Here's our summary of key economic events overnight that affect New Zealand, with news China is in recovery mode as the US and Europe jerk backwards.
First in the US, last week's level of jobless claims has taken the total past 33 mln and that is now 20% of their workforce. The weekly tally came in higher than analysts were expecting. We will get official data tomorrow, but it is certain to be ugly. A key number to watch is their participation rate.
Job cut tracking has spiked to the highest ever in the survey that started in 1993.
The US is experiencing a wave of company bankruptcies and the wave is expected to get very much larger. It is also expected to overwhelm the US bankruptcy court system.
In China there was a surprise rise in April exports, but imports tumbled - but that tumble didn't include trade with New Zealand although it did with Australia. That saw their overall trade surplus swell. They ran a +US$463 mln surplus with the US in the month, and a -US$46 mln deficit with New Zealand. Surprisingly, they actually ran only a -US$17 mln trade deficit with Australia, surprising because the March quarter deficit was huge. It means that Australia's vast trade surpluses may be coming to an end. No wonder the Aussie iron ore magnates are jumpy these days.
China's services sector is still contracting however, but compared with most other countries it is relatively modest, and the April contraction was less than the prior month and well past their steep February contraction.
And China's foreign exchange reserves actually rose in April with a small but unexpected gain. A small fall was expected.
More Chinese stimulus is on the way with various local governments rolling out some huge projects.
And China's carmakers shipped 2 mln vehicles in April, a +1% rise from the same month a year earlier and an indication their industry may be turning a corner positively. This is most unusual data on a worldwide basis.
In Europe, Airbus said deliveries tumbled -80% to just 14 aircraft in April.
The English central bank has warned it is facing its most severe depression in 300 years with a massive -30% fall in Q2 GDP that the same period in 2019.
The latest compilation of Covid-19 data is here. The global tally is now 3,784,100 and up +77,000 from this time yesterday and an unchanged level of increase.
Now, just under 33% of all cases globally are in the US, which is up +21,000 since this time yesterday to 1,232,000. This is an unchanged rate of increase. US deaths are now more than 74,000. Global deaths now exceed 260,000. The infection accelerations in Russia, Brazil and India are getting very serious now with all countries suffering huge overnight spikes. We should also note that both Sweden and the UK are the only two European countries that are not getting on top of their epidemic with new infections staying high or rising.
In Australia, there are now 6896 cases (+20 since yesterday), 97 deaths (unchanged) and a higher recovery rate of just under 88%. 58 people are in hospital there (-4) with 23 in ICU (-4).
There are 1489 Covid-19 cases identified in New Zealand, with one new case yesterday, down from two the day before. Twenty-one people have died, almost all geriatric patients. There are just two people left in hospital with the disease, and none are in ICU. Our recovery rate is now up over 89% and still rising.
Prices for hard commodities like iron ore and coking coal are both moving higher based on Chinese demand. Earlier in the March quarter, shipments of these commodities from Australia to China has delivered a record trade surplus for them of AU$10.6 bln in March alone.
Wall Street is higher today, and more US states move to re-open for business. The S&P500 is up +1.3% so far, and overnight European markets rose a bit more, up about +1.5% on the same news. Yesterday, both Shanghai and Hong Kong markets slipped lower while Tokyo registered a small gain. The ASX200 slipped as well, but the NZX50 posted a +0.7% rise.
The UST 10yr yield is falling in trade in New York, now just over 0.63% and a -8 bps retreat. Their 2-10 curve is down sharply to +40 bps. Their 1-5 curve is also flatter at +18 bps, and their 3m-10yr curve is down at +56 bps. The Aussie Govt 10yr yield is down -4 bps at 0.91%. The China Govt 10yr is up another +5 bps at 2.60%. And the NZ Govt 10 yr yield has gone the other way, down -5 bps to 0.63%.
Gold is sharply higher today, up +US$35 to US$1,720/oz making back all of yesterday's sharp drop, and more.
Oil prices are little-changed today. In the US, they are currently at just on US$24/bbl which is a marginal firming. International oil prices are just on US$30/bbl.
The Kiwi dollar is +¾c higher overnight, and is now at 60.9 USc on a dipping greenback. On the cross rates we are unchanged at 93.7 AUc. Against the euro we are +½c firmer at 56.2 euro cents. These rises mean the TWI-5 is up to 66.8.
