Here's our summary of key economic events overnight that affect New Zealand, with news most economies continue to struggle with economic responses to sharp drops in consumer demand. The Americans just can't seem to get on top of their emergency, with confused policymaking.
In the US, mortgage applications are rising sharply, but mortgage approvals aren't as banks get very wary about borrower risk.
American producer prices fell by -1.3 in April from March, the most in more than a decade and the largest year-on-year decline in almost five years. Depressed demand is creating deflationary conditions, ones that might last for a while yet. And unusually, these pressures apply to both goods and services.
And in a widely watched speech today, the Fed chairman said Congress and the White House will need to spend much more to push back on the coronavirus-induced economic contraction. Wall Street turned glum, mainly because he didn't embrace negative interest rates.
And it's not as though the Fed isn't pulling its weight. But huge financial market injections (and here) are not going to be enough on their own.
In China, the absolute amount of non-performing bank loans has hit a record high with a sharp jump. But that jump is only as fast as new lending, so the non-performing loan ratios have remained stable.
The Japanese government has decided to inject cash directly into both large and mid-size companies that are struggling in the face of the pandemic, adding to low-interest loans and subsidies already in place. The battle to save the commercial sector is desperate there now. It also comes with some irony, because some large Japanese companies are famous for their huge cash reserves and presumably they will not be recipients in this latest move.
In Australia, there was a surprising bounce in consumer sentiment in the latest WestpacMI survey. But the level is still very negative.
The uncertainty is also revealed in bank scenarios where CBA says that house price declines of up to a third by the end of next year are one possibility.
On Wall Street, markets have taken fright today with the S&P500 down -2.2% so far. Overnight Europe fell harder. Yesterday, key Asian markets were flat while the ASX200 ended up marginally and the NZX50 was down marginally.
The latest compilation of Covid-19 data is here. The global tally is now 4,313,000 and up +84,000 from this time yesterday which is similar level of increase.
Now, just on 32% of all cases globally are in the US, which is up +24,000 since this time yesterday to 1,380,000. This is a slightly higher rate of increase. US deaths are now exceed 83,000. Global deaths now exceed 295,000. The situation in each of Russia, Brazil and India is getting worse. And the UK is still reporting as many daily new cases as India is. Both only report cases that present to a hospital.
The reports of an uptick in cases in Wuhan can be overstated because the numbers are tiny - just a handful - but the local authorities there are not taking any chances, deciding to test all 11 mln citizens of the city.
In Australia, there are now 6975 cases (+9 since yesterday), 98 deaths (+1) and an unchanged recovery rate of just under 90%. 50 people are in hospital there (+3) with 17 in ICU (+1). There are now 704 active cases in Australia (-31).
There are 1497 Covid-19 cases identified in New Zealand, with no new cases again yesterday, and the same as the prior day. Twenty-one people have died (unchanged). There are still only two people left in hospital with the disease (unchanged), and none are in ICU. Our recovery rate is now just under 94% with 95 people known to be infected (-12) and 73 of those are in 12 active clusters. That means 22 other cases are recovering in self isolation in the community (-1 from yesterday).
The UST 10yr yield is lower to just on 0.65% and a -3 bps repeat retreat. Their 2-10 curve is little-changed at +49 bps. Their 1-5 curve is marginally flatter at +17 bps, and their 3m-10yr curve is unchanged +57 bps. The Aussie Govt 10yr yield is down -1 bp to 0.93%. The China Govt 10yr is up +2 bps at 2.68%. But the NZ Govt 10 yr yield is very sharply lower after yesterday's RBNZ MPS, down -11 bps to only 0.49%.
Gold is firmer again today, up another +US$10 to US$1,711/oz.
Oil prices are slightly lower today. The US crude price is down by about -50c/bbl to just over US$25/bbl. The international oil price is down slightly more to just over US$29/bbl. OPEC has slashed its forecast for global oil demand.
The Kiwi dollar is also a weaker this morning, down almost -1c to just under 60 USc. The weakness is across the board. On the cross rates we are down a full -1c to 92.9 AUc. Against the euro we are down more than -½c to 55.4 euro cents. These overall drops mean the TWI-5 is now 66 which in turn means the RBNZ actions yesterday devalued the Kiwi dollar -1.5% in a day, and it is now down more than -8% since the start of the year.
Bitcoin is higher today however, up another +1.7% to US$9,070. 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 ».
182 Comments
'In the US, mortgage applications are rising sharply, but mortgage approvals aren't as banks get very wary about borrower risk.'
If mortage applications are rising, it indicates that people are not shying away from borrowing to buy houses despite unemployment and business loss (Will be interesting to know in which category the demand is more, Is it for low end, mid range or high end houses). Have to see if same happens here in NZ though it depends on number of variables like house price to median income ratio, opporunities .....
