Here's our summary of key economic events overnight that affect New Zealand, with news the world's factories aren't the driving force they once were.
But first, hanging over today is an imminent visit by a senior US politician to Taiwan, much to Beijing's fury and accompanying threats. It is a tense flash-point right now.
Separately, global factories are now reporting their upturn has stalled as production stagnates and new orders contract. But price inflation and supply chain pressures brought signs of easing. Business optimism fell to a 26-month low in July. Growth is strongest in India, Australia and the US while the EU is struggling.
In the US, both the major July PMI reports said new order levels fell in the month, taking the shine right off their factory expansion. Both are still expanding however as they work through large order backlogs. A dip in new orders isn't unusual as they head into their summer holiday season however and was less than expected. Equally notable is the easing of price pressure, recorded in both reports. The widely-watched ISM one called the July pullback "slight", but the internationally benchmarked Markit one noted the sharp easing of demand.
But four of the six biggest manufacturing industries - Petroleum & Coal Products; Computer & Electronic Products; Transportation Equipment; and Machinery - all still registered moderate-to-strong growth in July.
Defying the Chinese official version which has its factory PMI slip into a contraction, the private Caixin PMI fell but not into contraction. But this fall was more than expected. There were softer increases in output and new orders, employment fell at a quicker pace as firms cut back, and input cost inflation slowed notably, with prices charged falling again.
In Hong Kong, they have fallen into a second recession in 3 years as pandemic restrictions sting their economy which fell -1.4% in Q2 and further weakening its status as a vibrant financial hub.
And staying in Hong Kong, crisis-hit Chinese property giant Evergrande says that one of its subsidiaries has been ordered to pay US$1 bln for failing to honour its debt obligations.
In Japan, factories are still expanding at a modest level but the momentum is slowing.
In Taiwan, they suffered their steepest falls in output and new orders for over two years as their factory sector suddenly contracted in July.
India is a bright spot, recording a rare rise in their expansion, which is now bubbling along at a solid moderate rate.
That is quite the contrast to Europe where they slipped into a minor contraction in July, their first in more than two years. And that was the case for both Germany and France. Generally among other countries there, northern Europe is still expanding while southern Europe isn't.
Not helping is a sharp drop in German retail sales volumes, which although it was expected, came in at the bottom end of forecasts. The Germans are hunkering down ahead of a tough period expected to start in a few months.
Latvia is already in a tough situation as it has become the latest in a string of European countries to be cut off from its supply of Russian natural gas from Gazprom. But the Latvians say they are still buying Russian gas from unnamed 'others'.
Most think the EU has just three months to build resilience to a full winter cut-off of Russian gas. Progress is frantic everywhere and the signs are now reasonable that a unified EU will be able to cope.
The first of the two Australian factory PMIs was released yesterday, and it shows little change with a good moderate expansion continuing. The other local version recorded a decline to a more modest expansion.
And Australian house prices are losing altitude quickly. The CoreLogic home value index, covering the eight major capital cities, fell -1.4% in July, following a -0.8% slip in June and a -0.3% dip in May. The July fall is the largest monthly decline since 1983 and both Sydney and Melbourne are leading the way down.
At the end of today, we will get the August review by the Australian central bank. They are widely expected to raise their cash rate target by another +50 bps to 1.85% at about 4:30 pm this afternoon.
The UST 10yr yield starts today at 2.61% and down -5 bps from this time yesterday. The UST 2-10 rate curve is more inverted today, now at -29 bps and their 1-5 curve is slightly more inverted, at -31 bps. Their 30 day-10yr curve is now at +40 bps and flatter than this time yesterday. The Australian ten year bond is up +2 bps at 3.09%. The China Govt ten year bond is down -2 bps at 2.75% and near is low for the year. And the New Zealand Govt ten year will start today up +2 bps at 3.42%.
Wall Street has opened its week -0.5% lower. Overnight, European markets closed down a minor -0.1% softer. Yesterday Tokyo ended with a +0.7% gain, Hong Kong with a +0.1% recovery after a weak opening. And Shanghai ended with a +0.2% gain, also after a negative start. The ASX200 ended up +0.7% and the NZX50 ended up +0.3%.
The price of gold opens today at US$1769/oz in New York which is up +US$2 from this time yesterday.
And oil prices start -US$5 lower at just over US$92.50/bbl in the US, while the international Brent price is now just over US$99/bbl.