Bitcoin is higher again today, up another +6.5% to US$9,873 which means it has risen +US$1000 in just six days. The bitcoin rate is charted in the exchange rate set below.
The easiest place to stay up with event risk today is by following our Economic Calendar here ».
147 Comments
Chinese govt created data are unreliable at the best of times, which these are not. Their economy is deep in the hole (as is the rest of the world) so they will be using every tool at their disposal to try and improve their situation, that includes manipulating stats. It is only sensible to be suspicious.
"The Bank of England has warned it is facing its most severe depression in 300 years"
"US, last week's level of jobless claims has taken the total past 33 mln"
" a wave of company bankruptcies and the wave is expected to... to overwhelm the US bankruptcy court system."
"new data on the economic cost shows the Australian banks are wearing up to $160 billion in loan payment deferrals." (AFR)
Buy!!!
Or even better. Hold what you have because it's only going to get better than what is was before.... ( and we pay fund management people to form these views?!)
The same as every other Central Bank - an economic powder keg of frightening proportions.
"Bank of England predicts record crash and house price slump"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/05/07/bank-england-predicts-e…
The standards of UK democracy are appalling:
Actions of a gangster state: UK Rejects International Court of Justice Opinion on the Chagos Islands
The US is certainly burning with all those jobless figures. New applications brought the total number of jobless claims since mid-March to 33.3 million- or about 20% of the US workforce. And the number of people collecting benefits has continued to rise, despite recent moves to start re-opening in some parts of the country. Economists say the monthly unemployment rate for April, which will be released on Friday, is likely to reach 15% or higher.
BBC Coronavirus: US unemployment claims hit 33.3 million amid virus. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-52570600
Not to worry, a couple of Republican states are looking at ways to deny people federal unemployment aid in order to force them into no other option but taking up low paid jobs. Also looking at how to remove any liability from companies for safety in those workplaces. Gotta get those mudsills back at the tasks.
With all the censorship on the net I thought I had better get back to my Friday book
'They thought they were free'
https://www.amazon.com/They-Thought-Were-Free-Germans-ebook/dp/B078HVYH…
"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.'
To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic German’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.
"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.'
Andrew, very thought provoking and a timely reminder. History does have a scary habit of repeating and the loss of the previous generations causes the loss of the awareness of what could happen. In these days, I don’t think we should divide along party lines (Labour National) and slag one another off because of perceived beliefs. Similarly, the slagging of Boomers and Millenials is counter productive. We need to work together to hold whoever is in power, accountable to the rule of law, the judicial process and the preservations of our freedoms. By dividing us they conquer us. Again, a great post.
I assume the book does mention it although this summary doesn't, but an important part of the process was the consequences of the Treaty of Versailles, imposed on Germany after WW1. The hamstringing of their economy opened the door for the likes of the Nazi Party and Hitler to slide into their Chancellery and then seize power. So largely the west brought WW2 on themselves. an interesting comparison was how MacArthur treated Japan after the war, ensuring their ability to rebuild their economy, guaranteeing their security which combined to ensure their prosperity despite their being so culturally different from us.
Banned on youtube. They are desperate that no one questions their secret motives:
The 25-minute long documentary vignette claims that Mikovits has been called “one of the most accomplished scientists of her generation” and did work revolutionizing the treatment of HIV/AIDs. The documentary says she published a “blockbuster” study that claimed “the common use of animal and human fetal tissues were unleashing devastating plagues of chronic diseases.” The “minions of Big Pharma” then waged war against her, destroying her “good name, career and personal life,” the vignette claims. She criticizes Fauci in the video. She has also criticized Fauci on her Twitter page.https://heavy.com/news/2020/05/judy-mikovits/
I did watch that. Heavy on ominous atmospheric presentation. Heavy on claims and disgruntlement, without evidence.
There is detailed point by point rebuttal of her claims available online, with sources.
Books like this are becoming increasingly relevant in today's society: https://www.amazon.com/Death-Expertise-Campaign-Established-Knowledge/d…
Brian Rose is about to do an interview with Mikovits.
LondonReal.tv
He’s set up his own platform and the videos are there for all to see. The David Icke ones are heartwarming as he presents his philosophy in a manner, that even if you don’t agree, there are some great messages. Brave men all !
