Here are the key things you need to know before you leave work today (or if you already work from home, before you shutdown your laptop).
MORTGAGE/LOAN RATE CHANGES
Nothing to report again today.
TERM DEPOSIT/SAVINGS RATE CHANGES
No changes today. But we have reviewed the rates of most at-call savings accounts - and some give returns that beat inflation and taxes.
BIFURCATION UNDERWAY
There are rough seas ahead for the housing market over winter. Our latest Housing Market Activity Report clearly shows that housing inventories available for sale are rising very much faster than either sales, or even new listings coming into the market.
NON-TRADEABLE INFLATION FRUSTRATINGLY STICKY
Annual inflation fell to 4% in the March quarter, but that means domestic inflation is above RBNZ expectations. It came in higher than RBNZ expected, but lower than analysts expected. Within it, rent prices climbed by 4.7% and their highest rate in more than 25 years. Non-tradeable inflation is staying stubbornly high. Quarterly inflation rose by +0.6%, above the December +0.5% quarterly gain, but the second lowest in 15 quarters.
DAIRY PRICES HOLD
Dairy prices held at today's GlobalDairyTrade auction event, bedding in the prior recent rises that included the SMP and WMP Pulse events. Analysts estimates of the farm gate payout forecasts seem neutral risk-wise.
CANCELLED!
The FMA has cancelled the crowdfunding services licence of Equitise Pty Ltd. The cancellation took effect on 3 April 2024. The FMA said it is satisfied that they materially breached certain market services licensee obligations, there was a material change of circumstances, and Equitise no longer meets certain statutory requirements.
TOPPED UP
Transpowers says significant inflows gave our South Island hydro storage lakes a much needed top up last week, bringing national hydro storage up to levels last seen in early March. National hydro storage is now at historic mean levels for the time of year, up from 83% the week prior. Hydro generation output has increased and thermal generation has eased off as a result.
THE WORLD WANTS WHAT THEY'VE GOT
Japan is on a roll, despite their currency issue angst (in USD terms). Their exports rose by +7.3% in March, following a +7.8% rise in February. It was the fourth straight month of increase for them.
SWAP RATES UP STRONGLY
Wholesale swap rates are likely to be back up strongly today after the CPI tea leaves have been analysed. Our chart below will record the final positions. The 90 day bank bill rate is unchanged at 5.64%, a level it has hovered around for 30+ days. The Australian 10 year bond yield is up +6 bps at 4.42%. The China 10 year bond rate is down under 2.27% and an all-time low. The NZ Government 10 year bond rate is up +10 bps to 5.04% and the earlier RBNZ fix was at 4.97% and also up +10 bps. The UST 10yr yield is up +5 bps to 4.66%. Their 2yr is up +6 bps at 4.98%, so the curve is now -32 bps and little-changed.
EQUITIES MIXED
After being underwater for most of the session, the NZX50 is heading into positive territory near the close of trading. The ASX200 was up +0.3% in early afternoon trade. Tokyo opened its Wednesday trade down -0.3%. Hong Kong opened today up +0.1%. Shanghai however is up +1.1% at its open. Singapore opened up +0.3%. All this comes after Wall Street closed its Tuesday session with the S&P500 down -0.2%.
OIL SLIPS
Oil prices have fallen back -US$1 to just on US$84.50/bbl in the US while the international Brent price is now just over US$89/bbl.
GOLD HOLDS
In early Asian trade, gold is unchanged from yesterday, still at US$2384/oz.
NZD PARTLY RECOVERS
The Kiwi dollar has recovered slightly from this time yesterday to 59 USc and up +20 bps. Against the Aussie we are up +30 bps at 92 AUc. Against the euro we are up +10 bps to 55.5 euro cents. This all means the TWI-5 is now at 68.9 in an across the board small gain.
BITCOIN FIRMS
The bitcoin price has risen today from this time yesterday, now up to US$64,134 and a +1.4% gain. Volatility of the past 24 hours has been moderate at just on +/- 2.1%.
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76 Comments
House Prices not as weak as FHBers want......
Combined with proposed cuts today announced at Oranga Tamariki, the children’s ministry, it takes the public sector cuts announced today to more than 1000. NZ Herald
So many public sector jobs going with no tally
One News has a running tally https://www.1news.co.nz/2024/04/17/a-thousand-govt-jobs-cut-in-black-da…
What everybody is sucked into is believing the cuts are massive. They're not. The 1 News tally has an "actual" losses row for cuts that are finalised.