Even if Up Strongly week over week indicates that more and more people have started to apply ....bank approves or not is a different story.
With the way economy is heading and more people losing jobs and business, moratge application should be declining going future.
Will have to wait and see how NZ data unfolds but will also be interesting to see the demand and how each bracket - low, mid and high end mortgage application behave.
yeah there is no mention as to the proportion of those loans that are 2nd mortgages or re-mortgages. Given there has been lockdowns over that period I would imagine the volumes being sold would be relatively low so cant think that they would be related to new purchases.
There has been a lot of talk about alot of americans having their credit cards maxed out during the crisis and one way to get cash and clear you CC debt is to mortgage your home that you may have previously owned outright. Although if you arent earning the bank may not approve.
I'd say lots of re-mortgaging applications as a result of the helicopter drop. One family I spoke with (two parents, three children) got $3,500 and have applied to refinance, using that to pay down the mortgage and also take advantage of the lower interest rates available. In other words, they want to lower their debt, as well as their outgoings. They are waiting to hear whether the bank agrees.
Certainly looks to me like deleveraging mode has been engaged
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/121503292/unprecedented-amount-of-cred…
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/121475474/let-people-use-kiwisaver-to-…
The Japanese cash injection into their commercial sector is going to need to be copied to some extent here if the Governments mantra of jobs, jobs, jobs is to be achieved, especially in the regions, because the banks have definitely indicated that they will NOT be venturing into that area. The RBNZ's actions could even conceivably be seen to be undermining the Government's goals.
The RBNZ dropping the OCR and making noises about the banks dropping interest rates, WITHOUT mentioning commercial lending at all. Orr knows that the banks will be risk averse and will work to hold house prices up despite what is happening, to protect their own investments in mortgage lending. The Government has tried to reassure the banks by saying they will shoulder 80% of the risk (although i don't know the mechanism of how this will be achieved) but the banks still did not go into the commercial area. Some of the contributors to this forum still indicate that the banks either won't lend to business's or that their interest rates are still horrendous. In the mean time saving is being actively discouraged through minimal to nil interest, and the RBNZ talking about negative interest rates.
The net effects I see - the banks will work to vacuum up as much of the helicopter money the Government is creating and then re-direct it into the housing sector. They will see this as a cushion to protect them from the distressed part of their portfolio, and will be able to wait longer before they call in those loans. But they will not be supporting business and jobs, unless that business is VERY secure (likely considered essential), arguing that that is not their role. This can be seen as contradictory for the banks, but the RBNZ is effectively supporting this position as they are not discussing any regulation that will limit and direct banking business.
It has the RWA capital demand regulation. The most egregious facet of this regulatory control of bank capital is that it encourages banks to lend to the collateralised residential property sector because the risk weightings are much lower than other sectors of the community in need of credit such a business, which attract much higher weightings. This is the reason we are a nation overrun by building societies masquerading as banks.
As Michael Reddell noted there is not an RBNZ action that monetises these purchased securities, in so much that the RBNZ can hand back the redemption proceeds to Treasury. In fact there is a liability to the banks that proffered them for central bank purchase.
One of the incidential curiosities of the bond purchase programme is that at times like this you hear a great deal of talk about how it is a wonderful time to borrow and the government can lock in very cheap long-term funding. And yet what do really large scale central bank bond purchase programmes do? They transform the liabilities of the Crown from quite long-dated to increasingly quite short-dated, exposing the Crown (us as taxpayers) to really substantial interest rate risk. Perhaps at the end of all this the Reserve Bank will have $50 billion of government bonds, with a representative range of maturities. On the other side of its balance sheet, it will have a lot of very short-dated (repricing) liabilities – all that settlement cash (see above). Whether the Bank eventually sells the bonds back into the market – which hasn’t happened a lot in other countries – or holds them to maturity, the interest rate risk doesn’t go away. It isn’t obvious what public interest is being served by skewing the Crown’s (net) debt so short term. Perhaps interest rates will never rise again……but that won’t be the view many people will be taking...
The Government has tried to reassure the banks by saying they will shoulder 80% of the risk (although i don't know the mechanism of how this will be achieved) but the banks still did not go into the commercial area. Some of the contributors to this forum still indicate that the banks either won't lend to business's or that their interest rates are still horrendous.
If that's continuing a pattern over the last decade of plunging interest rates it makes any pretense that dropping the OCR is to stimulate the economy a bit farcical. The only great difference it would have been making was inflating asset prices / devaluing money.
