Here's our summary of key economic events overnight that affect New Zealand with news the expected dairy price drop has been more than expected.
Dairy prices nosedived in today's auction. They fell the most since August 2023, down a massive -6.9% from the prior event, but are still +11.2% higher than the low prices at this time last year. In NZD the drop was -5.7%. Either way, there will be widespread disappointment in the rural sector at today's result because dairy had been a positive outlier in the sector. Of some concern will be that foodservice products like butter (-10.2%) and cheddar cheese (-6.9%) led the falls. Commodity WMP was down -4.3% and SMP was down -6.1%. And yes, because this is a stark interruption to the rising price trend since February, analysts will undoubtedly be assessing their new season forecasts. Fonterra too. Futures markets had signaled softness but it was the non-powder drops that were down more than expected.
But it isn't all tough news. In the giant American economy, retail sales at physical stores rose +5.8% last week from the same week a year ago, putting recent weakness behind it.
And May job openings rose by +221,000 from April to 8.1 mln, handily beating the market consensus of 7.9 mln and extending the evidence the American labour market isn't stuttering. Don't forget we get the June non-farm payrolls data this weekend, and that is also expected to show gains.
And the RealClearMarkets/TIPP Economic Optimism Index in the US rose by 3.7 points to 44.2 in July, the highest level in six months. And that was better than expected.
The US LMI held its positive levels in June. Inventories are lower, and demand for logistics services are rising in almost all other categories.
In China, while there are some positive signs from their recent PMIs, their property market woes are not going away. Vanke said its June sales were very modest and down more than -30% from a year ago. They need much better results than this to stave off collapse. And Country Garden said its sales were also flat in June from May, but are more than -70% lower than a year ago.
In South Korea inflation slowed further to 2.4% in June, from 2.7% in a month earlier and below market expectation of 2.7%. It pointed to the lowest reading since July 2023 for them and the June 2024 reading was lower than May 2024.
Overall Euro Area consumer inflation was up +2.5% in June, matching expectations. (A year ago this was rising +6.1%, so substantial progress since then.) Now neither food nor energy prices are exerting outsized pressure - it is all about services now.
In Australia, the central bank minutes for its June 18 meeting were released yesterday and these claimed they are on track to meet their inflation target of between 2 and 3% ... in 2026. That brought a few market guffaws. It is clear from these minutes that a rate hike is still on the table if data deviates from what they need to achieve their target.
The UST 10yr yield is now at 4.43% and down -5 bps. The key 2-10 yield curve inversion is holding at the lower -29 bps. Their 1-5 curve is also holding, now at -69 bps. And their 3 mth-10yr curve inversion is slightly more inverted at -93 bps. The Australian 10 year bond yield starts today at 4.45% and down -2 bps. The China 10 year bond rate is now at 2.25% and up +2 bps. The NZ Government 10 year bond rate is now at 4.73% and up +2 bps.
Wall Street is positive with the S&P500 up +0.4% in its Tuesday session, led again by the tech sector. Overnight European markets were all down an average of -0.5%. Yesterday Tokyo ended its Tuesday session up a strong +1.1%. Hong Kong was up +0.3%. Shanghai ended up just +0.1%. Singapore was up +0.9% however. The ASX200 however ended down -0.4% in its Tuesday trade, and the NZX50 slipped just -0.1%.
The price of gold will start today down -US$5 from yesterday at US$2324/oz.
Oil prices are marginally softer from this time yesterday at just under US$83/bbl in the US while the international Brent price is still at US$86.50/bbl.
The Kiwi dollar starts today slightly softer from yesterday at just on 60.7 USc. Against the Aussie we are holding at 91.2 AUc. Against the euro we are also holding at 56.6 euro cents. That all means our TWI-5 starts today still at 70.3.
The bitcoin price starts today at US$61,903 and down -2.1% from this time yesterday in a developing yoyo pattern. Volatility over the past 24 hours has been modest at just on +/- 1.7%.
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54 Comments
Infometrics paints a grim picture of the ongoing skills emigration from NZ.
Record numbers of people leaving New Zealand to work in Australia could have a negative affect on the workforce over the medium-term
seems likely that much of the country is experiencing a relative drain of its workforce of 25- to 44-year-olds
2 years since borders reopened and the Nats are still brushing this trend away as pent-up demand for OE, despite the data being inconsistent with their claims.
