Here's our summary of key economic events overnight that affect New Zealand with news of a big call by the US Federal Reserve.
First up you should know that the US Fed cut its benchmark policy rates by -50 bps, to the 4.75%-5.00% range, a larger cut that most professional observers had anticipated, but in line with some advance financial market pricing. (And it might be notable, that for the first time in almost 20 years, one voting member dissented, preferring only a -25 bps cut.)
They say the key to the cut is their "greater confidence" that inflation is beaten.
The Fed’s so-called dot plot, which they use to signal its outlook for the path of interest rates, shows the median 2024 year-end projection for the federal funds rate fell to 4.38%. That implies another -50 bps in cuts are coming soon. The median estimate for the end of 2025 decreased to 3.38%.
Markets initially reacted with Wall Street rising, commodity prices rising, the USD falling, and UST bond yields moving relatively little at the long end but dipping at the short end. But conviction in these early market moves seems to be wavering.
Of course, the US Fed isn't the first to cut rates in this cycle. We have already seen them from the ECB, Canada and England. And yesterday, Indonesia delivered a surprise rate cut. But now the Fed has moved, and decisively, many others will no doubt follow. Global rates are in a clear easing cycle, now that inflation seems to have been tamed.
American mortgage applications leapt +14% last week from a week earlier, the fourth consecutive gain, marking the sharpest increase since the 18-month high of almost +17% in mid-August. The surge in home loan demand tracked the fall in borrowing costs, with the average interest rate on a benchmark mortgage falling by -14 bps from the earlier week to a two-year low of 6.15%.
And there was a good (but not great) rise in American housing starts in August. They were up almost +10% from the previous month to an annualised rate of 1.36 million units in the month, firmly above market expectations of 1.31 mln units, and rebounding from the near 7% plunge in the previous period. It was the sharpest increase in nine months. Starts of single-family homes rose by nearly +16%. Despite all that, housing starts are still -6.5% below the year-ago level.
Japanese exports rose +5.6% from a year ago in August, slowing sharply from a 10.2% rise in July and falling short of market forecasts of another 10% rise. But it was the ninth successive month of increased export shipments.
In China, and in another sign of worsening tensions, China has 'blocked' a Taiwanese company manager from returning home, essentially kidnapping him at the border.
But that is minor compared to the economic signals. Mid-Autumn Festival mooncake sales were reportedly quite weak; celebrations didn't deliver the expected boost.
In the UK, they delivered another tame inflation result for August. It was unchanged from July at 2.2% and as markets expectation. The largest upward contributions came from the almost +12% rise in air fares, mainly for European routes. The most significant falls came for petrol and other energy costs.
The UST 10yr yield is now at just on 3.71% and up +7 bps from this time yesterday. The key 2-10 yield curve is now +9 bps positive. Their 1-5 curve inversion is less at -51 bps. And their 3 mth-10yr curve inversion is very much less at -115 bps. The Australian 10 year bond yield starts today at 3.92% and up another +3 bps. The China 10 year bond rate is at 2.04%, and down -3 bps to a new record low. The NZ Government 10 year bond rate is now just on 4.16% and up another +3 bps from yesterday.
Wall Street traded with the S&P500 up +0.5% from yesterday after the Fed decision. But it has now given up those gains. Overnight, European markets were mostly lower with London down -0.7%, but Frankfurt's minor -0.1% diop stood out. Tokyo ended its Wednesday trade up +0.5%. Shanghai was back from holiday and up +0.5. Hong Kong was closed. Singapore was unchanged. The ASX200 ended its Wednesday trade also little-changed but the NZX50 fell again, down -0.7% this time.
The price of gold will start today at US$2575/oz and up +US$9 from yesterday's high to a new all-time high. This price jumped after the Fed decision to almost US$2600 but has since fallen back
Oil prices are down -US$1 at US$70.50/bbl in the US while the international Brent price is still just under US$73/bbl. Trading is active post the US Fed, but net movements are lower.
The Kiwi dollar starts today at 62.4 USc and up +60 bps from yesterday after the US Fed decision although softening subsequently. Against the Aussie we are up +20 bps at 91.8 AUc although all of that before the Fed. Against the euro we are up +30 bps at 55.9 euro cents. That all means our TWI-5 starts today at 69.8, and up +40 bps from yesterday.
