> publicity about this. This has arisen subsequent to
> the original
> application, such that its context is unique to the
> circumstances.
> Our client was anxious to avoid it being considered in
> any manner
> relative to the merits of this application,” his
> lawyers wrote in
> March 2011.
>
>
>
> A month later that anticipated publicity for the
> donation did
> indeed occur, the result of self-promotion by proxy.
> Wide local
> coverage of this selfless act of charity was triggered
> by a press
> release: From Bell Gully on Thiel’s behalf.
>
>
>
> And claims Thiel would use citizenship to act as an
> ambassador-at-large seem like mere pillow talk. In a
> widely
> reported interview with Business Insider, Thiel
> described New
> Zealand as a “utopia”. This interview also
> occurred during the
> citizenship application process, and Bell Gully
> quickly forwarded
> this clipping to Internal Affairs officials.
>
>
>
> The Herald has been unable to find any public
> statements by Thiel
> promoting New Zealand since.
>
>
>
> Tim Hunter, columnist for National Business Review,
> noted in
> February that Thiel and Valar had been distant from
> these shores
> in recent years.
>
>
>
> “Looking back, it seems Mr Thiel’s love affair
> with New Zealand is
> less intense that it was when he was seeking
> citizenship,” Hunter
> wrote.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Even New Zealand’s Ombudsman, the statutory neutral
> arbiter for
> making decisions on government information, seemed
> perplexed about
> the case when compelling Internal Affairs to confirm
> Thiel had
> been in the country only 12 days in the qualifying
> period prior
> to being awarded citizenship.
>
>
>
> “In Mr Thiel’s case, there had been and continued
> to be public
> disquiet that the minister granted him citizenship in
> circumstances where his connection to New Zealand was
> not publicly
> known and, even in hindsight, was not obvious.”
>
>
>
> PART FOUR: BOLTHOLE
>
>
>
> News of Thiel’s surprise citizenship — overnight
> he became New
> Zealand’s second-richest man — came as his profile
> in the United
> States reached its zenith.
>
>
>
> In January 2017, Thiel was serving on newly elected
> President
> Trump’s transition team, after having been an early
> backer of the
> outsider candidate. He’d spoken at the Republican
> Convention and
> donated $1.5m to Trump’s campaign, with the biggest
> cheque coming
> during the candidacy’s lowest ebb — in the days
> after the release
> of the infamous Access Hollywood “Grab ’em by the
> pussy” tape.
>
> true
>
>
>
> Trump connection: Thiel’s support for Trump
> continued after the
> election, including organising a summit of tech
> leaders during
> which he was seated next to the president-elect.
>
>
>
> His move into mainstream politics — having
> previously backed
> fringe libertarian candidates — caught those who
> knew him both
> here and in the United States by surprise. “We were
> all surprised
> that he was so into Trump. But it was consistent with
> his
> contrarian and small government point-of-view,” says
> Xero’s Drury.
>
>
>
> Hard news about the extent of Thiel’s involvement
> with the Trump
> administration has been hard to come by.
>
>
>
> In lieu of Thiel talking, fevered rumours have swirled
> in the
> American media about what role he plays in United
> States politics.
> He’s been variously reported: having soured on
> Trump; being
> considered by Trump as a candidate for the Supreme
> Court,
> intelligence director or ambassador to Germany; being
> suddenly
> concerned about technology company monopolies; and
> running for
> Governor of California.
>
>
>
> But as Drury notes, despite the reports, there’s
> been little
> resulting evidence to underlie the above claims. Thiel
> is neither
> Trump’s man in Berlin nor suddenly seeking to
> regulate the likes
> of Facebook (of which he remains a director).
>
>
>
> “He’s been relatively quiet since all of that [the
> US election]. I
> keep a really close eye on that stuff, and he don’t
> seem around
> that too much anymore.”
>
>
>
> In a twist, Thiel also may have been ghosted
> — a slang term
> for the practice of ending a personal relationship by
> suddenly and
> without explanation withdrawing from all communication
> — himself.
> Michael Wolff’s explosive book Fire and Fury has him
> telling a
> fellow billionaire that, despite being forewarned
> Trump was prone
> to outrageous flattery and hollow promises, he’d
> taken the bait
> and now found himself on the outer.
>
>
>
> true
>
>
>
> Awkward: A summit meeting was notable for a strange
> hand-clasping
> between Trump and Thiel, with Thiel later saying he
> wondered, “I
> hope this doesn’t look too weird on TV".
>
>
>
> “He absolutely was certain of Trump’s
> sincerity when he said
> they’d be friends for life — only to basically
> never hear from him
> again or have his calls returned,” Wolff writes of
> Thiel.
>
>
>
> His sudden elevation to the centre of politics in the
> United
> States occurred as Thiel appeared to be busy trimming
> his
> remaining business exposure to New Zealand.
>
>
>
> In October 2016 he activated the buyout clause in his
> NZVIF
> partnership — requesting his public partners keep
> this news secret
> — seeing him book a gain conservatively estimated at
> $30m from his
> contribution of $6.75m, while NZVIF was left barely
> breaking even.
