Here's our summary of key economic events overnight with news both the US and Australia have entered 2022 in an improved and optimistic economic mood, in contrast to Japan, China and the EU.
In a major surprise, the US non-farm payrolls report was unexpectedly positive. The headline gain reported was +467,000 and far above the +150,000 gains which was widely expected, and nowhere near the -400,000 loss that some pessimists had feared.
Better, there were some significant revisions to job gains in November and December which mean employers added +700,000 more jobs than these non-farm payrolls reports had previously indicated. That is pretty significant.
Of course, regular readers will know that we also look at 'actual' job numbers and not just the seasonally adjusted levels. It is usual for the actual January payrolls to fall sharply from December and that happened this year too. The official data tries to look through those seasonal patterns. But the year-on-year employed workforce numbers do that too. The January 2022 employed workforce now total 147.5 mln, up +6.5 mln from January 2021. But it is down -2.5 mln from pre-pandemic January 2020 so they still have a long way to go to fully recover the pandemic effects. The January 2022 levels are about the same as the January 2018 levels.
The US participation rate is a improving sign however. For the first time in a long time it rose significantly, up to 62.2% from 61.9%. More people are back entering their workforce and wanting to participate in their labour market. It is not yet back to the levels last seen in the Obama years, but at least it is back above most of the Trump period.
The other positive out of today's data is that average hourly earnings increased to US$31.63 (NZ$47.70), up +5.7% over the past year. It was the largest monthly increase in the last year, and although inflation is high, it shows that wages are largely keeping up. CPI was up +5.5% in an actual (not seasonally adjusted) basis. Core PCE was up +4.9%.
Markets responded by seeing these numbers all but ensuring the Fed will raise rates in March and maybe aggressively. With the employment part of their mandate sorted for now, the focus is now unambiguously on inflation. The UST 10 year rate jumped. Equity markets rose on the basis that higher employment is always better. A strong Amazon result on top of the earlier strong Google result well overcame the weak Facebook disaster. And the USD rose.
Canada also released its jobs report for January and that was not positive at all. They lost -200,000 jobs on a seasonally adjusted basis (much more on an actual basis) and this was worse than the -118,000 analyst estimates. Their participation rate fell. Their jobless rate rose, and wage gains came in far less than current inflation. They will be grumpy with this result, especially after their neighbour's positive surprises.
In the EU, their retail sales data for December was also a significant disappointment, falling from November and rising a very weak +2.0% from December 2020 when a +5.1% gain was expected. And given rising inflation, that meant that retail volumes are falling now.
The OECD reported that overall inflation rose to +6.6% in the 12 months to December 2021, compared with +5.9% in November, and just +1.2% in December 2020, reaching its highest rate since July 1991. This increase was driven in part by a surge in annual inflation in Turkey (to +36.1% in December). Excluding Turkey, inflation in the OECD area increased to +5.6% in December.
The Reserve Bank of Australia has updated and upgraded its economic forecasts for the country in its Monetary Policy Statement released late yesterday (Friday).
But although they now say their economy will grow by +4¼% this year, growth will slow to +2% in 2023. However both are upgrades from their October forecasts.
Their pandemic rebound and their lower jobless rate means the Australian economy is about to swell to levels above what was being forecast for 2022 and 2023 before the pandemic hit. However, it isn't all positive. Aussie inflation is expected to well outpace wage growth this year.
In NSW, there has been a drop to 10,698 new community cases reported yesterday, now with 102,847 active locally-acquired cases, and another 31 daily deaths. There are now 2,494 in hospital there, off their high. In Victoria they reported 11,240 more new infections yesterday. There are now 65,968 active cases in that state - and there were 36 more deaths there. Queensland is reporting 6,857 new cases and 13 more deaths. In South Australia, new cases have slipped to 1583 yesterday and one death. The ACT has 449 new cases and one death, and Tasmania 570 new cases and no deaths. Overall in Australia, about 31,000 new cases have been reported yesterday.
The UST 10yr yield opens today at 1.92% and up another +9 bps. That's more than a two year high. The UST 2-10 rate curve starts today a little flatter at +61 bps. Their 1-5 curve is little-changed at +90 bps, while their 3m-10 year curve is noticeably steeper at +188 bps. The Australian Govt ten year benchmark rate is up +11 bps at 2.02%. The China Govt ten year bond is unchanged at 2.72%. The New Zealand Govt ten year is up +8 bps at 2.60%.