Yeah, that's why I'm so dismissive of the anti-lockdown brigade... I'm not trying to be an assh*le, it's just that I know that in the vast majority of cases if you scratch the surface a bit you find one of their baseline premises is some variation of "it's all a big conspiracy/no worse than flu/UN Agenda 21/George Soros socialist takeover/Bill Gates socialist takeover/Q Anon/autism vaccines/Illuminati/Rothschilds/Jews/take your pick."
Jee, I’d would not like to see what you would be like if you were trying. Just lighten up a bit, don’t take it personally and don’t try and be the judge, jury and executioner. Remember that you need to walk a mile in a man’s shoes before you can even begin to judge. So much hate can’t be good for the soul !
We can always learn something from everyone. Try and draw on any positives and let the negative bits slide on by.
At the end of the day, we are in this together and we need to learn to work it out together.
Andrewj, you might enjoy this book. I highly recommend it. Never realised when I was younger that the author was such a brilliant writer (in content, prose and poetry) and student of history: https://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Amnesia-Necessary-Memories-History/dp/0…
BTC spike today due to U.S. fund manager backing bitcoin as a hedge against inflation:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-07/paul-tudor-jones-buy…
When the apparent recovery comes …
"The post-pandemic recovery will be different from what happened after the last financial crisis, he argues, partly because bank balance sheets are stronger now and the Federal Reserve is allowing them to lend aggressively. While the current collapse in demand will keep prices of goods and services from rising in the short run, Jones doubts that the Fed can prevent that from happening over the longer term."
Tell him hes dreaming
As I said yesterday Bitcoin is nothng more than a day at the pokies...
The hard core bitcoiners think its some glimpse into the future … they overlook
- the positive aspect to all this fiat debt … IT PAYS everyone's incomes! Its the only reason supply chains are still ticking or that's theres any demand/ "viable" customers
- if fiat falls over Bitcoin is a dead duck (which Bitcoiner is going to possibly maintain the electrical grid for Bitcoin?) … What is there to buy if supply chains are toast?
If you want a better store of value buy a goat
I think the important piece here is to remember stock markets have been disconnected from fundamentals for quite some time and are the major recipients of any money printing. Now that the Fed is spending/creating/printing money like a drunken sailor, markets have risen substantially as a result, showing further disconnection from reality. This has created (even before the current crisis) a "two stream" economy, one based in the real world, one the financialised economy. And the reason nobody wants to stop it is the two are intertwined, if the financialised economy drops, pension funds, housing etc is in real trouble. Central banks are trying to print their way into growing economies, but it is likely they will make the problem worse not better.
So there is something like $1.5 quadrillion (yes you read that right) tied up in derivatives based on financial bets, all propped up by this financialised economy. World debt is something like 250% of GDP or more. If any of this dramatically collapses, all the banks are in trouble, probably everywhere in the world. All those in power want to protect the banks, so they ensure the banks cannot collapse, so they extend and pretend that the financialised economy is the real economy. Politicians will point to this fake growth as a result of their "wise management" to retain power, so the "extend and pretend" belief infects our political systems as well.
Ray Dalio's most recent article on currency devaluation and the current debt crisis.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/changing-value-money-ray-dalio/?publishe…
Yeah and then you have Kelvin (MIA) Davis on P Henry show last night trying to say domestic tourism will replace International...really are people going to be spending up knowing NO job is save. That interview was so embarrassing, he has no plan to help out the industry...when pressed on how was he going to save or help limit the 100k of immediate redundancies coming...he had no answer.
What can you do though FCM? As Winston Peters said I think the day he chose to go with Labour at the election that we were on the very edge of our economy crumbling. 2.5 years later here we are.
There's not much one can do until we reset in my opinion.
He could of course wrap gold around a turd and try and sell it to the public - but that would make him a liar! (or like Donald Trump)
I agree, but they need to be up front and honest..so people can really prepare..at moment they are saying we have a plan just wait here's some pocket money for the next few weeks..but really I do not think they do have a plan and they should be up front. But then again they are politicians, the experts at not delivering. (I think the only honest information is the leaked document to MSD to expect 300k of unemployment applications and prepare)
It's worse than that Airways and CAA re not funded by the taxpayer through the Government. They get their funding by charging the direct users of what they do - the aviation communities. The consequences of this is interesting before COVID, but COVID will have led to a total collapse of their income and it won't improve much in a hurry. Without COVID the consequences of this essentially is that the rest of the world uses NZ as an example of how NOT to manage their civil aviation sector. And the head of CAA has recently announced his resignation.
