Here's our summary of key economic events overnight that affect New Zealand, with news risk premiums keep on rising.
But first, the OECD is reporting that the global expansion is leaking away, and quite quickly now. Economic activity rose by just +0.1% in the first quarter of 2025, significantly down from an +0.5% rise in the previous quarter. The US and Japan were the main drags in their data. And they say this is a departure from the higher and relatively stable growth rates recorded in the OECD area over the past two years.
US initial jobless claims eased lower marginally, all accounted for by seasonal factors. There are now 1.79 mln people on these benefits, +103,000 more than at the same time last year.
Existing home sales in the US fell -0.5% in April 2025, to their lowest in seven months and notably below what was expected. High mortgage rates are getting the blame.
The first of the US PMI survey is out for May, the S&P/Markit one, and that reported output growth improved in the month, but prices spiked higher from the tariff impacts. And this was true for both the factory category, and their services category. It is better than a decline but in a broader historical perspective this isn't very impressive.
Supporting that was the Chicago Fed's National Activity Index which not only recorded a decline in April, but March was revised lower too.
Meanwhile, the Kansas City Fed factory survey for May slipped more negative again, even if hopes for the future remain positive.
We don't usually report results of the US Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS), but today's 10 year event reveals the rising risk premiums investors are demanding, even as background inflation rises. Today's event delivered a median yield of 2.14% plus inflation, compared to the prior equivalent event a month ago of 1.86% plus inflation. These premiums are on the move wider, and are likely to widen substantially if Trumps 2025 Budget gets through Congress.
North of the border, and in a bit of a surprise, Canadian producer prices slipped in April to be just +2.0% higher than a year ago. It turns out that many components for Canadian factories are sourced from the US and the falling US dollar has made them cheaper. That is certainly true for energy products, but true for many other components as well. Cheaper input costs will help Canadian factories push back against the tariff taxes their US customers have to pay.
In Japan, they booked record high machinery orders in March, up +8.4% from a year ago, and far above what was anticipated. The outlook for the next three months looks good too. But we should note these gains are built on fast-rising domestic orders. Export order contributions were weak.
Meanwhile, the Japanese May PMIs both slipped lower to be essentially flat (a marginal contraction for factories, a marginal expansion for services).
In China, and in a sign of how broken their real estate development sector has become, local authorities are using bond funds to buy back unused land from struggling developers as a way to stop them completely collapsing.
Singapore reported its change in economic activity for March and that came in at +3.9%, lower than the 5.0% growth in the December quarter but better than the expected +3.6%. But officials there downgraded their full 2025 expectations saying they will be lucky to get +2.0% growth this full calendar year - for all the obvious reasons.
The Indian PMI for May stayed little-changed with a robust expansion. But they too are now noting rising price pressures.
The flash Australia PMIs for May report a growth stall, for both their factory sector and their services sector. That was because they had their slowest growth in new orders in 2025 so far.
Global container freight rates stayed low last week, up +2% from the prior week to be -28% lower than year-ago levels. And bulk freight rates rose +5.0% from a week ago but remain in the general low range they have been since early April.
The UST 10yr yield is now at 4.55%, and down -5 bps from this time yesterday. The key 2-10 yield curve is now slightly flatter at +55 bps. Their 1-5 curve is now inverted again at -3 bps. And their 3 mth-10yr curve pulled back slightly too, now at +27 bps. The Australian 10 year bond yield starts today at 4.43% and down -9 bps from yesterday. The China 10 year bond rate is up +2 bps at 1.69%. The NZ Government 10 year bond rate is still at 4.68% and unchanged.
Wall Street is having a small bounceback, with the S&P500 up +0.5% in Thursday trade. Overnight European markets fell about -0.5%. Yesterday Tokyo ended its Thursday session down another -0.8%, Hong Kong was down -1.2%, and Shanghai was down -0.2%. Singapore ended down -0.1%. The ASX200 fell -0.5% and the NZX50 fell -0.3%.
The price of gold will start today at US$3,294/oz, and down -US$18 from yesterday.
Oil prices are -50 USc softer today at just under US$61/bbl in the US and the international Brent price is just under US$64.50/bbl.
The Kiwi dollar is now at 59 USc, and down -½c from yesterday at this time. Against the Aussie we are down -30 bps at 92 AUc. Against the euro we are down -10 bps at 52.4 euro cents. That all means our TWI-5 starts today still just under 67.4 and down a net -20 bps from yesterday.
The bitcoin price starts today at US$111,542 and up +5.0% from yesterday. Volatility over the past 24 hours has been moderate at just on +/-2.5%.
