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A review of things you need to know before you go home on Friday; TSB cuts mortgage and term deposit rates; consumer confidence up; Wheeler has a new job with a Chinese bank; CBL directors accused of insider trading

A review of things you need to know before you go home on Friday; TSB cuts mortgage and term deposit rates; consumer confidence up; Wheeler has a new job with a Chinese bank; CBL directors accused of insider trading

Here's what you need to know before you kick back for the weekend:

MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
Cuts from TSB:

Standard rates
1-year, 18-month: -14bps to 4.35%
2-year: -14bps to 4.25%
3-year: -16bps to 4.69%

Special rates
1-year, 18-month: -14bps to 3.55%
2-year: -4bps to 3.45%
3-year: -16bps to 3.89%

TERM DEPOSIT RATE CHANGES
TSB has cut all its term deposit rates by -10bps, other than its 9-month rate, which it cut by -5bps, and its 1-month rate, which is unchanged. It’s 9-month rate is its highest rate, at 2.65%. All its other rates for terms 6 months and longer are at 2.60%.

CONSUMER CONFIDENCE UP
There’s economic turbulence around the world, but kiwi consumers feel good, according to the October ANZ-Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence poll. Consumers’ perceptions of their current financial situations were the best they’ve been since 2007, with a net 20% feeling financially better off than a year ago. The consumer confidence, current conditions and future conditions indexes all rose, reversing last month’s moves.

WHEELER JOINS CHINA CONSTRUCTION BANK BOARD
In two-week-old but below the radar news, Former Reserve Bank Governor Graeme Wheeler has been appointed to the board of China Construction Bank as a non-executive director.

FORMER CBL DIRECTORS ACCUSED OF INSIDER TRADING
Former CBL Corporation directors are being accused of insider trading. Investors taking a class action against them have filed a statement of claim with the High Court. They allege Peter Harris and Alistair Hutchinson traded shares while possessing material information unavailable to the market. They also allege the former directors of the company provided misleading statements in the IPO documents that, at the time the company listed on the NZX and ASX, it had adequate financial reserves to meet its insurance obligations. And finally, they claim the directors are responsible for failing to update the market on CBL’s financial position after the IPO.

NZ-CHINA FTA UPGRADE REPORTEDLY GOOD TO GO
New Zealand and China are believed to have reached agreement on an upgraded free trade deal. The report comes from Newsroom, which says a signing ceremony could take places as early as next week, with the Prime Minister to attend the East Asia Summit in Bangkok and the Trade Minister to visit China. The Government has declined to comment on the report.

CERT CAUTIONS THE FINANCIAL SECTOR ON EXTORTION ATTEMPTS
CERT NZ, the Government's national Computer Emergency Response Team, has issued an advisory warning that it has received reports of extortion emails targeting companies within the NZ financial sector. "The emails claim to be from a Russian group called ‘Fancy Bear/Cozy Bear’ and demand a ransom to avoid denial-of-service attacks. They carry out a short denial-of-service attack against a company’s IP address to demonstrate their intent. So far, a larger denial-of-service hasn’t happened if the ransom is not paid," CERT says.

NZ AND JAPAN TEAM UP IN THE PACIFIC
Foreign Minister Winston Peters and his Japanese counterpart Toshimitsu Motegi have issued a ‘Joint Declaration on Cooperation in the Pacific’. They have agreed that Japan and New Zealand will work together on development projects in the Pacific, including in renewable energy, aviation infrastructure, water security, medical infrastructure and equipment, and disaster risk reduction. Peters said working with “like-minded” partners was one of the aims of the Pacific Reset.

PROPERTY LISTINGS HIT ROCK BOTTOM
The latest figures from property website Realestate.co.nz suggest the housing market remained subdued in October with fewer vendors putting properties on the market. The website received 10,235 new residential listings in October, up 15% compared to September but down 17.1% compared to October last year. That was the lowest total number of new listings the website has ever received in the month of October.

NEW RETIREMENT COMMISSIONER APPOINTED
NZ On Air CEO, Jane Wrightson, has been appointed Retirement Commissioner. Wrightson was formerly Screen Production and Development Association CEO, Broadcasting Standards Authority CEO and Chief Censor. Former Retirement Commissioner, Diane Maxwell, left after allegations of bullying. Interim Commissioner, Peter Cordtz, will deliver the Commission’s three-yearly Retirement Income Policy review to the Government in December. Wrightson will begin her three-year appointment on February 10.

NZD STRONGER
The New Zealand dollar has strengthened since this time yesterday to 64.4 USc, 93.2 AUc and 57.7 EUc.

BITCOIN STABLE-ISH
The price of bitcoin has fallen very slightly in the last 24 hours to US$9,096. It’s still enjoying a surge from China’s endorsement of cryptocurrencies.  

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11 Comments

re:NZ AND JAPAN TEAM UP IN THE PACIFIC

“We share mutual goals of defending the rules-based international order, and advancing regional peace and security.”

'Rules-based international order' is not the same thing as 'international law-based order.' Rules could be anybody's rules. International law, on the other hand, is universal.

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Andrewj a good link: it's the same old culprits.....lobbyists and cronyism. How on earth do we tolerate
the very existence of lobbyists in a so-called democracy? Meetings behind closed doors, the greasing of palms, etc, etc
Lobbyists behind the Leaky Building Disaster ( we want untreated kiln-dried timber ); cronyism involved in the sale of NZ public assets (and didn't the cronies do well....most don't even live in NZ any more!)

