Here's my summary of the key news over the weekend in 90 seconds at 9 am, including news of growing housing woes in China.
China's housing markets showed more signs of weakness as home-price gains decelerated further in April amid a souring outlook for their property market according to official data out over the weekend.
In addition to stagnant or falling housing prices, many potential buyers have faced problems getting loans as banks worry about their balance sheets.
The OECD has recently surveyed housing affordability and New Zealand is among the most unaffordable countries on both a rent and incomes basis.
In contrast, new residential construction in the US showed a healthy pick up in April in data released Saturday.
The latest effort to install a higher minimum wage happened over the weekend in Switzerland. The proposal for a SFr4,000 minimum per month - about NZ$5,200 - was included in a referendum. In a high turnout, the proposal was rejected more than 3 to 1 by voters.
Staying in Europe, Moody's has raised Ireland's credit rating by two notches and classed it as 'stable'. The new rating is Baa1. Slowly Ireland is recovering from its spectacular real estate bust that took down its banks.
Oil prices rose on Friday in all benchmarks while gold fell. Equities made a gain in a late rally on Wall Street.
The benchmark UST 10 yr bond yields ended last week at 2.52%, up slightly at the close but sill down sharply over the week. This will push our swap rates even flatter and they ended last week at their flattest in a year.
On the exchange rate, we start the week with the NZ dollar marginally softer at 86.3 USc, the Aussie is at 92.2 AUc. The TWI is now at 80.2.
If you want to catch up with all the changes yesterday, we have an update here.
The easiest place to stay up with today's event risk is by following our Economic Calendar here »
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4 Comments
Meanwhile,
"Data collected by the reinsurer Munich Re suggested weather-related loss events had risen in all continents since the early 1980s and more than fourfold in Asia and North America, S&P said."
".........assuming that extreme weather events are on the rise in terms of frequency and destruction," the report said, "how this trend could feed through to our ratings on sovereign states bears consideration.""
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=112…
3 months rain in 3 days in the Balkans:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/17/floods-serbia-bosnia-rain-balkans
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