Shows what he's made of. Quit at soon as the going gets tough - now a woman has stepped up.
I have, in the past, been accused of being sexiest, I prefer the term traditionalist. But I would like to give women a go at running the world. One things for sure, the can't do any worse.
When I was a student we had to read "Black Like Me" which was the true story of what happened when a white guy painted himself black and went jogging in the states
Not a lot has changed in the deep south since then.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/5174327002
..and people are surprised that a fool like Trump could be elected.
If your measures are rape-iness and corruption Trump is far, far worse than Biden.
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/women-accused-trump-sexual-misconduc…
(Not arguing that the two parties should not have put up better candidates. Nor that Bill Clinton was less a rapist than Trump, unless perhaps only in overall numbers.)
What is particularly sad with Trump's case is how it has utterly compromised the morals of the traditional Christian right. Francis Schaeffer would have been appalled, if the likes of James Dobson and Jerry Falwell less so. Schaeffer's own son notes that his father came to regret the tie-up theyhelped create in with the political right in the USA, realising over time just how much it became mere manipulation by the political class.
I noted the hypocrisy of all those jumping to vilify Neil Ferguson recently (for having an affair) whilst often being the ones who support Trump but never mention his sexual, conduct, affairs, violence to women or abuse of power. Quite astounding the level of bias.
I am realising that a common trait of my Facebook friends who've gone done that path is that of starting with a worldview and grasping thread that supports it whilst dismissing any evidence that undermines it. They have a level of surety in the correctness of their opinions that is as astounding as it is unjustified.
Thank you for a balanced view. As a Catholic I'm embarrassed by the church's handling of the abuse cases - they couldn't have got it more wrong in my opinion.
But ultimately it's a human issue. The fundamental principles that it's built on are good, but it has been undermined by the people in the institution - for a long time.. there are examples of it in every institution: Police, Teachers, Doctors and so on.
I don't mind other cultures and values coming here because the freedoms that allow them here are the same ones that allow me to practice my religion. And regardless of backgrounds there are basic human values on which we can all agree.
I don't like talking religion on here as it's business site, but as someone else brought it up I thought I'd say my bit. Because most Catholics are just regular people who want to get on with life, and have about as much interaction with church leadership as they do with the Kremlin.
You're embarrassed?
"We regret the events and will do better"???
Sounds like something Ponce Andrew would say.
Where is the punishment of those who did it and the measures put in place to ensure it doesn't happen again? Reparations to the victims ? Its comparable to the GFC, nobody really went to gaol and here we are again up to our eyeballs in debt with the BOE saying it's the worse recession (sic) since the Great Frost of the 1700s.
Elon Musk back again with Joe Rogan
https://youtu.be/RcYjXbSJBN8
Like it's any other Friday.
Changing value of money $$$$??$$
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/changing-value-money-ray-dalio
Negative Fed Funds Futures contracts skip forward to Dec 20 month. Read more
And the takeaway for those who might not read that link:
“Suppose central banks pushed back against today’s flight into government debt by going further, cutting short-term policy rates to, say, -3% or lower.
Well it would be absolutely devastating not only for what's left of savers but the banking sector and by implication - since banks control everything ....the economy.
What does a negative interest rate mean, aside from the obvious death sentence for banks and a deflationary collapse for the global economy? We have written thousands of articles (literally) why sliding into this monetary twilight zone - where both Japan and Europe already are to be found, frozen in monetary carbonite - means "game over", but instead of recapping article after article we will give the final word to the bond king Jeff Gundlach himself, who conveniently summarized it best last night when he tweeted that a rate
There are two parts behind the inflation mongering. The first, noted yesterday, is the Fed’s balance sheet, particularly its supposedly monetary remainder called bank reserves. The central bank is busy doing something, a whole bunch of something, therefore how can it possibly turn out to be anything other than inflationary?
The other part or half of what’s driving fears is fiscal, governmental in general. Come hell or high water, it is told, the feds as opposed to the Fed are going to drive inflation. Why? Because, as legend has it, that’s the way you “pay down” massive debt loads. You go nuts borrowing and then, quietly, ambiguously, you screw your lenders (bond holders) by devaluing the currency.
