Here's our summary of key economic events over the long weekend that affect New Zealand, with news most of the major 2024 elections have now been held, with overall results tending to go the way of the incumbents. The only major one left to go is in the US - but some may find the UK one of local interest in the meantime.
But first, today marks the 35th anniversary of the deadly June 4, 1989, crackdown on protesters near Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Hong Kong is expected to keep a tight lid on memorials that were once an annual tradition, as sweeping security legislation imposed in the city has forced organisers to disband, sent dissidents to jail and prompted many citizens to steer clear of sensitive political issues. But significant commemorations are still expected in Taiwan and other parts of the world.
This coming week will end with the US non-farm payrolls report, and it is currently expected to bring a +180,000 jobs expansion, so no start of their long-expected slowdown yet. Prior, they will report factory order levels and JOLTs data.
And this week we get the ECB monetary policy update on Friday and everyone expects then to cut by -25 bps to 4.25%. The Canadians are also expected to trim -25 bps from their official rate on Thursday, to 4.75%. And before that, the Indian central bank will do its own review, and they are expected to hold at 6.5%.
First in the US, the ISM factory PMI sagged on weaker than expected new orders which was a surprise to analysts. Overall the small contraction extended. This is a shift that moved bond markets, but not so much the equity markets. But this version was quite different to the internationally benchmarked S&P Global/Markit version which recorded an improved expansion - and on expanding new orders. Take your pick.
US PCE inflation steadied at 2.7% in April from the same month a year ago, and the monthly rate held at +0.3%. But the core PCE price index, the Fed’s preferred gauge to measure inflation, rose by +0.2% from the previous month in April after a +0.3% increase in March, the slowest increase so far in 2024, and below market expectations of a +0.3% rise. Even though these changes were actually tiny, the easing bias did move financial markets (and probably by more than they deserved).
The monthly rise in personal consumption expenditure was pretty tame in April, and was matched by an equally tame monthly rise in personal disposable incomes.
American petrol pump prices are now lower than a year ago, as weakness and oversupply spread in global oil markets. (The EU is getting the same lower price advantage.)
Canada said its Q1-2024 GDP expansion was +0.4% for the quarter to be +1.7% higher than year-ago levels. But a -25 bps rate cut to 4.75% is still expected on Thursday this coming week from its central bank.
We should note that Canada has been abnormally dry recently, and its famed hydro-power network is on reduced rations. That will have big consequences for their aluminium smelting industry, among others.
The Mexican presidential election delivered a landslide win for their first female president (her opponent was female too). She has almost won a supermajority in both houses of their parliament. Her party is the main left-wing force in Mexico, and continues its rule since 2018. This extends the global trend of incumbents winning big.
India's elections are over now and early tallies suggest the incumbent BJP candidate Modi has won in a landslide.
And India's Q1-2024 GDP expansion came in larger than expected at +7.8% higher than year-ago levels. Analysts were expecting a +6.7% expansion, but it has maintained the "about +8%" rate they have delivered for four consecutive quarters now. Over the past year the expansion is +8.2%. Given India's rising heat and water stress levels, it is hard to be confident it can maintain that level of expansion for long.
Japanese retail sales made good gains in April, up +2.4% from a year earlier and above the +1.9% rise expected. But some of this was catchup from the modest +1.1% rise in March. But Japanese industrial production was little-changed in April, a hesitation after their large +4.4% rise in March from February. Still, they have some more recovery required to peg back the prior declines.
After two months of small expansions, the official China factory PMI contracted in May. A small expansion was expected again in May, so this will be a disappointment. Meanwhile their official services PMI is still expanding, but at an unchanged and low rate.
China's banks are increasingly called on to "support" various sectors that are stuttering. That is resulting in shrinking margins. Even in the face of that commercial pressure, they are choosing not to support trade with Russia, a long-time gravy-train for them.
The EU reported that Euro Area inflation rose to 2.6% in May, boosted by services (+4.1%) and restrained by low oil and energy prices (+0.3%). Their core inflation rate therefore is rising, up +2.9%.
The bromance between Europe and China seems to be fading fast. Reports out Saturday say that major carmaker Great Wall Motors has closed its EU headquarters and released all its employees in a major pullback from is European ambitions. Apparently product acceptance in these markets was surprisingly weak. And Chinese EV battery makers are reassessing their grand expansion plans there too.