The bitcoin price starts today at US$60,835 and up +4.9% from this time yesterday. Volatility over the past 24 hours has been high at just on +/- 3.3%.
Join us at 10:45am this morning when we will be covering the Q2-2024 GDP release.
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204 Comments
That aged well:
by Yvil | 18th Sep 24, 5:25pm
Throwing the timeframe out a bit, the RBNZ is essentially signalling an OCR of 3.75% by the end of 2025 and 3.00% by the end of 2026
OCR of 2.5% - 3.5% by August 2025, cuts will come in bigger sizes than 0.25%. Fix your mortgages short.
Yes US is rapidly heading down a path toward bankruptcy (and I know some disagree with this position). Look at this chart - US debt expansion is out of control from around 1990 - falling interest rates have allowed this, but the rate of expansion is completely unsustainable.
https://x.com/gameoftrades_/status/1836503170299892074?s=46&t=MUwQeKa7M…
Add to that the plummeting US birthrate and growing proportion of senior citizens in the population. I understand the US is paying over a trillion $US annually in interest alone. That has to be around $US3 billion a day!
If there are fewer young taxpayers (and fewer consumers of products) in years to come, where will companies make their money and who will pay the taxes needed to service this debt mountain?
Yeah reading Dalio’s ‘Changing World Order’ was an eye opener for me. US is showing the signs of a declining empire. To survive it desperately needs to reign in its external commitments and reduce spending, but that same spending is currently the only thing stopping it from being in a very deep recession/depression (it’s been running war time deficit spending recently which isn’t sustainable over the long term).
When your biggest voting block is the senior citizen segment (of whom a high proportion vote) then reforms to cut expenditure on the elderly will be suppressed, to the expense of the young and productive members of society.
It's a no-brainer, but it's a problem that no-one will deal with (who wants to commit political suicide).
The good news is that the problem will solve itself as the senior die off.
I’ve said this before, I’ll say it again for those who haven’t heard. I would be happy to lead the way however the only way this can work is if I am appointed Global Supreme Leader to ensure the system is adhered to. It sounds extreme but it really isn’t. I will not be like the Iranian Supreme Leader. You will find that times will be very good once we get up and running. I am a lover not a fighter but there is some shit that needs sorting.
Apart from being morally dubious, it has a lot of benefits. Imagine the reduction in healthcare spending, the Super savings, the freed up housing. On a personal level, many could retire at 60 and know exactly how long they need to live off their savings. Wills and goodbyes are prepared well in advance.
Not sure about the compulsory bit. I completely understand the resources implications, however at the very least, we should have the choice and with no legal ramifications for our loved ones. How cruel a system is it when the choice to end one's own life who has a guaranteed pathway to the abyss such as alzheimers/dementia, and can't make that choice as they would be classed as a suicide and then there's legal ramifications for anyone who knew and didn't prevent it, and then the insurance implications etc etc.
Big demographic changes coming the next 10-15 years. Boomers dying at an increasing rate - average boomer now around 70 and 50% of that population will be dead in the next 10-15 years. Not something to be cheered upon as these are peoples loved parent and grandparents but as you say, a lot of our problems as a society will solved as they leave. This theory was also takes about in ‘The 4th Turning’ - as society leaves the crisis years caused by mismanagement from a boomer class who didn’t know how to manage a society after their greatest generation parents left the workforce/died.
With current birth rates, the senior citizen segment will always be the largest voting block. They are not dying off and being replaced by the youth. They are dying off and being replaced by the generation after them. Each generation is smaller than the one before it, at least in the developed world. AU/CA/NZ compensate by importing their youth.
The largest voting block is below them, but the issue is the engagement of said block with voting and politics. Too many are happy to sit back, pay no attention to what goes on in the world or their country, but still moan day after day about the political choices that are made. I have no time for these complaints from anyone who doesn't vote.
They have the same issue as most western countries. they had a population boom after WWII, they didn't adequately prepare for the cost of them exiting the workforce and the resources it would take to fund and care for them, they even proceeded to plunder the social security kitty for silly things, and now they are finding, like ourselves with our pension system, that it will all implode unless they can find the money and resources from somewhere. i feel they and many other western countries will try to kick the can further by lumping everything onto the current working population and the next generation, and there will be widescale revolt leading to imminent change. The people can only take so much of a hit to their bottom line before they finally realise that the system isn't build for the masses benefit anymore like it was post war, it is to keep them subservient to the government of the day in order to benefit said government and employers as they see fit.