On Wall Street, the S&P500 is up +0.7% to start their Friday trading and heading for a +1.7% weekly gain. The NASDAQ index is recovering today on the Amazon and Google results. Overnight, European markets were all down by varying amounts ahead of the US data. Yesterday, Tokyo rose +0.7% to be up +2.8% for the week. Hong Kong was back trading and making up ground after their holiday and up +3.2%. Shanghai remained closed for the final day of their week-long holiday. Yesterday the ASX200 rose +0.6% to end up +1.9% for the week while the NZX50 fell -0.5 but managed a very good +3.6% gain for the week..
The price of gold starts today at US$1806 and somewhat surprisingly unchanged from this time yesterday.
However oil prices are up strongly and by nearly +US$3.50 from yesterday at just under US$91.50/bbl in the US, while the international Brent price is now just under US$93/bbl and up about +US$2.50. At these levels, they are more than seven year highs.
The Kiwi dollar will open today little-changed at 66.3 USc. Against the Australian dollar we are also little-changed at our lower level at 93 AUc. Against the euro we are unchanged as well at 58.7 euro cents. That means our TWI-5 starts today still just under 70.9.
The bitcoin price is up almost +10% since this time yesterday and now at US$40,402 with its boost coming only from the non-farm payrolls result. Volatility over the past 24 hours has been extreme at +/- 6.0%.
Finally, please note that this is a long holiday weekend in New Zealand, with Monday a public holiday for Waitangi Day, New Zealand's national day. There will be no 90@9 Briefing on Monday and limited service on this website.
The easiest place to stay up with event risk today is by following our Economic Calendar here ».
105 Comments
In a major surprise, the US non-farm payrolls report was unexpectedly positive. The headline gain reported was +467,000 and far above the +150,000 gains which was widely expected, and nowhere near the -400,000 loss that some pessimists had feared.
But wait, there's more: because while the seasonally adjusted payrolls number showed an increase of 467k, the unadjusted data showed a plunge of 2.8 million!
It gets better: the Household survey showed a gain of 1.2 million jobs in January (from 155.975MM to 157.174MM), as the labor force soared by 1.3 million people, while the number of people not in the labor force plunged by 300K from 99.842MM to 99.516MM. Link
Audaxes, surely your Alhambra, Realclearmarkets, and Zerohedge doomsters know that "plunged by -2.8 mln" is what US payrolls have done forever in January after December. In 2021 it was -2.6 mln, in 2020 it was -2.8 mln. The average over the past decade was -2.9 mln. It's just seasonal. Highlighting it as abnormal is just shallow partisanship. Which is why I never use any of them as credible sources.
Did you read the links? Snider's RealClear Markets article did not mention today's NFP release. But he does here:
Payrolls and Population, What A Mess
I believe today is a perfect example of what’s going on with the yield curve. Powell’s going to hike regardless of the data, so, yet again, nominal rates rise entirely at the front. The curve from front to back is actually a bit flatter again after all these loud figures. If there was truly bright, unambiguously good news in there anywhere there’d be steepening – like there was up to the middle of last year before the latest benchmarks cut out the big surge once consistent with it.
One final note, just because. Pet peeve. Revisions to 2018 and 2019. There’s more to say about these and what benchmarking really means, but that’s enough on the subject’s subjectivity today.
I feel like some threads contain a little too much Audaxes. I appreciate the effort, but maybe one external link per thread might suffice?
Only February and already a contender for the thickest post of 2022.
Seriously?I can think of at least 5 or 6 other posters on this site who repeat the same stuff over and over,day in day out and you would be happy to curb Audaxes' input?
If this is misinformation all it does for me is begin to question everything in print. I personally don't believe half of what's out there anyway, official or not. Information out of the USA is no more reliable than the information out of China anymore, they are all playing games with it now.
America can borrow and spend more than other leading economies. They splurged $6.5t extra in 16 months. So they will be last cork to return to earth. Meanwhile most workers with no capital are getting worse off. That erosion plus rises in interest rates will cause recession in most countries after April
NPKS these are the nutrients that feed the worlds populations. The dwindling reserves of them is a threat to civilization as we know it.
