Here's our summary of key economic events overnight that affect New Zealand, with news that equity and bond markets are in more of a positive mood ahead of the US Fed's meeting tomorrow morning.
But first today, there was another dairy auction overnight and it was yet another weaker one, made worse by both a slumping cheddar cheese price, and the recent gains by the NZD. Overall prices were down -2.6% in USD terms and down -3.3% in NZD terms from the last auction. That puts them -36% lower than year ago levels. Every product fell, the least by the high-volume WMP (-1.5%), and the most by the cheese price (-10.2% from two weeks ago).
Of the 25 auctions in the past year, 19 have delivered lower prices. The price index is now back to a level we last had in December 2020. This continuing slide will probably have analysts reaching for the calculators to assess what the farmgate milk price will have to be reduced by.
US retail sales inched higher last week from year-ago level on a same store basis (+3.2%) but that isn't enough to account for retail inflation. Retail volumes continue their slow shrinkage.
However there was an unexpected surge in American existing home sales in February with them rising to an annual rate of 4.58 mln or more than +14% higher than year-ago levels. The apparent end of rising mortgage rates has emboldened buyers to commit - and sellers to respond. That was their largest rise since July 2020 and ends a year-long decline. But prices aren't responding to the additional demand yet; they remain -0.2% lower than year-ago levels. That was their first year-on-year fall in 11 years. The higher demand volume is coming from regions where home prices are decreasing and the local economies are adding jobs. It is their strong jobs market that is delivering these gains.
In the US banking scene, California's First Republic has seen its shares rally as confidence returns that it will survive. This comes after a Fed-prompted rescue undertaken by a set of much larger banks. US Treasury boss Janet Yellen commented that they will support deposits at other banks if that becomes necessary. But as we have seen elsewhere, management, shareholders and bondholders will always take the first losses.
Canada's CPI inflation rate slipped to 5.2% in February, a retreat from the January 5.9% rise. The change from the previous month is similar.
In China, they are starting a new surge in flu infections. The rate of people testing positive for influenza reported by hospitals across the country jumped to 53.2% last week, with H1N1, or swine flu, the dominant strain, forcing the suspension of some school classes in Beijing and Shanghai. By comparison, the rate for Covid was just 2.3%.
The German ZEW indicator of economic sentiment rose again in March, the third consecutive improvement, but the gain was far less than in February.
In Australia, APRA is apparently telling banks that it wants to know much more about their exposures to start-ups and crypto-focused ventures following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and volatility at global lenders.
Meanwhile, the minutes from the March 7 RBA meeting revealed they are likely to keep their cash rate unchanged at 3.6% on signs of economic softening. Their next review is on April 4, 2023.
More generally, markets are sensing today that contagion risks are fading, so risk appetites are rising.
The UST 10yr yield starts today at 3.59% and up another +10 bps from this time yesterday. But the UST 2-10 rate curve is now more inverted at -60 bps. Their 1-5 curve inversion is also a little more at -88 bps. But their 30 day-10yr curve is much less inverted at only -44 bps. The Australian ten year bond is up +8 bps at 3.35%. The China Govt ten year bond is still unchanged at 2.88%. And the New Zealand Govt ten year is starting today down another -10 bps at 4.16% and its lowest since mid February.
Wall Street has opened its Tuesday trade with the S&P500 up another +0.7% in a growing sentiment improvement. The expectation that the Fed will scale back its inflation fighting is part of this. Overnight, European markets all rose more than +1.7%. Yesterday Tokyo was on holiday, Hong Kong rose +1.4%, and Shanghai gave recovered +0.6% in Tuesday trade. The ASX200 ended its Tuesday session up +0.8% but the NZX50 was the outlier here with a -0.3% slip.
The price of gold will open today at US$1941/oz and down another -US$35 from this time yesterday.
And oil prices start today up a strong +US$3.50 from yesterday at just under US$69.50/bbl in the US. The international Brent price is now just on US$75/bbl.
The Kiwi dollar is down -¾c against the USD and now at 61.7 USc. Against the Aussie we are -¼c lower at 92.8 AUc. Against the euro we are -1c lower at 57.3 euro cents. That puts the TWI-5 at 69.9 with a solid -60 bps retreat.