I don't understand why we aren't as a country focusing more on electrifying ALL the things and then investing in our electricity network to support that. It seems like a massive no brainer in terms of economic returns (i.e. not importing energy from overseas) and climate too. From a cost and resilience POV, it seems daft to rely on imported energy, when we can generate electricity here.
The low hanging fruit has mostly been picked, and the remnants end up having steeper costs and diminishing returns.
I can replace one of my FF commercial vehicles with a BEV, at the cost of 15 years worth of fuel, with diminished range and load bearing capacity. The opposite of a no brainier.
And that's a basic vehicle, times that by much of our industrial usage (think logging machinery, fishing boats, tractors), and a purely electric future is still a while away.
It wasnt necessarily the clean car discount that killed it, it was the high RUCs charged. In many cases a hybrid (non plug in type) is now cheaper to run than an equivalent sized EV. I get EVs need to pay their share of the infrastructure costs, but if the govt want to meet emissions targets, theyre going about it the wrong way.
They are donig wrose than the minimum, they have spent most of their time in power undoing the changes that were leading us to lower emissions.
Walking and cycling? Nah back-to-basics means dropping johhny off at school in a 2 tonne ute and anxious kids unable to leave the house on their own.
Norway: electric cars outnumber petrol for first time in ‘historic milestone’
Electric cars now outnumber petrol cars in Norway for the first time, an industry organisation has said, a world first that puts the country on track towards taking fossil fuel vehicles off the road.
If only we had some foresight ..
Norway stopping oil exports at this stage is only going to push tens of millions around the world into energy poverty, especially in Europe.
At least the country is pumping billions each year out of its hydrocarbon exports to fund and adopt clean technologies, so that the world can wean off fossil fuels.
Do you know how much carbon input it takes to make a kg of beef or dairy? NZ would be one of the first economies to collapse if oil prices shot up tomorrow from large producers pulling out. Link
We would all use less oil if the supply was less and the price was higher. Whether that is via electric cars, less trips, more efficient vehicles, or push bikes. The poverty argument is very convenient, much like KFC claiming there would be mass starvation if they closed down.
like KFC claiming there would be mass starvation if they closed down
Stupid argument. KFC is at best a processor and distributor of poultry, not producer. That lazy analogy would apply if Z energy were to shut down tomorrow, not major oil producers like Equinor.
What you're suggesting is if the equivalent of 10% poultry production shutting down in NZ and people would just switch over to other sources or eat less.
Food and fibre contributes 14.5% of global emissions. Let's stop producing dairy and meat first and we will be in a position to lecture others on their emissions.
I'm not lecturing Norway, I'm just saying they are no saints either.
Surely there is some similarity between "we must keep supplying cheap fossil fuels or people will be poor" and "we must keep supplying cheap unhealthy food or people will be hungry". The reality is that we would be better off with less of both, either by choosing better alternatives or consuming less.
Food and fibre contributes 14.5%
I'd prefer we focus on areas with far greater percentages. People have to eat, but plastic producers don't have to keep increasing their production exponentially, while peddling that recycling and personal responsibility will save the planet.
How much would carbon emissions increase if shelf life of meat and vegetables was drastically reduced without the benefit of modern packaging technology? Ask a truck driver how much fuel they save by moving milk in plastic bottles vs glass. Ever thought how much carbon is emitted from decaying fiber? The energy to produce plastic is considerably lower than the altetnatives too. Research the holy grail project in europe. Countries like Germany, japan have recycling rates exceed 95%. We just dont have the compliant population or a government that listens to the industry. Hooray, we banned plastic bags and straws. How about we do something meaningful like dictate the type of plastic allowed for various packaging, and also define recycled content to be sourced in NZ, so theres actually a competitive market for recycled materials in this country!
But plastic is embodied carbon, not CO2 emissions.
The majority of plastic is crude oil derived. So add in the emissions of extraction, heating, processing, transporting, landfill usage etc and it stacks up pretty quick. If we demanded less plastic in the world then we would be further decreasing crude oil demand, and hence decreasing overall emissions.