NZ is particularly vulnerable to the price of phosphate as our soils are naturally deficient.
I'm aware of a company called Chatham Rock Phosphate Ltd which is a locally registered miner of Phosphate. However I'm unaware of the operations or capacity of this group? Maybe NZ needs these local pioneers for future food stability.
Prospective only. Several attempts to gain consent for mining seabed phosphate nodules on the Chatham Rise but all declined because Shut Up and Go Away.
Well um, at least that resource is still there, should the SHTF. And it will!
Looks like a reduction of fertiliser use globally either because of price escalation of availability will be followed by food shortages, Are we going to see the the great famines of the 70s again ?
Price changes effective 28 January 2022 from Ballance:
Global fertiliser prices continue to increase on the back of high demand and constrained supply due to high energy prices and Chinese exporters limiting trade. We have not experienced fertiliser prices like this since 2008-2009, and our team is here to help you navigate through these challenging commodity cycles.
As a co-operative, we are focused on ensuring that you have the nutrients to farm productively and sustainably through this period, and our local manufacturing plants are running at capacity to help you achieve this cost-effectively.
Fertiliser price increases are being felt by food producers across the globe. Since November 2020, farmers and growers in the USA have seen increases of up to 175%, Australia has seen urea cost increases of 230% , and Ireland has experienced increases in nitrogen costs of up to 250%.
The following changes are effective from 28 January 2022:
- Urea increases from $1,190 to $1,440
- SustaiN increases from $1,239 to $1,489
- DAP increases from $1,295 to $1,525
- Nrich SOA increases from $642 to $742
- PhaSedN increases from $815 to $925
- Sulphurgain Pure increases from $795 to $895
Audaxes,
Almost all your posts are just links to articles, like this. Now, the information is potentially interesting, but what about some analysis? What in your view, does this mean for NZ farmers and consumers.
Not sure what Audaxes thinks but as I see it when fert goes up in price farmers profits go down and food prices go up. If farmers cut back on fert eventually production goes down, either way the consumer pays.
Linklater, fertiliser in the NZ context has doubled in price in last 6 months, this is no different to the rest of globe except Russia & China who are large scale manufacturers of fertiliser have put export bans to ensure their domestic farmers get enough to feed their respective populations and don’t go hungry.
The trigger for the above started with very high energy prices in Europe currently, forcing fertiliser manufacturers to curtail or stop normal production. The ripple effect of food prices and availability will hit NZ consumers in due coarse.
With the global powers all wanting to stop using Coal / Fossil fuels and Germany shutting down their Nuclear energy all contribute to high prices of energy.
Interesting times ahead Zero Emissions verses Food
You couched the energy predicament in moderate terms. I'd rather say many European countries, particularly Germany hell bent on trying to fulfil the ridiculous CC goals.
Ridiculous goals? Like preventing biosphere collapse and the misery that would inflict on humanity, you mean?
Rubbish
We’d have less geopolitical problems if Germany was actually trying to fulfill their CC goals. Their dependency on Russian gas is working against those goals as is the closure of their nuclear power plants.
Already happening if you watch the right news channel. Fert is not going to help against Climate change, if the rain stops your screwed and the rain has already stopped in a couple of countries a couple of years ago.
You are dead right Carlos, it is a cluster problem.
At least it is raining in NZ we have had 100mm already.
Very slow but steady rain here in Tauranga, 6.3mm to 2pm and more to come.
A colleague is travelling overseas to see his mother, who is seriously ill and requires pre covid test taken 48 before departure and when he approaches, was advised that we can try but do not promise as basically he needs the test result next day to comply with 48 hours.
Why the uncertainity unlike in other countries where test result is given within 6 to 8 hours and if need within an hour to pay a certain addition fee. This is when the normal fee charged is the highest in the world and probably the only country that is charging $250 per person ( for comparison at Sydney Airport fee is $80 and result given in 8 hours).
AND NZ IS A DEVELOPED COUNTRY.....ONLY IN CHARGING PREMIUM.
ONLY COMPANY IS DOING THE TEST - HAS MONOPOLY SO IS ABLE TO GET AWAY WITH BLESSING FROM THE GOVERNMENT.