Murray, have you watched 'The Princes of the Yen' ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5Ac7ap_MAY&t=818s
Found a way Aj. So far the indication as much about what the JoP did as what it didn't do. Too much money without direction just creates speculative, non-productive investment. Something I've mentioned before. Any central bank must be able to provide direction to the money it creates to ensure the desired outcomes are achieved. When a company like Nissan can make more money through speculative investment than through manufacturing cars, then something is seriously wrong.
A lot of these indicators are already evident here.
Not sure if you follow Ray Dalio but he suggests the end of a long debt cycle sees people using leverage to gamble on asset prices. So the markets end up becoming detached from the real economy - i.e. the productive economy you refer to. Why build/produce anything when you can make more money speculating on the prices of things with cheaper debt? I think we're there now - everyone leveraging the last 10 years to assume high prices will rise..
Thanks to some of the contributors I have started to read some of Dalio's pieces. As to it being the end, it's been going on for a while now so how long? I guess that's the big question - everyone is trying to stave off Armageddon, but the longer it takes the worse it will be.
Dalio hopes we can have a 'beautiful deleveraging' where we don't under or over stimulate/supply money to the markets. 75 years since Bretton Woods which Dalio suggests is around the typical length of a long debt cycle. He suggests most people go through their lives thinking it (the long debt cycle) doesn't exist. I put most boomer investors in that bracket as they assume everything they have witnessed as 'reality' - asset prices rising, interest rates falling - 'house prices double every 10 years'.
I think we'll see companies start playing hot potato with bad debt - there were a few examples in the news yesterday where debt obligations can't be paid.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/12/us-fossil-fuel-comp…
Inevitably it comes. Society attempting to pull itself up by its bootstraps
Governments see bubbles as boom times and the success of their economies.
Only when they inevitably pop they cant let things contract so throw the kitchen sink at saving it in order to stay in power.
doesnt matter if its Fiat, IMO the only real way to avoid it is communism or regulate to avoid bubble economics which is basically socialism
Seems either way those in power win, the minions get the raw end
"Good problem to have", a "sign of our success", yada yada yada.
I find it perturbing that now the talking point generators are singing a song of economic impacts and negative social effects on people, and "mortgaging our children and grandchildren's future" (Ximon Bridges), where they never lamented the negative social effects on people of declining living standards caused by knowingly nurturing asset bubbles. Only now when the leopards are eating their own faces?
Yes it was at that point I was getting absolutely furious with John Key after voting for him - my respect for him went from quite high to absolute disgust. I actually feel quite sorry for him now - he is wealthy and he has a knighthood but I have zero respect for him. Money appears to be more important to him than morals, but that is probably true for a generation given how popular he was/is with part of our society.
Unless National change their tune, I'm not voting for them.
Odd right? They own 3 houses but still feel like a 'victim' so need to make future generations suffer because they suffered...at least that is the narrative I keep getting told. It was so hard, do you know how hard it was for me to end up with 3 houses and with my wage now 5x the cost of my first house.
Think many still deluded by greed, confirmation and recency biases.
Same with mental health. None of these asset rich commentators mentioned the mental health crisis EVER, until it suddenly suited their narrative, when the pandemic looked to be risking their own wealth.....suddenly its all "oh no, poverty and mental health the tragedy of it all!". Yet for the last decade the number of homeless has been growing year on year, wage growth was MIA, and asset inflation pushed more and more Kiwis into poverty and debt slavery, there was no concern for mental health and poverty then. If anything there was disdain and gloating.
The people are hypocrites. Heartless, selfish, deluded hypocrites.
Yes something is going to have to give - the wants of some having been destroying the health and needs of others. I think if you're in a position of privilege, as always you need to act with humility and good grace. There was the thread the other day around the French revolution and the heads of the King/Queens and lords being cut off after taking on massive debts, raising taxes, yet living a life of luxury themselves.
That is what it feels like for many....go and work your but off in a meaningless job, pay rent, don't get any closer to owning a home, battle mental health issues...but remember that your landlord had it really tough buying up properties the last 30 years!
It's more nuanced than that, GN. Two core reasons for the Buzz Lightyear house asset inflation:
- The RBNZ's RWA policies for banks privileges residential housing lends over other, more productive assets. So banks simply follow the easiest lending path.
- The plethora of District Plan, RMA, TLA DC's, TLA Modest Fees, TLA Inspections etc plus the risk-averse (get an Engineer's Certificate for that there Window Lintel), worksafe-worshipping build culture, have completely foobarred the old build-cost models by adding layers of cost at every juncture. Norm Kirk built his own house. Good luck with That now. And yet house builds (even the old stick-frame, hammered-together way) are perfectly within the capability of most DIY'ers. And the old single-storey stick-frame builds held up well in the most severe dynamic test yet: the Christchurch and Kaikoura earthquake sequences. Go figure. Mike Greer (Christchurch builder) reckoned that TLA imposts were easily $75K/house, and this was years back. For, essentially, zero practical benefit.
