Here's our summary of key economic events overnight that affect New Zealand, with news China has released a large set of economic data and not all of it is as positive as it first seems, or their officials claim.
But first, the New York Fed's survey of factories in its region in February was increasingly positive with and increase in new orders. But costs and prices rose at their fastest in ten years.
In Canada, housing starts stayed high in February even it they just slightly undershot expectations.
In China, data for industrial production, and for retail sales both came in better than expected for the January-February period, and recorded gains far above the December month as well. Year-on-year data isn't so relevant however as the 2020 bases were hugely affected by the onset of the pandemic there (and even if they do look spectacular in a chart).
But the retail sales gain actually wasn't that impressive even if it was better than expected. It indicates their 'recovery' seems to be weakening.
Worse, there was a rise in their surveyed unemployment rate to 5.5%, from 5.4% last month and 5.2% in December. In Chinese terms, admitting to that is sort of confirmation that things aren't exactly on the right track at present.
And Chinese electricity production slipped sharply on a daily average basis from December and was even lower than for November, so that might also be indicating a real economy slowdown.
House prices are rising a little faster in China than they have been recently, however. Of their 70 top cities, only nine had price falls. The range is from a fall of -1.5% year-on-year to +14.9%. These prices are rising their fastest in six months.
Beijing is under attack from the weather as a giant sandstorm engulfs the city. Desertification is inching closer and even the Party can't prevent such climate onslaughts. It is their worst sandstorm in a decade and flights in and out of the region have had to be abandoned.
Iron ore prices held their higher levels yesterday, and seem to be shaking off their drop of last week.
In Myanmar, China's support of the anti-democracy military coup has brought violent anti-China reactions with riots that have torched many Chinese-owned businesses.
And back in China, they have very low retirement ages, set in 1978 when their life expectancy was falling. The current 55 age for females and 60 for males is to be raised gradually over a number of years, partly as an antidote to their grim demographic prospects. They didn't reveal what the new target retirement age would settle at however.
In Japan, data for machinery orders in January came in better than expected although only by a small degree. But this data precedes the very strong machine tool order data for February we have already reported, so February machinery orders data is likely to have improved again.
In France, the boss of dairy giant Danone has been forced out after a series of poor financial results and strategy missteps.
In New York, Wall Street is marking time today with the S&P500 unchanged in early afternoon trade. Overnight European markets were an average of -0.2% lower. Yesterday, Tokyo ended its first session of the week up +0.3% but Hong Kong fell a full -1.0% and Shanghai shed a heavy -2.7%. Perhaps the "home team" doesn't wish to take big losses any more? The ASX200 ended yesterday flat, while the NZX50 Capital Index was up +1.3%.
The latest global compilation of COVID-19 data is here. The global tally is still rising and at a fast pace, now at 120,020,000 and up +332,000 in one day. Global deaths reported now exceed 2,656,000 and +4,000 in one days, so perhaps slowing. Vaccinations in the first world are rising however and in the US nearly a third (106.1 mln) have now had this protection. That is quelling the US daily death rate which was up less than +1000 yesterday. The number of active cases there is down to 7,365,000 (-23,000 fewer in a day).
The UST 10yr yield is down -2 bps from yesterday at 1.61%. The US 2-10 rate curve is marginally flatter at 145 bps. Their 1-5 curve is little-changed at +76 bps, while their 3m-10 year curve has flattened slightly too at just on +158 bps. The Australian Govt 10 year yield is down -7 bps at 1.74%. The China Govt 10 year yield remains pretty stable at 3.29%. But the New Zealand Govt 10 year yield is up a sharp +11 bps to 1.85%.
The price of gold starts today little-changed in New York, up +US$1 to just on US$1729/oz.
Oil prices have stayed high and are unchanged at just under US$65.50/bbl in the US, while the international price is now just under US$69.50/bbl.