The bitcoin price is much higher today, now at US$28,477 and up +3.0% from this time yesterday. And volatility over the past 24 hours has been modest however at +/-1.9%.
The easiest place to stay up with event risk today is by following our Economic Calendar here ».
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77 Comments
https://goldswitzerland.com/this-is-it-the-financial-system-is-terminal…
(filter out the gold huckstering, but the rest...)
We will in coming months and years see the most massive avalanche of money printing that has ever hit the world.
And along with that will come unbridled price rises and wage demands. This time QE isn't going to come with ZIRP, but a Volker like necessity to take back control. And that will collapse asset prices to restore 'stability'.
(NB: We saw the start of this with the blanket guarantee of depositors funds in US banks. Perhaps a hint to 'get your money out of assets' and to where it's safe = a 100% Guaranteed USA bank account. " Janet Yellen pledged further assistance to depositors if needed")
BW, you make a good point that " a blanket depositor guarantee could lead investors to shift their investments out of shares, bonds, crypto and property and into "safe bank deposits". We haven't seen this happening yet, but it could eventuate.
I don't quite agree with your statement "This time QE isn't going to come with ZIRP" I understand that lowering interest rates is not desirable because of its impact on higher inflation, but QE is precisely a mechanism to lower interest rates. How can you disassociate QE form lower interest rates?
Because you can see how it worked last time - so can I, and everyone else.
What did we do? Eventually we did as we were told and Borrowed and Spent. And this time, we won't wait. At least I won't. What others do is up to them.
But if I told you (as I am!) that your Real Purchasing Power is about to fall; the value of your hard-earned saving is about to be diluted, what will you do? The same as me and everyone else and start spending.
So this time it won't be ZIRP with QE, but '30%' mortgage rates and QE.
Agreed. Going to pivot to a PDK approach to retirement and try to underwrite all the expensive stuff I need to drive minimal opex requirements. E.g. off-grid everything etc while I'm still working.
All very good until your batteries need replacing, then you'll discover the opex savings won't cover the capex. Grid tied the way to go IMHO
Depends if we get to the V2G stuff any time soon, at which point I might very well be driving my battery. My current car is already capable of it, my house is not.
30 pct mortgage rate. That implies 25 percent inflation, zero growth/hugely negative real growth, high unemployment.
Times will be tough for most if all that happens
Could be.
"For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." and what is the opposite of ZIRP? We are about to get the back end of a deal that started with what was supposed to be limited QE in 2009.
"For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction."
In physics
Property owners came through high inflation with more equity and smaller real mortgages.
Renters went through also earning more but paying more in accommodation costs. From a few dollars per week to 200
That sounds fantastic for me.. on the assumption I keep my job. All that demand induced inflation will deflate the amount owing on the mortgage away to about the price of a decent pizza. Most of the mortgage is fixed for a few years so i have decent headstart on that at least. And my employers income stream is inflation linked, so job losses are not on the horizon for me.
I only just read your link PDK, (I have been busy). The author paints a truly apocalyptic future, literally as he speaks of nuclear war! And other problems such as "the end of money" This person surely wins the award for "King of all DGM's".
The link to buy his book, at the end of the article, unfortunately took credibility away from his many good points.
This connection being fabricated between digital assets and SVB is nothing but deceitful. It’s was a failure of fractional banking and the Fed, not this ridiculous narrative that crypto somehow contributed to recent bank collapses.
Fractional reserve banking in the US is not a feature any more. Loan growth is subject to risk weighted capital demands.
Freed from the physical constraints of actually holding cash, Basel essentially moved reserve requirements from the asset side of the banking system’s balance sheet to the liability side. Banks were no longer limited to multiplying credit from their reserves of national currency on hand. They could now produce credit and deposits from their store of equity capital. And a large segment of equity capital is retained earnings, meaning banks could multiply their own ability to create credit and leverage through using leverage on their own profitability. The status quo of the banking system has become one in which banks themselves control the levers of money creation – it is the wildest fantasies of the banking system come true.
But in depending so much on leverage, the banking system has become overly dependent on collateral. Collateral provides the lowest cost short-term operational funds while at the same time, depending on the particulars of each class of collateral, affords a reduction in the equity capital charge via regulatory definitions of “safety”. A repo transaction for a bank is a collateralized loan where a bank can fund assets at that lowest cost. In terms of the overall quantity of those assets a bank can ultimately hold and turn into profits, the securities that adhere to regulatory definitions of safety lead to the lowest capital reserve charges, and therefore provide both regulatory and funding leverage.
