Here's my Top 10 links from around the Internet at 10 am today in association with NZ Mint.
As always, we welcome your additions in the comments below or via email to bernard.hickey@interest.co.nz.
See all previous Top 10s here.
My must read is #4 on whether the Internet destroyed the Middle Class.
1. The IMF speaks - Here's the IMF's latest report on the New Zealand economy, hot off the presses this morning.
The IMF is generally positive, but does note New Zealand's rising current account deficit.
It also points out New Zealand's banks are still exposed to short term loans on international financial markets.
New Zealand's fast-rising house prices also get a concerned mention.
As does the chance of an early hike by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand in the Official Cash Rate to deal with it.
Happy reading.
While a recovery is underway, growth this year is likely to remain modest, with an increase in construction activity offset by headwinds from budget deficit reduction, the strong dollar, and the recent severe drought. Risks arise from persistent low national savings and large external liabilities, and from high and rising house prices. Directors welcomed the authorities’ continued efforts to reduce these vulnerabilities.
Directors agreed that the current accommodative monetary policy stance is appropriate, although a tightening may be warranted if house-price and credit expansion begin to fuel inflationary pressures.
Directors agreed that banks remain sound, with recent stress tests showing that the major banks could withstand a variety of sizeable shocks. They observed, however, that banks remain exposed to highly leveraged borrowers and to rollover risks associated with large short-term offshore funding needs.
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2. Cicada farming? - The FAO has come out with an interesting report on how insect farming could be the way to meet the world's growing demand for protein.
Here's the Economist with a nifty graphic how cheap insects are to run. Hard to love though....
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3. 'Get in behind Cyber-Shep' - America is changing its laws to allow Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to be used domestically. The biggest users, it seems, will be those in agriculture using drones for crop and herd management.
Who needs a sheep dog when you could sit at home in the armchair with an iPad?
Here's the New Yorker with the detail.
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This week sees the publication of “Who Owns the Future?,” which digs into technology, economics and culture in unconventional ways. (How is a pirated music file like a 21st century mortgage?) Lanier argues that there is little essential difference between Facebook and a digital trading company, or Amazon and an enormous bank. (“Stanford sometimes seems like one of the Silicon Valley companies.”)
Much of the book looks at the way Internet technology threatens to destroy the middle class by first eroding employment and job security, along with various “levees” that give the economic middle stability.
“Here’s a current example of the challenge we face,” he writes in the book’s prelude: “At the height of its power, the photography company Kodak employed more than 14,000 people and was worth $28 billion. They even invented the first digital camera. But today Kodak is bankrupt, and the new face of digital photography has become Instagram. When Instagram was sold to Facebook for a billion dollars in 2012, it employed only 13 people. Where did all those jobs disappear? And what happened to the wealth that all those middle-class jobs created?”
5. Strolling the Thames in China - Vice reports on a ghost city in China built to look just like London.
6. Not so fast - FTAlphaville digs beneath China's apparently strong retail sales growth over the last year. It's not as strong as it looks, it seems. The table is fun to look through.
The Chinese are big gold buyers.
Those banking on a speedy bounce in Chinese growth are unlikely to take much comfort.
On retail sales, the rise was almost entirely driven by one thing: the sharp sell-off in gold last month. Many Chinese consumers took the drop in prices to snap up jewellery, which led to a gold supply shortage in jewellery chains, retail banks, and even the Hong Kong gold exchange. As shown here, courtesy of ANZ, jewellery, medicine and cars were the only areas to show growth momentum in April vs March.
7. More warning signs in China - Bloomberg also looks at a slowing of investment growth in China and what it might mean for future growth.
China’s fixed-asset investment unexpectedly decelerated last month while industrial output trailed estimates, adding to concerns that the economy will fail to show much of a recovery this quarter.
The data may test the new leadership’s tolerance for slower economic expansion as President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang implement policy changes to improve the quality and efficiency of growth. The central bank warned last week that while the foundation for stable growth isn’t yet solid, stimulus policies could trigger inflation.
