Inside Money:Why underarm offers stink

Australian Trevor Chappell bowls along the ground to New Zealand's Brian McKechnie in 1981 to prevent him scoring a six off the last ball of the match. Photo / File

I checked the schedule to confirm that the Cricket World Cup does conclude at some particular point in time.

It seems like the competition has been droning drearily on in the background forever but in fact it's only been about five weeks. Maybe that's the point of cricket; that it slows time down enough to provide fans the illusion of a longer life - even the one-day version of the game.

Other things can play tricks with time, too, like this Bernand Whimp guy the Securities Commission is so intent on shutting down.

Whimp's trick was to disguise the fact that the value of money degrades over time in the fine-print of what the Securities Commission described as "misleading offers" to buy shares off people.

And while I can applaud the Commission for its action - it's also appalling that it felt the need to.

It's not illegal to make stupid offers for assets - capitalism depends on it - but it's stupid to accept them. How far does the Securities Commission have to go in protecting New Zealanders against their ignorance when, in this case, it's so easy to defend yourself against the spin of tricksters?

Whimp appears to have made a business out of offering low prices for shares to suckers who don't read the fine-print, or check the freely-available latest values or seek independent advice.

The Commission, and it has caught on in the media, refer to such Whimp-like practices as 'low-ball' offers, which sounds, I thought, like an innocent US baseball term.

In fact, or according to the internet, 'low-ball' traces its origins to a US railway signalling device and probably comes to its Whimp-like meaning via a version of poker where the lowest hand wins.

Interesting but perhaps it's not a strong enough term to ward off New Zealand investors from Whimp et al.

How about we label them 'underarm offers' from now on. Our cricket history shows us how to handle that sort of legal, but most unsporting, behaviour: block the ball, throw your bat into the air and walk off the pitch in disgust, just like this chap did.

Go you Black Caps.