The Kiwi dollar opened today firmer from this time yesterday at 63.3 USc which is actually a six week high. Against the Australian dollar we are also marginally firmer at 90.2 AUc. Against the euro we are a tad firmer too at 61.7 euro cents. That all means our TWI-5 starts today at 71.3.
The bitcoin price has moved lower from this time yesterday, down -3.3% to US$22,950. Volatility over the past 24 hours has been moderate at just over +/-2.8%.
The easiest place to stay up with event risk today is by following our Economic Calendar here ».
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119 Comments
Despite the entire vast armoury of the State Department & associated offices of expertise, the hierarchy of the USA government seem hell bent on painting themselves into corners. If she was going to go she should just have arrived there unannounced justified simply by security precautions.
On this day in 1988, the US Navy shot down an Iranian civilian airliner, killing all 290 people on board (including 66 children). The US attempted to cover-up its responsibility for the atrocity & has never apologized or admitted wrongdoing. Many of the bodies were never found. Link
The Chinese army crackdown on the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests killed at least 10,000 people, according to newly-released UK documents.
The documents provide horrific detail of the massacre, alleging that wounded female students were bayoneted as they begged for their lives, human remains were “hosed down the drains”, and a mother was shot as she tried to go to the aid of her injured three-year-old daughter.
Probably not a good move to try and play 'moral high ground' when you're a brutal dictatorship that crushes thousands of students under tank tracks and hoses them down sewer drains, have active concentration camps with millions in them right now, and are responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of your own citizens.
And the price of a passive press
So the Chinese regime mowed down a bunch of angry workers & peasants instead of students and that means it never happened??
This stupid whataboutism is what gives regimes the ground to grow on. We know the US is no angel and have made plenty of mistakes, which have determined the course of mankind in horrible ways, e.g. steering us into a climate catastrophe, BUT this doesn't mean we should stop to call out evil where evil happens.
Going to Taiwan is a signal, the world will not tolerate another abusive "Motherland". We need to bring freedom and self-determination into every corner of the world. Only this will result in a human society that becomes sustainable.
They sure did. But it almost certainly wasn't as bad as the Western press makes it out to be. Much like the Western presses "concentration camps" in which you are led to believe are like Auschwitz, but are more likely detention camps with re-education for most of the people there, with an occasional bad actor/actors deciding to go too far and abuse their power ordering unspeakable acts. China should be censured for that and probably agree to human rights oversight/inspectors. But most Westerners have this image of these free people in the area that are struggling for freedom... wheras the reality is significantly more complex than people realise. Having been there and seen Xinjiang first hand, I can tell you simmering ethnic and religious tensions over centuries have clearly made the area very dangerous for everyone that lives there.
But pretty much any major power has done similar to people, just in different ways. The Saudi regularly murder their own dissenting citizens, the Australians have a frightful history against their own people. South African history is littered with murderous government rampages. Even here we have some pretty horrific past abuse that we don't want to think about. And China will regularly lock up and torture any subversive elements in their country as well.
The US, by and large, simply decides to exact it's government massacres on other people. Essentially protecting itself from being questioned internally, which upholds its "democracy". It's an interesting case in human psychology where people claim to care about the Chinese government killing 10k of their own people, but don't care about the US murdering hundreds of thousands in it's adventurism dressed up as spreading freedom. What will be interesting is how the US deals with the subversive elements in it's own country now, with the rise of the "freedom" groups, mainly far right, within the US, who now appear to operate with impunity.
Reminds me of an interview Putin gave to the BBC, David Frost I think, early on in his time of power. Accused of running the infamous Gulags, concentration camps, before, during and after Stalin, he responded that had the British not invented these in Sth Africa and were the British now expecting to be thanked for that accordingly?
Remind me of how many Americans were were sent to Vietnam under false pretenses and died. The USA is no better than China. The West keeps banging on about Chinas human rights while it sits around and watches all the other serious problems going on around the world with climate change and thousands dying of starvation. The bottom line is that everyone in the USA is shit scared of China rising to the number 1 spot and is doing everything possible to cast them in a bad light.
The tin pot dictators country has vast energy reserves that American allies (Europe need). How ludicrous for American allies to sanction the power that feeds you (energy), with America once again playing the big bully (supplying weapons to enrich Wall Street), with their proxy war.
Comment on Stuff this morning. FWIW:
I saw the first negative equity property come up for sale the other day... Bought in Jan for 750k now for sale at 575k.... Expect to see more of this!
If the lender has 20% equity to fall back on, then they will incur a small loss; at 10%, a bit more. Regardless, if the comment is genuine, then the lender is likely to have weighed the possibility that 'this sale will be as good as we will get' and take the loss before it escalates.