In Australia, their minimum wage will rise +3.75% on July 1, 2024. More than 20% of their workforce is on minimum wage awards. The award is less than expected but more than current inflation (3.6%). Markets remain unsure of the next RBA on June 18 with many still expecting a hike. They point out the risks are high for inflation to stay elevated with this minimum wage hike because their target band is "between 2 and 3 percent".
New Zealand trade representatives are to sign three of the four-pillar Indo-Pacific Economic Framework agreements in Singapore. The IPEF is a US-sponsored trade initiative (with bi-partisan support in Congress) designed as a competing trade arrangement to China's RCEP. The IPEF is a high-standard agreement, imposing standards that some signers are baulking at (India, for example). It looks like the one we aren't signing up to at present is the supply chain deal. After signing, we become committed to China's RECP, The US's IPEF, and the nonaligned CPTPP. IPEF’s 14 partners represent 40% of global GDP and account for 50% of New Zealand’s exports.
The UST 10yr yield is now at 4.40% and down -10 bps from where we left it last week (Saturday). The key 2-10 yield curve inversion is la little more at -42 bps. Their 1-5 curve is also deeper at -74 bps. And their 3 mth-10yr curve inversion is very much deeper at -98 bps. The Australian 10 year bond yield is now at 4.33% and down a sharp -13 bps from yesterday. The China 10 year bond rate is little-changed at 2.32%. The NZ Government 10 year bond rate is still at 4.88% but will probably adjust when trading opens.
Wall Street has started it's week down -0.2% in Monday trade on the S&P500. European markets started its week up about +0.5%, except Paris which was unchanged. Tokyo ended its Monday trade up +1.1%. Hong Kong rallied +1.8% but Shanghai fell -0.3%. Singapore was up +0.4%. The ASX200 ended its Monday trade up +0.8% and of course the NZX50 didn't trade because of the long holiday weekend.
The price of gold will start today down -US$1 from yesterday at US$2348/oz.
Oil prices are down -US$3 at just over US$74/bbl in the US while the international Brent price is now just over US$78/bbl. These are four month lows.
The Kiwi dollar starts today more than +¼c firmer from yesterday at just under 61.8 USc. Against the Aussie we are nearly +¼c firmer at 92.6 AUc. Against the euro we are also marginally firmer at 56.7 euro cents. That all means our TWI-5 starts today at just on 70.9, up +20 bps from yesterday.
The bitcoin price starts today at US$69,275 and back up +3.0% from this time yesterday. Volatility over the past 24 hours has been moderate at just on +/- 2.2%.
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86 Comments
And the price of a passive press
Wanna bet in Feb 2022, Speaker Mallard, PM Ardern & Co wished they had available such effective enforcement means of suppression and vanquishment of the parliamentary protestors. Imagine though, glad to say, you would lose your money which undoubtedly indicates why many Chinese immigrants here, decide it is not so wise to visit their homeland.
Chinese propaganda Audaxes. A twitter comment by a Chinese national(?). Is it a statement of fact or an opinion. I've never heard of any actusation before that accused foreign powers of prompting the students to protest for their rights and arming them when the CCP used tanks to squash the protest.
It's clearly stated on their website and would for sure be in a loan contract you'd sign...? Do they not also set minimum repayments?
Standard lending criteria
You must be an existing or new Westpac Choices home loan customer, meet standard eligibility and lending criteria and be able to repay the loan in full within five years.
https://www.westpac.co.nz/home-loans-mortgages/options/greater-choices-…
I was in the process of switching to them until I realised this as well.
I've got one of the ANZ equivalents, which is 1% for three years, but the loan term is structured alongside the rest of my mortgage. This means the repayments are lower and the remainder of the amount needed to pay it off by the end goes into a high interest savings account.
Once the low rate comes off, I can either pay it off or roll the balance into the rest of my mortgage if I needed that saved cash on hand for some reason, so the flexibility at the moment is a big advantage.