Plastic pollution is the solution to or problems. All those microplastics are cutting sperm counts reducing the number of consumers worldwide. Not selective either, those plastics have found their way into every part of the world - even caves closed to humans for 30 years Researchers find high concentrations of microplastics in cave water and sediment (phys.org)
[This is a sarcastic comment but it does illustrate that our own waste will be our downfall]
Also Norway
The Norwegian government offered consumers massive subsidies to purchase an electric vehicle. New electric vehicles were exempt from several onerous taxes and the 25 percent value added tax (VAT). On average, a large new ICE vehicle would be subject to $27,000 in various taxes and an equivalent EV would pay none. Electric vehicles were also exempt from any road or ferry tolls, were allowed to use bus lanes, were offered free parking and charging in municipal areas, and had “charging rights” in apartment buildings. Norway spends nearly $4 billion annually on EV subsidies—about the amount it spends on total highway and public infrastructure maintenance.
We don't need foresight, we need billions of sovereign oil dollars to spend on stuff.
No, it's a good argument. If you have an abundance of natural resources you can extract to sell, you can do more things than someone who doesn't.
The compounding issue for most Petro states is their governance usually becomes corrupted. Norway being a relatively obscure example.
No you're wrong, again. The top 5 countries with the highest proportion of EVs are Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Netherlands and China.
Norway has oil, but there is nothing exceptional about the other's natural resources (China is net importer) that allows them to be 'virtuous' they have good policies, that's all.
EVs are cheap in China because they're selling them at a loss. Many of their manufacturers are at or near bankruptcy.
We could make EVs cheap, but would need to make more money somewhere else. Which we're not, and even if we did, you'd have to question whether that'd be the best place to put the surplus money.
We'd spend a dollar to make 30 cents.
You have 4 wealthy European countries and one that's subsidising their production to try and become the market encumbent.
You don't have a huge uptake in less wealthy nations.
I guess if you only view the world in a simple binary fashion, this can all be very hard to comprehend.
Nope you've changed your argument again.
The original statement was that Norway could afford to be 'virtuous' (adopt EV fleet) only because they were lucky and had lots of natural resources that they could export.
That argument is wrong for the reasons I gave above. The nations with the highest EV uptake (proportionally) of their fleet are not particularly well endowed with natural resources so it follows that that is not one of the determinants as to whether a nation has a high uptake of EVs.
And if you're wondering why I am harbouring this point it's because it's one of the many arguments that people put up to stop us taking action here e.g. we're not Norway so can't afford to. It's bollocks. We can't not afford to.
Just apologies, say you got it wrong and move on.
I would venture the number of people who need a ute is well less than half the number of people who have a ute. I'm guessing you're a tradie so the standard argument against all and sundry owning one does not apply.
Side note: I actually need a ute for farming duties but don't own one. I make do with an old European SUV for towing duties, and an even older Japanese AWD wagon for the really dirty stuff and trips to town.
No, you're wrong again. The Utes have got bigger for no discernable benefit in performance, there is an image in this article which shows and old style Ute compared to the modern one. The tray size on the new Ute is actually smaller. The argument that some people need massive Utes for work is bollocks. They don't need to be that big, like I said it's compensatory for lacking in other areas.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/utes-bigger-than-ever-professor-alistair-…
All cars of all sorts are now bigger, driven by consumer demand. Hence a Yaris is the size of an 80s Corolla, and a Corolla is getting closer to the size of an old Camry.
None of those vehicles are as suitable to some applications as a Ute. Personally, I find a van more practical, but I can also appreciate why that's often not the best vehicle for commercial use.
American pickups often have more power and torque than something like a Ranger or Hilux.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. We live in fairly different worlds I suppose, I'm blue collar.
The bit where you said people need Utes.
They don't, the old Utes which were much smaller, perform all the functions that the current Utes do. Like you say a van does a better job for urban environments. The current Ute buyer is not buying for utility it's for fashion and compensation.
And just to reinforce that the vast majority of the trips being made by Utes are not even for Ute-type purposes.
That's where my blue collar experience differs. I don't live in a city, and most people I know with utes are using them for work. It's sorta personal preference if someone likes to access their gear at standing height vs fishing them out if a van, and it's easier to load certain things over the side.
And 4wd vans are a bit less common.
I guess they could take half a cube of builders fill on public transport.
Ford F150 for example:
https://i.redd.it/7vmt7af2l2fa1.png
Very clearly has changed towards the comfort end of the spectrum vs the original utility aspect
We installed one about 18 months ago as a temporary fix due to renovations needing to remove the old cylinder. Have a Plumber/Gasfitter in the family so it was cheap enough to get done.