This accounting trick of regulatory safety meant financial innovation was needed to not only transform risky assets, but to mass-produce them as “safe”. Securitization of mortgage debt was one innovation widely used to create AAA-rated securities that were readily accepted as low haircut repo collateral, while at the same time using up as little equity capital as possible. The interest rate paid by the underlying mortgages and the traditional concept of risk/reward were secondary and tertiary considerations to how much leverage could be obtained and applied. Quality of assets was hardly considered in the pursuit for ultimate quantity. Jeff Snider
this reads pretty much like what is happening here in NZ? I thought fractional banking was the system, but what Snider describes makes more sense with what we see. In addition it is much more frightening due to the power that banks have to utterly screw the financial system and the country's economy.
Crypto is just as bad - both systems are forward betting, with no correlation to finite underwrites.
It was understandable that some folk wanted to get out from under the monopolistic parasitism that is F/R banking, but they missed the step of relating their replacement to something real (either energy - my pick - or resource stocks). They also made the mistake of trying to 'make money' from what should have been a passive/static (in fact, on a dwindling-supply planet, reducing) construct. Growth - of any kind - ultimately runs up against limits.
"relating their replacement to something real (either energy - my pick"
You dooo know how Bitcoin is created right??? It takes ENERGY to mine. It is exactly what Henry Ford proposed 100 years ago.
Bitcoin not shitcoins.
You are confusing asset backed currency with the cost of running a crypo network. You cannot exchange bitcoin and get back the energy used to mine.
This has been explained to him several times, don't waste your time.
The problem with an asset BACKED currency, is you have to trust a central party to actually hold the assets and issues tokens without inflating the money supply. In every single historical instance that this has been the case, human greed has kicked in and inflated away the value.
Bitcoin does not require you to trust anyone. It is Rules without rulers and unless everyone agrees to change the rules, they can not be changed.
The energy used is like a force field around the ledger (which just tracks what bitcoin tokens are allocated to which private keys) and is used to prevent people trying to change the ledger. The Bitcoin base layer is just triple entry book keeping where the buyer, seller and everyone else can verify that no one has created more tokens out of thin air.
No you are correct, only a battery allows you to do that, but it does allow you to exchange your Bitcoin for goods and services, which are the equivalent of other peoples economic energy.
What is an alternative system that you would propose?
Are you confusing crypto with crypto exchanges perhaps?
When you look at the effected banks you have to think it's more than coincidence. I would think it's possible that the "regulators" were going around the major banks asking them about their crypto exposure and implying that exposure was not a good thing. This led to these "crypto banks" being denied normal access to interbank lending so they had less options and were the most exposed.
no hiding the fact that crypto is backed by...nothing. Whereas other bank assets are back by something - even if t is an over priced NZ house.
I'm not sure what fact you think people are trying to hide. What's the NZD backed by? Consensus
Not consensus, fact; the NZ$ is backed by every economic asset withing the country. No crypto can claim that. But it is much more complex than that, any fiat currency is also influenced by the political stability of the country, the quality of the economic policies enacted by the government and over all the subjective opinion of those who would trade using the currency. Crypto's value is essentially just based on the subjective opinion of those who would trade with it, so not much really.
What backs the value of gold Murray?
Only consensus really. Gold itself is a physical object, but what people are willing to trade for it is highly contextual.
Not consensus, fact; the NZ$ is backed by every economic asset withing the country.
Hmm. In that case, why is the value of the residential housing stock 4-5x GDP? Similarly, why is global debt to GDP a similar ratio of 4-5x GDP?
To suggest that money is backed by 'economic assets' is deceptive. Money is created by 'debt obligations' on a distributed ledger.
No. You're twisting the argument. The value of the dollar is backed by the economic assets of the country. Housing is not in itself an economic asset. it doesn't create employment, nor does it create tradeable goods. Indeed the value of housing has created a gross distortion of the economy, improperly corning too much value within the economy, which does not reflect what it returns.