I guess the borrower had no means to offer a collateral top up to protect bank capital which remains at ridiculously low levels.
According to the Reserve Bank, the new capital requirements mean banks will need to contribute $12 of their shareholders' money for every $100 of lending up from $8 now, with depositors and creditors providing the rest.
Corelogic currently estimates my Wellington property at $200K below 2021 CV, and $350K below November 2021 peak. Personally I think its 2018 CV is closer to true value, so another $300K or so to drop. The property is mortgage-free so I'm unconcerned, but these would sound like scary numbers to recent buyers, and I can understand why people are FOOPing themselves.
My leafy central "Masterton" property purchased in December is still tracking 5% above purchase price or 25% above 2020 CV according to ANZ/Valocity. However there are some recent sales (last 1 - 2 months) at a similar price vs CV keeping things elevated.
As more people can work remote, desirable suburbs in sleepy towns that straddle semi-reliable commuter rail services will hold values reasonably well.
I think more importantly it is stable accommodation in a desirable location, that it might go negative in paper value should be of no impact to you if you can continue to service the mortgage.
If I were you I would not stress about negative equity, inflation used to be banked in by population, now it relates to resources, asset prices will therefore recover in the long term.
Sadly a lot of the people who will get caught out will be young FHB who wanted nothing more than a place to live
https://reddit.com/r/newzealand/comments/wdd2g5/how_are_other_first_hom…
I still believe we haven’t even seen the tip of the iceberg. Rates have increased, and prices changed, at such a rapid rate the impacts are yet to be felt. People who bought at the peak won’t have rolled off the ultra low rates. People who have rolled off super cheap rates bought several months before the peak. So far very few people are being hit with both increased services costs AND low/negative equity, but that won’t be too far away.
Yes if things turn deflationary at some point over the next 12-18 months that is when the drops could really start to accelerate - especially if central banks are very cautious this time around about pivoting because of what they have just experienced with supply chains/inflation. They've just been burnt badly by overreacting in 2020....will they do the same in the near future after this inflationary scare (I honestly don't know....but they might be far more cautious)
This is exactly right, the real victims of this are those, who through life events or the real need for stability made the commitment to buy. This will be life-changing for these people.
I am serious in that the government should step in here, these people will face a crisis leading to real mental health issues.
I bought some shares a few years ago and they went down in price. I did absolutely zero research into the company or the conditions in that industry, but I did look at some graphs and figured they would only ever go up in price. Plenty of other people bought shares in this company before me and they made heaps of money. Can John Q. Taxpayer flick a few bucks my way to cover my loss? Otherwise I might have to take personal responsibility for my own decisionmaking and that's hardly fair.
Agree - the anger of the negative equity first home buyers should be firmly directed at those people who have made mega dollar the last 10..20..30 years in a rigged property market....especially when those same people were acting like sales people, on sites like this, in order to extract even more wealth for themselves.
Perhaps the government should bailout every business that fails and we have zombie companies everywhere?
The post-GFC 'we'll save you' mindset has distorted 'free markets' so much that nobody really believes in the concept of risk exists anymore - nobody believes they can lose. But the risk of failure and the experience of pain is exceptionally important in order to regulate human decision making....and governments and central banks have systematically destroyed that factor over the past 10+ years. We need to learn a few painful lessons - and having witnessed the arrogance of many New Zealanders the last 5-10 years, even on sites like this, we need a good kicking to realign our thinking/actions/decision making.
I've noted before - as FHB's my wife and I bowed out of the market ~8 years ago when LVRs were introduced. Prices were already ridiculous compared to incomes then (we'd been warned of a bubble since ~2006, from memory).
I have some sympathy for those FHBs who were caught by FOMO - we understand what it's like to be given 6 weeks notice your home will no longer be your home because the landlord has decided to cash in (happened 3x to us since then, but then again, we've also moved a number of times to either more desirable or more suitable locations so it cuts both ways).
But it was always a game of 'hot potato', and if you're only reason for purchasing a house in an obviously inflated market is FOMO, you'll just have to take your chips where they lie. The game might not have continued for so long if FHBs had en masse stopped playing sooner, as the vast majority of specuvestors were competing with them rather than established households moving as they grew, but it would have continued for a while still due to vested parties sitting in government.
This crash has been coming for years, and for the average Joe, it is sorely needed. My only fear is the government will find some miraculous way to intervene - they've kept it going via targeted policy for so long now, and so many are invested. Just how many multi-million dollar property portfolios can a politician afford to service as interest rates rise - I bet some of them will feel pain before long too.