Total proposed losses: 1,986
Total actual losses: 508
Overall losses: 2,494
"Actual" losses so far are only 508 jobs, not 2494, which is what most reports tell you.
Paper cuts for now folks, apart from the 500 poor sods who actually have lost their jobs ("poor" excludes the ones who have golden parachute redundancy clauses). The tally needs another row for "vacancies disestablished", which are significant proportions of the cuts.
In most cases they have never been real jobs anyway, but only a bunch of bureaucrat roles artificially created by the previous spendthrift and wasteful government, with very dubious results. I am sure that a good chunk of them will wake up to reality and find a real job in the productive sector of the economy.
Except they won't.
Job market is drying up quicker than your average middle-age hangover. Abundance of immigrants filling low skilled jobs. Benefits will continue to soar, all of this cutting will result in lower tax revenue and increased beneficiary spending. The net "savings" may not be as much as is written on the tin. Meanwhile business reliant on swathes of public servants will suffer, as will many related services and agencies, taxi companies. How will AirNZ ticket prices react?
It's a deep deep gash, and no real plan behind it other than making the numbers look different.
"...business reliant on swathes of public servants will suffer, as will many related services and agencies, taxi companies. How will AirNZ ticket prices react? Its a deep deep gash..."
Arrant hyperbolic nonsense. Not only did Labour increase the public service by ~18000 / ~40% in 6 years - with no significant improvement in actual "public service" - the reductions so far are less tha the increase that Labour wilfully encouraged in the 6 months runup to the election.
https://breakingviewsnz.blogspot.com/2024/04/david-farrar-useful-contex…
https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/jobs/wellington
Oop, sorry: https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/jobs/wellington/wellington
766 jobs currently open in Wellington city.
That’s not a reason to keep 18000 extra staff being paid public money to do no work, which is what is happening now. The cuts that must be done are massive, it’s not the new governments fault, it’s the old governments fault. It’s far cheaper on the public purse to pay the benefit while these people are absorbed into real jobs, not fake ones. It will take time, and require an attitude change for many of them. But it will happen.
In most cases they have never been real jobs anyway, but only a bunch of bureaucrat roles artificially created by the previous spendthrift and wasteful government, with very dubious results.
Really fortunr? Can you prove that statement? Or is it another 'reckons' by a bad actor?
This isn't in reports. Well, maybe it is, but my experience is first hand. Some examples (you can run away and scroll govt docs if you want):
- MOE has their own building inspectors. This is over and above a council inspector who still has to come to sign off the building to make it legal. The MOE inspectors usually don't know the standard council and building regs (or if they do, they often argue against them), and are comforting to the MOEs own building guidelines. Much of these guidelines is asinine, and require a government appointed architect engineer also driving them.
- Many KO healthy homes upgrades on hold. Houses also empty, unsafe for human habitation in 2024 (fine in 2020, 2010 and 1980). The current government are wondering why the previous govt were spending $400k for what should be at a stretch $200k worth of work. KO has an army of project manager types rocking up multiple times a day to take photos of all trades on site, do a bit of interrogation, want a 15 min matter to reiterate what you told the last guy, make adjustments to the job on the fly, and want to pile as many tradies into a site at one time as possible (this is actually the slowest, worst way to get a job done).
There's a general theme there that's counter to doing a job well, right, or cheaply. I have to look at any project about what it cost me in time and materials vs what I estimated when I quoted it. It's easily 30% more expensive to do a job for the state. And that doesn't even factor in the lost productivity doing other work while you're still doing what should be a relatively simple, quick job.
Admittedly some of what the government is doing is trying to mitigate errors it made in the past. But there's ways to do that, that don't require systemic bloat.
And this is why the state shouldn’t build or own houses, or anything really. Had they sold all that state housing land off years ago, and had they not told people what they can and can’t build, we probably wouldn’t be in this mess.
The best development land in Auckland - a big no-nimby ring around the city from Glen Innes to Avondale, is largely state owned, and until the last decade was incredibly low density and run down. And even now it’s wasted on people who don’t work while people who do have to live further from the action. And they can’t build appartments or high density without creating slums. Privatise the lot, flood the market, prices and rent will drop, and allow high density apartments for young professionals.