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23 Comments
We'll see if the MSM has the balls to cover this.
The “safe and effective” narrative collapsed on camera during Senator Ron Johnson’s explosive Senate hearing on COVID-19 vaccine injuries Wednesday afternoon.
https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/covid-vaccine-safe-and-effective-narrative-collapses-camera
It's coverage will be related to how much public interest there is to a 5 year old pandemic.
No. They're still dishing out COVID vaccinations. The government needs to stop that now!
I've not been particularly strongly opinionated on this, but tended to be pro vaccine, but after reading this I would recommend everyone refuse to take the vaccine.
Exactly Murray. Painter is way too casual about this.
Uhhh, I'd like more info before I run around with my hair on fire.
The figures in the first pic, only give totals, they don't tell us what the total sample size is, or the nature of the patients For instance, how many COVID shots were given, relative to the other vaccines? Is the age and health profile of a COVID vac recipient any different than the other vaccination recipients?
Agreed. Like you I was more positive than negative and that was based on thinking that covid was more threatening than the vaccine but that included consideration of my existing respiratory ills. Never got covid though and stopped after the third jab which makes me fortunate, so far at least.
Even taken at face value (and Zerohedge do tend to hype things up), there will most likely be an age, or selection of co-morbidities, where the disease becomes worse than the vaccine. But yes, anyone who takes medical science seriously should want this to be investigated fully and accept whatever conclusions come from that.
There's some allowances for the fog of war making decisions difficult at the peak of the pandemic, and it's important to remember the disease was/is pretty nasty and has a range of short- and long- term side effects itself, but some decisions like vaccinating children seemed a little short on evidence even at the time.
and it's important to remember the disease was/is pretty nasty and has a range of short- and long- term side effects itself
Have there been many senate inquiries regarding the relatively high level of COVID deaths in the USA, relative to most other Western nations?
Yes I bet they'd have a field day looking at the caliber of leadership they had back then.
"We have it totally under control. It's one person coming in from china. It's going to be just fine" - Jan 2020
"Looks like by April, you know in theory when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away" - Feb 2020
"The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA...the Stock Market is starting to look very good to me!" - Feb 2020
"Just stay calm. It will go away" - March 2020
My call on these lethal toxins back in February of 2022, Murray...
https://www.garymoller.com/post/we-wouldn-t-dream-of-inflicting-this-on…
Also, Chris Martenson [Peak Prosperity] was the first high-profile entity in the world to have enough guts to mention this topic, and that in doing so, could potentially have got him killed.
From memory, this was around March 2020. The long knives came out immediately. The fact of the matter is if we had deployed IVM back then, we would have...
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Reduced our Covid death toll to very close to zero
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Improved our community health in a multitude of other ways
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Eliminated the added financial stress
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Carried on with our tourist industry fully intact: actually, probably increased it if anything.
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Avoided virtually all business closures
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Avoided all the resultant social and mental damage
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Avoided a multi-generational gene-editing derangement to a large section of our gene pool
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Emerged as a textbook example to the world of how to keep Mr Global in his place
https://www.garymoller.com/post/ivermectin-ivm-the-drug-that-literally-…
‘Lethal toxins’? Can’t be very lethal when the vast majority of us are still alive.
The batches vary wildly in strength, tis.
Death and severe injury rates show that some batches are exponentially more dangerous than others. Also, the toxic and inflammatory effects are cumulative with the more jabs a person has.
There is randomness in a recipient's likelihood of dying or being severely injured with the worst batches being likened to playing Russian roulette.
https://howbadismybatch.com/international.html
PLEASE for your own safety and your loved ones, take a look at the link below - this is utilising data from the year 2021 from all over the world and remember too that VAERS data is known to be significantly under-reported - the main take-homes, from Craig Paardekooper at How Bad Is My Batch...
#1 There was a huge range in terms of severe reactions with Belgium being the worst with 7530 total adverse reactions, 230 deaths, 4815 disabilities, 260 life-threatening, 70.5 reports of severe injury including death.
Poland at 20.1% came in with the median score, with Austria the lowest at 4.1%. This meant that Belgium's severe reaction rate was 17.2x that of Austria.
#2 Notice that Romania came in second at 59% severe reactions - their population realised very early on how lethal these products were - as a result of the plummetting uptake they sold thousands of their doses on to the UK, and then some were onsold to poor old gullible NZ 3rd hand.