Both, we are fully bailing out the banks already, companies had their share of support through COVID, if new home buyers excluded because reasons... I think that would be unfair. I am just saying that rather than just support the outrageously profitable banks why not use that funding to directly support these people (as per GV27's solution).
We have supported so many in so many ways, this seems a churlish wast of an opportunity (via the GV27 solution) to not avoid the very real destruction of peoples lives. It's not a small problem.
"What about people with screeds of cash?"
You're right, the people looking for shelter and a stable roof over their heads who are now facing financial ruin aren't the victims, it's moneyed boomers and the people who caused the problem who cashed out and now want something else to moan about.
Imagine, just for once, the deck not being stacked massively in your favour. How frightfully terrifying.
As I say below, if we taxed those benefits that those parties have extracted from the economy, at the expense of others, then we would be in a better position to more evenly redistribute the wealth to avoid the problems that people are talking about in this thread.
I think ultimately we have made a very uncomfortable bed for ourselves to sleep in - and yet in the process of making this bed, when people have pointed out how uncomfortable it is going to become, you got silenced by those who were making money in the building of the uncomfortable beds. They didn't care that it was going to cause sleepless nights and bad health down track. I did, but would mostly get laughed at.
As a result, I unfortunately have no sympathy for our countries predicament because it was entirely predictable given the selfishness, greed, lack of ethical judgement and goodwill of people over the recent past in respect to our housing market. Any any attempt to improve the ethical nature and goodwill of the participants got ridiculed by most people that you would raise the issues with. Greed is good and getting ahead were the most important issues....now we will have to deal with the consequences of this behaviour that had no moral compass.
Imagine if we just taxed the property investors who have been making hundreds of thousands/millions in untaxed gains to cover this risk? But no, we encouraged speculative behaviour because nobody in government had the courage to do the right thing in order to bring to an end this reckless behaviour.
And even worse, if you attempted to discourage the reckless behaviour, you got called names and belittled by those with vested interests (doom goblins lol..) who want to profit at the harm to the social and financial stability of the country as a whole.....If people get the pitch forks out because it all turns to custard, its those who have been boasting about how great it has been, being a property investor, well the pointy end of the sharp objects should be aimed towards them, and its their doors that society should be knocking on first.
There is a good, and I mean really good, option for a soft-landing that would let owner-occupiers refinance through a state-backed lending programme and minimal or even zero interest. Imagine ZIRP instead of FLP. Which is a better use of funds? Just pissing it into the market for all and sundry, or targeting it at those who are going to start to really feel the heat when prices go backwards fast? Remember, investors can just sell down and cash out, which will further accelerate drops for owner-occupiers. Parasites on the way down as well as on the way up.
The alternative is the total decimation of discretionary spend for decades to come, which will take jobs, livelihoods and lives with it.
Or perhaps we should just take the homes from people that own more than one, and don't need to do so, and give it to those who need a roof over their heads without a mortgage?
I mean how far are we going to go with market intervention here before this gets completely ridiculous?
Or has it been that central banks and governments have created these circumstances by preventing house prices from regulating, that we already are past the point of ridiculous?
Or has it been that central banks and governments have created these circumstances by preventing house prices from regulating, that we already are past the point of ridiculous?
As usual, the flaws with democracy are the average voters. A two-party system which a small cohort of voters can swing things to their favour for literally decades. And even when we do elect parties to fix the mess they've caused by taking the easy way out, they gaslight us and deliver sweet FA while banking deep six-figure ministerial salaries, for the primary output of blaming everyone for why they can't do the thing they promised they would.
A good point, but in reality their taxes are being off-shored to Aussie banks as profits so it is better for our country? I am not sure luck is the only ingredient in being able to be a house, I am sure it is a part of it but being able to earn a good income is not just luck.
I would argue it's primarily luck - none of us choose the circumstances of our birth or our genetics, our propensity for success or for addiction etc. But that is somewhat beside the point.
We only have so many tax dollars to spend (or borrowed money to spend...), and I'm not convinced protecting FHBs from the consequences of their decisions is the most deserving case. Remember they still have the house they bought and the mortgage they signed up for. If they had any awareness of the world they would have noticed interest rates drop in the last few years and surely must have been aware this could reverse.
The idea that people who actually live in their own homes are acceptable cannon fodder because the country printed tens of billions of dollars to enrich investors who blew out house prices for years prior to Covid is morally repugnant and people who think home owners facing financial ruin through no fault of their own so they can learn some sort of lesson is verging on sociopathic.
