The ANZ Roy Morgan NZ Consumer Confidence survey took a 16 point nosedive in February to 81.7, its lowest level since the survey began in 2004.
That's a lower reading than was recorded during the Global Financial Crisis and at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic two years ago.
The nervous observation of widespread Covid-19 in the community was flagged as the key reason for the dramatic drop, and perceptions of current personal financial situations fell 14 points to -18%.
The Russian invasion of the Ukraine may have had some influence on confidence in the final week of February, but ANZ noted more responses occurred in the middle two weeks than the first and last weeks of the month, and the overall consumer confidence measure was fairly consistent across February.
This left Omicron in the spotlight as gun-shy consumers grappled with uncharted territory.
"This is the first time most New Zealanders have faced a significant chance of actually catching Covid-19. This month’s data looks grim, but there are undoubtedly some temporary impacts in there. Time will tell what the other side looks like, but we do know that Omicron is fast and furious, and will blow through relatively quickly," said Sharon Zollner, ANZ Chief Economist.
Households also felt it was a terrible time to buy a major household item, at -21, down 17 points.
The survey period was from Monday 31 January – 27 February (four weeks), with Roy Morgan surveying 1000 households by asking a series of questions about their financial position and New Zealand's economic conditions as a whole.
The diminished confidence comes amid a tough time for many households, as they are squeezed by high inflation, a climate of rising interest rates and surging petrol and grocery prices.
However, the survey showed inflation expectations little changed at 5.6%, with house price inflation expectations easing from 5.3% to 4.8%.
The response to each question (for example, do you think prices will go up or down), results in either a positive or negative number. When the responses to all questions are tallied and negative responses are subtracted from the positive, it results in the overall index figure for the month.
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88 Comments
Maybe that 50% of the population just cares about the effect this might have on vulnerable loved ones or people who need healthcare during this surge?
But that would require you to care about anyone else but yourself and NZ isn't really that kind of operation anymore.
It's akin to recency bias, however. Getting the flu is worse than getting omicron, but the perception of that risk isn't (despite what a lot of people think they have never had the flu).
It's all a bit damning though if people are that concerned that the government hasn't acted upon it from a medium or long-term plan on preventative care (which should include general well-being, e.g. nutrition and exercise). Solutions are still driven towards expensive reactive care (medication).
Where is the info that flu is worse than omicron? Latest info I can find is that omicron is 40% more deadly than flu in current restrictive and hyper aware lifestyles to reduce spread in Japan. So... For unvaccinated normal life likely to be even more deadly.
Not bad though all things considering delta. But still deadlier than the flu, but an acceptable (to me) level of deadlier with our restrictions.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-03/omicron-is-40-deadli…
Wild how I'm not prepared to risk long-term damage to my loved ones based on your personal anecdata.
Yes, overwhelmingly, it has almost no effect on healthy full grown adults. No, that's not who I'm talking about when I talk about vulnerable members of my family. 'Vulnerable' being the key concept here. Why is this so hard for people to wrap their heads around?
I'm not talking about fit, healthy and triple-jabbed adults here by definition. The fact it has no effect on these people is totally irrelevant to what I am saying. Vulnerable people may not exist in your family, but they do in mine. They are by definition 'vulnerable'.
Forgive me for being somewhat irritated by the attitude that anyone who isn't vaxxed is just asking for it and deserves whatever they get.
I am on day 4 of omicron, it's like a moderate cold for me.
Of course I would rather not have got it, but hopefully this will serve my immunity to covid well.
If you have kids, I think it's going to be quite difficult to avoid it. I got it through my daughter.
If we didn't have kids I would have felt much more confident of potentially avoiding infection.
I'm on day 5, its been worse than any cold i've had, but not as bad as the one time I had influenza, it was worse for my partner, more like a flu case for her. We don't have kids, no pre-existing conditions, and my partner is generally pretty fit and healthy (runs half-marathons and eats healthy, rarely drinks).
I caught it off my partner, took me 5 days after she became symptomatic to notice any symptoms, and no idea where she got it from since she'd been working from home and not going out unless necessary, so pretty limited exposure. There are potential infection vectors literally everywhere, so no kids isn't going to stop you from getting infected.
I've been taking Vitamin D and regularly drinking green tea for months on end. There are quite a few studies suggesting both could potentially have a benefit in reducing the severity of covid infection, although it's certainly not conclusive. Also been taking some traditional Chinese herbal mixture (includes the brilliant herbs Astragalus and Reishi) for boosting immunity.
Who knows whether or not these things (in addition to double vax) have helped ensure my Omicron symptoms are moderate, at worst. I'll never know.
