A review of things you need to know before you go home on Thursday; BNZ cuts rates, banks withdraw cashbacks, inflation linker bond yields rise; UOM interest rates rise, wholesale rates flatten

Here are the key things you need to know before you leave work today.

TODAY'S MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
There was a major cleanup in the way BNZ makes it's home loan rate offers and you can read about that here. It is also now clear a number of banks have withdrawn their cash incentives for new mortgage lending. Details on that change are here.

TODAY'S DEPOSIT RATE CHANGES
There are no TD rate changes to report today.

REAL DEFLATION
In case you missed it, today's GlobalDairyTrade auction was a real downer, down -10.8% in US dollars, down -12.7% in NZ dollars. However markets were unsurprised and had almost zero reaction.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
Today's September 2035 Government inflation linked bond tender was reasonably well bid; weighted accepted average yield was 1.87%, higher that the previous yield of 1.79%. Is this markets pricing in rising rates?

COMMODITY INDEX RISES
ANZ report their Commodity Price Index for March increased by 4.6%, the second lift in a row. Dairy products once again led the increase (+9.2%), but much of this was a carryover effect into early March from the February rally in the GlobalDairyTrade (GDT) auctions. The last two GDT auctions have seen all of this improvement unwound already, not boding well for next month’s Commodity Price Index. One positive in March was a bounce in most meat and fibre product prices, which will hopefully prove more sustained. Outside of these two sectors prices were either lower or unchanged. 

'IT'S OUR JOB TO BE FAIR' [IRONY]
The IRD has announced that use-of-money interest rates on underpaid and overpaid tax will rise on May 8, 2015. The interest rate charged by Inland Revenue on underpaid tax will rise from 8.40% to 9.21%, and the rate for overpaid tax will rise from 1.75% to 2.63%. Compared with any bank, the spread the IRD applies is pretty handsome - although it is tightening ever so slightly from 6.65% to 6.58%. Now that is real monopoly pricing power.

ALL's WELL [MORE IRONY]
Fonterra's earnings may be a challenge, but at least it has a middling investment grade credit rating. Today S&P confirmed it is unchanged at 'A'.

WHOLESALE RATES FALL
Wholesale swap rates again fell today by -2 to -6 bps, in a strong flattening bias. In fact the 1-5 curve is now just +5 bps. The 90 day bank bill rate is still at 3.64%.

NZ DOLLAR CONTINUES SLIDE
The NZ dollar has been a bit weaker for most of the day, but recently has shown some firming. As of late afternoon it's at 74.6 USc, 98.2 AUc, and the TWI is unchanged from yesterday at 79.7. Check our real-time charts here.

KEEP AN EYE ON US
Enjoy your long weekend. We will see you back here on Tuesday (although we will have new content going up each day over the holiday weekend, plus all our chart resources will also continue to be updated daily). In the meantime, check in on Saturday at least to see what the US non-farm payrolls came in at. This is data that can affect markets world-wide.

You can now see an animation of this chart. Click on it, or click here.