Highlighting again, as this colleague has to pay $1250 for his family before departure and is not going on a holiday as most travellers are travelling for one emergency or the other and not for fun and has no choice but to pay and also take the chance that will get the result on time with no commitment from the lab that he will get it on time, so will have anxious wait despite paying a bomb.
David, one of your team should look and highlight the plight.
£32.50 for a PCR test in the UK: https://tests4you.co.uk/
That said any given item in Europe is typically half the cost of New Zealand (including a block of cheese), it's just an insanely expensive country to live in. Probably going to get more expensive without some action to lift the Kiwi.
In order for our family of 4 to leave Wellington late last year we paid...... drum roll....
$325.00 per person.
This was to guarantee 24 hour turnover required by Singapore Airlines
This included one for our three year old daughter.
Here in Spain we all recently contracted Omicron. From our local pharmacy a home kit test, nasal or saliva available, 3Euros. Not 300Euro. 3Euro.
NZers are being royally rogered by the Government response to Covid in a despicable fashion.
For those socialists who will no doubt cast personal attacks such as "first world problems", I'd remind them people travel for many reasons. Holidays are but one.
Yeah, I got Omicron while in Spain recently as well. Luckily it presented as a mild cold in my case.
100,000 Spanish people got to die to develop a widespread covid industry there that's affordable. You get to rock up there and reap the benefits and pretend it's no big thing.
Who's getting more rogered.
That's less than the death toll in the last two years as a result of smoking. While numbers of deaths may seem emotive you have to remember that everyone dies eventually and most frequently it's a preventable disease associated with lifestyle.
100k deaths, how many people didn't die from Covid but occupied a bed and ventilator in ICU?
Death emotive? Well bugger me, who'd have thought, I wonder why? So much easier when it's just dollar figures.
It's deaths over and above what would have been observed.
Most people are aware of their own mortality, I'm not sure how it's any more palatable being random happenstance compared to lifestyle.
this weekend -- sat and sun -- about 60 New Zealanders will die of cancer another 55 of heart conditions-- most of it preventable is identified early enough - through scans -- Each issue separately is similar to what Covid has killed in 2 years -- As someone who lots two friends in this period due to late diagnosis due to lockdowns -- i know where i would rather see the 60billion spent - ! perspective is a wonderful thing - we could all have been vaccinated if we had the option prior to the 4 month Auckland lockdown.... if only we had ordered vaccines at teh same time as teh rest of the world -- and even now the delays in opening up are down to the failure to order RAT tests - its too hard too much competition -- but yet a week after the scandal of stealing the 4.6 mil from smarter businesses -- the government has announced its bought over 60 million -- amazing how the world market changed so much in a week .......
Genuinely enjoy the commentary on interest; it's for the most part a cut above the tripe on stuff et al. Long may that continue.
Many families world over can't even afford a funeral. A lot of people world over haven't been able to attend funerals just down the road over the last two hears.
So while sad, this isn't really a problem that is going to get much attention. It'll probably sort itself out once the borders are actually open.
It's because labtest is the only company that is allowed to issue the results. All testing is done by them and they charge most of the cost.
Follow the money - labtests was sold to Brookfield Capital back on 2019. Our covid pcr testing has been completely reliant on a foreign vc owned operation.
It's all a bit silly. You also need to pick up a signed gp declaration of the results which adds more time to the process.
You can drop of your swab directly at labtests Mt Wellington facility for a faster turnaround.
Think had read somewhere, not sure that labtest charges appox $142 and the rest goes to the GP out of $250 though some GP may still charge $35 on top of that to boost their margins to squeeze further out of kiwi.
How a young population like Malawi shrugs off covid without mass vaccination. Further evidence the Barrington Declaration was the correct path and putting our economies to the sword, with mass lockdowns, was a public health disaster.
"...Jambo thinks the findings from the blood samples in Malawi explain a key feature of the recent omicron wave there: The number of deaths this time has been a fraction of the already low number during previous waves.
Less than 5% of Malawians have been fully vaccinated. So Jambo says their apparent resistance to severe disease was likely built up as a result of all the prior exposure to earlier variants.
...For one thing, says Mahdi, "we should stop chasing just getting an increase in the number of doses of vaccines that are administered." Vaccination efforts should be more tightly targeted on the vulnerable: "We need to ensure that at least 90% of people above the age of 50 are vaccinated."