The Kiwi dollar opens today marginally firmer at 71.9 USc. Against the Australian dollar we are up at 92.9 AUc. Against the euro we firmer too are just under 60.3 euro cents. That means our TWI-5 opens today at 74.
The bitcoin price will start today down -2.3% from this time yesterday at US$56,276. In between, volatility in the past 24 hours has been a very high +/- 5.4%. The bitcoin rate is charted in the exchange rate set below.
The easiest place to stay up with event risk today is by following our Economic Calendar here ».
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72 Comments
The Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine: No lockdown Sweden records a 2020 age adjusted excess death rate of 1.5%.
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/excess-mortality-across-countries-in-2020/
frazz,
Well said. He has 2 drums; one is his persistent efforts to downplay Covid in the face of all the evidence and the second is to suggest that climate change is not really happening. Very recently, he tried to suggest that last year, the global temperature fell by almost half a degree which is just nonsense.
I suspect he also believes that the earth is flat.
You are full of it linklater.
RSS dropped 0.458 and UAH dropped 0.47. But don't let basic math get in the way of a good smear.
http://images.remss.com/msu/graphics/TLT_v40/time_series/RSS_TS_channel…
https://www.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0/tlt/uahncdc_lt_6.0.txt
Population adjusted covid is a pup even compared to the '58 Asian flu. But big it up all you want if that's what floats your boat.
It's this sort of thinking that loses you credibility. It appears you are saying "we shouldn't have responded at all to COVID, because we have had worse pandemics in the past". It's a pretty crazy line of reasoning, when already with huge reactions all over the world (lockdowns/rushed vaccines/social distancing etc), millions are still dead.
We are supposed to be getting better and better at handling this sort of thing. Past comparisons when we weren't as good, hold less value. You may as well compare the Uigher problem with Ghenghis Khan and say "but he killed more, so we shouldn't care what's happening over there". Just because this virus isn't as bad as it could have been (imagine if it had ebola like death rates), it does NOT mean we should do nothing.
This whole period has shown you that people have lost their basic reasoning skills. They think they are smart by cherry picking, consistently pretending data shows one thing, when it actually shows the other and all sorts of other mental manipulation to try and push some other agenda.
I've never said we should have never done a thing. I was very keen to shut the border - much keener than hard n' early Cindy. Once the Diamond Princess data came out it was clear it wasn't going to be an ebola or Spanish flu. Sweden has shown you can let people keep their basic freedoms and still combat a pandemic. Our hard won human rights were run roughshod over - and yes, all sorts of agenda were pushed through under the cover of covid. Just look at the abortion and local government laws that have been pushed through under covid.
The human rights I was referring to was being confined to your homes, and the right to work, as well as the level waiver of a search warrant to enter your house. We have had pandemics before without dropping our pants on search warrants etc. Ramming through controversial legislation during covid just shows how ruthless the current crowd is.
NZ had the luxury of being on an island and being able to close it's borders. Other island fared/managed even better than us.
Those satellite data sets take the temperature of an atmospheric profile, some might say inaccurately, judging by the number of adjustments made, rather than a data set that represents temperatures at the Earth's surface, where humans actually live, as the NOAA and NASA data set do. Those data sets show 2020 as the warmest, or second warmest in the instrumental record!
frazz look at the graphs on euromomo. https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps
And countries that controlled it with effective lock downs did amazingly.
Over 13 thousand dead in Sweden from COVID as opposed to Norway with 640 dead (or population adjusted around 1200). Who recorded -3.6% on your same data source. So clearly effective lock downs worked.
Any how did the ineffective lockdowns work out? Sweden was the control - other countries performed far, far worse but let's just ignore them. If lockdowns were effective Sweden surely would have performed the worst by far? Big pharma and draconian public health officials hate Sweden for following 50 years of basic pandemic practice rather panic and following the CCP. Amazing how bitter people are about such an effective policy.
I literally just told you that. Their direct nordic neighbour (the best comparison) had less than 1/10th the deaths. You can call that "effective policy" all you want, but the numbers don't back you up, no matter which way you try to spin them.