Other news – There’s a complete media blackout regarding the acceptance by the World Health Organisation of the hurriedly-prepared IHR pandemic preparedness amendments that Ashley Bloomfield and his cohort of authoritarians just rammed through. This move is wildly unpopular, if you read the consultation feedback just from New Zealand. But if you read between the lines from the OIA release detailing what NZ wanted, they’re basically saying that we didn’t go hard enough during the last pandemic. They want more PCR testing, harder restrictions on travel, more coercion to vaccinate, but most importantly they want to distance governments from political fallout. It’s just an astonishing denial of the reality of what’s happened in the last few years.
Yes, if we get one of those flus or other respiratory diseases with death rates in the 10-50% range (and there are several to choose from), we will really need to step up our response and drop the silly culture wars. Although Covid had the neat trick of being transmittable without serious symptoms which adds to the challenge (as opposed to SARS, say, where monitoring body temperatures was a very useful response).
"respiratory diseases with death rates in the 10-50% range"
These don't exist, stop being dramatic. COVID and spanish flu managed to get the CFR up to 2.5% by not testing and confirming cases of everyone who was fine recovering at home. While bad treatment is given in the panic, Google "spanish flu aspirin".
SARS was about 10%, MERS is about 35%, H5N1 is about 50-60%. It's possible that the truth is somewhat lower due to missed detection, and treatment would quickly improve in a pandemic situation as we saw with Covid. But yes, nasty diseases are out there and we were very lucky with Covid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_mortality_from_H5N1
It's going to be very difficult/impossible to convince me a respiratory disease we have been tracking for 20 or so years has less than 1000 cases, yes. Either it's not respiratory or most likely we all been exposed to it or cross immunity from the generic flu is effective.
Take the deaths and divide by it by 0.5% for a lower bound of exposed people.
I think you're misunderstanding the situation here. This is a disease that tends to be caught by agricultural workers in close proximity to the animals with the disease, and in general it does not spread human-to-human. This makes your 'loads of mild cases' hypothesis less likely as people have gone in and tested other workers/housemates looking for those extra cases.
The fear is that the longer this situation of occasional infection goes on, the more likely it is that mutations will line up to produce a disease with similar characteristics in terms of fatality, but much easier spread. We're talking about potential pandemics here, not something that has already raced through the population.
This is covered in the Wiki I linked, there have been attempts to look for those asymptomatic/mild cases with limited success. It's possibly you're right, but also very possible that this is actually a very nasty disease. There's no reason to think this is at the upper limit of what nature (or generic engineering) could throw at us.
You could also look at Ebola, which has a ~50% fatality rate and likely has better statistics as countries really throw the kitchen sink at trying to eliminate outbreaks.
"A case-fatality ratio based on an accurate and all-inclusive count of cases would be invaluable, but unfortunately it is impossible to attain. The ability to diagnose every case of H5N1 as it arises does not exist. A few small reported studies have attempted to gather preliminary data on this crucial statistic, by carrying out systematic blood testing of neighbors and contacts of fatal cases in villages where there had been confirmed H5N1 fatalities. In most cases, this testing failed to turn up any overlooked mild cases, though in at least one study mild overlooked cases were identified.[35] [36][37] These methodical studies of contacts provide significant evidence that the high death rate among confirmed cases in the villages where these studies were carried out cannot be simply attributed to a wholesale failure to detect mild cases. Unfortunately, these studies are likely to remain too few and sketchy to define the complex situation worldwide regarding the lethality of the varying H5N1 clades. The testing and reporting necessary for mass serology studies to determine the incidence of overlooked cases for each existing clade and strain of H5N1 worldwide would be prohibitively costly.[citation needed]"
"Its likely that a bad flu pandemic will cause way more death."
Only if we panic, forget everything we know about treating the flu and and use some new experimental dangerous treatments. So, it's almost certain.
"I do not think vaccination should ever be forced..."
They have been working on a flu vaccine for years and best they ever got was 50% effectiveness for one winter. Remember this when they try to tell us that their magic new vaccine is >90% effective.
OK, you are just being (intentionally) dumb. Did i forget to use the word respiratory in front disease one time? (respiratory infections would be a better term)
It took us how many 1000s of years to figure out how to beat smallpox and it had probably had more than 50 cases a year on average I don't know how this is relevant.
Without vaccines we would have smallpox. Smallpox is estimated to have killed up to 300 million people in the 20th century and around 500 million people in the last 100 years of its existence. A really nasty disease that we don't have now. All because of the smallpox vaccine.