What's interesting though, is my wife has not come down with it, and she got the booster 3 weeks ago (so, she hasn't caught omicron, but she felt very ill for a week after the booster). My daughter and I didn't get the booster. Although my wife is also Japanese - there's some science floating around suggesting around 50% of Japanese people might have some genetic protection against covid.
So who really knows what's working and what's not, although obviously the evidence is pretty strong that vaccinations are very beneficial, overall. Whether those other things have helped me, don't know. But I was happy to invest in them, given they are 'No Harm' (if used within guidelines obviously).
That vitamin D helps is not only conclusive, but should come as no surprise. We've known about its positive effects on the immune system since forever, and as it's the immune system which is fighting the virus even in fully vaccinated indivuduals, there's plenty of reason to be taking it in the middle of a global viral pandemic regardless of whether you are vaccinated or not.
Nearly one third of Australians are vitamin D deficient. People with darker skin, and people who live in places with less hours of sunlight, also tend to be vitamin D deficient. Vitamin D is cheap, readily available, and well tolerated, and although it's not a silver bullet, there are almost no risks involved in taking it, and the benefits are not insignificant. That public health authorities are not routinely testing for vitamin D deficiency, and recommending supplementation for those who are deficient, is just another indication of how much this actually has to do with public health.
Yep.
Anything that strengthens the immune system has to be at least of some potential benefit.
As you say, regardless of covid, Vitamin D is well known to strengthen immunity and help protect against respiratory illness. There's been quite a few articles around on this, so I kind of think it's ignorant if people haven't been supplementing with it. Even if it doesn't help, it does no harm if taken in recommended dose - plus it's cheap.
There should have been much more focus on fitness and wellbeing in the fight against covid. Up to a point, people need to take responsibility for themselves - eat healthy, get fitter, and take supplements that are known to help immunity. Mind you, we talk about being fit, but if you do too much exercise it can weaken the immune system.
I'm pro-vax, so for me my comprehensive approach also involved getting vaccinated in addition to good diet (lots of fruit and veges - antioxidant-rich), light-moderate exercise (daily power walking, press ups and sit ups), and immune boosting supplements. Plus of course the good ole green tea.
If you google 'Green Tea Covid' several quite reputable-looking research papers come up on it - again not conclusive, but green tea is good for one's general health anyway.
I suggest that many know how badly this will affect supply chains, and not all sickness is mild. We are managing a range of impacts, most have 2+ days of severe flu like symptoms. But it is not just the health implications people are being cautious about.
We make a critical product (you now - one of those panic purchase items) and this week many teams are 40% down, almost 70% of one team are infected. Little to none of this is workplace transmission. While many will be ready to return next week, our customers have 50% of their warehouse staff absent. Even though both have stock, it can't get to the consumer easily.
This is likely to go on for a month or two (I don't believe the 3 week comment). While the first infection peaks were in Auckland, it is still accelerating in Auckland (I know people from many different social, business and sporting groups who have one in their family infected)
As it spreads, the pockets of infection will continue to keep a hefty level of worker absence that will affect all facets of our society. Restaurants are quiet, even the streets are quieter now
I'm concerned that the RBNZ will interpret this dive in confidence as a signal to not increase the OCR by 0.5% at its next meeting. Yes confidence is down and spending will most likely follow down too but inflation is still going up, significantly so.
The RB faces a tough choice between two evils; a recession or runaway inflation, ultimately it's more important to get on top of inflation than to avoid a recession, increase the OCR aggressively now!
You can only kick the can down the road so far...we've managed to continually kick the can down the road since 2008 - now 14 years later, with the central bank backed into a corner, with inflation very high, and a stagflationary recession quite possible, house prices falling, record levels of debt, lowest consumer confidence (on record?), the reserve bank has its chickens coming home to roost.
I don't think we'll see 0.50 at the next meeting. Not because of this survey, but because US 10 year treasuries are down 20-30bp (mostly Ukraine I'd say) in the last few weeks. NZ does not exist in a vacuum.
Mind, I'm not saying if they should, or they shouldn't, just my prediction of what they will do.
The real black swan is the fed not raising rates. I've said it time and time again, there is going to be no significant rate rises in USA or NZ, and if there are, they will be short lived.
It's a good contrarian take. The ruling elite would prefer financial repression than any potential upsetting of mkts.
To tame inflation, theory states economic activity must slow through higher interest rates.
How many new articles have you seen lately stating businesses are crying out for customers? Eateries/cafes very quiet, tourism dead etc, house sales/prices on the decline.
It all points to a slowing economy, but prices are still rising. All raising rates does is ruin people with debt aka mortgage holders. This further exacerbates the problem because no one has any discretionary funds.
Inflation is driven significantly through things out of NZs control. See Russia/Ukraine for example. Raising rates in lil old NZ doesn't change these events.