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Agriculture Minister Damien O'Connor said high numbers of suicide were a harsh reality for farmers.

https://www.odt.co.nz/star-news/star-districts/ringing-tears-canterbury…

National's primary industries spokesperson, Todd Muller, said the level of anger and fear he sees in farmers' faces is like nothing he's encountered before.

"I'm deeply troubled because I've seen it in the faces as I've travelled around the country, I have seen anger, I have seen anxiety, I have seen fear and I have seen held back tears.

It doesn't feel like Wellington, the powers that be, has looking after our own as a priority.

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Henry, do you have any thoughts on why?

I will have a try. Partly it's cultural, partly it's an ideology foisted on us thats failed, partly it is debt, partly it's out of control costs and threatened loss of property rights.

Not easy subject to discuss with locals. Culture in the West was wrapped in a christian belief system, even if you are atheist/agnostic, you probably went to a christian school, or had someone in the family who regularly went to church. Many cultures are linked to faith, Jewish, Islam etc, faith is intertwined with culture. We replaced our faith with a belief in money/power for significance and meaning, we fell into a vacuum trying to figure what life is really about, 'is it just me in here alone? An inability to live in the now, stuck in some future that hasn't turned up and may never. A belief that at the end of day we get judged is a powerful force, every town or village in NZ has an unused church if not 3 or 4, those organisations in the past were powerful spiritual support structures. Every town has a cross to commemorate fallen soldiers. We have not replaced out old beliefs with new ones that can hold up to scrutiny, or when the wheels come off.

Debt is a bugger to pay off now we have a tax system without the deductions, so add the tax required to pay off debt with capital and it's a Herculean task, so you are stuck with the mortgage instead of a day in the future being debt free.

We have had compounding cost increases that are not reflected in the Cpi, and it's still rolling on. We all know that inflation is higher than stated, it's an Orwellian task to believe what simply isn't true because we are told it is. Inflation compounding is a killer once you get a few doublings in. Add to that compliance costs etc.

Then you start getting people in Local/ State govt thinking they know more about running your farm than you do, it's like 'you gotta be kidding me'. That loss of control is a big deal for me. Most farmers run complex systems, some admittedly badly but most very well. Some 25 year old from the council, who I probably wouldn't employ is not going to know what the hell he's doing or what I'm doing, I become powerless, and I hate it.
I feel our council is run by management and councillors are little more than goodwill ambassadors.

French farmers vent their frustrations, I was in Normandy when farmers got together, took some old ewes, a trailer of manure, went to the local council office, cut the sheeps throat and threw them through the council window, dumped the manure so they couldn't get out. Healthy stuff when under stress, then they all head off for a long lunch lots of wine and a sleep. By the way it worked.

I find this hard to discuss, it's close to home and a little bit of heart on my sleeve.

http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_copybook.htm

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Elements of the human condition
Here & now we have issues with leadership in Wellington. And its failure to guide lower levels, keep them inline & and serving communities.

See here for leadership that takes people backwards fast
https://youtu.be/OFHcy8rhiVg.

Bigger picture it's back to the classics. Rational thought, philosophy. Science.
https://youtu.be/OFHcy8rhiVg.

https://www.amazon.com/God-Not-Great-Religion-Everything/dp/0446697966

"[An] impressive and enjoyable attack on everything so many people hold dear... Hitchens has outfoxed the Hitchens watchers by writing a serious and deeply felt book, totally consistent with his beliefs of a lifetime. And God should be flattered: unlike most of those clamoring for his attention, Hitchens treats him like an adult."― New York Times Book Review

"[Hitchens] has somehow turned out an atheist book that, whatever one's stance on divine providence, is thoroughly enjoyable...in its profane interrogation of the sacred, [it] achieves a kind of joyous impudence...His narrative leans briskly and unrelentingly forward, subverting an unsettling all kinds of complacencies, religious and otherwise."― Joseph Rago, Wall Street Journal

In the tradition of Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not a Christian and Sam Harris's recent bestseller, The End of Faith, Christopher Hitchens makes the ultimate case against religion. With a close and erudite reading of the major religious texts, he documents the ways in which religion is a man-made wish, a cause of dangerous sexual repression, and a distortion of our origins in the cosmos. With eloquent clarity, Hitchens frames the argument for a more secular life based on science and reason, in which hell is replaced by the Hubble Telescope's awesome view of the universe, and Moses and the burning bush give way to the beauty and symmetry
of the double helix.

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Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher, currently a researcher at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Ljubljana Faculty of Arts, and International director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities of the University of London.

https://youtu.be/545x4EldHlg

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Unfortunately even the Hitchen brothers were polarised. I like history and simply don't know enough and never will. I look at the Abrahamic religions Christianity, Islam, Judaism, the Druze faith, the Bahá'í Faith, and Rastafari, what started with Abraham when he went to his maid Hagar and had a son called Ishmael, left the world a divided place.

The socialist left in the States is at odds with conservative christianity, it's where the conflict is going to come from. I can see wealth taxes on the horizon, the inequality is getting ridiculous and a lot of it is caused by corporations being too close to govt, central and local.

I don't for even a second believe there is a fix it, one size fits all solution, but I know some people do a lot better if they recognise a spiritual side to their life and somehow create ,often amazing things.

Your last link looks really interesting I will have a listen, looks like quite a character.

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The brothers were very separate.

You probably have a view of JP, the here lady is interesting.

https://youtu.be/v-hIVnmUdXM

https://youtu.be/lSI5EzGSA3I

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AB's by 40-50

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Oh the revolving door between public and private sectors:

In two-week-old but below the radar news, Former Reserve Bank Governor Graeme Wheeler has been appointed to the board of China Construction Bank as a non-executive director.

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