I have worked on contract in teams in government departments (3-4 years ago) that could comfortably lose half their staff without any significant impact on achieving meaningful policy work outcomes. In my opinion, there’s huge wastage from what I have seen. Very much ‘Gliding On’, creating unnecessary work just to keep bods busy. Frequently farcical.
The simple fact is they will never be as efficient as the private sector as the private sector seeks to make money, and to do that, they have to be smart and efficient. The public sector is different. The operation is not commercial, and the people are there to get paid rather than make a profit. If they fail in their endeavours, which they do, a lot, then they ask for more money, and if you have idiots in charge like we have had for last six years, they hand it over. Private sector doesn’t work like that. Clear difference. Even lefty woksters should be able to understand this.
I'm not much of a fan of throwing around labels like lefty wokesters. But in general, we are facing problems that require genuine innovation, and parliament is largely made up of mid-upper class academics (both left and right wing) who are going to be fairly tunnel visioned and indoctrinated to fairly linear mindsets.
Having a state funded jobs program for more middle management and made up nothing work is not a productive endeavour. Have them pick up a spade, lower construction labour costs, and help build some infrastructure or housing.
spot on HM -- have the agencies are usually in some form of restructure -- a massive number of staff are on secondments in roles they have no knowledge of unlimited sick leave in many cases - and its almost impossible to get sacked for poor performance -- usually you get a sideways promotion out of one department to another -- many of the additional 18000 jobs that were created were significantly overpaid when compared to similar roles in teh private and NGO sector -- witness Kainga Ora -- taking staff from health sector roles at 20k more -- and had no clear direction -
a good example was as Te Whatu Ora was established with hundreds of new back room jobs the MOH was also creating and filling jobs hand over fist -- when of course a single health authority should have seen the need for less MOH roles not more
Curled up in that, tangled actually is that ghastly, abhorrent word accountability. The adoption of let’s say consultants, introduced layers of protection for all involved. Every consultant employed had, still have in fact, a disclaimer built into the relative contract absolving them of any liability if the outcome went to the dogs.,That way the council or whatever could blame the contractor and both could walk away to do it all again when the fuss died down. QED!
I have actual experience of a govt department not knowing their own rules around certain activities (handing out money in this case), which resulted in multiple meetings involving four people (and the member of the public concerned) and of course the piece of paper concerned. All up the meetings took eight hours (x4 public service drones) the piece of paper was interpreted, and the 200 dollars was duly handed out. So instead of taking a sensible person 5 minutes to read the rules and check with a manager it took 4 idiots 32 hours and probably cost the better part of 5K in tax payer money. Hopefully they are all on the list for being made redundant. I would call that sort activity not a real job, just a display of self importance. Chop chop I say. This was the Ministry for Children, where 500 jobs are going. Firing these sorts of people will have no effect on the delivery of services….it might actually improve the delivery of services.
I saw this article on Bloomberg today and thought it was quite interesting:
What If Fed Rate Hikes Are Actually Sparking US Economic Boom?
Obviously our situation in New Zealand is different having shorter term fixed rate agreement but I think we do have to take into account that there is some counterbalancing effect to raising rates. For a lot of people with savings, term deposits, bonds etc. do benefit. As society ages people tend to hold more of these type of assets.
Are we entering a pro-inflationary environment? No idea but clever people seem to indicate that might be the case.
I think you need to understand maths. Compounding interest is very powerful. A 30% gain in four years is really not that good, but very in line with how the maths works. The value of my assets has doubled in the last four years. It’s not some sort of evil conspiracy. Some people are educated better, earn more, work harder and spend less than others. The less you spend the more you save, the more you save the more you can invest, and then the more you make, returns on returns. It works well. But the maths is very simple.
Nice been born at the right time Painter.
The majority of all U.S. assets — $41.8 trillion — come from real estate, which is not too surprising considering how much property values have increased over the decades. After that come equities and mutual funds ($33.8 trillion), durable goods and other assets ($33.3 trillion) and pensions ($30.1 trillion). The remaining amount comes from private businesses at $17.1 trillion.
Your warning comes in the first paragraph ...
As the US economy hums along month after month, minting hundreds of thousands of new jobs and confounding experts who had warned of an imminent downturn, some on Wall Street are starting to entertain a fringe economic theory.
So ignore the warning at your peril.
100 million barrels of oil were 'consumed'.
Never to be had again.
And equivalent BOE of coal and gas, ditto and ditto.
All the infrastructure on the planet, got one day closer to failing.
