David Chaston details the key news overnight in 90 seconds at 9 am in association with Bank of New Zealand, including news that the New Zealand dollar is falling steadily and is now at its lowest level in seven months on a TWI basis. It is also under 76 cents Australian and under 77c American.

With politicians out of the way and technocrats in place in both Greece and Italy, there was hope that the right kind of individuals were finally in place to tackle the painful and challenging budget problems in both countries - that was the storyline anyway.

But the market is quickly judging that Europe's problems are more systemic and less about personalities. Not only did Italian and Spanish bond auction yields soar to unsustainable levels, French yields over German levels pushed out to record levels. Europe is headed for recession, as the latest growth data shows.

Across the Atlantic, growth data is much better. Retail sales are rising as as Americans spent their dollars at electronics stores and on the Internet.

On Wall Street, the news was all about the clearing of the "Occupy" protesters overnight - although they are trying to reassemble, even retake the park where the protest started.

On the markets meanwhile, the Dow is up 0.5% holding well above the 12,000 mark. It's added 1,000 points from the levels we saw in the three months August to October. Pretty impressive really. US oil is rising and about to push through the $100/barrel mark.

In China, the IMF is warning authorities there that they need significant banking reform to head off a "steady build-up of financial sector vulnerabilities". China is doing well, but struggling to find a balance for its fairly heavy hand in regulation. The worry is that it is their banking system into which the unresolved economic issues get pushed into.

And finally, here at home we have the latest Fonterra GlobalDiaryTrade auction results and there is a positive surprise - prices rose 2.6% from the previous auction, the largest rise in the last ten auctions.