Occasionally, as the kids say, they say the quiet part out loud.
A working paper just released (but not edited) by the Chicago branch of the Federal Reserve does just that. A taste:
The current low interest rate environment limits the Federal Reserve’s ability to stabilize the economy, while the large public debt curtails the efficacy of fiscal interventions by inducing expectations of costly fiscal adjustments. A solution to this impasse is a coordinated fiscal and monetary strategy aiming at creating a controlled rise of inflation to wear away a targeted fraction of debt. Under our coordinated strategy, the fiscal authority introduces an emergency budget with no provisions on how it will be balanced, while the monetary authority allows a temporary increase in inflation.
As noted yesterday, on the contrary, there was none to be found anywhere – not until the mid-sixties under very different underlying (not deflationary) circumstances.
It wasn’t up to authorities to create it, no matter how much they wanted to or how willing they were to just tear up tradition and exceed political limits. The monetary power for inflation, or deflation, as the case would be, rested within the banking system which, contrary to “recovery” expectations, wasn’t recovering. Link
The monetary power for inflation, or deflation, as the case would be, rested within the banking system which, contrary to “recovery” expectations, wasn’t recovering
Every quarter the Federal Reserve surveys the opinions of senior bank loan officers (SLOOS, or Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey) to gauge bank perceptions on all lines of debt issues. From commercial loans and CRE (commercial real estate) to mortgages and consumer credit.
The Fed has both a regulatory interest in the results as well as a monetary policy interest insofar as it relates to the effectiveness of monetary policy (expectations) in keeping disruptions to that theoretical safe minimum (no second and third). Is the Fed’s playing around with fed funds or increasing the balances of its alphabet soup programs soothing rattled institutional nerves?
The survey for the second quarter of 2020 was conducted in early April. So, yeah:
A large increase in the number of respondents reported how their bank has tightened lending standards for all loan products. Thus, while tens of millions are losing paychecks, even if all of them go back to work they will find it harder to qualify for credit on the other side of the shock. Same with businesses; many who are losing profits and might be able to survive in between will also be left without the same level of, and access to, debt.
It is looking like an especially large hurdle for consumers. Not only do the SLOOS data point to higher lending standards, it also shows a big change in potential commitment. To put it simply, not many even want to think about installment credit of any kind right now. Link
I would be interested Audaxes if you could distill all those into a couple of your own sentences. Are you saying deflation in the short, medium and long term? Dalio per the links above is saying inflation by printing and spending is the only option governments will choose.
They may choose that option, but deficit spending (sovereign bond issuance funding) involves the transfer of existing savings, created by banks, to the state - no new credit is created to spur business investment. Global banks have been reluctant to create new credit by issuing their IOUs (deposits) to purchase borrower IOUs (assets) and thus increase the size of their balance sheets since 2008.
India Firms Are Leaning More on Japan Banks Amid Funding Freeze
Central bank purchases of government bonds enrich the tiny minority rentier class, but no further bank lending is extended to the general population of taxpayers and their productive enterprises because they are considered not creditworthy in the current circumstances.
Society needs to tackle this impasse before it engulfs another decade.
As a consequence we have endured global disinflation which could spiral into outright deflation if policy changes are not enacted.
Killing with kindness. "Suicide rates in Australia are forecast to rise by up to 50 per cent due to the economic and social impacts of the coronavirus and tipped to outstrip deaths from the pandemic by up to 10 times."
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/suicides-toll-far-higher-than-c…
So are you going to blame the government for saving thousands of lives from COVID19, which would have been out of the control of the victim vs suicide by people who have over extended themselves and decided to take their own lives?
Pretty tough gig this government role these days! Can't win.
You're coming out of the gate a bit hot there bud, I've said nothing about blaming the govt for anything. I'm just lamenting the fact that we have a serious issue in this country with suicide and there will no doubt have been a large increase in suicides these last few weeks.
Imagine in a scenario where the Director General of Health and the PM get up in front of the cameras everyday at 1pm to update us on the numbers of suicides and domestic violence incidents in NZ. That would be sobering. And we'd understand quite quickly what a real epidemic looks like.
But no. It's a coronavirus with a patented cell entry protein that gets all the air time.