“China’s economic recovery remains weak,” said Li Wei, a Shanghai-based economist at Standard Chartered Plc. “The government will stay vigilant on local-government debt, keep property-market controls and discourage public spending. All of those measures will restrain China’s growth rebound.”
8. Europe's leadership divide - One of the biggest problems in Europe is recapitalising and cleaning up its banking system.
Reuters reports on the the divisions within Europe on just how to do that.
The European Central Bank clashed withGermany on Tuesday over how quickly the euro zone should complete a system to deal with failingbanks.
A separate rift also emerged at a European Union finance ministers meeting over whether or when big depositors should suffer losses, as they did in Cyprus's bailout.
10. Totally Jon Stewart on Bill O'Reilly, Benghazi and the IRS targeting Tea Partiers
62 Comments
An absolute ripper of a read about what the Japanese 'experiment' involves:
http://www.economonitor.com/edwardhugh/2013/05/14/the-real-experiment-t…
The interesting thing is just throwing more money into the banks has achieved very little in the US, it simply didnt make it to the man in the street to spend and generate inflation. So it looks like Japan is going to do the same thing, oh how bright....not. Now if they handed this money to the Japanese govn which used it to get competitive tenders to build hospitals etc then that would get to the man in the street...but no...it will slosha round shaes and commodities making life harder for the man in the street, and hence fail, and hence yet more deflation.
part of the theory on inflation is of course is that its partially the expectation that there wil be inflation in the future that causes inflation. So the BoJ saying its going to print for 2 years and keep doing it is exactly the words needed...but its just words if the money isnt in ppls pockets.
"Maybe this cost push inflation is the “wrong kind” for some adherents of Abenomics" yep thats correct, its counter-productive.
The defination of madness is doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result.
regards
Wasn't brave enough to be so blatant :-)
But, once you have seen Jamie Oliver demonstrate how a chicken nugget is made, you realise it will be food processing companies who will pulverise farmed insects, and reconstitute the resulting slurry into a protein "extract" or "suipplement". Then its just a short 'hop' to 6 burgers for 2 quid at ASDA. [Many horses breathe a sigh of relief at this point]
The French are eating grasshoppers and have been eating snails for a while now. Henry Charrier, aka Papillon, survivied on a diet of cockroaches as a protein suplement. Yum...!
So i guess there is hope for humanity after all. When everything else is gone, we can eat whatever is left, including cucarachas, just like Henry...
I think I will become a vegetarian! Nah, on second thought, I'll go fishing on a fishpod chocka full of snapper just in front of my house... Fish farming will be a lot tastier...
HGW
" a tightening may be warranted if house-price and credit expansion begin to fuel inflationary pressures"...
Even if the RBNZ is allowed to raise the rate tomorrow...it will be 2 years from tomorrow before the rise would begin to have an impact!
2 more years of property bubble inflation...ooops sorry...not allowed to use that term are we!
#3 I just went out and had a conversation with the girls. They scoffed at me. One of them showed me her canines, or should I say her missing canines, which have been broken off on bulls ankles. Questioning me on how a drone was going to move a reluctant bull. I had a ready comeback. They would be armed of course. I can see it now, yes sitting at home with the ipad. Every shepherd in the country once they hear this news will be fighting to get the new technology. I cant wait either.
Then it crossed my mind. Who was going to open and shut the gates. A minor technocality I guess.
Youre not taking into account the 24 megapixel camera on the drone. With infrared. yep. No heading out in the middle of the night in the frost to check Maisie and her progress calving. Sitting on the sofa watching reruns of Game of Thrones with one eye, the other on the split screen on the ipad with a closeup on Maisies bum from the drone. Ooh if only beef was worth more than a piddly $4/kg I wouild buy one now.
Belle - you're not thinking outside the paddock. Why not attach the camera to the bull? You'd get an excellent view of the cow.
Seriously, folk get too narrow too soon; camera capability means that one on a pole in the home paddock or on the highest feature will be able to scan the farm - flying is too energy-intensive, much as I'm a flying enthusiast.
Agree re real worth of real food. There's a serious ground-swell thinking the same way. Ever watch 'Farmer John"?