What about landlords using serfs to fund their retirements by buying more and more rental properties - pricing out the serfs from the housing market, while increasing rents?
That to me is sociopathic.....using a housing crisis to enrich yourself at the expense of somebody else is the lowest form of ethical investment from my perspective.
Not cannon fodder, certainly unfortunate in their timing. What are you actually proposing - any owner-occupier can refinance through this deal, just those who bought during the 1-2 years of low interest rates, anyone who reaches negative equity?
I worry that the benefits of this accrue to those with the highest income and the largest loans. Not exactly an equitable distribution of scarce tax payer funds.
If carefully targeted and used as political cover to allow house prices to fall significantly, I could be on board. There would need to be carefully designed rules to ensure multiple property owners are not benefitting (they can sell a property if they run into liquidity problems). Otherwise the investor with a dozen houses in a company who recently upgraded to a larger mansion will be queueing up for another hand out.
The primary aim should be cheaper housing and we need to be careful not to apply more fuel to the fire, even if it is only smoldering at present.
I mean, we already have a Brightline test to decide whether something is your primary residence. So it's not impossible to think we could make this distinction. But absolutely, it should be available to owner-occupiers only.
In an ideal world, we'd have some sort of government-backed retail bank, who might be able to refinance your loans and put a portion on a zero-rated product, perhaps that you could service using a rate premium on the borrowing you need to take on your next home - just so that the sale and purchase of new homes as people needed them could continue without people being trapped.
What a shame such a thing does not exist.
And yes, I support absolutely using it as a chance to push the reset button on housing, including a CGT on family homes, land reforms, etc. But the harder you push the reset button, the more I think you would need to open up such a scheme. But you would then need to make sure you'd screw it up by piling in more and more people or else we end up back at square one.
I have one house, which I live in and I feel incredibly sorry for people who are not sleeping at night, worrying if and when they will lose their homes. I've been there - it's not good and certainly no lesson I would wish on them. Having said that, I have made good and bad financial decisions and not expected the Govt to come in and help me.
Housing is consumption. They are not investors they are speculators. Central bankers allowed this 'speculation' by keeping interest rates artificially low. Sadly young people were conned into speculating on an $800,000 house with low incomes. Housing never goes down.
Western world banking is the most amazing con game of monetary magic ever created, where private banks create money out of thin air and lend it at interest to the public. Time for a reset.
If by 'propping up' you mean 'not seeing owner-occupiers financially sunk' then sure. But the benefit of doing this is you could in theory totally reset house prices to affordable levels if you were smart about it.
The reality is that you can't make one cohort of New Zealanders the ones holding the bag when the music stops at every turn. That's the point of a soft-landing: the people getting it aren't as worse off as they could be through no fault of their own, while you still get the social benefits of increased home-ownership because more people can actually afford to own as prices fall.
But sure, I guess we could 'teach those kids a lesson' by financially ruining a few of them enough to the point where they just give up on life or the country. I mean, they'll think twice before being born at a certain time again, right?
'to the point where they just give up on life or the country'
If you have missed it...that has already happened during the boom of property prices...let alone if they start falling.
I know many depressed young people who have sat on the sidelines of the property market because they didn't want to take on $500,000 in debt....and others who have simply given up on the country and left.
I also know of others in their 30's who the stress of a $800,000 mortgage, dealing with Auckland traffic, and trying to raise a young family got to much and are no longer with us this year.
So the harm isn't just on the way down (which it appears you are trying to suggest) - its been the collective pain on the way up as well.
Absolutely not my intention. There is nothing worse than being lectured about apparently not working hard enough to get a deposit as prices exploded, only to see your quality of life and financial position crumble and have the "I told you so" sanctimony on the way back down.
I can personally attest to how hard that is to deal with.
So many people on this website warned people of pending downturn but then you had a number who encouraged people to buy if any FHB did purchase they should of known rates would not stay at emergency levels for ever, house prices actually went up 40% in this time period. Now prices are going the other this will enable more people to get on ladder at much lower price.
...and we also had the PM, Finance Minister etc commenting about how they would prefer house prices to stay level; not fall, just stop rising so fast. The message was loud and clear: We're going to keep the party going because it's good for us.