Costs us $140 about every 6 - 8 weeks for a gas bottle for a family of 3. In the next 3 - 4 years we'll switch to something more permanent.
Get a thermodynamic solar hot water system. It even works at night!
we do incentivise it with 1% green energy loan, for most people that's still too expensive when they have high mortgage interest rates to repay.
ive been looking at solar, but with a 13 years payback period i just cant justify it atm, i will look when it gets cheaper.
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Frances-Electricity-…
France’s Electricity Prices Turn Negative Amid Poor Demand
Power prices in France turned negative for hours on Tuesday morning amid tepid demand in a struggling economy and increased renewables generation.
https://www.harrisonssolar.co.nz/solar-systems/tesla-powerwall
17k installed...no inverter needed...no price reduction in the past couple of years that i can see.
It can make sense if you're the sort of person who buys a new car every few years.
The second hand market for EVs looks to be pretty good as their depreciation is above what you'd expect traditionally.
Hard to say how big that second hand market will be though, in the past we've had a steady stream of used Japanese imports keeping the price of cars down, except Japan don't have large EV penetration, and the places that do have the steering wheel on the wrong side.
Hydrogen comes in a rainbow of colours.
Green hydrogen: made by using clean electricity from surplus renewable energy sources, such as solar or wind power, to electrolyse water.
Blue hydrogen: is produced mainly from natural gas, using a process called steam reforming, which brings together natural gas and heated water in the form of steam (carbon dioxide is also produced as a by-product).
Grey hydrogen: created from natural gas, or methane, using steam methane reformation but without capturing the greenhouse gases made in the process.
Black and brown hydrogen: Using black coal or lignite (brown coal) in the hydrogen-making process.
Pink hydrogen: generated through electrolysis powered by nuclear energy.
Turquoise hydrogen: made using a process called methane pyrolysis to produce hydrogen and solid carbon.
Yellow hydrogen: made through electrolysis using solar power.
White hydrogen: naturally occurring, geological hydrogen found in underground deposits and created through fracking.
There are significant practical/structural issues with this in NZ before you even consider the capacity/generation/investment requirements to fund electrification of the bigger stuff. One key reason is that 26 local networks are privately owned and have a variety of differences in structure, philosophy, and resilience. A good example of this is comparing Auckland, where Vector is largely community owned, and Tauranga, where Powerco is privately owned (our community ownership is on the gentailer side). Vector has a longstanding community project directing capital into undergrounding lines throughout the city. Powerco has no such thing hence Oceanbeach Road is $5m+ houses with 1970's concrete power poles and wires going everywhere like a favela. Alot of the work that needs doing to electrify needs to be done at this level, and these companies are not easy to work with. The other thing is that electrification requires more peak capacity at local levels (and smarter networks) . With 40 year return schedules on these assets it's not an easy investment thesis to push through.
I think you're right but devil in the detail. I'd argue for an US style 'public' ownership model in trust but know that's a pipe dream in our inherited crown system. We don't have public assets, we have crown assets with sometime public access. Might be no greater example than the battle for fisheries conservation.
As someone that spent $120k under grounding a powerline (Auckland, Vector), I am sure they can do their own too.
Vector is a prick to deal with and that under grounding they promote is just lip service. They made zero contribution to ours and didn’t take the opportunity to make it nicer for anyone else.
I noticed with a new development on our street they had to underground a cable the entire length of the street, it must have cost a fortune. No one else in the street got hooked up to it, we still have overground power lines. Vector are very much "do what I say (underground), not what I do (overground)"
The average electric car has a capacity of 40Kwh (kilowatt hours), there are 4.5 million cars in NZ
40,000 x 4.5million is 180 Gwh (giga watt hours).
NZ biggest power plant (huntly) produces 1.2Gwh.
Are you suggesting its a no brainer to build 150 green power plants equivalent to our biggest plant?
It cost 3-4 billion in todays prices to build Huntly, x 150, that would be 450 billion.
Let alone ignore the fact it probably cost triple to build a green power plant, unless you want nuclear?
If you are going to say "if everyone installed solar..." that could cost nzers around 30 trillion dollars to get.
every car owner not only needs to by a new $40,000 electric car but also fork out another $20,000 for solar to power it.