And add to that
the like of the Hungry Lion Fletchers gobbled up outfit after outfit of the construction supply sector and from that dominant and lofty position controls a more than fair sized segment of supply of said materials and pricing thereof
In the days of Big Norm and beyond right up to Rogernomics it wasn’t that easy to get a mortgage. There were the savings banks, building societies, solicitors and something if I remember rightly involving capitalising your family benefit? Trading banks ere able to open savings banks within, in the late 1960s. The RBNZ imposed a stringent lending corset on the banks. Priority to primary production, industrial. Nothing personal except the small come and go overdraft. Douglas booted all that into touch and at the same time availability of credit & credit cards hit the ground running. So suddenly home lending got strapped to a rocket and housing construction became a real big biggie for the like of the aforesaid hungry lion.
Fiat and credit is the problem. Try creating a credit bubble when you can’t create money/credit out of thin air. Banks would actually need to loan out deposits and be a middleman again. The ups and downs are much smaller with sound money. No inflation targeting, no ridiculous house price growth, markets would work again. Fiat only steals from the future and always fails as history shows.
Wasn’t really due to sound money though:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/nathanlewis/2020/02/2…
AEP. Amazingly Cuomo sent sick to rest homes in NY also. " Basically, every mistake that could have been made, was made. He likened the care home policy to the Siege of Caffa in 1346, that grim chapter of the Black Death when a Mongol army catapulted plague-ridden bodies over the walls.
“Our policy was to let the virus rip and then ‘cocoon the elderly’,” he wrote. “You don’t know whether to laugh or cry when you contrast that with what we actually did. We discharged known, suspected, and unknown cases into care homes which were unprepared, with no formal warning that the patients were infected, no testing available, and no PPE to prevent transmission. We actively seeded this into the very population that was most vulnerable.
“We let these people die without palliation. The official policy was not to visit care homes – and they didn’t (and still don’t). So, after infecting them with a disease that causes an unpleasant ending, we denied our elders access to a doctor – denied GP visits – and denied admission to hospital. Simple things like fluids, withheld. Effective palliation like syringe drivers, withheld.”
“The striking thing is how consistently the government failed, in every single element of the response, everywhere you turn (the Army excepted),” writes the doctor. “This is probably the most expensive series of errors in the country’s history.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/05/12/governments-handling-co…
Italy was no better either.
https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/the-massacre-of-italy-s-elderly-nursi…
There's only one person in the US who is ultimately responsible for the management of the coronavirus out break in the US and that's Teflon Trump, who sheds all responsibility no matter what. The only thing Trump wants to protect above all else is his tax returns!
MSNBC: Trump Could Lose Crucial Tax Return Case After Tough Supreme Court Hearing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_UI0M9ifmk
Quite agree. Trumpie is not responsible for State Governor and Mayoral decisions. Only people with TDS pretend otherwise. My neighbour is just back from a few years in Vanuatu. The Chinese project workers brought Covid-19 to Vanuatu in November December last year. He, his wife and daughter caught it. A few days in bed and away again. The Vanuatu culture involves a lack of hygiene and general cleanliness, and as a result, a general hardiness of the population. The Vanuatu people hardly noticed the Covid-19. A Chinese medical ship came in December. Did a few minor surgical operations, sent a few medical teams out to provide free medical exams, and then went away again. The Covid-19 has already been right through the Pacific and Africa, anywhere China has those projects going. The only people still talking about it in those areas are apparently politicians wanting to get their hands on foreign funding for Covid.
Interesting Sit23, I think I may have had it in early november. We had visitors from auckland. Both of their children were having high temps, nausea, diarrhoea. Tiredness. 3 days later I had a lower lung problem. Deep in my lungs I had no air. Ridiculous fatigue. Minor cold symptoms. Then the cough. I was fatigued for over a month.
The visitors children go to school with lots of chinese.
I am awaiting scientists digging to see exactly when and where it really did start.
USA is not like most countries, it is a federation of states, Trump has a lot of power, but his hands are pretty well tied when it comes to regulating activities within states, like lockdowns, welfare, healthcare, policing (and related law), those are state rather than federal level decisions.
Yet again thanks to the managers of our commercial rest homes - they locked down about a week before our govt. Pls a list of names - they were only doing their job but they were life savers and so much better than their equivalents in Italy, Spain, UK, NY. Life savers.
Well can contribute, Radius,Ryman, Summerset who acted early and independently. However not so where our family has a resident who were open house even after the NZ border was closed. Believe me, we protested but were told this was in compliance with MOH directive(s.) Have an email confirming that.