Which in hugely obese USA is over 50% of the ppn if you include significant over weight as a comorbidity. Plenty to fear if you are the average yank. We have dear friends over there, most are lifestyle induced tubbies but their anxiety is nonetheless palpably real and painful to see. Large segments of NZs population are in the same category, especially so with some ethnic minorities. We are not as crowded but nevertheless the grim reaper would still cut a sizeable swathe here.
Yes, absolutely. The confused mishmash of L2 rules is unenforceable. Ardern's infantilising and conflicting commands about interregional travel; discouraged but permissible, open bars at Napier while visiting 'mum' verboten but a daft unworkable alternative that could only be dreamed up by some wellington propellor head is allowed, are bureaucratic fantasies that will be quickly swept aside as we all evolve our own common sense modes of dealing with C19. The time of personal responsibility, especially towards keeping our olds safe, has arrived. Thank goodness. I am completely over being didactically lectured by a Karen Walker version of the trunchbull.
Guilty as charged. But OK BMI and no comorbidities. Got lucky in the genetics lottery and do some lifestyle stuff to favourably tip the balance. But taking no chances, despite the tiny one in 23K chance of coming across someone with the lurgy. So yes, well curbed! Including the fear bit. When your time is up and all the other cliches.
Suicide and mental health funding have been much talked about and recipients of increased budget in recent years. Likewise poverty.
What's newfound is more the concern for these issues coming from a wider tranche of folk on the internet. Is it the potential for them to be more affected by these things than in the past when it was primarily something that affected others?
And as ginjaninja highlights, economic recession is an unavoidable side effect of a pandemic, lockdown or no lockdown. Witness the recession predicted for Sweden, the current poster child for erstwhile "just a flu" Facebook warriors.
Too soon to call it. We don't yet know enough about the behaviour of the virus and it's subsequent variants to predict whether strategies followed by countries such as Sweden vs other will achieve better long run health outcomes. Pakistan has largely given up, others will soon follow. The virus will rampage across the developing world if the pro lockdown team have it right. Or not if the herdists sect turns out to have been the true religion. At a coldly academic level a fascinating lab experiment is under way.
You digress. My point is - suicide, mental health and domestic violence are real epidemics in NZ, and perhaps it would be interesting to treat them like we treat Covid19, with daily updates and a sustained political awareness of these issues beyond the platitudes of throwing more money at these problems.
Yes, and more silent epidemics could be added to your list. I am tired of the daily theatrics and preening egoism from the dear leader but this is a new threat additional to the established ones you list. The difference is its rapidly escalating and catastrophic risk potential which demand a high profile level of urgent response.
Suicide happens at the best of times and the worst of time - it just happens.
I'm sure we all know someone who's done it ( Mine was John Taylor. Who bought land next to me in Christchurch and started building a home. He overextended himself and his business by doing so ( Taylors Laundry Services) and drove out to a quiet, lonely road and gassed himself in the back seat of the car).
Tragic though it always is; as it is now, no one knew that 60,000 New Zealanders weren't to be killed by Covid19. ( on estimate). What was our Government supposed to do faced with that possibility?
There has never been a pandemic in history that has not had devastating economic and social impacts. It is naive to expect this pandemic to be any different. We must instead prepare for this impact and invest in the resources needed to support those in need. Resources that have been massively underfunded over the last 20 years in NZ, who already had some of the worst mental health and suicide statistics in the world.
Take a look at worldometer re size of GDP in China, USA, Eu.
EU is 19% of world. China is 13%.
I do not think most people would think this, given that media is always focussing on country, not economic block.
EU is china main export destination and its in big trouble. Hence China will not be doing anywhere near as well as it is making out
In PPP terms it looks different : Graphic evidence
Chinese GDP is a number concocted by Chinese govt. External estimates put it far lower - as little as half of what is claimed.
https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/2189245/chinas-gdp-g…
So one can assume mainland China threatens the status of the US claim to indispensable exceptionalism.
And there are others - Let Me Be A Bit... Thoughtful.
What is the right policy with regard to China? We've tried engagement, they just take what's offered and keep on getting bigger and more powerful without reform - in fact getting less free and more malignant, as demonstrated by their treatment of Uighers and south china sea territory grab, not to mention their every growing state hacker army that predates the world. They are a bad actor on the world stage, and should be isolated until they improve their behavior towards their own citizens and the rest of the world.