It's hard to compare other countries because like for like in terms of major indicators like healthcare quality, population fitness/obesity etc etc are all very different. As is their populations ability to be suckered into not using their brains and believing poorly thought out lines of reasoning from posters with an agenda.
I've been saying for ages now that if Sweden emerged from a northern hemisphere winter with little to no excess deaths then that would prove that NZ made a catastrophic mistake - Sweden as you say is the control experiment. And NZ didn't have to do nothing like Sweden - that's a false dichotomy which is repeated ad nauseum. What I never expected was the extent to which people would just deny the evidence that's right in front of them. On a slight tangent what I find really troubling now is that reputable scientists like this woman who's got thousands of citations (link) is now being stone walled from publishing a meta analysis on Ivermectin. You know the pessimistic economist Satyajit Das in his book "banquet of consequences" predicted that trust in authorities would be a predictable causality in his future. He sure got that one right.
No lockdown is a bit strong - Sweden has had a wide range of changing restrictions over the last year - they just tended to 'recommend' rather than prescribe. The end result was similar. Large events prevented, close contact restricted etc.
This is not to mention the self-imposed isolation of those fearing the disease. My parents in the UK wouldn't have gone out much more than they have done even if they were allowed to, because there was a disease running rampant which could have killed them.
No, going by that data Sweden has done a great job. But their approach was not to encourage people to continue living their lives exactly as before the pandemic, they just had a quite different approach to lockdown and seem to have had good enough social cohesion to make a soft approach work. Good for them. Other countries had good results with tough lockdowns, for example NZ.
What is your conclusion? Do you think lockdowns are responsible for the deaths in other countries? You're usually posting things to tell us Covid is not particularly dangerous, but this link shows many countries had ~100 or more excess deaths per 100,000 thanks to the pandemic.
In Myanmar, China's support of the anti-democracy military coup has brought violent anti-China reactions with riots that have torched many Chinese-owned businesses.
The Chinese Communist Party daily Global Times has alleged in an editorial that “The violent attacks were apparently well organised and planned”. The editorial hinted that the protests in Myanmar and the arson against Chinese establishments are being coordinated from abroad. Beijing traced the twitter account of Founder and Executive Director of Burma Human Rights Network, operating out of London since 2015, for inciting the unrest in Myanmar.Link
The Indian foreign minister articulates the West's interference in other nation's affairs succinctly:
A set of self-appointed custodians of the world find it very difficult to stomach that somebody in India is not looking for their approval. It's not about democracy or autocracy, it's hypocrisy.
I don't need a certification from outside who have an agenda. Link
This is seriously hypocritical of Beijing on so many levels. It is no surprise Kyaw Win (Burmese) operates out of London, considering he would likely be thrown into jail or worse if he was in Myanmar. Is Beijing saying "You can't talk about your country when you are out of your country?" - which if so, should mean they cannot come out defending Chinese people living in Myanmar. You can't have it both ways!
Taiwan on Monday advised its companies in Myanmar to fly the island’s flag to distinguish themselves from Chinese businesses, which came under attack over the weekend amid a bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Yangon.
https://asiatimes.com/2021/03/taiwan-tells-firms-to-fly-flag-amid-myanm…
..in China, they have very low retirement ages, set in 1978 when their life expectancy was falling
China's life expectancy wasn't falling in 1978.
1977 - 65.28
1978 - 65.86
1979 - 66.38
Also if your country has 1.4 Billion people population decline is not "grim". Industries are automated, health is better, wealth is greater, you don't need so many people.
Well challenged.
It's amazing how a pre-held belief can skew appraisal. Given global overpopulation, China did the best thing a Government cold possibly do with its one-child policy. They are in a far better position than they could have been, and the knock-on is that we must be just that much less threatened by their overshoot. The Western MSM - totally steeped in 'growth is good, growth can be forever', dropped that ball completely; called it an affront on 'human rights' - which don't exist with unlimited population and can't exist from a position of overshoot.