#3 Batch EJ1688 resulted in a 6.26% death rate and 23% with severe reactions. Some of the milder batches had 0% deaths and less than 1% severe injuries. France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Netherlands, and Spain, had batches that scored in the 20 -27% range for severe reports. Austria was an outlier scoring at 11% for their worst batch, and once again Belgium was hammered with their worst batch FH8469 showing an 87% severe reaction rate.
#4 Note - this analysis was only 2021 data when individual country codes were available.
#5 When they filtered for data on young people of an athletic age (18-35), they filtered for that age range. On doing so they obtained 887 reports that provided an onset interval. Of these 887 reports, 700 reports had onset within 24 hours - that's 79% of the reports. 806 had onset within 48 hours - that's 90%. This was a staggeringly high %. It is generally held that a more potent toxin brings about a faster intoxication.
#5 Sweden and Portugal did badly too - with 67% and 51% respectively reporting severe reactions for each of their worst batches.
#6 In 2021 VAERS received 5061 adverse reports for Australia. However, only 18 of these reports had lot numbers. This is appalling. The Australian Government was hiding and covering up vital information from their own populations. It is possible to tell the degree to which a government cares for its population by the care with which they keep medical records pertaining to adverse reactions. There were reports of 302 people dying, but only 1 of these reports had a lot number. This is incredible negligence on behalf of the government and the medical profession.
NZ's whistle-blower Barry Young is being dragged through the courts for alerting Kiwis as to how lethal some of these batches were and his findings were up there with some of the worst cases from abroad, with the carnage in the lower South Island being exponentially worse than Auckland.
Ed Dowd's work came up with some shocking results too...
https://vigilantnews.com/post/global-vaccine-impact-study-reveals-up-to…
Best regards
Colin
Wow, there's some real data analysis issues here. Lots of scary percentages, but never a denominator of 'total vaccine deliveries'.
I always like to point vaccine sceptics to the mortality data - Europe has very comprehensive reporting and you can find similar for other regions and countries. Scan through the age ranges. Look at the spikes that coincide with the big waves of Covid that swept through the continent. Note how the spikes are huge for the elderly, and invisible for younger age groups - 0-44 years barely troubles the 'significant increase' line while 85+ blasts right through it. Note the lack of any sign of vaccine-related mortality. Everything is remarkably consistent with a viral disease causing excess mortality, primarily in older people and primarily in winter when viruses spread more readily.
https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps
Any idea of the vaccine being more dangerous than the disease, certainly for 45+ year olds, is completely laughable given the mortality data. For children, the comparison is more difficult as both are largely harmless.
For some perspective, please also consider that seatbelts also cause injuries.
Yet seatbelts are also safe and efective.
To get bent about vaccine injuries is to also ignore the far greater harm that covid itself does to people, especially to unvaxed (unbelted) people.
So Trump was elected at a time of crisis, with the US deficit at the catastrophic level of about 6% of GDP. He comes to office with a mandate to cut spending, and with Bessent stating a goal of a 3% deficit.
Now we see the tax and spending bill pass Congress, with a dramatic course correction in US government spending leading to...a projected 8% deficit...
Do any of the pro-Trump deficit hawks have whiplash yet? Don't worry, you're not the first to be scammed by Trump and you won't be the last.
Congress hasn't passed it yet, only the House (by 1 vote). It has still to go to the Senate.
Yes, that's true, the Senate could still have some influence on it. There's some hawks in there, and also other Republicans who want to reduce the Medicaid cuts - nervous about the electoral effects of 8-10 million Americans losing health care.
Would say, the next mid term elections will be just about the most interesting, revealing and foretelling in all of American history.
Congress and the Senate have no incentive to cut spending as they will lose there seats if they did.
Meanwhile Trump and his idiocy has just ensured China will be Sth Africa's new bestie.
Membership fee to Ma Largo now at $1mill and ever increasing 'purchases' of his crypto required to gain his ear
It seems he trying to drive the US into a revolutionary state so he can declare Marshall Law.
"Martial Law" otherwise who is 'Marshall' and were you making a joke?
But yes in so many areas trump is completely pissing off most of their traditional allies. And now removing Harvard's foreign student charter - that will have a big impact!
In a brief chat with different people and pondering on why Trump won't stand up to Putin, raises, again, the issue that Trump is seriously in hock to the Russian banks. To put it another way, Putin now really does 'own' the President of the USA. Sort of Ironic isn't it? Can the CiC in the US be accused and charged with Treason?
Ironic reference to the Marshall Plan when the USA wanted to engage with the world
Not sure hes in hock to the Ruskies...and even if he was hes been in a position to settle that account for some time....but he does have a great fear of nuclear conflict which I think Putin holds over him like a Sword of Damocles.
Trump is not a brave man.
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