NZ was one of the few countries who managed a reasonable form of post GFC recovery, returned to reasonable interest rates, returned to surplus through sound economic management and judicious infrastructure investment (remember nationwide ADSL broadband?). But we didn't like that much, Labour spent the surplus in year 1.
Our Government and RBNZ have none of the self control demonstrated 13 years ago, and little of the smarts required.
I'm not overly hopefully that we will see more than poorly thought through knee jerk policies and massive unintended consequences, more thinly veiled ideological attacks on Labours disliked demographics rather than true attempts at recovering our economy and democracy.
Indeed. It's concerning the number of commentators who think that lowering cash rates is something you do when you have to, but raising them is only something you do because you should.
Failing to normalise interest rates has major consequences too, and we may just reach a point where the lesser of two evils is to hike them and brace for impact.
I think if they are really doing their job, they should see this as an important indicator on why they really need to curb the inflation. Yes, some of the factors are due to Omicron fear, but I think the major part that causing such low consumer confidence is high inflation.
I agree - consumer confidence has a lot to do with inflation. Yesterday, while waiting in line at the grocery store, the elderly lady in front of me (holding cash in her hand), asked for some items to be removed from her total purchase until she had enough cash to pay her bill.
It is debatable that increasing the OCR will make any noticeable difference to the price of things in NZ apart from maybe houses. The global price rises we are seeing in oil, wheat, aluminium etc will flow directly and indirectly into the prices we pay in NZ - and this will completely overwhelm the tiny difference that reducing consumer spending and increasing unemployment will make on the demand side.
RBNZ would do well to look back 100 years to the stated intent of the more progressive central banks. Central banks should be focusing on ensuring that easy credit flows to productive endeavours (industry, increasing productive capacity etc), and NOT to speculative activities (inflating asset bubbles, share buy backs to boost share prices, derivative trading etc). Government should be thinking not about cutting spending, but about what it needs to invest in to increase domestic productive capacity, improve energy security, and reduce the cost of living.
They definitely have the tools, OCR is an important one. If they claimed that OCR was main effective tool to stimulate economy and boost the inflation to their target range, then surely adjusting OCR in a way to remove excess stimulation is also main effective tool to reduce inflation.
I am not buying into it's global inflation not domestic inflation as an excuse not increasing OCR. When they claimed the risk of recession back then, inflation was lower than their target range, I believe it was a global deflation not domestic deflation too. Yet they lowered their OCR to "stimulate" a so call "deflated" economy despite domestic goods prices had shown signs of increasing.
So if someone says increasing the OCR won't make noticeable difference to the inflation, I'll say some people in RBNZ need to own their mistakes and resign, and apparently two core committee members have already resigned...
Exactly....the 2/10 inverted back in 2019...indicating that recession was coming...then the central banks fortunately had COVID to use as the 'trigger' for extraordinary monetary intervention in the economy.
I guess this time they will blame the war caused by Putin. As opposed to just chickens coming home to roost after years of ultra loose/dangerous monetary policy.
Recall that back in October 2019, the OCR was suddenly cut by 50bps. This was only the third time in history that the OCR had been cut by that much in one go, outside of a major global recession. The other two times were 11/9/2001, and shortly after the 2011 Christchurch earthquakes.
Remember; no COVID, no war, no recession, just an economy on its knees. We had yield curve inversions, discussions around negative cash rates and quantitative easing, all months before anyone ate a bat in Wuhan.
I just hope people remember this when the politicians and economists inevitably try to use COVID-19 as their scapegoat.
Yes I agree - I think we will have to start facing reality the next few years.
Its odd how society seem to think there are free lunches to be had - but there are not. In order to make the future better you have to make sacrifices in the present. But instead we've tried to make the present better with, in my view, the probability of making the future worse. Avoiding recessions using reckless monetary and fiscal policies is simply pain avoidance - we need to be strong and face the pain and come out the other side of it (is this the great reset...I don't know...possibly).
A friend once said to me that "drinking tonight is like borrowing happiness from tomorrow morning". I thought that was kind of clever.
We should think of debt in the same way. Taking on debt is like bringing forward future prosperity to today. It's a zero-sum game. We don't get to enjoy that prosperity both now and in the future, it's one or the other.
As you say, the piper will need to be paid at some point.
Again agree completely - BTW go to property investor night and debt/leverage is your friend....
I think its a sign we're at the end of the long debt cycle Dalio talks about - and usually at that point people use leverage to speculate with debt. Exactly what we've witnessed the last 20 year.
Unfortunately usually when the tide goes out you get to see who is swimming naked....but instead we have central banks giving the naked swimmers new swim wear every time the tide goes out....(but I think they've just run out of swim wear!)