Classic
Migrant worker, working in the black economy, not paying tax, now unemployed, can't get the wage subsidy because he doesnt exist, wants the taxpayer's help
Chinese bricklayer Mao Qunyou had been working cash jobs on-and-off in Auckland since his two-year contract ended with a previous employer late last year. He said it was hard to find a stable job, which meant when Covid-19 shut most businesses down, he was not entitled to claim the government's wage subsidy. He said he was still owed money for cash jobs before the lockdown and hadn't had an income for weeks. "I asked the Citizens Advice Bureau. I also phoned the Ministry of Social Development. I thought it would be good if I can get some subsidy because I haven't got any income for such a long time and I have to survive," he said.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/416133/unemployed-migrant-workers-s…
Yep, cash culture is widespread. Provided caution is exercised to avoid red lights on IRDs triage IT system and the big spending noter urge is kept under control, it's virtually undetectable. I know of some eye watering sums of cash that tradies have salted away. Medium to larger business tend to be much more strict about accounting for cash as they are aware that IRD taking a close interest in their businesses can be very expensive to respond to, even where everything is tickety boo.
I read that article mouth agape. If I was in China, Philippines, India etc on a work visa and became unemployed I can assure you there would zero sympathy from the government or citizens of those countries. They would laugh in my face if I suggested the tax payer should provide me with financial assistance. I would be homeless on the street. Why should the NZ taxpayer be expected to pay benefits for those that aren't entitled? This man should contact his embassy and get back to China if there is no work available.
Peters has been skiting about MFATs good work in organising repatriation flights for kiwis abroad but is silent about progress in getting other countries to uplift their now stranded work visa citizens from NZ. I read that 80K NZrs have come home and 50K foreigners have left. If these are the full numbers that leaves about 200K here on work visas not eligible for welfare. Media have seized on this example, probably because it includes an uncorroborated allegation the chinese embassy refused to help one of its citizens which will play well to the current anti china mob sentiment. No word of course on how other countries are dealing with it, that'd require an attempt at balance. And none too on the large number of visa workers who have made no attempt to get home and are lying doggo in the hope this will blow over.
Is this part of a strategy to divide powerful Russia - China relationship down the track.
https://tass.com/world/1154171
https://tass.com/politics/1153655
I would assume that’s just because of the actual products no? You don’t need iron ore while you’re in lockdown but nailing people’s doors shut is hungry work. I can’t see how the Australia thing isn’t just sabre rattling, the Chinese are going to need a lot of iron ore to build all those shiny new stimulus white elephants.
FYI to the people who suggested we follow Sweden's example:
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/health/medical/sweden-admits-a-big-failure-to…
At a population of 10 million, 3000 dead so far and still going strong at 99 new fatalities today.
I'd like to ask the "stop the draconian lockdown!" people to write the names of the 46 people they'd choose to die every single day on their Facebook page.
As the virus' bite goes deeper into Sweden's population, so will their economy decline, as people will, all by themselves, go into some form of lockdown. Their problem will be that their depression will end up being almost as deep as anyone else's but it will last much longer and they will continue to lose people. I think you make a very dodgy assertion there.
Yep. As I said from the beginning, there was never any reason to believe that letting the virus rip would create a better economic outcome than lockdown. The anti-lockdowners just decided that was the case. The reality was a choice between mass death and depression, or just depression.
Yep, I'd say so, once the "I don't want to risk doing X because virus" is embedded in mass psychology that's a loooot of foregone purchases which is a whole other layer of deflation on top of what we already have. Not to mention all the second order effects of uncontrolled virus spread chaos knocking out other systems. Does anyone really believe Brazil's iron ore sector is going to be humming better than Australia's in three months?
The implied assertion was that a Sweden style approach would deliver a higher death rate vs harsher initial lockdown when no-one, including myself, can predict the comparative end of game outcomes of either approach with any level of confidence. It's why my position is that despite the economic carnage which is about to become much more real, NZ was in an almost uniquely advantageous position to give elimination or better a crack. We've done that pretty well, albeit with missteps and the emergence of a bizarre Jacinda/Ashley cult. But the time has arrived for personal responsibility to become our guiding principle rather than mummy scout leader telling us how we must brush our teeth. To go a bit Churchillian, 'the battle of Britain has been won, now the great battle of the Atlantic begins'. Longer, harder and the WW2 event that tested Churchill the most.
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