A traditional economic cycle is seven years. This one is at least six years overdue. You could have sat on the sidelines for six years waiting for a correction that should have happened, but didn't. Meanwhile, the country has been dreaming up ways to bankrupt itself specifically to force more money into housing and keep the easy credit game rolling over. Or, you could have bitten the bullet and gotten a stable roof over your head. After all, the deck has been stacked against buyers for so long, you're getting into stopped clock territory thinking it might actually change.
And again, you assume that aspiring FHBs will still have jobs if everything goes Baywatch-up. There is likely to be a major drop in spending and employment if house prices walk back at a big rate. Everyone assumes they will still have a job and be in a position to buy a house. This is a foolish assumption.
And landlords assume that their poor renters will continue to be able to pay their rents....that also is a foolish assumption (if things get as bad as what you suggest....if FHB can't buy a house, then I'd suggest your typical renter might also be struggling to pay rent).
All that would mean is that house prices need to go even lower!
Yvil you are one of the people who thought emergency rates would be here long time, I suppose you should have worked harder at arithmetic and not so much on grammar if you are over leveraged go and see a financial advisor remember if you learn from mistakes you will be a better person. Keep calm enjoy life, you are really good a fabricating stories about real estate some quite funny and some a little far fetched.
Ah a bailout. More deficit government spending to fuel inflation, playing right into the central bankers hands, to indebt western world governments. Government should stay out of this collapse, let people fail, especially the bankers, who will quickly become insolvent. Remember when banks created all this money (through issuing debt), the interest needed to pay back the loans, was never created. Herein lies the problem with the private central bankers Ponzi scheme.
I also feel incredibly sad for these victims (who were simply following advice to get on the first step of the property ladder). I've been through two economies like this and no matter what anyone says, you don't make it up when times get better. Having said that, I disagree with you - it is not the Government's responsibility to step in. Yes, the Reserve Bank created this problem (along with Govt) by printing too much money, keeping interest rates too low for too long and even now, allowing banks to have cheap money (until Dec), but they shouldn't make matters worse by stepping in.
Fair enough I respect your opinion, and we are agreed on this being a very sad circumstance, I just think the government will be stepping in some circumstances anyway.
For example, If (and more likely when) interest rates make servicing these very large mortgages untenable that will require these new house owners to be foreclosed on by the banks and their houses sold by the banks. This will remove their life savings and make them more reliant on housing benefits into the future. There will be a smaller number that also have businesses that rely on their equity in their houses for security against business loans and these businesses will also need to be closed. It could also be that these people require benefits for accommodation and income support. Lastly, it is likely that such a life event will trigger mental health issues for some requiring mental health support (such as it is in this country).
NZ GOVERNMENT BOND REPURCHASES
LSAP Repurchase History Data
Published: 18 July 2022
Published by New Zealand Debt Management at https://debtmanagement.treasury.govt.nz/investor-resources/data
Deal Date Settlement Date Maturity Date Type Volume accepted ($m) Accepted Yield %
15-Jul- 2022 19-Jul- 2022 15-Apr- 2041 Nominal $415 3.950
Yesterday NZDM reported outstanding 41's issuance down to $6,035m from last month's release reported at $6,450m
Minister of Health Andrew Little plans to recruit more Kiwis into nursing & doctoring by a plot in Shortland Street which highlights the government's recruitment plans ...
... and as if we needed any more assurance that Ardern's team had completely lost all commonsense ... the day after $ millions were sent overseas to expats who're needing a cost of living boost ...
OMG ! ... when will this madness end ...
The gold standard for fuster cluck decisions is Max Bradford, his pièce de résistance demolishing Broadcasting House……….to make way for ministerial offices………….which never got built because it turned out they weren’t all that important after all.
No one since has come even close to old Maxie!
When you absolutely don't know what you are doing you can only take the advice of technocrats. Increased wages cause inflation (they are barely a contributor but anywho) is the advice of treasury.
So with a determination to not pay real wages to our critical staff we have to deal with the consequences and immigration becomes your only option.
The clear evidence that immigration has caused immense social issues with regards to social services, infrastructure and asset values cannot be considered as we chase our tails into the ground.
Labour the party that actually implemented catch 22.
Are "Speculators" Interest.co's Godwins law? :)
On a serious note you are right of course, given inflation most rises are really just reducing true wage deflation. The use of immigration to continue to suppress wages is an outrage and the total lack of objection in our bought and paid for (to the tune of a$90m/yr https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/government-communications-spending-increa…) media remains a true shame.
Just read an entire thread of comments above which started about Pelosi's visit to Taiwan, and then the comparison about who is the better evil, China or the USA?
Without once asking what Taiwan think about being able to invite who they want. Or don't they matter?
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