Here are the key things you need to know before you leave work today (or if you already work from home, before you shutdown your laptop).
MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
HSBC raised its shorter term fixed rates today for terms 6 to 18 months.The Police Credit Union raised its floating rate by +65 bps to 8.14% and cut its three year rate by -32 bps.
TERM DEPOSIT/SAVINGS RATE CHANGES
The Police Credit Union raised its key term deposit rates.
ANZ CUTS PAYOUT FORECAST TOO
ANZ has cut its milk payout forecasts. For the 2022-23 season they cut it by -5c to $8.20/kgMS. For the 2023-24 season they revised it down -25c to $8.25/kgMS. They say deteriorating global economic conditions, including a weaker outlook for China, is negatively impacting demand for dairy products. The relatively weak NZD is supportive of the farmgate milk price, but is not sufficient to offset the impact of lower returns for dairy commodities.
MORE MIXED THAN NEGATIVE
The BNZ/Seek monitoring of job ads in May has them falling for a second consecutive month, and taking them -1.7% lower than a year ago. However BNZ reminds us these are still very high levels. They say candidate availability is "improving significantly" meaning the jobs market is getting a lot more competitive. And they are watching the effects of a big upswing in immigration, which will affect some sectors significantly. However, industry and regional trends are more mixed than negative.
FOLLOW THE MONEY
When Budget 2023/24 was released we updated our much easier-to-read summary of the main Spending and Revenue components. We have now completed filling out the drill-down data. You can now drill into Social Welfare (or Social Development if you prefer that sanitised term), Health, Education, Housing and Transport. You can also see the costs of tax concessions, transfers and items like interest in the Finance & Revenue drilldown. The Government will spend $166 bln in 2023/24, up +30% in five years. GDP will be $415 bln in that same period, up +31% in the same period. Our total export income (goods plus services) will be less than $100 bln, up +17%.
FUNDING LOCAL GOVERNMENT
Local authority rates are under the spotlight at present. Most of the talk is about 'what services to cut'. But Stats NZ data shows that over all local authorities, rates rose nationally at almost +8% in 2022, a rise of $555 mln to $7.6 bln. This was the largest dollar rise ever. The largest percentage rise in Rates was the +9.3% in 2007. And after a second +8.6% peak in 2009, those excesses heralded a long period of restraint. Some say that 'restraint' left local services with a large backlog of essential projects. But clearly ratepayer appetite for sharpy higher taxes is limited. Councils also get revenue from regulatory income. This is often far more volatile. That includes petrol tax, especially in Auckland. But this regulatory income rarely runs more than 15% of rates, so is relatively minor in the grand scheme. Funding local authorities at the level they want to operate with their various mixtures of 'essential services' and 'social services' clearly requires more transfers of money from the governed. It doesn't help that those making these decisions have been voted in, in low turnout elections. The hunt is on for 'other people's' deep pockets.
"BE CAREFUL WITH EXEMPTIONS"
With Aussie interest rates rising, the Australian financial regulator APRA has warned banks on the risks of granting loan serviceability exemptions to borrowers.
NO CPI INFLATION IN CHINA
As we have noted elsewhere, China has no consumer inflation. This was confirmed today in their official data for May which reported their annual inflation rate edged up to +0.2% in May 2023 from April's 26-month low of +0.1%, but less than market estimates of +0.3%. Between April and May, prices slipped slightly. None of this paints a picture of substantial demand. Milk, beef and sheepmeat prices all fell faster than the overall level.
DEEPER DEFLATION IN CHINA'S FACTORIES
However, China does have deflation in its industrial sector. Producer prices fell -4.6% yoy in May 2023, faster than a -3.6% drop in April and worse than market forecasts of a -4.3% drop. It was the eighth straight month of producer deflation and the steepest fall since February 2016 amid weakening demand and moderating commodity prices.
ACCEPTING DEFEAT ON ECONOMIC POLICY, ERDOGAN'S CHOICE FOR CENTRAL BANK GOVERNOR RAISES EYEBROWS
We should note that Turkish President Erdogan is reversing course and giving up on his disastrous rate-cut experiment that brought extreme inflation and a savage devaluation of its currency. He has sacked the central bank boss he installed to carry out this policy, and hired an American executive to get things back on track. He has also appointed Mehmet Simsek, a well-respected and orthodox former finance minister, as minister in charge of the economy. The new central banker was the CEO of First Republic Bank in California - yes, the one that just collapsed!