6-day workweek coming to NZ?
What a naive comment.
Has a looming shortage of GPs, midwives and nurses in NZ fared better for the workers still here? Or are they being worked to the bone to fill staffing shortages forcing more of them to leave the country in pursuit of better working conditions.
Teachers, policemen?
This isn't North Korea and you can't keep people from leaving.
Some will do better overseas, but most will just transfer the same problems to new geography, but they have to work that out for themselves. Not much can be done to convince such people otherwise, and we can't be as wealthy as our neighbor - who has all the same problems.
Given neither you, I or anyone here is in a position to do much other than moan, it's kinda naively pointless to keep harping on about it.
The health ministry could start by asking front line workers what the issues are and actually focusing on that. The typical response is to add bureaucratic burden when there are these sort of issues, e.g. more cultural safety or more forms or more audits or other BS, rather than doing the obvious increase pay rates and set safe staffing numbers. There is no shortage of investment bankers right?
Quite the contrary actually.
Several of our high-value business are finely balanced with barely enough skills in their sector to operate in this country.
The missus works for an accounting consultancy that has clients in the gaming industry. The sector is still bleeding talent unfortunately.
Smaller developers have no option but to relocate to Aus for better access to talent. The economic losses will likely be significant as these companies already had successful offerings on the shelves and were cashing in millions of dollars each year in IP checks.
Quite the contrary actually
Seems to have been the case for trades given the lack of new entrants over the past decades, so will spread into other vocations over time.
Just don't work in a field that's lacking in critical mass. You want to work at something that has 90% uptime, and be in the top 10% of performers.
And with a wall of asset renewal/maintenance, will we have the skills on hand to you know, not have transmission towers falling over or ferries running aground?
Good old short term strategies to keep scaling back on investing in the skills we need over the decades to keep the country running.
And the International Monetary Fund has expressed concern at the level of debt world wide, US$91 Trillion. PDK will be saying I told you so, but CNN are running an article discussing this. It identifies that the US is paying US$892 Billion in interest payments alone this year, and next year it will top US$1 Trillion. Unbelievable numbers! (https://edition.cnn.com/2024/07/02/economy/global-debt-crisis/index.html)
The article also clearly identifies this as a significant political threat as politicians refuse to address the problem, and leaving to just get worse.
The trillion dollars a year figure sounds more alarming considering it represents a-sixth of the entire US federal budget.
The US will likely raise more debt in the coming years with its social security programme estimated to face a cumulative $4.1 trillion deficit over the next 10 years.
Murray - this nails it:
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2024/06/22/281-the-battle-…
It suggests that Jfoe (yesterday's late thread) is not quite correct. We need to be discussing this (and the 4pm thread was a good start) because the media mostly shy away (peddling optimism to generate clicks?). We, here, are at the front of this discussion, seems to me.
But read the link carefully - yes, it's trillions.
edit - had forgotten this one, found it in the comments: https://www.rexweyler.ca/ecologue/2017/10/1/real-wealth-howard-t-odums-…
Inflation fading faster in countries where cost / level of debt is lower. Funny that. It's almost like increasing household living costs and adding billions to business costs doesn't help bring prices or wages down much at all. All pain, no gain.
Don't worry though, when we eventually get into range RBNZ will claim a stunning victory for medieval monetary policy.
Meanwhile, progressive countries are designing and installing new mechanisms to absorb and mitigate price shocks. They figure that the next time we get a big oil price spike, they would rather stop it at the border. In NZ, we will, again, let the next price shock propogate through our economy while we wait 24 months for monetary policy to kill thousands of businesses and put tens of thousands of people on the dole. When the price rises peter out, we will say 'yes, that was very necessary and successful monetary policy!'
The problem we have here is that we used to get price shocks / crises every 20 years or so. Now they will come every few years.
A tentative 0.25% reduction in even 6 months time followed by another cautious 0.25% who knows when is no saviour to households and businesses currently under pressure. Can’t repair that sort of damage retrospectively and 0.25% is as much use as it would be by lowering the water level from 10ft to 9.5ft to help a drowning man.
I doubt anyone on here has a problem with lowering the price of Debt. What many have a problem with is - what we use it for. Sort that débâcle out and perhaps then we can look as a lower cost of finance for Debt used to push the country forwards, not backwards into an ever increasing debt load of residential mortgage outstandings. Until then, don't be too surprised if the OCR, rises....
