Here's my summary of the overnight news in 90 seconds at 9 am in association with Bank of New Zealand, including news French President Nicholas Sarkozy has announced plans for a unilateral financial transaction tax of 0.1% that starts in France alone as early as August.
Many eurozone countries have agreed the need for such a tax, often called a Robin Hood or Tobin Tax, but have failed to get everyone to agree. Britain has rejected the idea as too damaging to jobs in the City of London, while the rest of Europe is worried that anyone who imposes the tax unilaterally would see banks move elsewhere in Europe, or into Asia or America. See more here at Bloomberg.
However, Sarkozy is behind in the polls and faces defeat in Presidential elections in April and May unless he can win the support of voters, who are angry about slow growth, rising unemployment and the role of banks in the Global Financial Crisis.
Sarkozy, who leads the centre right parties in France, faces defeat at the hands of the centre left candidate Francois Hollande, who also supports such a tax. A wild card in the election is the leader of the far right National Front, Marine Le Pen, who wants to pull France out of the euro altogether.
Meanwhile, European stocks fell 1% and the Dow was down 0.2% in late trade as nerves about the European sovereign debt crisis returned. A much touted deal to restructure Greece's deal is still yet to be finalised on the eve of a regular crisis summit of European leaders. See more here at Bloomberg.
Italian bond markets were steady overnight after a well received auction of Italian bonds, but Portugese Credit Default Swap spreads, which are bought as insurance against a default on government debt, rose to record highs. The markets are now pricing in a 73% chance of a Portugese default. See more here on the Euro crisis summit at Reuters.
Across the Atlantic, US consumer spending was weaker than expected in December despite incomes growing at their strongest rate in a year. Many consumers are tightening their belts and saving more. See more here at Reuters.
Closer to home, Roeland van den Bergh reports at the Dominion Post that insiders are saying Air NZ Chief Executive Rob Fyfe may announce his resignation before the end of next month to take a job as the head of one of Britain's biggest airlines, possibly British Airways or Virgin Atlantic.
The New Zealand dollar fell slightly overnight, but remains solid over 82 USc.
No chart with that title exists.
81 Comments
Bernard, these are two articles that are worth taking the time to read and watch. I put them up on yesterdays 90 at 9 The first is John Ward at the slog on Merkel and the second is G Edward Griffen.
http://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2012/01/30/revealed-angela-merkel-rigid-seri...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jAdu0N1-tvU#!
Great video Andrew – I hope more people would listen to G Edward Griffen.
On the verge of collapse, when man become a real problem.
..and on top of all economic/ financial/ environmental/ social/ etc. problems, they have enough time and money for lust of war – how stupid these leaders are – even leading billions into the WWIII.
...and there is no "Intellectual Revolution" - just silence - even support.
Griffen is excellent, uncomfortable watching for the ecofascists on this board and confirms what I've been saying as a history teacher for much of my 37 years at the chalkface, that the cartel/oligarchy running NZ is seamless. A lot of people intuitively know this - that's why I was one of the 900,000 who didn't vote - the first time ever for me.
Here more info's on Merkel: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Merkel
AndrewJ: That video is a sobering piece. While it is long at 80 minutes it is compelling. If I had never seen Niall Ferguson's series on the "Ascent of Money" I would have thought it was just another wacko conspiracy theory and given up after 5 minutes. Watched it all the way through. One difference is Ferguson named names. Made me wonder if Gareth Morgans Universal Capital Tax is a right wing straw man test.
Er, has anyone noticed that the Baltic Dry is shouting PANIC. Looks like China has stopped buying Aussie dirt.....
lay that graph over the right-hand side of this one (line it up time-wise).
Its more about an oversupply of ships, many of which were ordered before the GFC.
http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-01-29/markets/30675248_1_shipp…
What these analysts consistently seem to ignore is that regardless of their narrow opinion, the BDI has been proven to lead economic derision in the market movements of the past. That is to say, the BDI has been volatile exactly BECAUSE markets have been volatile and unstable, and is a far more accurate thermometer than those that most mainstream economists currently rely on. If only they would look back at the numbers further than one year ago, they might see their own folly more clearly.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-baltic-dry-index-signals-renewed-market-decline
...... sitting here in Oz , the mining industry is still going gangbusters ! ..... So wotcha talking about , Rogie dodge ?