SWAP RATES UNCHANGED
Wholesale swap rates are likely little-changed today. However, the real action in swap rates comes near the close. Our chart will record the final positions. The 90 day bank bill rate is down -1 bp at 5.68% and only +18 bps above the 5.50% OCR. The Australian 10 year bond yield is now at 3.96% and down -4 bps from yesterday and holding most of yesterday's jump. The China 10 year bond rate is however unchanged at 2.72%. And the NZ Government 10 year bond rate is at 4.59% and down just -1 bp, and that is still higher than the earlier RBNZ fix which is down -6 bps to 4.49%. The UST 10 year yield is now at 3.73% and down -7 bps from this time yesterday, after diving on the US initial jobless claims data. But it has recovered +4 bps from its intraday lows.
EQUITIES MIXED; NZX50 WORST
Wall Street closed with the S&P500 up +0.6% in its Thursday session which means it is now up +0.3% for the week so far. Tokyo has opened up +1.5% in morning trade today and if that holds it will be up +0.8% for the week. Hong Kong has opened down -0.2% heading for +1.3% weekly rise. Shanghai is down -0.1% at its open and on the way to a -0.7% weekly loss. The ASX200 is up +0.4% in afternoon trade today, and that might limit the weekly loss to -0.2%. However. the NZX50 is down another -0.4% in late trade today and will then have shed -2.1% for the week in a tough set of sessions.
GOLD FIRM
In early Asian trade, gold is at US$1964/oz and back up +US$18 from yesterday. Earlier in New York it closed at US$1965/oz and London closed at US$1966/oz.
NZD LITTLE-CHANGED
The Kiwi dollar is up nearly +½c from this time yesterday at 60.9 USc. Against the Aussie we are stuck at 90.8 AUc. Against the euro we also unchanged to 56.5 euro cents. That means the TWI-5 is now at 69.2.
BITCOIN UNCHANGED
The bitcoin price is virtually unchanged today and is now at US$26,381. Volatility has been modest at +/- 1.1%.
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80 Comments
"The new central banker was the CEO of First Republic Bank".
They probably picked him up for 1/10th of what he was earning before the collapse. No one back home would want him so soon, and this will be a chance for him to rebuild his credentials. If he does, his salary sacrifice will be worth it.
Agree. Have two kids and I think at least one of them is home every day the next two weeks.
My wife is a teacher and disagrees with the action being taken and voted against doing it.
The kids suffer and its putting more pressure on teachers with less time to get the kids through their assessments.
Hard enough getting kids engaged in school after covid without this continual disruption. A really damaged cohort of kids coming through the system.
But I am sure Skippy (education is so important to me) will be onto it......
They made significant and dramatic decisions in a period of 1-2 weeks, with a very limited volume of information due to the quickly unravelling nature of the situation. You'd have needed a year or so to fully consider and weigh actions.
But yes, the ramifications are huge. They're saying post covid workplace absenteeism is around 25%. School absenteeism is over 50%. I shudder to think what the nature of our workplace will look like in 10 years. A good time to be paid based on output, I bet.
You should read The Plague Upon Our House, by Trumps medical advisor. I think most of the negative impacts were foreseen. There is absolutely no excuse for what labour did during covid. Kids needed to be, and still need to be in school…no excuses. I do think starting teachers are well under-paid though. Maybe politicians should start on that salary too.
Negative impacts would definitely be foreseen, the whole concept of shutting down society globally seemed like it'd come with massive ramifications.
There's a pretty good excuse for what labour did during covid. Even if you decided to keep the schools open, the volume of available teachers and ancillary staff would have been through the floor, parents unable to take kids to school, etc. At best the kids would've had an erratic and dysfunctional experience
There is no excuse.
No learning loss in Sweden during the pandemic: Evidence from primary school reading assessments
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0883035522000891
Meh, not sure 2 years out of formal schooling system is going to have huge impact on workplace in 10 years.
The bigger impact is likely on social skills which will have wider impacts than just the workplace, but it will be a worldwide impact so not really worth worrying about NZ falling behind.
Meh, not sure 2 years out of formal schooling system is going to have huge impact on workplace in 10 years.