>
>
>
> The clause had been a feature of all NZVIF deals, and
> its original
> purpose to was to encourage new local venture-capital
> firms to
> invest in nascent start-ups. Its use by Valar — a
> savvy
> international operator which effectively went all-in
> on a single
> listed company — caused some concerns within the
> Government over
> what exactly it had got itself into.
>
>
>
> A 2014 government-commissioned report into NZVIF said
> the deal
> with Thiel “creates some difficult optics where, in
> the Valar
> Ventures example, the taxpayer is offering an American
> billionaire
> a loan at less-than-market rates”.
>
>
>
> The buyout led to finger-pointing in Parliament over
> who was
> accountable for the one-sided deal, and has cast
> serious doubts
> over the future of the fund as whole.
>
>
>
> But Thiel wasn’t done cutting his local links. In
> the middle of
> 2017 he cashed out of his flagship New Zealand
> investment in Xero,
> with Crunchbase now listing the company among
> Valar’s exits.
> According to available records, Thiel's only
> remaining local
> equity investments of note are small — recent
> valuations put it as
> worth a few million — stakes in Vend and e-reader
> technology
> creator Booktrack.
>
>
>
> Drury sees Thiel’s subsequent ghosting as more a
> lack of
> opportunities than any misrepresentation. Despite
> boosters, with
> only four million people the New Zealand economy is on
> par with a
> mid-sized city internationally and our technology
> industry is
> nascent.
>
>
>
> “The reality is they ran out of investable
> companies,” says Drury.
> The NZVIF fund, with its lucrative subsidy, being only
> half-subscribed by the time it was wound up, lends
> some support to
> this hypothesis.
>
> true
>
>
>
> The Founders Paradox: An art installation by Simon
> Denny using the
> medium of board games to portray Thiel as heroically
> trying to
> free himself from democratic rules. Thiel visited the
> exhibition
> in December 2017.
>
>
>
> A flying visit by Thiel to New Zealand in December to
> visit an
> Auckland gallery gives some credence to an alternate
> explanation.
> The venue, on Karangahape Rd, was home to The
> Founders Paradox,
> the latest work by artist Simon Denny, with the ideas
> of Thiel as
> a central focus.
>
>
>
> According to art critic Anthony Byrt’s notes
> accompanying the
> exhibit, Thiel’s hardcore libertarian and Lord of
> the
> Rings-inspired world-building fantasies — along with
> his position
> at the apex of the technology ecosphere — have seen
> him become
> “one of the most influential thinkers in the
> world”.
>
>
>
> (Asked by another gallery visitor what he thought of
> the
> exhibition — including a large rendering of himself
> as a
> blue-skinned knight fighting the forces of fair
> elections and
> democracy — Thiel reportedly said: “It’s
> actually a work of
> phenomenal detail.”)
>
>
>
> Denny’s work paints New Zealand as a stepping stone
> — and safe
> haven — for powerful technologists seeking to escape
> government
> limits on human activity.
>
>
>
> A crude description of this attraction for New Zealand
> came last
> year in The New Yorker where Reid Hoffman, the
> co-founder of
> LinkedIn (and a member of the so-called PayPal mafia)
> said the
> country had become shorthand for apocalypse insurance
> in Silicon
> Valley.
>
> true
>
>
>
> Boltholes: Fellow PayPal founder Reid Hoffman has
> described New
> Zealand as a preferred hedge for Silicon Valley
> tycoons concerned
> about the collapse of the United States.
>
>
>
> “Saying you’re ‘buying a house in New Zealand’
> is kind of a ‘wink,
> wink, say no more’,” Hoffman says.
>
>
>
> Drury says this trend started after the September 11,
> 2001, terror
> attacks on the US and hasn’t slowed, and considers
> Thiel as part
> of it.
>
>
>
> No other Silicon Valley hedger has quite gone to the
> length of
> Thiel, however. Internal Affairs figures show the
> libertarian
> internet tycoon is the only businessman in at least
> the past six
> years to have secured citizenship despite neither
> living nor
> intending to live here.
>
>
>
> Drury is aware of the controversy his one-time
> shareholder has
> caused, but says the episode was worth it.
>
>
>
> “So, maybe we were all a little starstruck back
> then.” he
> concedes.
>
>
>
> “My view is these people are net contributors, even
> though they’re
> not here all the time. I sort of joke, ‘If you can
> give me a
> 10-pack of passports, let me flick ’em
> around’.”
>
>
>
> Dunne, however, is unimpressed by Drury’s
> enthusiasm, saying the
> Thiel episode raises issues about both how citizenship
> was
> obtained and how much the country values its
> passport.
>
>
>
> “It’s a transparency issue,” he says.
>
>
>
> “As far as I can tell, having been granted
> citizenship, Mr Thiel
> has been conspicuously absent ever since.”
>
>
>
> Thiel’s presence in recent years appears to
> have been
> primarily related to real estate. An unexpected quirk
> in the tale
> of Citizen Thiel is how, despite his reputation as an
> investor
> with a Midas touch, he seems to be one of the few
> people to lose
> money in New Zealand’s recent frothy real estate
> market.