US navy announced overnight to plans to re-fuel their pacific fleet from northern Australian nat gas ...........
...... the orders for our good stuff just keep rolling in !
I don't see to much of a slow down happening gummy. Although Id be worried if I owned a house in melbourne or similiar. My brother in law is a mechanic in a mine up in queensland and gets 2.3 times more money than when he was in NZ 3-4 years ago. He tells me that some of the perks have been cut back a little bit from when he first started but the top of the ticket money just keeps going up. He changed companies about 6 months ago and had absolutely no problems getting job offers. Agricultural exports were up to something like 8.2 billion for victoria with wool and grain up about 46% by value last year - so wheres the problem ?
How much longer are you over here for ? Looking forward to the 20/20 game tonight !
Yup , the 20/20 should be excellent ...... watched all of the men's tennis final ( must ask Amanda Morrall how fair is it for the guys to play 350 minutes , and the gals 82 minutes , for equal pay .......admittedly , the gals do give you more grunt for your buck ! )
....... we're planning on 2 years here . Let the little boss get her culinary skills up to date , some TAFE courses , etc .... Tunarama was fun , and we learnt some Japanese tuna filleting techniques .
Our only complaint is Canberra , that Gillard & Abbott are a right pair of gooses . Politics in Oz used to be on a higher plain than NZ , not anymore !
Butcha right about the Oz economy , she's robust ...... and folks seem optimistic here on Yorke Peninsula .......
El Presidente Sarkozy plans to increase VAT 1.6 % and introduce a financial transaction tax . His so very clever plan being to show consumers that their pain is being equally felt by the bankers , we're all egalitarian in socialist France , as he attempts to suck up a further 55 billion Euros annually , out of the economy ....
.
13 billion will go into reducing payroll taxes and the like , to make French labour more competitive ......
...... a 0.01 % financial transaction tax is being levied on all derivatives transactions , too ....
Yup ! ...... 0.1 % doesn't sound like much as first glance ...... but it is 1000 Euros from every million that moves ......
...... ergo , financial services will flee French shores ( London calling ! ) , and velocity of money movement will slow down ......
A self imposed recession , may as well shoot yerself in the foot whilst you're at it ...... less taxes collected , ooooops ...... they'll be forced to raise the taxes another notch or three next year ...... .........
GBH: by saying financial services will flee French Shores (to City-of-London), you imply France has a Financial Services Sector to flee. Can you apply that reasoning to NZ where NZD $50 billion of hot-money travels through the City-of-Aotearoa on a daily basis without hardly touching the sides. The question is what and who would be affected if that hot-money fled the City-of-Aotearoa. An NZ tobin tax on that hot-money alone would produce revenue of $50 million per day or $11 bn pa
And Bill Gates
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/23/us-g20-development-idUSTRE78M64Q20110923
And 18 countries and the following (via Wikipedia)
Over 1,000 economists (including Paul Krugman,[97] Jeffrey Sachs[98] and Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz[21]), more than 1,000 parliamentarians from over 30 countries,[99][100] the world's major labor leaders, ATTAC, Occupy Wall Street protesters, Oxfam, War on Want[101] and other major development groups, the World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace[102] and other major environmental organizations support a FTT. Other notable supporters include the Archbishop of Canterbury, Bill Gates and Michael Moore.[96] David Harding, founder and CEO of one of London's biggest hedge funds has given qualified support for a European tax on financial transactions, breaking ranks with many of his peers fiercely opposed to such a measure.[103]Speculator George Soros, put forward a different proposal, calling rich countries to donate their Special Drawing Rights for the purpose of providing international assistance, without necessarily dismissing the Tobin tax idea.[25] It has been widely reported that the Pope backs such a tax. However, the reality is that a commission of the Vatican of which the Pope is not a member merely said that such a tax would be worth reflecting on.[104]
The European Commission has proposed a regional FTT to be implemented within the European Union (or the Eurozone) by 2014.[49]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_transaction_tax#Supporting_countries
My understanding is that it would not. I think that it is aimed at curbing leveraged trading and other unhelpful trading activities such as currency speculators. If people persist in these undesirable activities the governments will at least recover some taxes to offset the mess created.