We just spent a couple of years telling everyone if you don't turn up to school, work, whatever that there's no consequence and life goes on. For a seemingly wise reason, but the cultural shift in attendance is fairly profound, and kids particularly are impression so the habits and behaviours learned over covid will be with many for a lifetime, and set the standard for those following.
It is pretty heartless of the teachers to do this to the kids. If teaching is a profession (which I think it is) why don’t teachers behave like professionals and accept performance related pay? Some of my kids teachers are outstanding, they were always on-line for questions during lockdown, they are subject experts and always prepare good lessons. Others are totally clueless and barely better than babysitters. Don’t know their subjects, can’t control a class and expect extra pay for anything beyond the 9-3. Why do the quality teacher tolerate being paid the same as the terrible ones? Good teachers deserve a lot more money, the bad ones are lucky to get what they have now.
I'm a non-union teacher for all the reasons above... I changed career because I wanted to work with young people, and to everything starts from attendance. I've been unionised in other jobs where it makes a lot more sense, but have always felt uncomfortable with the PPTA. Now that they are rostering home year levels I am even more uncomfortable, as this means striking teachers stay on their full pay. When it is the whole day off I get it as giving up 1 day of salary is a sacrifice. The message it sends to the students isn't exactly one of integrity and commitment to education.
Lockdowns had a massive impact on morale in education. In 2019 I was just starting teaching and the attitude and engagement of students before lockdowns began was totally different.
Why should teachers only be paid 9-3. No, they don't spend their lesson times preparing their lessons. And yes, they should be paid for lesson preparation as well as contact time. They're not contractors, they're employees.
And they are appalling remunerated for a skilled position in the early years - how many of those "clueless" teachers that you're whinging about are further through their careers and thus up the payscale and don't care about future employment prospects? Fun fact: only half the teachers are better than average - like in any career path.
When a starting teacher who has invested 3-4 years in their training receives less than minimum wage in the hand for doing that job, we have a serious problem.
But stop with the 9-3 B.S. already - you know it's not true.
It is not true for all teachers but certainly for some of them. My kids had teachers that didn’t return their NCEA work until after the next assessment, so they couldn’t learn from their previous work. One of my kids missed out at prize giving because the teacher forgot to register their grades. One maths teacher taught the class that the chance of drawing a king from a pack of playing cards was 1 in 52. The kids told her it was 4 in 52 or 1 in 13 but she said as it was only 1 card being drawn they were wrong! Great teachers should get loads of money, poor ones not a cent more.
I totally agree. GREAT teachers should be rewarded. My wife and I got involved when our kids were in school, volunteering and attending all their school events. I've seen great teachers in action and seen the results. Unfortunately, not all teachers are so engaging with their students and their lack of enthusiasm stands out a mile away.
total opportunism and the usual Labour give in to the Unions -- totally right the disruption of Covid has left us with only 60% of kids attending regularly -- and yet we continue on and on and on with strikes and disruption - will cause disadvantage to this generation of students who have had 4 years now of disruption -- basically their whole secondary education on some cases -- no compensation in marking and grade inflation will replace the actual lost education, learning skills and knowledge- and that will be reflected in the workforce for many years to come
13/05/2020 - do you honestly believe covid disruption ended at the conclusion of the first l4 lockdown?
Disruption has been consistent. We bounced in and out of lockdowns (naional and regional) until dec 2021. With traffic lights for a further 10 months.
During that time, school was off consistently - The student/their household was in isolation due to covid, isolation due to close contact, or if they did get to school, the teacher might be isolated.
My children's primary school have acknowledged that all kids that started from 2018-2022 are significantly behind. The issue now is that they simply aren't catching up, no-one has time to go back and teach the missing years.
Combine that with the (always known, but now categorically proven to be crap) methods of teaching implemented under one T Mallard, and it is clear that the nation has failed these kids on all counts.
But we need to pay our teachers well, it's for the kids. We also need to support all public unions, they are apolitical and 100% focused on delivering best value for the tax payers. No way they are in bed with a particular political party that will raid the public purse to give into every single demand, but let's give the unions whatever they want anyways, RBNZ can keep printing saddling more burden to the future generations but it's all worth it as we get so much value from the public sector.
And for auckland kids add in the closed flood days and cyclone days as well as strike days in term 1. Already lost 7 days of school before they got to term 2. This was supposed to be the post covid back to normal full bore year of school. Yeah nah. I get it's a pay dispute. But it's the kids suffering. Labour has a lot to answer for with its pay freeze on health/education. Spending billions changing management system in health. Curriculum reviews in education. That money would make a huge difference at the coal face but that's not where its being spend. So much $ for so little.