Similarly, when the next variant comes along, Mahdi says, it will be important not to immediately panic over the mere rise in infections. This rise will be inevitable, and any policy that's intended to stop it with economically disruptive restrictions, such as harsh COVID-19 lockdowns, isn't just unnecessarily damaging — "it's fanciful thinking.""
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/01/28/1072591923/africa-…
Spose if you're one of the most impoverished nations on earth and your average age is only 18 that's probably a reasonable conclusion.
Maybe other factors at work also - Malawi already had country wide roll out of ivermectin prior to C19 coming along. As this Japanese research highlights.
"The community-directed onchocerciasis treatment with ivermectin is the most reasonable explanation for the decrease in morbidity and fatality rate in Africa. In areas where ivermectin is distributed to and used by the entire population, it leads to a significant reduction in mortality."
Why COVID-19 is not so spread in Africa: How does Ivermectin affect it? (medrxiv.org)
Here's a bunch of contributing factors:
- The weather
- Age
- Fast lockdowns
- Under reporting
I don't think there's been any actual peer reviewed study that confirms Ivermectin has any vaccine like protection against Covid. Maybe reality is a lot more boring.
I don't think anyone has ever said that Ivermectin has any vax like protection have they?
The argument has been that if it's used very early as a treatment it had good results. (that was the Japanese study)
Of course if one was cynical one would say that Ivermectin is out of patent, cheap, readily available and there are no once in a lifetime windfalls for big pharma to be made therefore the studies into how good it may or maynot be don't get done.
Not that the covid mRNA therapy has great vaccine like properties - it is non sterilizing and leaky - just look at Israel. Even if the covid mRNA therapy was non sterilising there is still the problem of animal carriers - successful vaccine programs like measles, smallpox and polio do not have this animal pool.
If there was much weight to it's effectiveness there'd be nothing to stop a company from getting the clinical trials done and then marketing it. That's actually way quicker and cheaper than having to develop and approve an entirely new treatment.
It's well out of patent, so zero economic incentive to do so. Whereas a 'new' mRNA formulation and its off to the bank carrying mad stacks....
The sales and marketing of off patent drugs is a significant business, anyone manufacturing a drug with proven benefits against covid is going to make money.
Ivermectin is a prophylactic for Covid, several recent studies on it.
If those studies are credible JKB, I wonder why it is not being used as a preventative, without going down conspiracy rabbit holes, as it is cheap. I am sure most health authorities would advocate it if it was safe.
It is a pretty shallow rabbit hole - Emergency Use Authorisation for mRNA therapy is reliant on there being no other treatments for covid. So big pharma has a huge financial incentive to dismiss any alternative off label treatments else their mRNA treatment - which hasn't even finished its stage 2 and 3 trials couldn't be granted EUA.
All of this is publicly available knowledge - not a "rabbit hole". Just like the FDA officials who granted EUA approval for mRNA covid treatment then quit and joined the boards of Pfizer and Moderna. Nice work if you can get it.
The Revolving Door: All 3 FDA-authorized COVID shot companies now employ former FDA commissioners
https://dossier.substack.com/p/the-revolving-door-all-3-fda-authorized
The problem is that so far, these vaccines are showing the highest levels of efficacy with minimal negative consequences. The argument against them rests on some earth shattering negative consequence showing up down the track.
There are aspects of the medical industry of moral concern, but overall medical science has been shown to be remarkably effective.
You're wanting to adhere to an alternative science, involving some rather large leaps of faith, that results in far less reliable outcomes.
Fast lockdowns - did you miss this bit? - "...Mahdi says, it will be important not to immediately panic over the mere rise in infections. This rise will be inevitable, and any policy that's intended to stop it with economically disruptive restrictions, such as harsh COVID-19 lockdowns, isn't just unnecessarily damaging — "it's fanciful thinking."
"Meta-analyses based on 18 randomized controlled treatment trials of ivermectin in COVID-19 have found large, statistically significant reductions in mortality, time to clinical recovery, and time to viral clearance. Furthermore, results from numerous controlled prophylaxis trials report significantly reduced risks of contracting COVID-19 with the regular use of ivermectin. Finally, the many examples of ivermectin distribution campaigns leading to rapid population-wide decreases in morbidity and mortality indicate that an oral agent effective in all phases of COVID-19 has been identified."
https://journals.lww.com/americantherapeutics/Fulltext/2021/06000/Revie…
https://www.nature.com/articles/ja201711
You might find this interesting, it is re-run regularly with any discredited studies removed. Meta analysis across all scientific studies is probably just more "misinformation" though aye. https://ivmmeta.com/
There is no transparency regarding the authors of the website. Good science usually doesn't have to hide.