The flu vaccine unfortunately doesn't eliminate the disease, it just helps your body deal with it, reducing symptoms. If your young and healthy and you don't want it, don't get it. The covid vaccine was a similar vaccine. When everyone was getting a new disease at once, it saved lives and helped the health system from being overwhelmed.
All this info about vaccines is readily available from official sources. If you choose to look for conspiracies, then conspiracies is what you will find.
Correct, funny how the media never reports on the number of people dying from the flu each winter but is all over the first person to die of Covid like its some tragic event. I think the people would revolt against something like Covid happening again, it was like the boy who cried "Wolf", no way the masses are going to put up with lockdowns and having their lives put on hold for years again, which is not necessarily great if the next Pandemic is truly lethal.
@Zwifter and @tim52 - easy to spout the 'cry wolf' rubbish when the COVID response (vaccines, social distancing, etc.) saved millions of lives.
Covid-19 vaccines saved an estimated 20m lives during their first year
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-esti…
Fact is nobody really knows how many lives it saved like nobody knows how many lives it has also ruined by the after effects of the vax. The media no longer want to talk about it to the point its like it never happened. All I can say is I'm so glad I never got the vax based on my own personal risk assessment. Its really bad how the vax was mandated and people were all but forced to take it to keep their jobs and the rest lined up like sheep. I was very lucky in that I was given the choice.
They locked down the population so the disease wouldn’t spread quickly and overwhelm our hospitals causing chaos, until a significant portion of the population was vaccinated. I hate this idea of people saying ‘it wasn’t that bad’ they seem to lack imagination, of course it wasn’t that bad that’s the point of the lockdowns.
also my grandma recalled the lockdowns of the Spanish flu, when they closed schools down etc. so you better believe we’d do it again.
Interesting though, I wonder if there are any stats or studies being done around the behavioural impact of lockdowns and mandated vaccinations in terms of seeking medical assistance. I feel like there is a lot more health anxiety in the general population these days from many I've spoken to, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was confirmed that more people go to the doctor more often for things they didn't used to.
We need to learn the lessons from covid19 before appointing a supranational body to order us about during future pandemics. Here are one or two thoughts on what needs to be learned from covid19...
Lockdowns and masks were ineffective. Regulatory capture of medical organizations like the FDA, CDC, NIH, by pharmaceutical companies is a problem under normal circumstances, but it becomes a colossal problem during pandemics. This is because bureaucrats in charge of public spending succumb to an uncritical chain-of-command type mentality during times of crisis. This occurs at precisely the same time that opportunities for huge profits come within reach of pharmaceutical companies.
In New Zealand regulatory capture of Medsafe, ANZTPA, and the funding of those organizations by corporations creates a perfect storm of conflicted interests. Groupthink by politicians, and pressure from captured regulators, is a problem that needs to be addressed during pandemics. There needs to be a pressure relief mechanism that seriously incorporates non-vested-interest expert viewpoints during times of crisis.
Orthodoxy, and suppression of critical thinking, is a huge problem during pandemics. In New Zealand the vilification of NZDSOS, VFF, Reality Check Radio, doctors, scientists, even Nobel laureates has left deep scars in society, and resulted in a poor outcome for New Zealand.
Temporary abandonment of civil society frameworks like the separation-of-powers or the human bill of rights needs to be safeguarded against.
The covd19 vaccine was an abject failure, and its rapid deployment highlights the failure of captured regulators. The contamination by SV40, non GMP conditions used for manufacture, unusual limited liability clauses, high excess death rate after rollout, poor initial clinical trial results, inappropriate approval for pregnant woman and children.. it all needs to be picked apart and looked at seriously.
I think some of your lessons are dangerous extrapolations for Covid and may not apply to future pandemics. It's quite easy to imagine future diseases where lockdowns and masks are very useful tools.
I'm pretty agnostic on masks for covid, I haven't really looked into the research. Certainly I think people went a bit crazy with them - it was only ever a small risk mitigation at best (some reduction of an already small chance of catching the disease from the random person you walk past).