That's because we let the market and ideologues at RBNZ determine what debt can be raised for... low risk investment in weatherboard castles [tick], developing build to rent apartments in areas with sky high rents [tick], investing in a project that has a decent chance of increasing productivity [get outta here].
We used to extend cheap Govt / RBNZ credit to stuff that made our lives better. We lost the plot.
What are you proposing RBNZ do instead? Genuinely curious on the specifics. Cut OCR 0.25/0.5 asap, then end at X by end of 2024, Y by 2025? What are the actual numbers involved here?
RBA are at 4.35% cash rate with signs of inflation being sticky, possibly accelerating. Chance of a hike there this year seems much more likely based on markets. So would you say shoot for 4.6%? Or what exactly?
The problem that we need to face up to is that we grew our economy through the 1990s and 2000s by boosting private debt from 65% to 150% of GDP. The torrent of freshly printed bank credit money was gathered up as 'surplus' by businesses and then transferred to savers, shareholders and Govt (who reduced Govt debt to nearly zero). We celebrated the increase in GDP like it meant something.
Private debts approached 150% of GDP in 2008 at the same time as interest rates increased. Before we knew it, the interest being paid on private debt hit 15% of GDP! This meant that a huge proportion of household income was being redistributed via banks to savers (and bank shareholders). The economy crashed spectacularly of course, unemployment boomed etc.
We have just repeated the same pattern. Private debt levels were steady at 140% to 150% of GDP from 2010 to 2019 but low interest rates meant that interest payable on that debt was in the 6% to 7% of GDP range. Low interest rates gave private debt levels a nudge up in early 2021 and then RBNZ hiked the OCR from basically nothing to 5.5%. Interest payable on private debt went from 3.2% of GDP to over 10% of GDP in two years! That's $42bn per year going on interest payments - or a quarter of total wages and salaries!
So, to get to the point. Our private debt level is currently 140% of GDP and interest payable on that debt is around 10% of GDP. Our economy will crash and unemployment will continue to climb, until we get that interest payable back into the 6% to 7% of GDP range. That requires an OCR that starts with a 2 or a reduction in private debt that would take years. Here's a chart showing how reliably interest payments as a % of GDP create splendid recessions.
My general view is that monetary policy destabilises the economy, achieves sod all in terms of stabilising prices or taming inflation, and NZ would be a better place if RBNZ just parked the OCR at 3% and packed up shop.
"My general view is that monetary policy destabilises the economy, achieves sod all in terms of stabilising prices or taming inflation, and NZ would be a better place if RBNZ just parked the OCR at 3% and packed up shop."
That would mean however eschewing our membership of the 'club' and all that that implies....I suspect the hope is there is at least one more round to go before the club loses all credibility.
I agree with much of that - and made some similar points above. I guess what I struggle with is the idea that controlling the flow or stock of money (credit) is an effective way of managing the over-consumption of natural resources. When we slow the flow of credit money, it is not the people consuming too much stuff that lose their jobs and stop consuming, it is the young and precariously employed who consume the least. To move to a more sustainable future, we need something akin to a revolution in how we manage our economy.
Agreed - 100% (intended).
I was a little less-read when I started commenting here (damn near 20 years now) but I came at it from a physics POV, and could only see that a reduction in energy-input would require below-zero interest-rates (or someone else being screw-d by the interest-charger, more than they would have been). I think we're seeing the latter now - the banks and the elite are mopping up from everyone else, but under a sinking lid which eventually snuffs the whole process out.
Go well.
JFoe - I’m getting repetitive but it appears you think higher/normalising interest rates are the problem. They are not the problem. The excessive debt banks issued against the housing market is the problem.
We should be able to raise rates if and when we need to and the economy should be able to manage that - but what we need is prudent bank lending and what we’ve witnessed the last 20 years has not been prudent bank lending,
When rates are dropped, we need mechanisms in place to stop people/businesses going on debt benders so that if/when rates rise in the case of an external shock, we are in a position to weather that storm, Instead the mindset has been ‘interest rates are going to be near zero forever so take out as much debt as possible’ - this is why I have been calling NZ (and our housing market) a fools paradise. To the dismay of quite a number of society.
Jfoe... If I remember right, you have often mentioned Japan as a good example of Fiscal/Monetary policy, ....a progressive Country ?
Look at what is happening with its Currency..... crashing.