Pre-covid times I'd 100% agree. In the current environment, where just having highly qualified experts who disagree with the official narrative on your podcast warrants a massive global smear campaign and cancellation attempt, I'm not sure that's still possible.
You know Joe Rogan is a podcast, not the entire space time continuum, right?
Yes, PC culture is annoying.
No, I don't think it can censor good science.
Didn't say it was. Just a recent and highly visible example of why it might not be possible to put your name to something controversial without risking your reputation and livelihood.
Joe Rogan? Really? You were given a metastudy from American Journal of Therapeutics and an article from Nature on its well established anti viral properties.
I can't find a reasonable amount of consensus that would lead me to have enough faith that Ivermectin was a superior treatment or preventative for Covid-19.
I can however google "any viewpoint" and get web pages to read and share.
Why does an additional early treatment need to be superior, wouldn't just also effective and almost free be useful enough? The expensive new treatments don't appear superior either but seem acceptable as complementary to vaccination.
Brazil and Japan study results out this year. It is a drug with long term safety record, unlike the mRNA solution that Trump let lose after a 3 month safety trial.
You're special Pa1nter. They are not "web pages" are they - they are peer reviewed meta data from multiple studies published in reputable journals. Remember you commented up thread "I don't think there's been any actual peer reviewed study" - well now you do.
There's a difference between "peer reviewed", and multiple people citing the same flawed research. The papers claiming he highest amount of efficacy for Ivermectin have been discounted for some very flawed methodology, and the ones that are more credible make a fairly inconclusive case for its use.
But it's helping make a case for the Malawian school of pandemic response, so there's that.
Canada also released its jobs report for January and that was not positive at all. They lost -200,000 jobs on a seasonally adjusted basis (much more on an actual basis) and this was worse than the -118,000 analyst estimates.
One gets the general impression the economic woes Canada is experiencing are predominantly self-inflicted unfortunately.
P'raps 100k Canucks trucked themselves over the southern border and got jobs in the Lower 50? Would explain both sets of 'statistics'.
and poor old EU, no changes there, structural issues identified 30 years ago still pretty much the same. Too much embedded resistance to change, look at France and their attitude to the workplace and retirement age. Stagflation and stagnation for the EU to continue.
You have to keep in mind that the EUs population is falling, you wouldn't expect economic growth with demographic decline.
On Wall Street, the S&P500 is up +0.7% to start their Friday trading and heading for a +1.7% weekly gain. The NASDAQ index is recovering today on the Amazon and Google results.
There reason why Amazon stock is surging today - and after the close yesterday - may not be entirely due to the company's earnings, which despite the solid AWC performance and Prime membership hike, were actually rather soggy: the company itself is aggressively repurchasing its own stock
While Amazon did not mention it anywhere in its earnings release, in the AMZN 10-K filed this morning, the company disclosed that it had repurchased half a million shares of common stock for $1.3bn between January 1 and February 2. It probably also repurchased (a lot) more after the close on Feb 3, when the stock price exploded 18% higher in very thin volumes, effectively repricing the stock entirely after Facebook's implosion earlier in the day, but we'd be guessing.
Does anyone know why the number of locations of interest on the ministry of health have dropped off a cliff as cases have risen? I estimate we are getting about one LoI for every seven cases. How does that make sense? Has the contact system already collapsed?
- Peeps have asymptomatic covid
- have C but mistaken for cold/flu/sniffles
- Have C and realise it but disincentive for getting tested too compelling to get tested and Cased.
In all 3 circumstances, no recognition so no Official Case.
We have lots of cases though. I expect we will get 240-250 today, we had over 200 yesterday. We have about 230 LoIs reported over the last 10 days. It doesn’t make any sense. Unless the government has massively raised the threshold for reporting LoIs or the contact tracing system has broken and they aren’t effectively capturing them.
Either way the government is not being transparent with people about what is going on.