Wait i forgot , nz has the highest amount of disposable income in the world.
Think about for a second, if it was a no brainer, it would have been done.
I think your argument only makes sense if every electric car is fully discharged and charged every hour (which is not physically possible). The capacity is meaningless in terms of energy use, its the amount of kilowatt hours used that is important. If every car battery was fully used/recharged once a day, your argument is out by a factor of 24, but I suspect it would be a lot less, maybe only once a week, so that is a factor of 168.
Can do you a nice Leaf if you can go to $9000. It’s my brother’s car. He bought it to save running costs on the school run for all his kids. He does big kms. Kept his turbo diesel wagon for weekends and out of town road trips. His reason for selling the Leaf is that he hates it with a passion. Uncomfortable and a pain in the arse to keep charged. He visited me recently in our uncles new BYD vehicle thing. Said he’ll never drive it again due to the horrible ride. First time he’s ever felt car sick whilst driving. I asked him “What is the best option then, hybrid all the way?” He answered “Listen carefully Frank, you pisshead. The best option by far is a thing called benzine.”
Early Leafs are problematic. As are many Euro electric vehicles.
You can get a 7 year old Renault Kangoo EV (small van) for 10 grand, less than the equivalent age ICE model. The problem? Many of them are getting 70-80ks range, unladen.
This isn't a problem with other EVs, and will be less so in future. But for the time being, there's a lot of expensive paper weights out there.
Short and medium distances, if you need to move a lot of mass long distances they aren't there yet. Plenty of intra city trucking could be electric, and a Tesla semi would probably be fine for most freight companies regular Auck to Welly runs, might need a short charge while the driver has a meal break, but probably not.
Oh, FFS! Some of you guys need to get out more. And limit your commentary to shit you actually know about.
I've just driven my wife's BYD Atto 3 to Wellington and back. Yeah, sure, it doesn't have the handling and roadholding of my Tesla Model 3.
It's about as floaty as every SUV I've every driven, EV or ICE, compared to a sedan with good road-holding characteristics.
And I've driven my Tesla to Dunedin and back. Range anxiety. Pfft!
And I tow.
Straw man response, as my comment had nothing to do with affordability, I was commenting on range, ride quality, load carrying, towing etc.
But FYI, cheapest Model 3 on TradeMe starts at $27,000, and cheapest Atto 3 is $32,500.
Someone's gotta buy the new ones for someone else to buy the second hand ones a few years later.
Lol, you know nothing about vehicle design and dynamics, the weight of an EV battery is in the best possible place, down low between the axles, it gives a great feeling of stability from the low COG.
And the weight of an Atto 3 is similar to the heavy ICE SUVs like an AWD Mazda CX-5, there's about 30kg difference.
Gotta love when reactionary boomers and ludfites spout forth on things they know nothing about.
Reading between the lines indicates yourself and Antz have been significantly triggered by my description of an electric car battery. I know it is hard to comprehend a 30% drop in value of the car you recently purchased. My advice would be to offload an EV asap as it won’t be long before it is worthless.
Most people could probably charge their cars overnight with a standard 3 pin plug (it depends how many kms you do during the day). That is a max of 2.4kWh, the same as what my fan heater is currently drawing. If everyone had an electric car and charged them at night, we would still use much less power at night than during the day.
You're mixing up energy (Wh) and power (H). Huntly's power output is 1.2GW, i.e it can produce 1.2GWh energy every hour which is 28.8 GWh per day. Granted, solar etc will not produce 24/7, but also BEV don't need a full charge every hour.
Yes a lot more generation is needed if we aim to replace fossil fuels, but your calculations are way out. E.g. If you assume all BEV need a full charge every week, and replacement generation runs 8 hours a day for seven days a week, then you need about 3 Huntly equivalents i.e. 180/(1.2*8*7)=2.68.
It is still massive investment, an order of magnitude lower than your estimates.
it made my head hurt when looking at the numbers they had put down in the original post.
a standard ev might use 10kw a day (good for 60km) which based on my back on the envelope for 4.5m cars a year is ~ 16k GWh a year. By comparison NZ produces/uses 44k GWh a year.
Annual light vehicles travel in NZ was 45billion kms in 2018. Call it 50b
A typical EV car uses 0.15kwh/km.