The must-read Drones book is Daniel Suarez 'Kill Decision' and his earlier books are ripping reads about technology too. Just don't expect much in the way of character development...
And I see that Chinese retail "data" is Still missing them quote marks in yer reporting.
I'm waiting for the word 'unexpected'.....
The Boatman question is silly. It simply identifies one parameter, then hangs it's hat on that. It's either spin, ideology, or just non-thinking. Which, Boatman? One parameter might be the amount of paddock required, presumably grass vs grain area.
But the big, unasked question is: why are we even discussing insect consumption at all? This is in a world where concurrently everyone is advocating economic growth, and building for population growth.
All biota is part of the food-web. We are already the biggest species by biomass on the planet. We eat. We are eating out way through every fish-stock, drawing-down every aquifer-level, degrading soils, and chewing through never-more fossil fuels to maintain the 'system'.
This suggestion is somewhere between cognitive dissonance, denial, and stupidity.
Something like growth-forever economics, really.
Fair comment , and you are right on all the issues raised .We are consuming the planet to death , and cognitive dissonance is the biggest problem .
My point is that I have a problem with being exploited.
We read of hungry families in South Auckland , of kids going to school without food , and we have a food pricing mechanism that is corrupt , unfair and expoitative .
The Chicken Meat Pricing Cartel ( effectively run by an Australian Company) is depriving Poor Kiwis in the lowest socio-economic levels of one of the worlds cheapest sources of protein in the form of Chicken .
Its wrong on every level.
OK, I'll buy that.
But they are only doing what the 'free market' encourages.
So rather than tackling the effect, how about changing the cause?
We need a steady-state 'economy'. Go there, and you've dealt with the monopoly issue en-route. Not sure you will ever deal with the poor - not until we reduce population and consumption.
PDK - You need to think about what the free market is.
http://beforeitsnews.com/economics-and-politics/2013/05/rev-sirico-figh…
"When people are allowed to pursue their best interests wealth is generated. People must serve other people in order to make a living. It is only when the restrictions of the state enter, restrictions which are often sold as populist in nature but typically serve the interests of the powers that be, that we see the worst examples of poverty."
Crony Capitalists and Socialists are the one's who do the exploitation.
On the main we do not have a free market. Small to medium sized business's operate the closest to a true free market system. These business's have to serve other people in order to make a living if they don't their business model fails and someone else steps in.
Try to take a failed product, goods or servce back to a Government Agency or a Crony Capitalist it you don't believe me.
If you removed many of the Socialist controls people would make different choices on their personal breeding programmes as they would have to be self-sustainable. They would only breed the number of children they could afford to bring up.
Any system that does not promote self-responsibility is exploiting.
oh dear.
"When people are allowed to pursue their best interests wealth is generated".
Define wealth. I call it the ability to buy bits of the planet. No bits, no wealth, just meaningless numbers.
The rest is just an idological opinion - no fact anywhere.
Self-responsibility is good - I do it to the best of my ability - but I bet you don't. I bet you consume happily, using your denial to ease/override your conscience. Unfortunately, I'm talking about restraint - you seem to think it means 'making a surplus'.
We're past that nonsense. Why do you think the planet isn't responding as your kind hoped? Clinging to 'we didn't take enough free-market medicine, we need more' is stupid. It - money, commerce, consumption - was never driven by anything more than a big, short-term, injection of energy. It's the only reason you have the time to do things other than organise food/shelter, the only reason we've been able to invent etc.
This debate has moved on - I was at a lecture last night, two more this week, all accepting the limits to growth as 'given'. Sir Peter Gluckman is going to get there (just calling for the debate at this stage) but more and more they know. Only a dwindling number of dinosaurs will dream on. I appreciate that your generation weren't aware (actually that's not quite right, they had the same learning opportunity I did) and assumed all progress was a permanent step in a direction - sorry, it was temporary.
Define wealth. Here's the Business Dictionary. My emphasis:
1. General: Tangible or intangible thing that makes a person, family, or group better off.
2. Accounting: Value of an entity's accumulated tangible cash, land, building, etc.) and intangible (copyright, patents, trademarks, etc.) saleable possessionsminus liabilities.
