Here's our summary of key international events from over the weekend that affect New Zealand, with news US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross is optimistic the US can agree a “Phase One” trade deal with China this month. Ross says licenses will be available “very shortly” for American companies to sell components to China's Huawei.
He says Iowa, Alaska, Hawaii and locations in China are all possible places where the two countries presidents, Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, could sign the deal after the cancellation of this month’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Chile because of unrest there. Bloomberg reports Ross labelled the agreement “particularly complicated” and says the US was “making sure that each side has a very correct and clear, detailed understanding of what each side has agreed to.”
Meanwhile China's official Xinhua News Agency says China and the US have reached consensus after talks between their lead trade negotiators on Friday.
“The two sides conducted serious and constructive discussions on properly addressing their core concerns and reached consensus on principles. The two sides also discussed the next consultation arrangements,” Xinhua said.
It appears the 16-nation Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which includes New Zealand, won't be signed until at least next year.The final statement from the weekend's Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Bangkok says the group welcomed a “commitment to sign the RCEP Agreement in 2020”. However India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi didn't mention the RCEP talks in opening remarks at a meeting with Southeast Asian leaders and instead spoke only of reviewing the existing trade agreement between ASEAN and India, Reuters reports.
Across the Tasman economists and money markets predict Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) Governor Philip Lowe will probably keep the cash rate unchanged at 0.75% on Tuesday. Bloomberg suggests the RBA could be bumping up against the “reversal interest rate,” a level at which accommodative policy begins to produce unintended consequences. The clearest sign of this is said to be the drop in consumer sentiment since the Reserve Bank began lowering interest rates in June, especially following the July and October cuts.
Also in Australia the Westpac Banking Group, parent of Westpac NZ, reports annual financial results today (Monday). Westpac may cut its dividend for the first time since the global financial crisis due to low interest rates, weaker revenue and higher remediation charges. In its annual results last week the ANZ Banking Group, parent of ANZ NZ, reduced franking credits on its dividends.
Saudi Arabia's giant state-owned oil company Aramco, the world’s largest oil producer, has announced plans to float on the Riyadh stock market. Reuters suggests Aramco could offer 1% to 2% of its shares raising as much as US$20 billion to US$40 billion.
The New Zealand dollar was last at US64.25 cents, A93.04c, and against the euro at 57.54c, little changed from Friday afternoon. The NZ two-year swap rate is down one basis point at 1.02%, and the US 10-year bond is up two basis points at 1.71%.
The easiest place to stay up with event risk today is by following our Economic Calendar here ».
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14 Comments
Exactly - unfortunately for the US - China has surpassed the threshold and can protect its territorial integrity
Anyone who is not anti china is viewed as china's puppets? the article simply stated some facts about trump's distorted reality in his mind. Trump can never truly win over a trade deal with china, just at look at how divided the America is now and what's trump's top priority? Get re-elected.
"the article simply stated some facts about trump"
really? like :
"Overall Chinese are more mature and rational in approach"
"Blessing and disguise have made Chinese nations even wiser and united"
"powerful President of China, who hold political, executive and military powers"
doesn't sound like blind propaganda at all.
I am surprised that a chinese state propaganda merchant who is smart enough to have mastered the english language could not also be smart enough to see that statements such as those mean nobody is going to take anything else they say seriously.
Talking more about this fellow
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/10/donald-trump-china-phase-one-de…
Bloomberg suggests the RBA could be bumping up against the “reversal interest rate,” a level at which accommodative policy begins to produce unintended consequences.
The RBA's conundrum: Do low rates solve low growth or cause it?
It is arguable that the unintended consequences of the low rates and unconventional policies central banks have adopted since the global financial crisis have contributed and entrenched the low-growth environment experienced since 2008.
I'm not convinced by the concept of genius when defined as brain efficiency (call it IQ). The people who have changed how the rest of humanity thinks are not the brainiest but maybe the most curious. Feynmann and Shannon did not have super high IQ. Most species have evolved to use the minimum brain to achieve its survival with brains in humans beings maybe developing an outsize brain as a secondary sex selection feature rather like those small birds of paradise with metre long tail feathers. When you walk down an ill lit alley at night and see someone coming the other way you don't try to estimate if his brain is bigger than yours. My PC can add numbers a billion times faster than me but it cannot cook todays dinner. There are circumstances where speed and complexity of thought win but they are rare. Where is the evidence that the various self-made billionaires (Gates, Zuckerberg, Bezos, etc) have bigger faster brains than for example my wife?
IQ is better thought of as statistical distribution rather than a number. Buckminster Fuller pegged the threshold at 1:10,000(which is about 160 on Standford Binet). In a crude sense it is a measure of horsepower, what is available not whether you choose to use it. It doesn't measure innovation, but it helps to have the horsepower to do that. The test itself is measuring a range of mental processing, gives a person of high IQ more chance of being able to innovate. However it is possible to be particularly good in processing in certain ways that might not show up in an IQ test, but still show up in innovation.
One of the fascinating things I see are people of above average IQ that might have achieved well academically and are quite arrogant about it, but are well short of real intellect. To achieve well in academia doesn't require a statistically(distribution again being a better measure) high IQ, just structure and persistence. Although some professions do require a minimum level intelligence, such as engineering. I'd put that threshold at 130, which means if you see an economist then they probably don't meet that threshold or they would have done engineering instead :-) I'd go further and say that innovation comes from non linear, and non structured thinking.
Full Buckminster Fuller Quote: “We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.”
Instead of IQ on my wife's Pacific Island they say "has a good head on them" and that is better than a mysterious number. I find the comparison between IQ and physical fitness instructive. In common usage we say someone is 'fit' meaning a collection of physical abilities: speed, strength, suppleness, etc and similarly our brains have a multitude of dimensions (I'm decidely numerate but almost unequalled in inability with foreign languages). The olympic champion can run 100 metres and so can I much more slowly, the olympic champion can high jump over 2 metres and however many attempts I make I will never do it. Sometimes brains are really useful but most of the time simple determination is all that is needed.
One of my favs is the 9 types of intelligence. Factual, Analytical, Linguist, Spatial, Musical, Practical, Physical, Intuitive, Interpersonal. Adds another layer of complexity to it. I've been called a polymath twice in my life, which I consider to be strengths in more than one of these. That perhaps adds to the innovator process. Many are problems solvers, just not as fast under time pressure. Capacity constraints play a part at some point. I, like you, have total inability with language. I am not the sharpest at interpersonal either. But interesting you mention the physical as I became a national champion earlier in the year. Spatial would maybe be my strongest. What intrigues me is the fascination with "The Chase". Be interesting to see one of the chasers fix a lawnmower :-P
Hong Kong comment
Am hearing its a month plus for HKers to get paperwork approved to travel, including to here to holiday. Paperwork to get out.
Seems super vetting is being done because pres11 is saying HKers are criminals, and he is treating all as such.
Thing is recieving countries are falling into line.
Joe Rogan says
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