It’s 11am and there hasn’t been a single LoI added for the day and there was bugger all added in yesterday - there were 17 LoIs added in yesterday. And most of them were flights and a few gyms where it was obviously the same person. How do you have 209 cases and 17 LoIs?
Contact tracing is a complete waste of time at this stage of the game.
So is testing now. If you get sick enough with Covid your going to stay at home, if you not your just going to carry on as normal. Nobody is going to sign up to get isolated. Its game over lets just drop the restrictions and get back to normal.
Dr JC mentioned NZ in his latest vid yesterday Carlos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2qSrcq-Jz0&ab_channel=Dr.JohnCampbell
I can see the gumint wanting to slow the spread but I'm not sure they're aware they have zero choice in the matter.
Yep worth a watch the guy is just laughing at us, pretty much like the rest of the world now.
Do believe Brock, our dear PM’s recent brush with omicron, proved that far beyond reasonable doubt.
Not sure why you're laughing out loud so much?
Well they’ve reported to LoIs for 1pm. Two, that’s all they’ve reported all day.
And the offical count for today is 243 community cases. So over the last day and a half we have 20 LoIs compared to 450 cases reported. Why is nobody talking about this?
Perhaps because all that gate keeping, tallying & reporting of same is now irrelevant and things unsurprisingly are slacking off even more. Covid is in and out and about & what is being recorded can only be a large understatement of the reality. Numbers that add up to nothing are worth nothing. Bureaucracy needs to admit their already fraught system has now failed to keep up, and occupy themselves with other reporting such as, what is the status of our hospital services including but not limited to covid admissions.
So the US and Aus look like they are coming out of the pandemic pretty well. The US hourly rate increases keeping up with the cost of living increases can only be dreamed of in little old NZ where we are held to ransom by a clueless finance minister and an irrational Reserve Bank, both hell bent on screwing middle and lower classes to lives of debt servitude and despair. But don't worry, house prices boomed, rents grew hugely and cost of living increases far outpaced wage rises. Which according to them, lowered inequality! We are led by idiots.
To be fair the minimum wage in the USA is like $7.25 an hour, now just imagine if you had to live on $10 an hour in New Zealand ? Good luck with that. The USA has plenty of scope to raise the minimum wage and they tried to get it to $15 an hour a while back but it was shot down.
The only benefit to the States is size. NZ has what, a dozen cities? The US has 20,000 to choose from, so if you don't mind living in a 2nd or 3rd tier city, you can have some pretty affordable housing and a low cost of living.
If you were going to be poor/minimum wage, NZ is probably a better option overall. If you're an aspirationally wealthy middle income type, the answer is less clear. If you're super wealthy, everywhere is kinda awesome.
Yeah I agree Pa1nter, I have always maintained the if you have plenty of money and don't have to work anywhere on the planet could be awesome to live.
I completely agree, but the pedant in me wishes to point out the US only has about 800 incorporated communities with a population over 50,000.
That's one of the reasons house building costs in places like Houston are so low. Ultra low cost Hispanic labour.
Also big economies of scale.
I think people should get paid a fair wage, get sick pay, holiday pay, retirement contributions, maternity leave, bereavement leave, etc etc.
Unless they're making something for me.
However oil prices are up strongly and by nearly +US$3.50 from yesterday at just under US$91.50/bbl in the US, while the international Brent price is now just under US$93/bbl and up about +US$2.50. At these levels, they are more than seven year highs.
Russia plans to divert more oil and gas production to China.
Four commercial contracts were signed during the visit. Gazprom and CNPC inked a long-term contract for the delivery of 10 bln cubic meters of natural gas over the Far Eastern route. Rosneft and Huawei sealed a deal on cooperation. Rosneft and CNPC signed an agreement on the deliveries of 100 mln tonnes of oil via Kazakhstan over a decade and approved a memorandum of understanding to cooperate in the low-carbon development sphere. Link
the week the gas pipeline to china is fully completed -- watch out Europe --- the Ukraine pipeline which is what all teh huff and bluster is about by teh US and EU will simply have its tap turned way down - as teh Russians sell to China instead - both China and Russia have been playing the long game -- whilst the EU and US sit on their respective fat asses !