3. Economics: Total of all assets of an economic unit that generate current income or have the potential to generate future income. It includes natural resources and human capital but generally excludes money and securities because the represent only claims to wealth. Two common types of economic wealth are (1) Monetary wealth: anything that can be bought and sold, for which there is market and hence a price. (2) Non-monetary wealth: things which depend on scarce resources, and for which there is demand, but are not bought and sold in a market and hence have no price. Examples are education, health, and defense.
I cannot define "better off". That is precisely the point.
Each person will define "better off" in a different way. Different people under different circumstances and at different times place different values on different things, and will therefore have different views as to whether they will individually be better off if they exchange one thing for another.
Similarly with "potential". The same object or circumstance will present different potentials to different people and they will therefore place different values on it.
That is why trade takes place and that is why it makes both parties to a freely entered into transaction better off.
You may define "wealth" differently if you wish. That is your right. Equally I have every right, if I wish, to define "force" as "the exercise of God's infinite power in furtherance of His divine will". But I would not expect to take part in a meaningful discussion with physicists about physics on that basis.
O F F S. I do not really think that force is the exercise of God's infinite etc. I invented that as an example to illustrate a point, that being that discussion is meaningful only if the parties agree on the meanings of the terms involved, and that if the discussion is about a particular field of knowledge then the discussion should use terms as they are defined in that field of knowledge.
I might equally say that even if I would normally take "bowler" to mean a kind of hat, I would need to accept a different definition of the term if I wanted to discuss cricket with a cricketer. Are you now going to conclude that I must be a fashion correspondent?
Sure is , but it should be much cheaper . Instead we have a dominant market player ( effectively an Australian owned Monopoly) in the form of TEGEL which is ripping us off .
A Fresh or frozen chicken should be around $2 to $3 each by international pricing benchmarks , instead its much more and you cannot import chicken meat
At 2 - 3 bux what sort of chicken would you get? Antibiotic fueled pulp I would expect. Come on boatman, be prepared to pay for something edible. Let the rest of the world eat slugs and snails. I want to be able to pay well and get a good product. And that means paying the grain farmer a decent quid for his product too.
Theres always something!
Now its GLOBAL COOLING,and its not an April fools joke, its actually more seriuos than global warming according the scientists .
On 30 April 2013 that esteemed publication FORBES MAGAZINE , published an article about scientists having found evidence of Global Cooling , thats right folks , Global Cooling !
What on earth is going to happen to all the scams and utter nonsense around Global warming such as Carbon Tax , Tradeable ETS units , farting cows and whole armies of " researchers and consultants" scamming the Government ?
I cant wait to see what the Green Party Policy on this one will be, now that we know our cows farting is quite harmless
You've posted that very recently, and it's been shot down. Why the need to repeat? Nobody bothers unless they have a vested interest, and/or an inability to dispassionately compare long and short term effects.
I make my suggestion again - that you are a spinner. I raised a serious point about food, population, global biomass. Rather than discuss it, you slapped that back up. Do you not realise that it it too obvious?
We will - are - having the discussion about limits to growth, whether folk like you want to or not. Sorry, but it's time because it's happening. Please don't waste the time we have - or put that another way, don't waste the time your offspring have.
Anyone challenging anyone without maths/science/engineering/evidence/data/facts is spinning. Which would seem to be too many right wingers in here. So if you want to start justifying your position(s) with maths/science/engineering/evidence/data/facts, go right ahead.
regards
Thanks DH - had forgotten about gish gallop.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2012/05/29/global-warming-alarmis…
"I am a professor and endowed professor at the University of Houston where I founded and direct the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and head the graduate program in space architecture. My background deals extensively with research, planning and design of habitats, structures and other in space and extreme environments on Earth."
So not a climate scientist then.
and in fact just reading that page, a fruity loop.
A great source for you Im sure.
regards
Boatman, you are ignorant, cognitively dissonant, ill-informed and possibly stupid.
Carl Sagan:
"We've arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.”