Yes, some only did what they legally had to do, others did what they thought was right looking at the evidence at hand.
But still, all reactions are political as the race is on between the big players to be the first NOT to let the virus into their homes as brand wise, it's not a good look.
Yet the health profession and the Govt. still have their blinkers on when it suits them.
They ignore that viruses are seasonal and how that affects the indoor air quality. https://40to60rh.com/ The season does not start until next month.
Completely overlooked that the highest concentration of pathogens is in the area where the healthcare workers get in and out of their PPE, hence the nurses getting effected at Waitakere Hospital.
Just might be too a motive in there to keep the usual admissions to rest homes ongoing for as long as possible to deflect the possibility of them ending up in the DHB’s care. It is seems pretty clear the government had to act on advice that our hospitals were already pressured with the existing cases & criteria of illness and accidents and if CV19 was going to compound that it was likely to be the elderly needing to be actually admitted.
"The Jan. 21 conversation between Jinping and WHO leader Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was reported in Der Spiegel, which cited intelligence from Germany’s federal intelligence service, known as the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND).
The report published over the weekend said Xi urged the WHO chief to “delay a global warning” about the pandemic and hold back information on human-to-human transmission of the virus.
The BND estimated that China’s action to conceal information resulted in a loss of four to six weeks in the fight against COVID-19."
https://nypost.com/2020/05/10/china-pressured-who-to-delay-global-coron…
Examination of cell phone use has shown there was something weird happening around the Wuhan viral lab in early october - period of a week when all cell phone use there completely shut off. Yet another indicator of possible accidental release from lab doing viral gain-of-function research (including genetic splicing) on bat and pangolin viruses.
We had some rain , it was scattered but we got 8mls so it's wet now and without any heat it will probably start things going green, it's too late for any meaning full growth.
Now we all have to face going into consent to farm with our regional council. Councils removing private property rights should be a big deal, not this whimper, the resignation to the inevitable surrender of rights once hard fought for, to an invisible bureaucracy.
Welcome to the socialist State, now so many have their hands out it's going to be near to impossible to reverse. Welcome to our dystopian future the one Orwell warned us of.
We once accepted responsibility for our lives our families and our community ,now granny state is going to turn it into a nightmare. Most of us know where this ends, it's a creeping insidious loss of freedom and who wants to put their hand up when the battle is nearly lost anyway.
If it is any consolation centralised power needs resources, or control of the fruits of production, to keep control. A shortfall leaves them nothing to promise, nothing to hand out for bribes. They lose control at the periphery first. You farmers have the production and you are by nature decentralised. Stay strong, stay united.
A leetle Kipling (Gods of the Copybook headings, final verse)
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man --
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began --
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire --
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
If we hadnt abused our land in the first place Aj there would be no need for resource consents. Look to your neighbours that treated their land like an industrial factory and blame them.
Too many cows per ha. Too much cropping on too bigger slopes, or too close to waterways. Feedlots with no effluent disposal. You will know these people. Its their fault.
It goes back way further, Belle. Burning down the forests chasing Moa (most of the East Coast of the SI went up this way in the 14-1500's), clear-felling the remnants for farming and milling only the straightest and best trees (most of the rest were termed 'rickers' and used for firewood) and trying to farm the underlying and sometimes unsuitable soils, had had a slow-century-scale effect on weather patterns. Most noticeable in places like Central Southland, where the old Drainage Districts took a century to lower the water table out of the extensive peat swamps. Now it has to be irrigated. Vegetative changes are, to coin a dreadful pun, slow-burning changes......yet remediating - bunging up the tile drains which run to every former tussock, replacing wetlands, getting more forests back etc - will be just as long a slog. The key in each case is that the changes over the average human working lifetime are not all that noticeable.
We could have avoided the need for consents if we had just written sensible, easy-to-understand district plan rules (e.g., maximum stocking rates per hectare; required distance for fencing of waterways, fert application rules etc.). In that regime, no consents would be needed unless you wanted to farm outside the rules.
But these simple planning methods were resisted by councilors/landowners/industry and hence we morphed into this completely ridiculous and bureaucratic nutrient management consenting requirement.
But these rules would need to be run off a quite complex formula anyway wouldn't they? Topography, climate (changing), substrate etc would all be inputs to determine the allowable land use.
I still remember hearing on radio (years ago now) the point being made that a failing of the RMA was (still is?) that each consent application must be evaluated in isolation. So say within a catchment, each land use consent individually might be allowed, yet consolidated you get a bad result within that catchment.