"Money is created by 'debt obligations' on a distributed ledger." This is the banking view, which as we are seeing globally is seriously flawed. The currency, especially the amount in circulation should be controlled by the sovereign owner. The problem here is that our governments have abrogated their responsibilities here.
The value of the dollar is backed by the economic assets of the country
Could you explain how you define the 'economic assets' of NZ. You mentioned that the housing stock is not an 'economic asset', yet it is the collateral for credit creation for many SMEs. Therefore, it must be an 'economic asset' in some form.
The New Zealand Dollars value is essentially just based on the subjective opinion of those who would trade with it, so not much really.
The latest seems to be the big loans they wrote to internal customers just before the collapse?
I mean... its smart if you are internal and see the writing on the wall, take a big loan, knowing the Fed will rescue you?
Because you see if we’re going to talk about de-dollarization, then if we don’t understand how the dollar system was contradictory, we will think of de-dollarization as something that has hit the dollar system out of the blue.
In reality it is the maturation of the contradictions of the dollar system. And if you see, for example in the next two slides, I’m just going to show you the value of the dollar declining. So Paul if you will show — yes the dollar since 1971. [max view].
You’ll see here that there is a huge rise in the dollar in the early 1980s, which is the Volcker shock. And since then you see, although there are ups and downs, there is a secular downturn in the value of the dollar. With the stock market bubble the dollar went up. But funnily enough, all the money coming into the United States after the housing bubble, all the money that was attracted into the United States —massive quantities of money — were not able to prevent the downward slide of the dollar.
And since then, quantitative easing, etc. quantitative easing one, two — quantitative easing infinity, etc. — have let the dollar go up, but now you see what they began to do in the last decade or so, is they have rebased the whole system.
So the two peaks here that you see — in the previous graph they are valued at about 80. And in the new graph [max view], you see that they are valued at about 100.
So they basically are basing the dollar up again so you do not see the broad secular decline, but believe me, there has been a secular decline in the value of the dollar.
And this is despite all the efforts made by the Federal Reserve to essentially run the casinos of various asset bubbles which would have brought money into the dollar and therefore kept the value of the dollar up.
So everything is fine now.
Sarc on
The cook straight ferries are fully booked for weeks, so those on todays cancellations are now stuck for weeks..... must be doing great things for domestic tourism to the South Island.
When I was a kid I used to play a video game called 'Zoo Tycoon' where you could build a zoo, fill it with exhibits, and then fleece the punters by placing vending machines and concession kiosks everywhere. A trick I learned early on was you could make tons of money by filling the park with guests and then placing a fence across the exit - meaning the visitors were doomed to forever wander, spending their money on overpriced fizzy drink and popcorn.
Mother Nature and the Maritime Gods are playing their own version of this, it seems.
No good if you are stuck of course. And airfares are so exorbitant at the moment - I paid nearly $900 for a return Chch to Auckland flight yesterday (2.5 week notice).
geeze. You could buy a car for that...l
And then fill it with $500 of petrol for the drive
What’s the official term for the state of NZ’s infrastructure?
I think it’s’f#%^ed’
I believe FUBAR is the "Official" Term.
Not at BOHICA yet so FUBAR is pretty accurate. Give it time and the pollies will screw it up though.
Aren't the two shipping companies, one private one govt short of a ferry? The private one flogged off a ferry recently. Perhaps its replacement hasn't arrived yet?
Straits NZ itself has been flogged 4 times in the last 6 years from one PE firm to another. It is currently owned by the infrastructure investments arm of Morgan Stanley. Haven't heard a peep from OIO on whether these transactions a risk to our national interest. They must be busy chasing homebuyers with Chinese-sounding last names I suppose.
It’s Ok Michael Wood will commission an urgent feasibility study into building a cycle bridge across Cook Strait.
The consultants will be expected to report back in 2 years.
straight
Take note!
Dunno, with all the problems they seem to have with them you do have to wonder if they are more bent than straight. And its Cook's Strait, at least till a new name gets "gifted".
The renaming of britomart is bull sh1t
Who asks or authorises this, someone higher than the geographic board
In October if labour are reappointed, you will have to relearn the place names for the whole country.
I dunno "Britomart" was pretty stupid IMO. Does it have any history or connection with the station? Where as Waitematā has rather a lot more significance...
But not in our supermarkets...