Fortunately for the future of my grandchildren your antediluvian views are being shared by fewer of the intellectually challenged with every passing day.
:)
no ammo use either?
sounds messy...way to go. LOL, I wonder how many ppl would eat meat if they had to get it the hard way, off the hoof.
Of course you didnt actually grow the pig, so that energy consumption was externalised and ignored. Thats what gets me about fish even tarahiki is $28 a kilo yet steak is the same price...wierd.
regards
Good old UN - bringing to us 3rd world practises such as roach munching. I trust Klark enjoys her silkworm sandwhiches. I am sure this will be compulsory under the next Green led government, compulsory insect protein as all the cows will have been shot.
So CO2 is 400ppm, crop growth seems to be better as well. I wonder if this is a co-incidence?
While the higher co2 is generally good, the unstable and extreme weather it brings with it is highly detrimenatl to crops output. So sure on a prefect year we'd see more but with more frequent and extreme droughts and rains the output on bad years will be a lot less or even zero.
ppl live say 70 years so really we need to look at taht as a time span for the average food output and not have 22 more babies one year because of an exceptional crop and then watch all of them die of starvation over the next 3 years due to extreme weather events.
regards
Insectivores R Us
I spent a bit of time in Korea in the '80s standing by the building of an oil rig and a bulk carrier. My local bar had free crickets as a snack.
It took a couple of beers to numb the aversion, but they were actually quite nice. They were roasted behind the bar and served by the plateful. Really crunchy and the nearest thing I can match to the taste is burnt coffee.
Korea was fascinating then, just emrging from rice paddy farming to massive technology based industries, they picked everybody's brains and while we sank slowly down the economic standings ladder they left us in the dust.
Great people. Tough and ndefatigable. You have to be because the place has only two states. Too bloody hot and absolutely frigid.
:)
Then they need learn the offence is equaled in the offer Steven......
.Albatross.!.. Albatross..! .Albatross for Chrissakes..!...
dja get wafers wiv it....?
Course ya don't get bloddy wafers wiv it..!
wot flavor is it..?
well, it's Albatross init , it's bleedin Albatross flavour..!
I'll take two please...
right.!
Ganet Ripple..Stormy Petrel on a stick...!
Title : Australia the next Eurozone Maybe ? link below at CNBC news. Personally I don't think it will be as bad.
The EU followed austerity and its failed, and badly, OZ says it wont so is defering the return to surplus. So quite why CNBC thinks its the next EU zone when its not following the failed austerity model isnt obvious to me....or maybe tahst it, it isnt thinking but its a political comment.
regards
The problem from the expert view of an over-the-hill engineer.
All these bloody economists and govt finance wonks are addicted to their Keynesianism, Austrian Schools and what-have-you. The reality is that every one of the crises these idiots create is different to the last and dogma and the old rules don't apply.
As we can see from the total mess the Europeans are making, sometimes a middle of the road approach is worth looking at.
As long as the Fed and many other central banks are privately owned and creaming interest for the 0.001% from the money printing nothing's going to change. The only hope is a new Bretton Woods and I'm not holding my breath.
I was fascinated to learn recently that the average Cypriot has 5 times the wealth of the average German. Mainly because they own their own houses which the Teutons don't. Puts the whole mess in a different light.
"addicted" indeed....it does strike me that they are being dogmatic, ie a bit of keynesian (or austrian) worked so more will be even better, and too much is just right...oops. I guess its because it gets political and not logic based. While the CB's can take some of the blame, most blame I think rests on Govns and we the ppl voted the losers in.
The 5 times the wealth of a cypriot is based on la la land / house appreciation/value that is only realised when you sell. If no one is willing to buy the price drops until someone will. That appreciation is also based on the now non-existant money laundering process, ergo cyprus is a basket case as there is nothing left to support those prices or its economy....looks like one big train wreck ahead and euro exit....and all those implications...
regards
This excel article left me both impressed and horrified (impressed they could, horrified they did)
http://www.neatorama.com/2013/05/14/Creating-Art-with-Microsoft-Excel/
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