Governments & opposition political parties in the developed world need to stop lying to the public , that they can afford the level of pensions / healthcare / and other welfare , which they've built up .....
....... we're living beyond our means .......
The IMF used to storm-troop into the shattered economies of emerging Asian countries , and into despotic African regimes .....now they've gotten the developed world economies to bail out instead ..... and JK is borrowing NZ into the cross-hairs of the IMF's austerity cannon .....
A-fecking-mazing !
EG The currency speculators who screw round a nations exchange rate, making it that much harder for the productive exporters. The investment bank trading algorithims that get market prices sloshing like water in a bath, skimming profit with each slosh. All these also take money out of the economy for no meaningful contribution. Free loading leaches who contribute nothing and do a lot of harm. Imagine the good that could result if all the PHD's developing trading algorithims did something useful instead.
The pity is that there aren't more currencies for the traders to tinker with ...... a freely floating Chinese yuan or Germany mark , would take minor currencies ( such as the $NZ ) out of the spot-light ...
.......... too many countries peg their currency to someone else's , or form a united block of one currency , such as the Euro ....
So, going back to my starting question, - The proposed financial transaction tax would not help investors like me or you to increase our ROIs. It could - potentially - make it harder for us if we decide to do some currency trading. Bill Gates may be supporting the tax idea, but go figure what his interest is in this matter. Makes me wonder why men of more ordinary means would want to support it...
Currency trading, adds no value to anything, should be taxed the same as a casino because thats what it is. Trading shares is a similar process, the main difference is that there are a lot of retirement accounts invested in shares. So these kiwisavers put money in, saving for retirement, and traders seek to extract that retirement money. It's all a big game, buying and selling to and from greater fools. There is NO INVESTMENT anymore. If you were investing there would be very few times that you actually made transactions. There is a big difference between investing, and speculating. "When I make an investment, I wouldn't care if the stock market closed for the next 5 years" - Warren Buffet.
I'm not sure what kind of "investor" you are, but a FTT if administered fairly would have very little impact on actual investors, but it would increase the risks for speculators.
Alex13 - ChrisM is right. It isn't meant to.
The problem has been too many expecting to 'make money' fro nothing but 'investing money'. Sometimes, this 'investment' was nothing more than debt.
Quite what those wide-eyed wonders thopught would underwrite their ever-bigger game, is the interesting question. "Didn't think about it" is probably the stunning revelation.
In reply to the latest above: They don't 'make an income'. But they expect to buy stuff with their 'income'. Do you not get it? Something has to be done - really done - for money to have a home. Currency traders don't do anything real, but they expect real rewards. Not enough parcels when the misuic stops.
Why is it that a certain type refuse to 'get it' so consistently?
I think that the huge amount of energy individuals have had in the last 100 years have distanced ppl from the reality of the limitation that we had to live within the annual energy sent to us by the sun. This means the spongers who didnt want to do 'it" (ie make something or work for real) just couldnt be numerous....their burden on society was too great.....the odd King, OK.....
So the changes that are coming have to and will sweep away that illusion ie getting something for nothng......and thats both the ppl on the welfare state and "investors".....they are really both parasites that a smaller host cannot sustain.
regards
Alex13 - you don't make any sense.
Try not eating, but staying rich. You die.
Try eating, but in fiscal poverty. You live.
Food is energy, as is just about everything real. The stupid mistake is in assuming that 'rich' means 'being able to get anything you want', which actually means you expect more energy to be available.
Sorry, a large number of idiots forgot to stand back and take in the big picture. Sure, that includes a majority of the media (I've just warned Mora I'll blast him, re the Panel in a minute) but that's no excuse for not thinking it through.
Nine to noon interview of Dr Rod McDowell, yesterday, towards the latter stages. Add that to the John French onelast year. These are our intelligent thinkers. Sorry, 'finance' was a retroactive deducer of a discipline, always a problem when the paradigm changes.