Fantastic visual of the Fed funds futures this year. Quite the swing!
https://twitter.com/DylanLeClair_/status/1638206877740744705?s=20
Surely people can see that the Fed rate hikes are doing diddly squat to tackle US prices via the theoretical channels like fewer business loans for expansion, lower consumer demand, magical changes in 'expectations' (lol)? if the only channel the Fed actually has to slow their economy down and get more people unemployed is the triggering of financial system meltdowns - should we not step back and question the whole wacky world of reckonomics?
Price increases are already falling away rapidly of course as supply chain disruptions unwind, capacity adjusts to meet new patterns of demand, commodity prices stabilise, imported costs of key inputs reduce, and companies finally get called out on price-gouging.
Thankfully, alternative views are getting much more of a hearing now. This piece in The Hill is clear and logical and Nathan Tankus has written a series of pieces over the last week that have rightly attracted positive attention.
Meanwhile in NZ, we do have an effective transmission route between interest rates and the reduction of aggregate demand - taking hundreds of millions of dollars off mortgagors and giving it to bank shareholders. This reduction in demand will have negligible impact on the rate of price increases of course, which are falling because NZ is a price taker and the same drivers that are reducing US price increases will play out here.
No need to panic
All good…
Til 21st April when it will all hit fan only more
In the US banking scene, California's First Republic has seen its shares rally as confidence returns that it will survive.
This was the piece i was reading https://ep.ft.com/permalink/emails/eyJlbWFpbCI6ImFlMGFlMWI1YjhjNGRmNTVkNDkyYjliMGExZGM0MWJiY2RjZDJmIiwidHJhbnNhY3Rpb25JZCI6ImIyOGFiMjNhLTU1OTAtNDAxYS1hZTBlLTlkZGE5NDRiODRiNCJ9
The RBA seems to be the outlier in its reticence to raise rates aggressively. This provides an interesting study case, in a couple of years time, we will be able to look back, and see which response (how aggressive) to inflation was best.
A little like Sweden is now providing an interesting study case about its Covid response, it looks like its softer approach to lockdowns was the right way to go.
I suspect that the RBA is well aware of their own property Ponzi, personally I think they are doing better then the RBNZ
but they still had their "We will not raise rates until 2024" miscommunication.
Re Sweden, yes I believe thats always been the health systems target response, never let politicians take over a health crisis. Its real clear that all this has done is push the covid deaths out a bit
The health crisis was not Covid, but obesity, heart disease and cancer. The real trial still ongoing is the gene therapy forced on Team NZ and it's lasting effects. All cause deaths are at our all-time highest. Cancer's, infections, heart problems are accelerating. Why has this not been investigated or reported. Covid deaths or gene therapy deaths?
Given the average age of the population has been steadily increasing for a number of decades now, that should really come as no surprise.
Larger population => more age-related deaths.
Older population => more age-related deaths as a percentage.
We've gotten older, but not necessarily any healthier. I recall reading that we've had next to no effect on the rate of death past 90 (which is about 25% per year), we've just increased the number of people getting there.
If it was not covid, then it is an aging population, plus poor healthier choices.
Aging vaccinated population = more deaths
Larger population vaccinated = more deaths
I wonder
RBA interest rates have an almost immediate effect, due the high percentage of variable loans they have. Note that in Australia, only the average 1-year term is lower than the average floating rate.
What was always crazy here was that fixed term loans were cheaper than floating. Totally ignored the price premium for certainty. That I would suggest was a banking strategy piggybacking on this country's mad property market. And this causes a massive delay in the effect of OCR increases in NZ - rendering the RBNZ neutered by bigger foreign corporates.
It's even worse in USA, where mortgages are fixed for the whole duration.
You don't need to look back in time to see that RBA has a much firmer control of it's situation than either NZ or USA.
Some anecedotes from working as a lawyer:
- Have 2 clients who haven't paid their mortgage since last July. The bank is only now threatening to take enforcement action against them. They haven't even asked for interest only or a repayment holiday. If they had done so earlier, they could perhaps have gotten away with a few more months of no repayments.
- Another company client who got an interest free small business loan during Covid. IRD is now telling it to pay interest. The company will likely just go into liquidation.