Lockdowns, I think NZ shows they were quite effective as we wiped out the disease and bought time to let the rest of the world figure out how to treat and live with the disease. You could argue the international isolation had side effects that outweigh the risk of the disease, but that maths could very quickly change in a future, more dangerous, pandemic.
Masks don't work - period! The Cochrane review says so. The Cochrane review is the highest quality of evidence that exists. It's completely unsatisfactory to say "oh well here's some crappy low quality observational study that says..." or to say "We know the Cochrane says they don't work, but we're making an executive decision because we think they might do something..." That's just false logic.
The kind of exceptionalism that you refer to is also false logic. It's the same false logic that was used all throughout the covid period. The idea that the lessons learned from history don't apply this time because this virus is soooo dangerous. That exceptionalism mentality is what's dangerous.
Not 'period'. The review says masks likely don't work for flu and covid with low to moderate confidence. I'm quite happy to defer to that conclusion but you are overselling it. I will update my priors accordingly, but this doesn't seem inconsistent with my previous comment.
I'm not sure what exceptionalism you are referring to, can you be more specific? Is your whole post abouts masks which I said I was agnostic about and thought were overplayed? If so, why are you reacting so strongly?
You’re glossing over the real issue which is regulatory capture of organisations like medsafe, and orthodox groupthink by politicians. The WOrld Health Organisation is such a captured organisation. In future pandemics, politicians should take any WHO directives with a large grain of salt.
Interest.co's running quotes have apparently become self aware
"If you ask something of ChatGPT, an artificial-intelligence tool that is all the rage, the responses you get back are almost instantaneous, utterly certain and often wrong. It is a bit like talking to an economist."
~ The Economist
My thoughts (among notable others) too.
However, the RBNZ's MPC might decide to wait a bit longer to be assured the 'tax cuts' + 'yet more deficit spending' don't halt progress in getting inflation down.
Next BoP print (19th June), GDP print (20th June) and various pre-CPI releases should give us some clues before the next MPS (10th July).
But the next CPI print comes out after the MPS on (17th July) so the RBNZ's MPC may use the absence of that data as an excuse to hold (ghouls that they are).
Have I mentioned that November 2023 was the time the RBNZ should have started the easing process?
.
Just read that in the USA (in election year) more voters want a recession than persistent inflation.. the outcome being they will keep rates HFL with risk of a rise.
I think a majority in NZ would probably support that arguement for HFL. Salaries aren't rising, we can't lower taxes without more inflation, we cant increase benefits or invest in public service or infrastructure... and prices are already too high for most people to make ends meet.. if we drop the ocr anytime soon and asset prices or salaries rise... even a bit then inflation will roar
also we can't just lower our ocr without the world starting to relax at the same time unfortunately. This may have a long way to play out.
Having had asthma attacks everyday from going to school I can definitively say yes often many days. Seen the ER many times as a kid. In fact my first words were mimicking the breathing alarm machine. I got better at not breathing for extended periods & learning to move during those periods to create safe spaces because ambulances and ERs were so normalized they became more of a hassle and annoyance compared to learning to avoid being outside in residential areas during high smoke periods. Normally residential housing & schools are deadly and moving down the road or in a contained vehicle space with air filtration is a vast improvement. I never skirted exercise though I just picked types and spaces that were more conducive to health (once you leave areas where NZ housing is there are vast improvements or enter spaces with significant air filtration).
NZ houses are so poorly designed they let residential smoke in so if you have housing in these areas it is actually safer to go somewhere else and sleep in a car if you have to. Not ideal but smoke around housing is a significant killer and if it truly was life threatening then you would understand you do what you can to stay alive. Not stay living in housing or going to schools that are high risk. Yes those who suffer the worst effects of air pollution are regularly at risk from death and here is a clue in cities with the highest rates of active transport they have the highest rates of respiratory diseases & deaths. It is just a function of air pollution increasing the risk and the most dangerous air pollution is not being targeted at all.
Anyone who starts a bonfire or household fire is deliberately causing harm but why ruin the party when NZ could instead have better air pollution monitoring and filtration systems available. But we don't and instead wasted billions giving thousands of dollars to the richest most ablebodied people for EV car ownership, and removing transport and housing accessibility while being ignorant why over 80% of the population cannot cycle for all their transport needs.