The desertification issue will indeed bite them in the bum - and it may well have knock-on effects for us (as they seek to buy/commandeer/demand our land).
This is exactly right. I applaud the Chinese governments 1 child policy (even though it creates little emperors and have skewed the population toward males). The loss of consumption has saved the world and their country from an already bad crisis to being so much worse.
Kiwi men on track to have zero fertile sperm by 2040. Nature is having its say, regardless of the financial plight of younger people...Or is it all interrelated?
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/lifestyle/2021/02/kiwi-men-on-track-to-h…
Both cultural & economic reasons. I think a huge factor is certainly house prices. I know when I was looking 4 or 5 years ago most of my friends took a good 6-7 years to save up the deposit (150k on a 800k hours). So this gets you to age 30. Then you spend a few years getting the mortgage paid down as you don't want a huge mortgage with one income. So by the time you start your family you are already 33 years old. So if you start at 33, it takes 3 months to get pregnant, your first is born at 34. Realistically you start trying on your second 18 months after that (your age 34 & a half), Takes 3 months to get pregnant. So your second is born when you are 35. If you try for a third you are going to be pushing 37. This is old biologically. Further if you have a 3 bedroom house with one living area, your will run out of space for a 3rd kid. Gone are the days of the 80's,90's when you could get a builder & build a second story or expand. Council have ruined that with red tape. My Aunties council plans from 1991 to double the size of her house was on 3 pages. Upsizing is out of the question, those 4/5 bedroom bungalows a couple with 2 decent incomes could buy in the 90's are now all worth 2+ million. NZ has changed, this isn't a good county for families. The worst part is after the recent price rises the current lot saving for a house, don't stand a chance.
Personally I am going for zero children, the world is already far too overpopulated and the drawdown and climate crises we face are far too big to ignore. Children these days are unlikely to have a good life considering these crises and will likely need to respond in pretty grim ways.
Guys on track to have zero fertile sperm in less than 20 years...nature perhaps telling us we have enough people already.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/lifestyle/2021/02/kiwi-men-on-track-to-h…
Of all countries, China is more likely able to solve that desertification issue through wholesale change to agricultural practices. They may just end up leading the world in adopting 'no till', regenerative ag;
Zachary,
And the policy has worked so well that it was reversed in 2015. Why? Because they need more workers. As far as i can gather, this is having little effect on their birth rate and they face a major demographic problem in the not too distant future. It has been said many times that China will grow old before it grows rich.
Zachary,
And the policy has worked so well that it was reversed in 2015. Why? Because they need more workers. As far as i can gather, this is having little effect on their birth rate and they face a major demographic problem in the not too distant future. It has been said many times that China will grow old before it grows rich.
Fundamentals are no more important and asset class be it stocks or housing market depends upon government and reserve banks generousity but How long can it continue.
Americans ready to pour $40 billion into bitcoin and the stock market as stimulus checks arrive: survey: https://on.mktw.net/38JtwUT
Average Kiwi struggling still no word from the Great Jacinda Arden.
"Nero fiddles while Rome burns”
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2021/03/soaring-house-prices…
The same phase was used when John Key was the PM and not responding to the crisis.
So moral of the story is that whoever gets power will be Nero and it does not matter which political power, it belongs to and that is the reason one says that POWER CORRUPTS and Jacinda Arden clearly emphasis the same.
Nero's of the world also become thick skin, immune to any criticission in their own world of I, Me, Myself.
No - but the parallel is a very good one.
Nero fiddled because he couldn't do anything else, and it makes entire sense to enjoy yourself (I'd have up-ended a whisky on the Titanic, and/or asked the string quartet to play Elgar's Nimrod)
Rome ran into the law of diminishing energy returns; not a lot they could do but decline and fall.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs41247-018-0049-0
Ironically, the stuff which was burning represented sunk build-energy...........
stu...to be fair this crisis was set in motion in the late 80s with the commencement of huge unnatural population growth through mass immigration. I do not even know or care who was in Govt. But at least back then the numbers were not astronomical and a large number of immigrants could genuinely contribute positively to society by way of financial investments in NZ and setting up REAL businesses that employed NZers. But it was the start of a slippery slope.
