90 seconds at 9 am: China wobbles as exports slump, iron ore prices in bear market, big interest rate and exchange rate drops; Japan cools; Oil falls; NZ$1 = US$0.846 TWI = 79.3

For a take on Australia in the wake of the iron-ore price slump: this macrobusiness post would be funny if it weren't.

I wonder if you could write the same thing about NZ by just changing the names?

The Yuan is a managed currency right?

So its "fall" is effectively a devaluation through state intervention , as we know it . 

No one really knows its worth because of the secretive way in which it is managed , but we do know that its really cheap to travel and eat in China , so the currency is probably below par already

This is going to be interesting for us as soft commodity exporters , and very  interesting for the Aussies as hard comodity exporters 

Chinese "data", DC.  Forgot the double quotes, Again!

But ya can bet that their teeming middle classes are still queuing to hoover up a coupla lines of our White Powder....

Re: this macrobusiness post "The one trick pony will drop dead without care"

This is indirectly related to the below which I sent to Transportblog to see if they wanted to make an article and get discussion going.

The interesting bit is the paragraph I highlighted. Finland (and the rest of Northern Europe) has a 65 year advantage over Australasia. That is when they started this urban education/training/ high-tech business machine (Finland had a 50% rural pop pre WW2). Transport and local government is just one cog. Education and research is a big part of the machine. They have an important cultural belief that education is the way to get ahead, this probably goes back centuries to the Lutheran learning to read the bible practice. A stable exchange rate has been important. But achieving this by using the euro has not been a success. Norway's sovereign wealth fund is probably better as resource exports are at least partially converted to more stable long investment rather than a leveraged debt fuelled consumption boom.  Also Finland has a history of housing booms and financial crises predating the GFC.

So although Finland has two weaknesses, firstly the cost of housing/ the possibility of a repeat financial/banking crisis. Secondly being part of the failed euro experiment. I believe there economy is stronger and more diversified and should weather the coming storms.  As the above Macrobusiness article makes clear this is not so certain for us down under.

I think the general public is instinctively weary of putting all their eggs in the dairy basket to mix metaphors, hence the following survey results http://www.interest.co.nz/rural-news/68886/horizon-survey-fish-and-game-finds-70-nzers-believe-expansion-dairying-has-worsened.

I believe the countries that will do well this century are the ones that will adapt their institutions to eliminate weaknesses and promote strengths.

 

Below is the journey planner for Greater Helsinki.

 

http://www.reittiopas.fi/en/

 

It is all in English except street addresses. It is quite intuitive. I find using the map option rather than address is the easiest. The results are great, it assesses all the possible PT options, you can see time and distance of travel, when the next three PT options are. CO2 savings compared to car/1 passenger? travel. Another link will show the biking option for the same route.

 

Greater Helsinki is similar size and population to Greater Auckland. Helsinki has problems with bottlenecks being at the end of a peninsula with islands and bridges/tunnels. It has roughly the same amount of motorways as Auckland but much more PT infrastructure as you will see. From memory it has 50% medium to high density housing (apartments and terrace housing with communal car parks) and 50% stand alone housing (although that might be a Finland wide proportion). Typically the high density areas are well supplied with PT. Either bus-ways going the length of the motorway, train or metro. Tram in the older inner city area. But the overall density is about the same because a lot of parks, common spaces, paths etc. From memory 2400 people per sqkm.

 

I believe that Greater Helsinki has spent a lot more money on transport than Auckland. Both in capital expenditure and on-going costs. The capital expenditure is obvious given the greater choice of transport options. The higher running costs are mostly related to climate. The winter with lengthy icy periods being hard on the roads, winter studded tyres are compulsory between certain dates, the freezing/thawing process opens up cracks/hole in the road. Frequent snow storms requires fleets of snowploughs. You can get the wrong sort of snow that interfere with the railway points.

 

A transport card for Greater Helsinki when I left in 2011 was about 450 euro for a year for students/children and double that for adults.

 

The transport services are provide by local councils and Greater Helsinki has three big ones and several smaller ones.

 

Residents pay roughly half there PAYE to local government and half to central government. PAYE is higher than NZ but there is not a huge difference in take home pay for similar jobs. (Nursing, pharmaceutical medical trials and hospitality in particular I know about).

 

Local councils also provide all education (preschool to tertiary) and most healthcare facilities.

 

Anyway readers can get a good idea of an alternative city type by exploring the journey planner website, perhaps using google maps to get a satellite/street view.

 

Helsinki/Finland is not perfect. They have high housing costs and in the past they have had booms and busts in housing requiring bank bailouts in the early? 90s.

 

Finland has managed the transition from a rural/agricultural economy to a high tech manufacturing one, most famously with Nokia. But in fact they have many niche industries. For instance the lifts in the Skytower are provided by Kone a Finnish company.

 

I would be interested if any readers had similar information from other cities. Especially if they have history of stable and/or low housing costs. 

The only thing that Aucklanders can build is their debt.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11217335

I wonder who benefited from all those impairments.