Japan does much of what u advocate.... Ultra low interest rates....Govt deficits..... Money printing.... et al.
AND.... Japan is a wealthy country... Its current acct. is in surplus, even thou its trade balance is not what it used to be.
Do u really think NZ could easily do what u advocate ...without possible/probable unintended consequences... ??
Just imagine if...NZ ran large Govt deficits.....printed money....and mitigated import price shocks..??? How would things unfold..?
Mitigating price shocks also requires some insight into the future.. ( It would be a bad bet to subsidize, say oil, if prices continued upwards ).
Falling value of a currency...asset price inflation...CPI inflation....Large current acct deficits are all symptoms of Monetary inflation.... in my view....and which has been going on in NZ for a long time.
Sometimes Markets dont play ball ( unintended consequences of policy decisions etc ) ..... The Yen crash is an example of that.
If our interest rates were substantially lower than ,say, USA or Australia..... what might happen ?
just thinking....
Clogged Bank Balance Sheets Cause Key Repo Funding Rate to Spike
(Bloomberg) -- A key rate tied to the day-to-day borrowing needs of the financial system hit the highest level since the beginning of the year as chunky Treasury auction settlements and clogged primary dealer balance sheets curbed lending capacity.
Funnily enough I was at the Warehouse yesterday too, as it was bucketing down and I wanted somewhere to take dumbthoughts jr for a walk around (or else she likes to play up at bedtime) and also because mrs dumbthoughts wanted me to try and find some home brand makeup product that is doing the rounds on TikTok. Alas there was no stock ... at least something sells at The Warehouse.
My observations:
- The store was practically empty
- Pricing was definitely inflated, even on sale items. E.g. massive display of V Energy drink cans, but you can literally buy a single can for a better price at the petrol station and it's much cheaper for a box at Pak N Save.
- The Warehouse doesn't help itself by having so many items out of stock, untidy displays, clearly no care/effort to present the store well
My Warehouse shares are starting to challenge my Rivian shares for biggest plummet, and Rivian was just an IPO punt.
Conversely, I went to Farmlands yesterday and had to fight for a park. Looked like most people in there were only buying feed and supplements though. Didn't see anyone going near the Milwaukee stand.
Unemployment is up sharply in places like New Zealand where the supply shock had previously pushed labor demand well beyond pre-2020. Even so, joblessness is how substantially higher than '19 and before. Still steadily rising, too. https://youtu.be/qRNC6ROnyFE Link
35% of Auckland property sellers choose to delist rather than meet the market
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/350330068/auckland-house-sellers-givin…
Yep we have friends who have had their FHB friendly investment property on the market in Auckland for a few months now. Dropped the price a few times and no offers at all. Now pulling it to turn it back into a rental, hoping that they can get through the next year until payrises, increasing rents and dropping interest rates make it a better prospect.
Dairy prices nosedived in today's auction.
The "climate" has become an excuse to introduce totalitarian controls, vast new taxes and restrict our freedoms unnecessary. The Covid-era controls are to be re-introduced under some "climate" story that is as tall as the Covid story was. Link
WEF - Now moving beyond just carbon tax! She says: Other Aspects of nature that are easy to quantify should be charged for! We probably wont be able to charge tax on all of nature on day one. But let’s start by adding tax to water. All of nature will be owned & taxed… even Show more
Cannot believe some here still deny climate change is a hoax? The evidence piles up daily but yet its a grand conspiracy for more control...spare me. The kids are right ..
Category 5 hurricanes are somewhat of an anomaly relatively speaking in any hurricane season. However, a Category 5 hurricane on before the 4th of July is unprecedented. University of Miami hurricane expert Brian McNoldy posted, “#Beryl holds the new record for earliest Category 5 hurricane by a huge 15-day margin now.” This storm continues to break records, ravage the Caribbean region and stun scientists like me.
It's not denying climate change, it is questioning who should be responsible for reducing emissions. So long as the private jets whiz around to COPxx talk-fests there is no credibility from those telling other people to pay without sacrificing anything themselves.
Reducing emission is a fudge-phrase.
Consuming fossil energy is the real description.
And if we stop that, it's all over Rover - there is no energy replacement, by several orders of magnitude.
And the fossil stock is definitely finite.
So we need to be asking what the new construct looks like? Because this one is Fu..ed.
Looks like we will be seeing less brand new spotless Ford Raptors driving around over the coming months...
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