>
>
>
> In 2011 he bought a striking four-bedroom Queenstown
> holiday home
> constructed with Swiss granite and known locally as
> the “Plasma
> Screen”, due to its expansive windows, for $4.8m.
>
>
>
> Six years after he purchased the house, the local
> council assigned
> it a capital valuation of only $2.5m. Thiel similarly
> lost
> $200,000 on a Parnell property he bought in 2010 and
> sold two
> years later.
>
>
>
> The value of the land that brought him to public
> attention in New
> Zealand — a 193ha block of former Crown leasehold
> farmland on the
> shores of Lake Wanaka — is also intriguing.
>
>
>
> Bought by Thiel for $13.5m in late 2015, the previous
> owners had
> tried — and failed — over the previous decade to
> subdivide the
> section. Council planners said the site was classed as
> an
> “outstanding natural landscape” and it was
> unlikely they would
> approve consents for any more than the single building
> already
> present.
>
>
>
> Real estate agent Graham Wall told the local paper
> while the land
> itself — rolling scrub hills — wouldn’t seem out
> of place on the
> Desert Road, Thiel was immediately sold on its
> isolation.
>
>
>
> “You turn up there with a jaded billionaire from San
> Francisco and
> it’s, ‘Oh my God, I could have a house here and
> not see anything
> except lakes and mountains — the best thing on Earth
> and for
> $10m!’”
>
>
>
> For now council records show this land appears to be
> being banked.
> In the two years since Thiel made his purchase, no
> resource or
> building consent applications have been filed.
>
>
>
> Exactly what is intended for the land at Damper Bay is
> unknown,
> but Thiel has built at least one physical bolthole in
> this
> country.
>
> true
>
>
>
> Plans for Thiel's house in Queenstown, including
> new panic room.
>
>
>
> According to building consent records, his Queenstown
> Plasma
> Screen holiday home last year suffered a serious fire,
> causing
> more than $500,000 in damage. Building consents for
> the repairs
> filed with the Queenstown Lakes District Council in
> May show Thiel
> took this opportunity to rebuild and repurpose a
> walk-in closet.
>
>
>
> Plans now describe this nook as a panic room.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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>
> #yiv4698768321 dd.yiv4698768321last p
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>
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> div.yiv4698768321file-title a:active, #yiv4698768321
> div.yiv4698768321file-title a:hover, #yiv4698768321
> div.yiv4698768321file-title a:visited {
> text-decoration:none;}
>
> #yiv4698768321 div.yiv4698768321photo-title a,
> #yiv4698768321 div.yiv4698768321photo-title a:active,
> #yiv4698768321 div.yiv4698768321photo-title a:hover,
> #yiv4698768321 div.yiv4698768321photo-title a:visited {
> text-decoration:none;}
>
> #yiv4698768321 div#yiv4698768321ygrp-mlmsg
> #yiv4698768321ygrp-msg p a span.yiv4698768321yshortcuts {
> font-family:Verdana;font-size:10px;font-weight:normal;}
>
> #yiv4698768321 .yiv4698768321green {
> color:#628c2a;}
>
> #yiv4698768321 .yiv4698768321MsoNormal {
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>
> #yiv4698768321 o {
> font-size:0;}
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> #yiv4698768321 #yiv4698768321photos div {
> float:left;width:72px;}
>
> #yiv4698768321 #yiv4698768321photos div div {
> border:1px solid
> #666666;min-height:62px;overflow:hidden;width:62px;}
>
> #yiv4698768321 #yiv4698768321photos div label {
> color:#666666;font-size:10px;overflow:hidden;text-align:center;white-space:nowrap;width:64px;}
>
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>
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> #yiv4698768321 .yiv4698768321replbq {
> margin:4px;}
>
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>
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>
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>
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> font:99% Arial, Helvetica, clean, sans-serif;}
>
> #yiv4698768321 #yiv4698768321ygrp-mlmsg pre, #yiv4698768321
> code {
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>
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>
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>
>
> #yiv4698768321 #yiv4698768321ygrp-msg p a {
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>
> #yiv4698768321 #yiv4698768321ygrp-msg
> p#yiv4698768321attach-count span {
> color:#1E66AE;font-weight:700;}
>
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> #yiv4698768321reco-head {
> color:#ff7900;font-weight:700;}
>
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>
> #yiv4698768321 #yiv4698768321ygrp-sponsor #yiv4698768321ov
> li a {
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>
> #yiv4698768321 #yiv4698768321ygrp-sponsor #yiv4698768321ov
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>
> #yiv4698768321 #yiv4698768321ygrp-sponsor #yiv4698768321ov
> ul {
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>
> #yiv4698768321 #yiv4698768321ygrp-text {
> font-family:Georgia;}
>
> #yiv4698768321 #yiv4698768321ygrp-text p {
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>
> #yiv4698768321 #yiv4698768321ygrp-text tt {
> font-size:120%;}
>
> #yiv4698768321 #yiv4698768321ygrp-vital ul li:last-child {
> border-right:none !important;
> }
> #yiv4698768321
>
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