That idea that each consent application must be evaluated in isolation is just what the burgeoning consultancy industry wanted. It's just not that hard. So many sophisticated tools these days, such as LIDAR would make it easy to set up specific mapped zones with specific rules attached. And if you drop that data into the equally sophisticated database and GIS systems - you get an ePlan that has easy searchable access down to the specific property level. See New Plymouth's here;
Kate That e-plan looks meaningless for rural areas. Southlands plan with the use of physiographics is potentially a better way to go. https://www.es.govt.nz/community/farming/physiographics/introduction-to…. But there aren't many physiographic specialists among councils. Planners are limited by their knowledge base. https://ourlandandwater.nz/future-landscapes/physiographic-environments…
Kate Unless you want to end up like EU etc where they regulate inputs and have unsustainable farming that relies heavily on subsidies to survive, regulating inputs is not the way to go. As shown by some submissions to Essential Freshwater Proposals, fencing of waterways can be dependent on topography.
BBC Coronavirus: China’s new army of tough-talking diplomats. "China has dispatched an increasingly vocal cadre of diplomats out into the world of social media to take on all comers with, at times, an eye-blinking frankness. Their aim is to defend China's handling of the coronavirus pandemic and challenge those who question Beijing's version of events." https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-52562549
Perhaps not to us, but to the general population maybe. The commentators here all have a good deal of critical analysis and exercise their frontal lobes a lot more than the average joe. A lot of people do not understand where money comes from, let alone how international politics are at work to influence their ideologies.
ICYMI: "Army of bot accounts linked to an alleged Chinese government-backed propaganda campaign is spreading disinformation on Twitter & Facebook about coronavirus & CCP critics. The network on Twitter is growing by an estimated 300-400 accounts every day." https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-12/china-s-disinformati…
From the BBC live blog;
FBI warns Covid-19 research groups of China hacking threat
Gordon Carrera BBC Security correspondent
"The US FBI and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have issued a Public Service Announcement warning groups researching Covid-19 of likely targeting and network compromise by China.
The UK and US had already issued a detailed joint warning about other countries targeting research back on 5 May. On that occasion, they did not officially name names but sources indicated China, Russia and Iran were among those responsible. Now, in a widely trailed move, the US has decided to single out China specifically with this new advisory. So far they have not been joined by the UK and the new alert does not contain any new details of what has taken place. That means this may well be interpreted as a means of both playing to a domestic audience and of raising the pressure on China as part of the growing tension between Washington and Beijing".
There is history of state assisted propaganda emanating from the UK so I'm sure the authorities won't be far behind in joining the US in this venture.
There is a ‘frightening bigger picture’ behind Beijing’s threats
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OpXA42jcU4
Sky News host Andrew Bolt says there is something “really frightening about China” under President Xi Jinping with the regime becoming an evermore “aggressive and dangerous power”.
“You know the really frightening thing about China,” Mr Bolt said.
“It's not that it’s just threatening us with trade bans to make us shut up about wanting an independent inquiry into how this coronavirus started.
“What's really frightening is how many other countries China is threatening. Neighbours and friends”.
Mr Bolt said a recent press conference involving China’s foreign ministry spokesman portrayed “a real sign of how many countries China is now bullying”.
“New Zealand. Japan, Vietnam, more. That's the bigger picture”.
We have a live example.
It is what it is assuming reporting accurate.
Question: what should happen next,
1. In a public health sense, imagine a super spreader, like they all registered true/multiple identities for tracing.
2. In a Legal sense, because police were instructed to do nothing.
As many as 300 biker gang members and affiliates openly broke the coronavirus mass gatherings rules at a Matamata funeral, as several police watched on.
https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/121496813/coronavirus…
Is it like they were treating it as a business conference and planning meeting.
The power of the Police rests with their sole access to the legal use of coercive force. A handful of Police are powerless against even a much smaller number of gang members than 300. But otherwise if gang members are acting lawfully they are also members of the community and have civil rights. You know my feelings on the unlawful nature and the abuse of power of the whole government response, which Stephen Franks calls a constitutional issue.
Yep, it's not clear about social distancing of the 300 +
How do you see it fit with the road blocks put in place in north island, to protect local communities, I know women who were not happy to be stopped and interrogated (no police in at least one example). You wonder if some of the 300 + were on road blocks too.
As an aside what do you think of use having to register details everywhere we go?
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2020/05/auckland-woman-creep…
This lady wasn't.
Trump getting his buddies out of prison: BBC Ex-Trump aide Paul Manafort to serve sentence at home amid virus fears. "Ex-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort has been released from prison to serve the remainder of his sentence at home due to Covid-19 fears."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52652509
There's a lot to point out about Trump including the now 85,029 dead American citizens from his mismanagement of the coronavirus. Not to mention his letting the US spin out of control means it's going to be very difficult for rest of the world to recover from this new virus.
