Not being shy at coming forward I am starting to wonder if there is anyone in the beehive that knows what they are doing.

Sure, 2011 is going to largely mirror 2010 and that was evident last year.

The economy had been flat throughout 2010 as people saved harder and paid off debt rather than spend. Apparently, this was happening a lot quicker than government had expected even though they had been advocating for it for some time.

Customers paying down debt doesn’t result in better cash flow but simply increases their equity. This is good, however it is only paper money as equity is worthless unless sold or leveraged against. Something the government is not keen for people to do.

So now we have a stalemate largely created by the government scare mongering.

People are now brain washed into thinking debt reduction rather than investment is the key.

But is it?

Appearing before Parliament's Finance and Expenditure Committee, English said the recovery would continue to have some challenges over 2011, and the onus was on the tradable sector of the economy to grow jobs in order to get unemployment down.

Personally I think the government should share some reasonability maybe by supporting a sustainable housing project rather than the growing number of schemes that are nothing more than smoke screens to make it appear they are actually doing something.

"They’re not rushing back to the shops and are not rushing into the housing market. And the big export prices haven’t started feeding through yet…" he said.

English appears to be fluttering like a fish out of water with no answers, content on finger pointing and unable to give any clear direction.

Sitting back hoping the export market will bail us out when the Australian economy is slowing fast isn’t going to cut it either.

So do we batten down the hatches and weather the storm that could last as long as three years or do we take the bull by the horns and make better use of what is at our disposal?

Over the last few months there has been disaster after disaster throughout the world and even here in New Zealand and each of those places require buildings.

We have the material and labour in abundance so let’s stop doodling on paper and pick up a hammer and starting building ourselves a better future.

It is insane to expect things to change when all we are doing is what we have always done.

Don’t be afraid to share your comments.

Brian Dalley is a leading Property Consultant | former NZMBA Mortgage Broker, and Real Estate Agent.
You can read more of his views and opinions on his website www.propertyprofit.co.nz.

German banks will face another stress testAfter numerous banks passed financial stress tests with flying colors only to be rescued later by government bailouts, planning is underway for a more demanding set of trials of European institutions.

European Union authorities in the coming weeks will launch a second round of stress tests for large banks and insurance companies in the bloc, in a move to bolster confidence in the financial industry.

Last year's tests, particularly in the case of the banks, were criticized by numerous experts as being too weak. Just seven of the 91 tested banks failed.

None of Ireland's banks was among those that failed. Yet the Irish government just months later sought an 85 billion euro ($113 billion) rescue package not only to bridge a massive budget deficit but also to cover looming bank debts in the country.

Germany's Hypo Real Estate was one of nine banks to fail the first test

The European Banking Authority (EBA), a newly created regulatory body, said Thursday it will conduct EU-wide tests in the first half of 2011, with the results to be published in the middle of the year.

Domestic financial regulators, the European Systemic Risk Board, the European Central Bank and the European Commission will be involved in the 2011 stress tests, according to the new regulatory body.

The EBA said it will separately initiate a review of liquidity funding risks across the EU banking sector.

EBA spokeswoman Franca Rosa Congiu told Deutsche Welle that the tests will cover a "broadly similar" group of banks and that the methodology and approach will be similar to the measures used for the first test.

Congiu said the next round of testing will include changes but declined to comment on what they could be. "Many of the details still need to be defined," she said.

Rather than quelling doubts about the strength of banks in the eurozone, last year's bank stress tests left the impression that they were trying to hide rather than reveal serious weaknesses. Markets are now in no mood for games, as the rising costs of borrowing even in France and Germany show.

None of the Irish banks failed last year's stress test but some later needed help
The bank stress tests are part of the new European System of Financial Supervision framework designed to assess the resilience of the financial sector and will be conduced in parallel with a second EU-wide stress test for the insurance sector.

The European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) plans to beginning conducting test for insurance companies in the second quarter of 2011.

The tests, which will cover at least half of the insurance companies per country, aim to "identify and quantify the impact of the different stress scenarios on an insurer's financial position in an adverse and very severe economic environment," the authority said in a statement.