Here's my summary of the key news overnight in 90 seconds at 9 am, including news of a surprise rise in China's trade.
But first, the US House of Representatives has now voted to increase the US debt limit until March 2015 without conditions; Senate and White House confirmation is now a formality.
UST benchmark 10yr bond yields have risen again overnight after yesterday's Yellen grilling in Congress and are now at 2.75%. The oil price inched higher with the US and Brent benchmarks getting closer. And gold continued its rise, and it now at US$1,285/oz. In mid-day trade, equities in New York are holding yesterday's gains.
In China, data out overnight showed that export and import growth unexpectedly accelerated in January, defying signs the world’s second-largest economy will slow. It also fuelled speculation that fake shipments are resurfacing.
The Bank of England said the British economy will grow much faster this year than it previously thought but that interest rates will remain low for some time to come.
Australia is reported to be readying an asset sales plan exceeding A$100 billion. The country has also been reviewed by the IMF who were generally positive, although they did say it was important the Aussie dollar trade at much lower levels.
Yesterday, Xero announced a new and expanded push into US markets where it currently has less than 10% of its signups. Some impressive new hires were revealed and sky-high goals.
The NZ dollar has fallen marginally against most currencies overnight and it starts today at 83.2 USc, 92.1 AUc and the TWI is at 78.3.
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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5 Comments
Got in before Hugh. Yes!
Caught this editorial from The Press yesterday on CCC having to face up to difficult decisions. For anyone following the continual debate over council charges, council debt and rates this editorial sets out the issues very nicely.
I guess we can say that Mayor Dalziell's honeymoon is over and, if the editorial accurately portrays her thinking, then she is currently scoring a 'D' and needs to try a lot harder.
For those following yesterday's thread on charges for building consents. I found a report on the Office of the Auditor-General's website addressing the issue of fees and charges. It will be an easy read for any who want to read it in full but here's the take away:
[A]ny authority given to a public entity to charge a fee is implicitly capped at the level of cost recovery. So a proposal to lift dog licensing charges above the actual cost of running the Animal Control unit would be illegal. Charging out a building control officer at $165/hr would only be legal if you were budgeting them to do real work just 50% of the time. About time the Auditor-General had a wee look at these practices.
Kumbel it will be interesting to see how the Councils will be transparent with fees.
Should we be expecting to see them provide a Labour + Overheads model?
Should each seperate area/department be required to have all transactions entered into a simple cashbook system which has to be published monthly online?
Efficiency, Accountability/Transparency are meaningless words in any public organisation.
In theory the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act would give anyone authority to request sufficient information to check quite a lot of this stuff for themselves.
The key to it all is the full budget. When your council publishes its annual plan they only publish the summary of the public accounts. For most purposes that is enough for the average member of the public for consultation purposes. I can't think of any reason why a council could refuse to provide the full budget for, say, the building control unit if you asked for it. You could do a lot of analysis off that if you knew what you were looking for.
Oddly lots of the stuff people would want to know is published on the web - if you know what you are looking for and where. I have recently used the phrase 'hidden in plain sight' a few times passing on info that people thought was hidden away. I have never spent more than 30 seconds finding it either.
If you got all 70+ CEO's to cast a secret ballot on whether they wanted out of building consenting I think you would get a 100% yes vote. They have all the responsibility and no real control over what they can and can't do.
So we ended up in the ludicrous position of CCC losing its accreditation to process building consents but having to carry on anyway because the law says they have to if no-one else will.
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