BrisConnect is a multibillion enterprise set up to build a series of PPP road and buslink projects in Brisbane. The backers are the usual big names like Macquarie Bank and Deutsche Bank.
Yet a Melbourne woman, named Hang Fe, just bought a 10 per cent stake in BrisConnect and you can do likewise if you have a spare $32 000 sitting around (immediate word of advice:DON’T). Shares in BrisConnect are currently trading at 0.1 cents, so Hang Fe’s investment brought her no less than 32 million of them.

The catch (there’s always a catch, isn’t there) is that these are partly paid “stapled securities” carrying with them an obligation to pay an additional $1 a share next April, and a further $1 in early 2010. For 32 million shares, that comes out at $64 million dollars. But most analysts say the value of fully paid shares will be well below $2, so anyone who pays up will lose a lot of money.

It seems safe to say that, at this point, holding BrisConnect shares makes sense only if you have no other assets the company can seize to enforce the $1 payment. For someone in this position, the shares appear to represent a one-way bet, admittedly at long odds. And, presumably, anyone who is in position to pay will be sure to sell out before the payment is due in April: a problem with partly paid shares of which I was unaware until now.

Since the remaining payments almost certainly won’t be made, the obligation will therefore fall on the underwriters. That in turn raises the question of whether the underwriters will still be around, and in a position to pay up, when the money falls due. That seems fairly likely as regards the payment due in 2009, but much less certain as regards Macquarie in 2010. At that point, the whole thing will presumably fall back into the lap of the Queensland government.

Note: I am Not a Financial Advisor, and I don’t claim an exact understanding of either Brisconnect or the implications of buying partly paid shares when you are already insolvent. So, please seek proper advice before going anywhere near this.

Hat-tip: Rabee Tourky alerted me to this

Here’s a post on the credit crisis from my colleague, Rabee Tourky

In a Minneapolis Fed. research paper Chari, Christiano, and Kehoe
examine three claims about the way the financial crisis is affecting the economy as a whole and argue using a number of graphs that all three claims are in fact myths.

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It’s an analysis familiar to most on the Left. Support for laissez-faire is a hypocritical pretence, typified by Republicans who denounce a universal health care scheme as “socialist” while backing huge handouts for wealthy sugar producers.

For cultural and historical reasons, the United States has never had a proper socialist party of any significance[1]. Instead

the socialism we do have is the surreptitious socialism of the strong, e.g. sugar producers represented by their Washington hirelings.

In America, socialism is un-American. Instead, Americans merely do rent-seeking — bending government for the benefit of private factions.

As I say, familiar stuff. But it’s mildly surprising to see it coming from George Will.

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Supporters of social democratic and labour parties have had plenty of experience of seeing their parties in office. Despite some substantial achievements there has been plenty of disillusionment, particularly in the case of coalition governments with centrist or liberal parties. Time after time, the promise of radical transformation has faded to hard slog for modest reforms or even (particularly in times of crisis) capitulation to the demands of capitalist orthodoxy.

By contrast, explicitly libertarian parties have hardly ever scored enough votes to elect candidates, let alone form governments. But now, thanks to New Zealand’s multi-member proportional system, a new government, led by the National Party, has been formed in which the ACT (Association of Consumers and Taxpayers) party (with a bit over 3 per cent of the vote) holds a couple of ministries. ACT was the subject of some enthusiastic commentary in open threads here, and an op-ed piece by John Roskam of IPA in the Fin (paywalled, maybe someone can find a link). They combine libertarian economic policies with the now standard accompaniments of climate change delusionism and coded law-and-order rhetoric.

Unsurprisingly, given the circumstances, the first announcement of the new government was that the longstanding requirement under the Public Finance Act for budget surpluses over the cycle was to be abandoned. At this stage, declining tax revenues are the main factor, but large-scale Keynesian stimulus is going to be needed, and soon.

Labour’s guarantee of bank deposits looks certain to be retained, and there’s every likelihood that more intervention, maybe even nationalisation, will be needed before the financial crisis is resolved.

As far as I can tell, ACT has had to settle for a review of public expenditure (plus the ministers’ jobs) as its price for participation in a government which seems likely to be forced in the direction of interventionism. It will be interesting to see how long they last.