He's toast anyway, there's no way he's going to be voted back in which explains why he's fighting so hard to keep a lid on his tax returns, since he'll face prison time for tax evasion once out of office.
You might want to keep an eye on the polls ST. Remember when he first got in to power he was just a dodgy game show host really. Now lets face it how on earth can Trump win? Most of his political promises have either failed, compromised or stalled. And then there's all the other dodgy stuff such as his obvious tax evasion, most of his aids going to prison due to serious crimes, the list goes on and on...
Oh and then there's the really stupid stuff, like advising people to use unproven medical cures for the coronavirus. And even his wanting to research injecting people with disinfectant as a possible cure!!!
Plus here are the latest polls for you: Reuters; Trump approval dips amid mounting coronavirus death toll, trails Biden by 8 points: Reuters/Ipsos poll. "More Americans have grown critical of President Donald Trump over the past month as the death toll mounts from the coronavirus pandemic and he now trails Democratic challenger Joe Biden by 8 percentage points among registered voters, according to a Reuters."
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-poll/trump-approval-dip…
Nahh ST you do support Trump! Simply by attacking people who point out the problems he is directly causing. Shall I list them for you? Why have you got you head buried in the past look at the actual damage he's doing now and Trump has had plenty of time to fix things but he'll hasn't improved anything, in fact he's had the opposite effect not just in the US but globally! :)
And everyone knows Trump can't win the next election. Just look at the polls he's lagging behind all of them. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/
Hes favorite to win the elections.
If you're a Republican you will vote for him again, as regardless of your personal views he has followed through with a lot of his pre election promises. How many world leaders can you say that about?
Hes going to get a massive upswing of Democrat votes also, as a lot of Bernie Sanders supporters would prefer Trump over Biden.
The worlds a bit past this whole we should hate Donald Trump because hes Donald Trump BS, because TV said so.
The proposed new Act to give the powers currently being taken unlawfully. I'll provide a deeper analysis in a day or two. The very worst aspect of it is that it takes away the principle that "A Mans Home is his Castle". This principle is within the Health Act, and even the RMA. This would enable Police to enter your home without warrant, or a Marae, under section 20(3). This is a dangerous precedent. Any racial group, or any age group, any group at all, can be targeted for special attention.
Further it makes road blocks lawful. I guess you will get used to them in time. Might be you have to carry papers around with you from now on to prove your right to travel.
http://www.legislation.govt.nz/bill/government/2020/0246/latest/whole.h…
It actually puts proper restraint under these powers from what they were during Level 4 lock down.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/121504938/coronavir…
Not that I think it will wholly prevent the large parties and gatherings - as seen in Matamata, having the powers is one thing - being able to enforce them is another. Imagine how impossible it is going to be to contract trace gatherings of 50, let alone gatherings of 300. Stupid people exercising their civil liberties are going to send us all back to lock down, I fear.
Here is how the Medici kept the rabble out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palazzo_Medici_Riccardi
Is this new news or old news.
The problem for MoH & PM is that this flu vaccine thing is not a funding issue. Massive extra funding won't change the core pyschologies or competencies of all, and those all are still in administrative control.
Today 14 May.
The Ministry of Health says it does not have enough doses of influenza vaccine to meet increased demand brought about by Covid-19.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/416599/ministry-of-health-says-infl…
22 April.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2020/04/prime-minister-jacinda-…
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern disagrees with frontline health workers saying there was an issue with flu vaccine distribution.
4 May
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12329285
District health boards need to take some responsibility for getting 700,000 flu jabs to the places that need them, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says.
It's both old and new Henry. What a lot of the arm chair critics choose to ignore is that the PM is highly dependent on the quality of their advice. what virtually every manager doesn't understand is that every management level beneath them is a filter, often driven by politics - internal and external, and ultimately this reflects on the quality of advice that goes to the PM and her ministers. Slants and filters intentions on transparency and integrity.
Murray86, anyone who is getting advice is responsible to ensure that they are getting advice from competent, credible advisors. Are you suggesting that our prime minister is less aware of publicly available information about public health issues than you and me? (like about the flu vaccine, like the COVID 19 tests etc). Even if she did not know it the first time, she must have learned her lesson by now.
If she is unable to illicit honest, credible information from her advisors, that is on her. Your expectation from a leader is way too low.
Have you ever worked in a government department in Wellington?
Trust me when I say the message that generally goes to the top is very different than that of what is actually happening as there are a bunch of high paid arse lickers between the shop floor and the minister they report to and they only want to deliver good news in order to have a chance of promotion.
I trust you. But if you know this, so does JA. It is up to her to get credible information from people reluctant to give bad news. I think you omit one thing from your fact though. People in government lie to their leaders because the leaders lie to the public, it is not vice versa. If leaders are trying hard to be honest and transparent, those below will have to budge. The fish rots from its head you know.