I said this two years ago & everyone looked at me as if I was intellectually handicapped. The GFC was a similar scenario for North America, which was a play from the book of the BoJ from the Asian Crisis at the turn of the century. ''Short term pain for long term gain.'' used to be the saying when I was being educated. And by & large, it worked. It clears out the crap which gathers constantly. Now, we are all just all a bunch of wusses with a new monetary theory. But the pain is coming. And we need to face it ''Face first.'' as Mr Zelensky said.
I sold a proportion of my share holdings late 2019 based upon the 2/10 inverting. A share market pull back and wider economic recession was likely based upon the history of that 2/10 inversion. Central banks would have known that and been preparing their response prior to COVID even being a 'thing'.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/13/us-bonds-yield-curve-at-flattest-level-…
And people will claim this is great because it will allow mortgage holders to inflate away their debt! But what they don't see if that companies and governments have a lot of debt also, and rising interest rates to curb inflation will be a claim on the earnings of tax payers and company earnings. Where the money is going to be to provide workers with pay rises I just don't see. Governments and companies have to pay their debts first in order to avoid default. And if they chose pay rises over paying interest on debt, then its possible that we see widespread debt defaults across the economy.
What I see is a period financial repression with severly negative real interest rates and inflation way above wages. This isn't like the 1970's high inflation were you start from a base with relatively low debt levels. Were now seeing high inflation in a period with extroadinary high debt levels. Something will have to give.
Households also felt it was a terrible time to buy a major household item, at -21, down 17 points.
IS there actually any available stock of household items to buy
Its like saying households felt it was a terrible time to renovate - absolutely it is there is no Gyprock, no wood, no steel, no fastenings.
Oh no...housing, I mean the NZ economy, is declining. No surprise.
Worth noting that the NZ Housing economy is the financial funding backbone of most small to medium businesses. Banks don't have the margin/time/skill to correctly access your businesses to judge business loans. Its all how much is your house worth. The decline in value plus the end of the wage subsidy will have terminal or near terminal effect for many as it has been the life support for many associated SME businesses. Choices for the Govt. Get all the debt laden reality cleared out this year (mass mortgagee and bankruptcy action), or, let this mess drag on into the election year. What to do....
The wave of inflation is about to transition into something worse, Stagflation. Congrats RBNZ. You have created the worst possible mess.
I am hearing from friends (in the Wellington region) with small businesses that consumer spending is well down. a couple who own restaurants have said numbers eating out have plummented since mid Jan.
I have also noted that the big box stores ie farmers, the warehouse etc are offering quite reduced prices on products - farmers at the moment seem to have 40% off everything - a sign people just arent opening their wallets.
of course this is understandable when we are paying $7-8 a kilo for fresh fruit , $25-$30 for meat, $15 a kg for cheese and 6.99 for 10 eggs and thats at pak n save. Family budgets are definitely feeling the pinch
Price of 98 petrol has jumped about 30c per liter in the last week here in Christchurch (at least at the BP stations I regularly go past) - up at $3.35 today when I came home from work.
I would be budgeting for $4 per liter for 91 grade within the next 3-6 months.
I get that vac sealed eye fillet from the butcher down here in Tauranga. Gave up on most "Steak" as its either tough or totally tasteless. Its nice as you cut it to your own thickness. I still swear that NZ exports all the best stuff and the locals are left with the 2nd grade stuff still paying top dollar.
Two things Grant could do, adjust Tax brackets, drop GST on some food products (done in OZ so not like we reinventing wheel here). I predict it will be the Tax brackets, BUT not until election year, after the hurt has really set in, then he will be seen as the great saviour.
It'll bounce back pretty quickly once people adjust to the Omicron reality, or once the Omicron peak has passed in a month or so. Just like it rebounded quickly after both the other major dips on the graph (GFC and first Covid lockdown). Its not the end of the world people.
Don't hold your breath for the media to start asking any real questions. If we start looking a bit too complacent, Rod Jackson or Michael Baker will soon be called upon to remind us all how scared we're supposed to be again.
> Hospitals coping so well that they are wanting to strike. No real deaths....
I hope you're right. But as these are lagging indicators it's probably too soon to say. Cases are followed by hospitalisations followed by ICU followed by deaths.
Three weeks ago all the talk here was about 'covid purgatory' at ~200 cases a day. Patience grasshopper.
I can only agree with those surveyed. Only silver lining I can see is for ag- high prices and a sinking NZD.
Everyone else, get ready to eat 10%+ CPI. Social welfare bill will blowout. Unemployment will rise. RBNZ will be praying for gentle rises from the Fed so they’re not forced to raise themselves. Economists will continue to claim it’s because of supply chain problems. I don’t think it will be reversed until we’ve seen epic wealth destruction in the housing and share markets. The ‘wealth effect’ has made too many promises that the real world can’t keep.
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