- Threatening a mortgagee sale against a debtor of one of our clients. Realised the COVID restrictions on mortgagee sales are still in place. Have to give 40 working days (rather than standard 20 working days) notice that the mortgagee intends to exercise the power to sell.
Altogether my impression is that there are a lot of bad debts out there which are still bubbling away and haven't come to the surface yet for various reasons.
Thanks for the comment. I reckon is there is a massive amount of bad debt still out there. The facilities approved pre covid will be attached to securities that that went up in speculative value during this period so unpaid debts could be ignored. Well those securities are plummiting in value right now. Looking at the banks all I can see it reduction in overheads (offices and headcount), and exporting of every last cent to Australia parent.
Its like they are getting ready for something big to occur.
Mortgage fraud will be interesting.
The small business loan is an interesting case. We took it for our business - had 4 months work booked ahead, and was negotiating a $600k contract.
Second Auckland lockdown hit, and every client rang up and delayed their work indefinitely, as well as the big contract deciding the market was too risky.
Company went into negative cashflow, was service-based so very little in the way of assets to cash out (servers and a company car), so we decided to fold it, and paid out the remaining workers from the sale of assets, and they went on the Covid-UB. Managed to find alternative providers for those customers who had ongoing service requirements that just weren't enough to keep us afloat.
Two years later, we find the IRD expecting us to pay the loan (I'm not opposed on principle, but GR did say specifically when questioned about it during its inception that companies that folded would not be expected to pay it back). I checked the loan contract, and there is no allowance for the company folding - only thing is you agreed to keep the company functioning for the duration of the loan.
Well, the company couldn't function when the government shut down our cashflow. But I haven't been able to get a hold of IRD for months to sort it out. They seem to have gutted their phone staff, and even the business line just says "we can't take your call".
It'll be interesting to see what the IRD does about these going forward.
To close a company you require a letter from IRD so presumably this won’t be issued if you have a debt owing. Might pay to check how it stands with the companies office rather then wait to be struck off
Yeah, sadly followed the advice of my accountant, which I only recently discovered (through very slow email discussions with IRD) was wrong. Hence why trying to contact the IRD. Not stressed, it'll get sorted eventually.
This financial crisis or systemic problem is nowhere near over. The US is literally praying that more bank runs do not occur.
Agreed.
There will be more bank runs, but in the opposite direction.
Now that the US Government via Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has told us all that any deposits in a USA bank account are 100% guaranteed, that's where every spare cent on the planet with any sense will head.
Who is going to leave their money in a Switzerland given what we've seen over the last few days, when the USA is an unconditional safe haven now?
Then, the rest of us who lose our liquidity will have to compete to get it back. And how do we do that? Yep, you guessed it - higher interest rates.
Agreed. Now how can we pull all our funds out of the NZ bank and deposit them into a US bank?
BW - Estimate AT1 outstanding is about 250bil , with about 21 bil I beleive rolling over in the next month. Going to be expensive or impossible to roll some of this, which is going to effectively reduce banks ability to lend. IMHO they should have converted this AT1 to equity, diluted everyone THEN done the deal with UBS....
Would have still caused chaos but less.....
As Monty Python would have said in that great stetch (One of my favourites) Sketch Junk Bonds please come in, your time is up!
not sure I agree, 100% insured by what exactly? The money printer? So the $ will end up in hyper inflation if this situation ever plays out again and they do 100% insure it?
Off to bitcoin we go
Housemouse Have you heard of Sandy Dai. Could be a real catch instead of chumming with IT GUY
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/accountant-who-billed-clients-after-being…
There was a fabulous stock market rally in 2008 between the forced sale of Bear Stearns and the collapse of Lehman Brothers. The eye of the storm so to speak, when everyone believed the crisis was over and there would be no "contagion", when the truth was it had barely just gotten started.
Fake and fake. You've pulled those figures out of your ars
Have you never seen a stock chart before? When Bear collapsed and was sold to JP Morgan for $2 in March 2008 the S&P500 was 1253 (that's a stock market index by the way, in case you didnt know what that was either). This was detailed in the Big Short movie as well, in case you prefer TV to Google. The market then rallied hard to 1440 - that's a 15% increase in case you don't do maths either. Everyone thought the problem was "fixed". Lehman collapsed exactly 6 months later, triggering the stock market rout that ultimately took the S&P500 down to 667 in March 2009.
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