My comment is general and not a dig at JA.
I doubt any PM has the time to be perpetually trolling through forums, news sites and blogs like this. So there is a huge dependence on advisors to do that and summarise the content. Timing is a factor, but even a summary while technically correct can still provide a misread of information. Language has many nuances and it takes some real skill to transmit succinctly the information required accurately and without bias. Very few can do this consistently.
See above Murray86. I think the main reason is that government openly lie about everything, never accept their shortcoming and try to narrate the story in a way that benefits them. When you have a government that will lie or muddy the message, then offcourse those working for them will do the same. There is a thing call "tone at the top".
Government is worried about their public image, more that serving the people actual needs. They want to be elected and loved. This equally applies to all other NZ parties, so I am not trying to bash JA. Have you forgot that National was saying housing problem? what housing problem? EQC payment problem? what EQC payment problem? etc. When a government uses a propaganda language and never gives honest and staritforward answer, offcourse those working for it will understand the "tone at the top" and act their roles accordingly.
When JA was asked has she ever lied as a politician on TV she said no. go figure.
I am not quite that cynical B, perhaps because I have seen it in action during my working life. A good politician who sticks to the script their advisors provides them should always be able to say "no" to that question, BUT they must also have sufficient awareness that that script reflects reasonably closely to what the mainstream media is reporting. Some examples of divergence in this area is JKs National Government on housing, HC on riding in cars doing over 160 KPH and signing paintings she didn't paint.
This is not cynicism, if your personal experience shows that there have been some good politicians hindered by the bureaucracy is because the said politician has been the exception to a rule. Most other politicians were not like him, so he (or she) was unlikely to succeed. The Bureaucracy serves the political entity by large and will serve its demands. It will ignore conflicting demands from mavericks.
I am sure if instead of government i was saying the same thing for companies, their shareholders and directors, you would have not disagreed. As you are convinced that private shareholders are only there to maximize their own benefit. But you are unwilling to accept the same for politician and political powers: they are there to maximize their own interest.
"It will ignore conflicting demands from mavericks." Very true. I've been one of those mavericks and I can state to a certainty that being proven right, when you're not singing the company tune, can be very damaging to ones career.
How do you break the silence, without becoming the one person no one listens to?
Murray, it's difficult to see how the flu vaccine supply issue & timeline fits with your narrative.
Here is another worked example.
From January 21st 2020. Both.
Here is a 10,000 person petition to the Health Minister.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2020/01/coronavirus-petition…
With Ministers reply
"I want to assure the public that New Zealand is well prepared for these sorts of situations - we are active and alert, but not alarmed."
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2020/01/coronavirus-michael-woo…
Here were independent observations of failure of then described border process, but dismissed....
"I'm advised that the risk of an outbreak in New Zealand remains low, but we are increasing our health response at the border as a precaution," Clark said in a statement...
How does narrative you suggest fit here?
The flu vaccine supply issue will have been screwed up inside the MoH, so there is no way they would be admitting the unfortunate facts to the minister up front. What the PM was told would be some spin on it.
And the rest is politics Henry and neither initiative enough to say the PM 'lied' to the country.
The results of an Horizon poll, we are a nation with our hands out.
"A Horizon Research survey of policies to stimulate the economy finds 79% support “getting people back to work”.
This equates to support by an estimated 2,830,000 adults.
The second most supported policy is giving people a lump sum cash payment (50%), equivalent to around 1,797,600 adults.
The third ranking measure was to build affordable housing (48%)
This interview is both enlightening and troubling. Professor Krugman explains how the masses of US sovereign debt will just "melt away". His contention is that provided the debt is funded in the local currency it can roll-over forever without significant impact. He quotes the British debt after WW11 as 270% of GDP that was down to 50% of GDP after 30 years. Is this what the NZ government plan is? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-5YyrUsu5A
Britain did that with 3 billion people on the planet, most of the oil still in the ground and as a top-end predator, resource-wise.
Can the Empire-du-jour repeat that? No. So what happens to the debt? It must be defaulted-on. Class, discuss possible ramifications.....
I see that various business interests are grovelling for the government to maintain strong business channels with China.
There is balance required on this one. China is important economically, but not at all costs.
NZ needs to support an international inquiry into covid-19, but it needs to be done in a manner that is not scapegoating China (as much as it should be that way).
The NZ tracing APP is safe.
FBI press release
https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-and-cisa-warn-agai…
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued a public service announcement today warning organizations researching COVID-19 of likely targeting and network compromise by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Health care, pharmaceutical, and research sectors working on COVID-19 response should all be aware they are the prime targets of this activity and take the necessary steps to protect their systems.
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