And the elite are hollowing out what remains of the (temporary) middle class - those left standing. The bottom end got hollowed out decades ago. That's the 'job cuts'- it's an ideological class-war aboard a sinking shIP. I guess the idea is that all those sacked folk will abandon their mortgages, the rentiers will be able to step in and scoop them up - then rent them back. It's flawed, of course; blood out of a stone, all that; but that's what these turkey are attempting, methinks.
100 million barrels of oil were 'consumed'.
Yeah but they weren't wasted. I had the boat out yesterday hooning around, we created infrastructure, people were holidaying, making memories. Life is good, let's burn all the oil. No one lives forever so let's go out in a fireball..... Much prefer that than eating crickets and avoiding cannibals (The Road)
Yes, you are right. PDF doesn’t realise that the climate emergency is declining in popularity faster than electric cars and the Labour Party. The last poll I saw half of the people that were worried, no longer care, and it was only a small minority that cared to begin with. PDF can have a conversion with a small group of like minded people, and after they are done. No one care what they said. That’s the reality. People are going to live their lives.
People that aint yet born dont get a say - no more kids, problem solved as they wont need any resources :-)
The problem PDK is that if we have a mature discussion only some will participate - and even if we seriously retrench tomorrow with what we know now 5-6 billion people will have to go - they will starve to death when the food supply runs out when the fossil fuel runs out
So whats the plan - we could husband what is remaining and buy time sure but we will still need a different energy source, less people and be way more efficient with all the other resources we consume. No real sign that we are on the right track yet so there is a possibility that my grandchildren will be our last generation - it is what it is
Interesting times - I am sure the species will survive even if much less in number
housing inventories available for sale are rising very much faster than either sales, or even new listings coming into the market
How can inventory (or stock) rise faster than new listings ? If there are 1'000 new listings and not one single sale, then the rise in inventory is also +1,000. How can Inventory increase by more than the number of new listings ?
Is this the biggest central bank bailout of a single entity in history? Adrian Orr would be in awe.
The central bank had provided SCB, previously one of the country's largest commercial lenders by deposits, with 592.7 trillion dong ($23.72 billion) in "special loans" as of April 2, according to a recent update produced by the bank on the matter, seen by Reuters.
The State Bank of Vietnam's previously unreported cash injections into SCB amount to 5.6% of the nation's annual economic output, or about one-fourth of Vietnam's foreign-exchange reserves.
https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/vietnam-mounts-unprecedented-2…
I had to check the date to make sure it wasn't reported on April 1st!
After the central bank stepped in, SCB's deposits plunged 80% to about $6 billion by December 2023, according to the new official information from the source. SCB could run out of deposits by mid-year at the current pace, and bad loans had surged to 97.08% of SCB's credit balance as of October, it said.
Lan, the tycoon whose October 2022 arrest sparked the bank run, was sentenced to death on Thursday after being found guilty of masterminding the fraud. She had pleaded not guilty to embezzlement and bribery for allegedly siphoning off $12.5 billion in loans from SCB to shell companies while effectively controlling SCB through proxies.
The state bank of Vietnam just announced is auctioning off its gold after not selling for 11 years. Coincidence?
Already market prices are at a 30% premium to international markets.
https://vietnamnews.vn/economy/1653989/gold-bar-auction-to-be-resumed-a…
Korea and Japan pledge joint action on currency depreciation free fall.
Interesting to see what their cunning plan will be. Together engaging in market manipulation by coordinating USD dumping? Who will the buyers be?
https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2024-04-17/business/economy/K…
"Wholesale swap rates are likely to be back up strongly today after the CPI tea leaves have been analysed."
Or perhaps the falling NZD and Recessionary environment means swaps rates are likely to reflect fundamentals?
Coolabah Capital's take on NZ inflation.
General takeaway:
The NZ economy has contracted almost continuously since late 2022 and unemployment is rising, but, unless the sectoral inflation estimates show something materially different, the RBNZ will be disappointed by this outcome, which reduces the probability that NZ will cut rates later this year. .
https://www.livewiremarkets.com/wires/progress-in-reducing-nz-underlyin…
So agents bemoan not being able to exploit lack of supply over demand to whip fomo into a frenzy for lazy commission. Boohoo. Now they have to really work for a crust, no advo and toast and don't spill the inta coffee in the Audi.
List at a realistic price or don't waste anyone's time.
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