That's 7,500,000,000kWh, or 7,500GWh. That's about equivalent to what geothermal produced in NZ in 2023, or about 1.5 Tiwai Point Aluminium Smelters.
Sounds do-able in the 15-20years it'll take to replace 90% of light car fleet if we pull finger.
Or if we actually densify urban areas, and create a decent PT system....
Correct, i made a mistake 1*10^9 is billion not trillion. actually theres only 2.1million houses.
60000 x 2.1million households
60x10^3 * 2.1x10^6 = 126*10^9
$126B
it still points out there is a lot to consider rather than just saying turn everything electric, it takes a long time and a lot of infrastructure to turn an entire economy electric.
For the last few weeks lake Manapouri has been spilling more than 600m3/s of water
https://www.meridianenergy.co.nz/power-stations/lake-levels
which is equivalent to wasting about 20% of NZ electricity consumption. We could have got all this energy at very low cost if it wasn’t for the Save Manapouri campaign.
...because Snowy river pumped hydro is going so well...
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-23/snowy-hydro-sinkhole-toxic-gas-t…
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/aug/31/snowy-hydro-2-pr…
Redesign, analysis, all the checks, approval process, physical resource cost, extra labour, possibly bringing in new staff for the redesign and they'll be asking a LOT you can imagine given how hamstrung the project is, could be compliance costs for the blowout in terms of the project not keeping to schedule. Too many things, and everyone will milk it at every point they can to squeeze a buck out
‘Last 2 times the Fed’s first cut was 50+ bps:
🔸Jan 3, 2001
- S&P 500 fell ~39% next 448 days
- Unemployment rose another 2.1%
- Recession
🔸Sep 18, 2007
- S&P 500 fell ~54% next 372 days
- Unemployment rose another 5.3%
- Recession’
https://x.com/geiger_capital/status/1836477991192531210?s=46&t=MUwQeKa7…
That's a very interesting observation from you, Observer. I have a friend in the top ranks of Spotify and back in 2018, just before their NY stock exchange debut, they were strongly predicting a global crash in 2020, which ended up happening due to covid rather than classic market reasons. I wonder how bad it'll be now with the added pressure of covid and international conflicts.
"they were strongly predicting a global crash in 2020, which ended up happening due to covid rather than classic market reasons.."
An interesting coincidence dont you think?
How do you pump them trillions into them repo markets without unleashing hyperinflation? Hmmm ...
https://prospect.org/economy/the-crisis-in-financial-markets-began-befo…
"Well before the pandemic, the Fed injected hundreds of billions of dollars into repo markets for reasons that are unclear."
The stock market was always going to crash back then, regardless of what interest rates were. In 2000 the dotcom boom imploded and in 2007 the housing market imploded. This interest rate cycle is driven by inflation not a crisis. It would be more pertinent to compare the 1970's and early 80's. However, most pundits won't like what happened back then either.
I’m on th fence as to whether it is more like the 70’s/80’s or the late 1920’s.
We had relatively low wealth inequality in the 70’s/80’s and we didn’t have massive asset bubbles either (at least until the 87 crash).
We now have wealth inequality like it was just before the Great Depression and we’ve had extremely frothy asset markets just like the late 1920’s.
That depends entirely on the definition of economic growth, which may need to be redefines on coming years given it has previously been reliant on exponentially increasing rates of births, and use of finite resources. I hope it comes soon personally so we can finally shift our focus.
Its going to be replaced by 6 or more units. Back then you weren't even allowed to build 2 on that 800m2 site (was zoned one per 500m2), totally ridiculous.
I doubt we will ever see price gains like that again in Auckland, unless planning rules go backwards again.
Yes I agree. Or at least a bottom around November, as I have been saying repeatedly (although IT Guy and many others strongly disagree)
Then oscillating above and below that effective bottom by -1 to +1.5% until this time next year, when prices could rise at least 4-5% over Spring / Summer ‘25/ ‘26
Australians call for Woolworths to dump their NZ operations.
https://www.afr.com/companies/retail/woolworths-faces-investor-calls-to…
This is a fantastic podcast on the Florida housing and the dynamic with insurance markets. There are great learning here for NZ. It's a great listen for anyone wanting to understand some of the upcoming risks and opportunities. Riverhead came to mind, I was going to suggest it to Wingman but then I remembered he knows best.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/7igh3RDF6IFjthLYBYLAlG?si=95tODLjqTVyf…
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