It doesn't matter where, Europe, US, Japan, whereever there's QE you know it doesn't work. Never correlates with any economic variables whether GDP or CPIs. If anything, there's an inverse correlation which just means the economy suffers and central banks use QE to respond to it. Link
That real GDP is getting flatter and flatter - so throwing more and more debt/money at the economy is giving less benefit each time QE is used.
If/when it unwinds, it will be spectacular. Like waking up from a long sleep only to realise that everything you thought was real, was just a dream. In the end productivity is key, not playing god with QE.
Bud Light's trans makeover is easily the worst marketing campaign in history. Now hurting more than just a brand and sales volume.
Former Anhesuer-Busch InBev - AB's parent company - executive Anson Frericks recently told ABC News the product boycott is undoubtedly bringing about financial pain for the thousands of salespeople who work for wholesalers who depend largely on performance-based compensation.
Compensation for salespeople varies across distributors and markets, but according to Frericks, a typical salesperson makes around $60,000 per year, including $20,000 in variable pay, which depends largely on commission.
'Good people are going to start leaving because they aren't making money,' he told ABC.
Numbers are suffering primarily due to a decline in Bud Light sales that reached as high as a 60 percent drop off over the week that ended on Memorial Day.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12157745/Bud-Light-boycott-hit…
With all due respect. You quote the Daily Mail as some reputable source to back up your vile discriminatory agenda. Now I'm not saying this story isn’t true, however, the Daily Mail has failed numerous fact checks, generally linked to deliberate attempts to spread fake news, implying that the publication seeks to profit from hoaxes or disinformation.
With all due respect. You quote the Daily Mail as some reputable source to back up your vile discriminatory agenda.
OK sir. Therefore you will deny the following because you don't like the Daily Mail:
- That Memorial Day sales were down up to 60% (even though this is supported by Nielsen data)
- That ABC News is also not reputable given that this is the source for falling salespeople commissions (https://abcnews.go.com/Business/thrown-faces-bud-light-salespeople-boyc…)
- That AB In Bev has shed $27 bio in market capitalization (OK, Daily Mail doesn't source this. I will give this one. Even though there is plenty of evidence to say this is so).
I have absolutely nothing against the Daily Mail. I clearly said that I am not saying the article is not true. I was just interested in your confidence in the narrative.
Would you feel more confident in the veracity of the facts if this were published in Granny Herald?
If you don't trust data from the likes of Nielsen, market data from the likes of Trading View, and salespeople interviews from the ABC, I understand.
The Bud Light fiasco is corporate self-immolation and hubris the likes of which we may never see again.
Apparently the LBGTQ+ advertising we are so saturated with now is not for sales, but for the ESG/Social Equity rankings investors rank them on. I find it all very odd given I or anyone I know have ever looked upon LBG as anything other than completely normal anyway. The T was so rare.
Their pay is a mixed bag. You can get 160k household income from 2 teachers with arts degrees living in Invercargill only working 40 weeks a year, that’s pretty bloody good compared to the alternatives.
The flip side is an IT teacher in Auckland with an engineering degree could get almost double in the real world.
They don't only work 40 weeks a year. They are in class 40 weeks a year. That like saying we should only pay soldiers the time they are in actual combat.
Teachers work bloody hard for little pay and it's a job that not many could handle for more than few days. But hey, as usual the interest commentators believe every person in every profession in New Zealand (other than themselves of course) are useless at their job.
The reason people get pissed off with teachers striking is because they have suddenly lost their free childcare during the strikes, plain and simple.
I am married to a former teacher. It all comes down to experience, the experienced teachers can work 40 weeks, the newer teachers struggle a lot.
As I said, some can get paid quite well for a degree that is almost worthless anywhere else, while others are completely underpaid. Are you saying there are other jobs paying better for a degree in history etc?
I never said they don’t work hard, but lots of people work hard for less. My wife was on about 80k 10 years ago with a few extra units, not sure what salary is like now but back then I thought it was pretty decent.
This is kinda the problem. Our general public school outcomes are woeful. There's a handful of likely causes:
- the teachers are sub-par
- the design of the education system is sub-par
- we're raising sub-par children
It's probably a combo, but in the case of the first one, paying the same sub-par performers more isn't going to improve the quality of their work.