Need a gent? Nope. And I don't know about your radio, but mine doesn't skype.
Hair stylist? I'm about the message, not the messenger. You got any idea how much I've saved over the years? Vanity, said Tolstoy, all is vanity.
Thanks for the link, by the way. He's a smart, good human being. Note that after he said where it was going, she interviews Rod Oram this morning as if BAU will continue. And she's meant to be one of the smarter ones!
"Powerdownkiwi" - I only offered you a possible answer to the question you asked! That it sparked a brash and arrogant response tells me that my suggested answer might have been correct...
“It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull”.
You've been here before, A13. Plenty of chances to get informed - which is always good.
But even if you hadn't, I suggest that for folk who don't question everything, it's definitely caveat emptor.
How long have the laws of physics and chemistry governed what happened on the planet? For ever.
How long has a growth-based fiscal system been around? A few thousand years? And one species of how many, indulging? Economics as a 'discipline' has been around how long? About the same time we've been exponentially digging into the finite store of fossil energy.
Seems a fair arrogance, to me, to place that short-term, artificially-constructed, backwards-looking 'discipline', over physics and chemistry. Which means it's an arrogance to presume a continued ROI, if it doesn't involve doing something real. Currency traders, if they by something with their skim-off, are riding on the back of someone somewhere who did something real.
Those who thought that money magically begets money, were fools, in my book.
I think Fyfe is a real loss.
I have a lot of business dealings with NZ, and prior to his arrival they were quite a prickly bunch to do business with, but in Fyfe's time they've been much more approachable.
I hope like hell it doesnt go back to doing things the old way
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Dry_Index
The BDI is termed a leading economic indicator because it predicts future economic activity
The thing about OZ. Is they will keep digging the mountain of ore,for a few months then suddenly sack everyone when they realise, that its just going to sit there for a few years.As far as fueling the American Pacific fleet goes,Why piss of your main export market.?
And the landlords will love it...they can boost the rents and suck in the subsidy....which Key and English can fund using borrowed dosh on the slate.....the dole payments are set to shoot up too...no work because the building sector has been slammed by some fool increasing the tax theft....and chch set to shake rattle and wobble for years to come...oh but wait...we have 80000 rotting buildings to repair/rebuild.....with more borrowed money....yes recovery is here...no question about it.
They wont be re-built.....from my perspective I see 50 to 60% losses on house values.... leaky homes are only viable to repair when there is a significant increase in housing values......so these are or will be totally un-economic to repair.....
Landlords are it seems highly geared....not sure how many will be around after a 50 to 60% drop in value.....the banks will call them in....
GST, I understand it hasnt been tax neutral.....so surprising that.
regards
80,000 monuments to collective arrogance.
Human vs nature.
Long as I remember The rain been coming down.
Clouds of myst'ry pouring Confusion on the ground.
Good men through the ages, Trying to find the sun;
And I wonder, Still I wonder, Who'll stop the rain.
(CCR)
yep......eg "I want a mexican style bungaloo"...in rainy NZ.....I dont know who were more stupid, the architects who said yes or the punters who asked.... There is a good reason for simple rectangles, eves and roof slopes....tried and tested defence for NZ elements......
regards
I wonder if the financial transaction tax will apply to central banks?
http://www.silverbearcafe.com/private/10.11/gaoaudit.html
16 trillion is more than the entire US GDP...
Ive flown a few airlines in the past, I wouldnt get on a Air NZ from choice, the service was pricey and they staff awful..last time I had to fly they were intent on getting every last dollar in extra charges....these days I dont fly anyway....I avoid the carbon footprint....its train or ferry for me.
"silly?" I have never seen you apply logic or thought to anything.....you ignore what I say about Peak oil and its effect on Jet A1.....airlines will go to the wall at a prolonged > $120USD a barrel....and when it drops to say $50USD it will be a severe recession and no one will be flying......the income will go and the fuel costs will nail the industry....most will go bankrupt unless supported by a Govn...ie me the NZ tax payer......will I guess bail out Air NZ....for a while......
regards
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