Nowadays most migrants flocking here arrive penniless and the low quality businesses that many of them set up are really just a front for (unfortunately legal) human trafficking rings not to mention fairly common cases like the "no sex, no visa" case. which I believe, are far more common than we think. By allowing this in NZ we are complicit in modern day slavery and forced prostitution, not to mention being responsible for a system that ensures our poor will always struggle to earn a living wage, are destined to forever pay huge percentages of their wages in rent and will never be able to afford their own home.
So I guess the question is, can they genuinely do much that will have significant impact in the short term (next 12-18 months)
The problems are systemic and have built over decades.
It's still on them though. They should have been much more urgent in their first term.
Yes, apparently they can build one of the largest "gangs" in Rotorua and spend heaps of Taxpayers money keeping Motels and Hotels afloat and building up crime statistics and paying more than ever for so called new build "Council Houses" and paying themselves higher and higher wages to not produce a safer, fairer, business orientated, profitable, catchment, crime free, Country, that a Country of 5 Million could produce, which is not to be "Sniffed at". It i not Covid19 that is the issue, it is how we are turning things into a dire, over priced crap and doss house and how some who shall be nameless take advantage of "Lockdown" and sink their money into ever more expensive Houses and are deemed to be the Saviours of our "Land", by profiting from our Land of Milked and Honey..... I call em B-ankers and Poll-lies....Funny Munny, is not to be laughed at, especially when stolen from 'Savers"
Yes but realistically the price paid will be a recession. Hence the non-action on the issue. I think Labour is in a bit of a predicament. If they introduce demand side initiatives (capital gains or land tax) this will cause a recession. Doing nothing will see votes hemorrhaged to the greens. Sort of a dammed if you do, dammed if you don't scenario. This is why they are opting to try & completely ignore the issue & focus on Covid & array of unimportant social issues.
Zero sympathy for their plight - primarily self-inflicted I would add.
Governing is not necessarily easy – there needs to be some tough decisions taken – and some will not be happy – such is the nature of the beast.
If they’re not up to it then they shouldn't have put themselves forward in the first place.
Whatever noble intentions Jacinda and Grant had, they probably met the same fate as those of John Key, and for the same reason.
Key & English; Ardern & Robertson were probably 'invited' into the same backroom at some important international meeting and had a discussion along the lines of :
"Look. You'll do as we are doing - or we'll reduce your economy to rubble. The last thing we need is an insignificant country like New Zealand showing the rest of the indebted World that things can be done in other ways, and being successful. Now. Get back home and get your people borrowing; speculating and spending like ours are"
The only country I can think of that tried to do it another way was Iceland, and whilst they were brought to their knees (as they were probably similarly told they would be) they survived.
That's what we need ; a new "keep the nuclear ships out" moment of courage from past times. We actually do have it in us.
But....our current crop of 'leaders' don't ; and neither will the next lot.
Michael Burry warns of hyperinflation....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdYhB-_RLbc (George Gammon)
In relation to profile’s comment above:
It’s important to recognise Swedish culture. Many followed the advice and stayed home where they could and avoided close contact. Unlike some countries where “muh freedoms” involve acting like nothing is wrong and getting sick anyway.
I’m interested in the percentage of people who have ongoing health implications from COVID-19 especially in places where there’s been high infection rates (e.g. now hit 9% in the US ) but we may not fully know this until the vaccines take effect and the gate is shut on the disease
CCP will always gamble.. with the looser, we know which ones. CCP 'magic weapons' is proven to be difficult in those countries than ban their land from acquisitions, thus preventing the agent of sympathy from move in. Just google those countries that ban land transfer to foreign entities.
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