What fools the public were. We already had footpaths for the safest form of active travel but it is dangerous to many because of the air pollution in residential areas from the smoke. We already had extensive railways for mass public transport but we were ripping them out for cycleways over the same paths in many areas while at the same time increasing thousands living in new housing who could have used it for travel. We advertise to people that public transport is far less important then cycling (something that was already more high risk and active transport was already funded with walking paths). Then we act surprised when those who are the best placed for public transport opt out of it because we have made it more dangerous and far more limited in its accessibility to houses & workspaces.
Most people in Auckland cannot use public transport for work & living needs, (Auckland has poor accessibility to high speed & capacity transit North, West and East) and they cannot use active transport. Hence more people will be forced to put up with higher costs of living and less time available for wellbeing just to perform the essential functions of getting to work. The fact Auckland has stuck with buses for more then half the cities' public transit (considering that we still have clear separation in Auckland's cities much in the same way as before), that we don't even have a rail line to the airport and back is a massive joke. Light rail never would have worked for the purposes required and was always going to be less efficient then existing rail systems that traveled to the same suburbs and areas. Light rail never would have added more public transport accessibility. In fact it would have caused a reduction in transport accessibility overall by its very design. But hey surely we made the streets more accessible to people by pushing to remove all the existing accessible transport options.
No wonder the options to WFH have meant there is significant drops in people going to offices and CBD. To think a simple lockdown or occasional WFH initiatives did more for the environment and transport loads then all cycling initiatives put together. It just shows how much NZ really does not care. Because if a lockdown enabled transport goals to be met and for others to finally experience a minimum amount of the same denial of transport they impose on others then surely it is representative of the end goal they are aiming for eh. But hey who cares if cyclists push for removing of the human rights of others & the essential needs for them to live simply for the cyclists luxury of choice. After all human rights & UN conventions don't really matter to NZ either. It does not matter if those with the most socioeconomic vulnerability have their access to education, work and medical needs removed from them. Because their lives never truly mattered to NZ in the first place and our priorities never were for improving the air quality. It was always about more entitlement and billions spent for the most ablebodied and wealthiest who need the least support.
If the ECB cuts 0.25% on Friday, this will trigger a series of cascading cuts among central banks as they try to preserve parity. In NZ, our central bank continues with the HFL nonsense and the NZD responds accordingly. In all likelihood, the RBNZ be making similar small cuts soon. (Wayhey! Only about 6-9 months too late though.) We should see long-end bonds reflect this in the coming days, weeks and months. And who knows, even our tiny stock market may see some life as the big money takes up positions.
S&P downgrades France's credit rating Standard & Poor's has downgraded France's credit rating from AA to AA-, citing a budget deficit in 2023 and negative economic forecasts. As the Financial Times notes, there are concerns that the country's debt-to-GDP ratio will rise until 2027, rather than fall as previously forecast. Link
China's banks are increasingly called on to "support" various sectors that are stuttering. That is resulting in shrinking margins. Even in the face of that commercial pressure, they are choosing not to support trade with Russia, a long-time gravy-train for them.
I've no doubt that trade will continue using less direct banking routes and/or other mediums of exchange. (Russia produces a lot of gold for example.)
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/518569/house-prices-consistent-but-…
However, the biggest price fall was in Wellington with the average price plunging 13.4 percent on April to $739,497, the lowest since November 2020, and 14 percent lower than a year ago.
13.4 percent in a month seems like a decent drop for such a short period.
Prices went up quite quickly in the capital, thanks to low interest rates coupled the gold rush within the public sector created by the previous government.
Many of our grads left walked away with just 2-3 years of experience to work as programme/project advisors at random agencies for 100K+. Who would want to spend hours doing boring technical design when you could earn much more pushing paper around and attending meetings all day long?
New art installation at the Beehive: 'Cuts in Context' | Taxpayers' Union
https://youtu.be/yNrkcwafB7M?feature=shared
Wage theft in Oz apparently gets a lot more official attention than here
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-04/work-wage-theft-claims-rising-le…
Msms non reporting of the recent Who gig is disgusting, but par for the course. This from the cheerleaders of the covid thing in the first place. They really are a toxic lot. I get more real news on the threads on this website than I do from all the msms put together.
Mind you, I did stop doing msm news many years ago now, so that could be a factor.
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