There has been a shift towards focusing on the kids with terrible parents. This leaves less teaching time for the average kids and almost nothing for the bright ones. Back in my day it was the opposite, teachers spent a lot of time with the best kids. Hard to know which approach is best.
I have young kids at school and that is my observation. Very little focus on kids who are achieving as so many aren’t. Not enough focus on the three r’s.
Completely anecdotal - I hope I’m completely wrong. As I said my wife is a former teacher and she is disappointed at the lack of focus on the basics and too much e learning etc.
I don’t have any issue with teachers themselves, it’s the system that sucks.
Yep, the teachers and principals I interact with generally cite how much time they expend dealing with various social and mental health issues with kids. It doesn't have to even be many kids, you only need a handful of dysfunctional kids to monopolise a teacher's time.
China...needs to export its way out of an economic depression and will not hesitate to do so with a cheaper yuan, Caixin magazine reported last week that the local authorities are drowning under $10 trillion of ‘hidden debt’ that they can no longer fully service. The orthodox way out is to wipe the slate clean with root-and-branch restructuring of debts, which is what Japan failed to do in the 1990s, and China is now failing to do, because it is traumatic and runs into powerful vested interests. The central bank (PBOC) is trickling out support but to little avail. The transmission mechanism is broken.(Telegraph)
And if the Yuan goes, I wonder what will happen to the NZ$?
And much more so, the savagely still overpriced NZ housing stock.......what could possibly go wrong???
Well all the banks are now singing the same Bullsheeeit lines, in unison, with Tones the Comb/Onewoof.......praying like hell to the spruikergods that the Gumby FHB will turnup on masse, to save the day. Such vested contrivance interests, cannot go unnoticed!
I trust this contrivance will not go unpunished in the next HPI or REINZ reports!
+ No sorry, speculated Debtbombs will always explode......
A good article here. Interest rate risk management in the New Zealand banking system - Reserve Bank of New Zealand - Te Pūtea Matua (rbnz.govt.nz)
NZ banks required to duration match interest liabilities and assets to avoid a Silicon Valley style mis-match that could cause insolvency.
Our banks also use duration gap analysis to make sure they have correctly hedged their interest rate risk for changes up/down of rates.
(30) The Duration Gap | Asset Liability Management - YouTube
So they should be fine from an interest rate risk perspective - the bigger issue would be equity/solvency issues if house prices were to fall far enough (i.e. the value of assets relative to debts - as opposed to the cost of the debt liability from the interest rate risk).
Anyone who works in the banking industry can correct me - but this is from memory from a bank financial management uni paper in the past.
Our total export income (goods plus services) will be less than $100 bln
We have one of the lowest exports to GDP ratio in the the developed world, even below larger trade-deficit nations such as UK and France.
In fact, India is not far behind us in this regard and could overtake us in the next few years.
It's an interesting data set.
Our 22% is also higher than Australia, US, Japan, China.
We are much smaller than places like Gabon and Congo (50%).
https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/exports/
I do think we ought to export more. But if you take Gabon, this metric doesn't align with economic strength. It's inflated because their GDP is relatively small, so smaller incomes.
No other small developed economy has such a low export to GDP, Finland being the next lowest at ~32%.
We were actually hovering in the low-30% range for a while until things took a turn southwards right around when John Key decided to crank open migration floodgates.
Australia is relatively small compared to large economies but has a slightly smaller % than NZ.
I guess since the Key days exports has generally grown except for the COVID blip, but GDP has grown a lot more, hence the ratio has decreased.
Again, I do think we should export more, it's just a slightly difficult metric to compare against other countries.
Also interesting that at the top of the chart there are some countries 100% plus. I guess they are re-exporting products through their country. This appears as an export but isn't counted as GDP?
So NZ being at the end of the bus line doesn't help this metric.
I would love for even a superficial piece of actual journalistic investigation/ analysis of teacher supply in NZ... This year how many science/ maths trainee teachers are there + how many were born in NZ (as opposed to international students)? Does anyone see a problem for the future if we have to constantly import our STEM teachers? What is the pay for teachers in Australia (https://www.education.wa.edu.au/teacher-salaries) - if you can earn NZ$35,000 p.a. more teaching in Australia, where will the 'best' overseas teachers be applying (and where will NZ trained teachers be applying if they do not have significant ties here)...
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