Yes. It doesn't pay to cr.p, (EU/USA) in Russia's backyard, Ukraine.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/31/de-dollarization-russia-china-eu-are-mo…
"The U.S. dollar has been the world’s major reserve currency for decades, but that status could come under threat as “very powerful countries” seek to undermine its importance, warned Anne Korin, from the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security."
Hard to believe real estate agents and their ilk have such a shit name.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/127632158/homesconz-criticised-for-let…
Funnily enough I was on the phone to homes.co.inzid just yesterday arvo when I saw our house with the sale price listed even though it's not settled yet. I asked for it to be removed and got told they were oh so busy and it could take two weeks in which time it will have settled and they'll get the data from the council.
The worst part is that I asked the B&T agent that listed our place to keep the sale price confidential. (this can be done by the lawyers upon settlement).
I also asked the agent (whose buyer bought our place) to keep it confidential - twice, and I also asked the office to keep it confidential.
Sure as god made little green apples that was just a little to hard for the B&T team and the sale price is on multiple websites.
I called the office manager yesterday and she advised me that they have to send a written request to the B&T directors to keep sale prices confidential as all sales go to RINZ and it affects the companies market share.
Talk about fox guarding henhouse! (not to mention I have no idea why a price being recorded/not recorded would have any affect on market share)
You pay a small fortune in commission and still feel like you need a shower to wash the filth away...
Why were you trying to suppress the price from the public arena?
Isn’t it actually better for the market and consumers to have price knowledge?
A - it's private information.
B - as mentioned above, the sale hasn't settled and therefore shouldn't be public even if I wanted it to be.
C - we paid B&T a lot of money and asked them to keep it private, they didn't do because it doesn't suit their interests, that alone grates me.. (one of the prices listed isn't even correct)
D - if someone really wants to know the price they can easily ring the agent and ask them, most times agents are happy to disclose the price and that's fine, but it's quite different to the info being public.
I know some people like to blag about how many millions they sold their house for, that's just not my cup of tea which is pretty much the reason I was trying to 'suppress the price from the public arena'.
I don't think you can suppress it, its public information and so it should be. Usually takes months for that information to appear as well so thats pretty strange if it there already, homes.co.nz usually has TBC for months after the sale. There are some categories that the price gets withheld by the new buyer if its going into a trust for example. As the seller I'm not sure you get a say in the matter.
Bit of a weird hang up there.
Sell privately next time. You'll be disturbed to learn you were paying these punks tens of thousands of dollars for sweet bugger all.
That's something no one will ever know though.
The offer on our place went up $150K overnight, maybe that would have happened privately, maybe not.
But yes, after dealing with agents this time, maybe next time we'll sell privately.
For all you "Bitcoin is a waste of energy and serves no purpose" people, please watch this short vid on miners in Texas shutting down their operations so that the grid has extra energy available for the massive storm that is rolling in:
https://twitter.com/CNBC/status/1489328084020981760?s=20&t=9tHgza9l-1Tr…
Hardly a surprise, the last time they had a storm in Texas the whole network went down anyway and people died when they froze to death. They probably should pull the plugs out of the wall or isolate their gear as well, wouldn't want any of that precious mining gear damaged by mains spikes when the power lines start coming down. How considerate of them.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/chloe-swarbrick-on-being-queer-dep…
The more I hear from swarbrick the more impressed I am:
Money isn't a motivation — I've always just seen it as a tool that can solve problems. I hate that people become attached to it. Money makes people miserable at both ends of the spectrum, and I've seen that people who have the least are often the most generous.
In Parliament there's that pampered, leather-bound, wood-panelled environment. I don't need that, or the chauffeur-driven famous side of being a public person. Every time I walk into Parliament, I think to myself, is this the day we blow it up? Not literally, of course.
Spoken most likely by some one who has never been on the bones of their arse
That's possibly true, I am never going to vote for this bunch of Greens but I like Chloe. She always answers the questions and puts up logic worthy of any debate.
Compare that to a politician that advertises their humble beginnings but then had no conscience in amassing obscene amounts of money in a parasitic way detrimental to the country they profess to love.
"Overseas tourists could be back within two or three weeks, the Herald Sun paper reported earlier on Sunday, citing an unnamed senior government source. An announcement from the government may come as soon as Monday..."
Of course that would mean you could travel freely by transiting Australia. So much for a five step reopening! It's now basically binary. :-)
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