Dairy prices slip; US retail rises; Boeing makes more layoffs; China faces Higos; China faces big grain shortfall; Aussies feel another China lash; UST 10yr yield at 0.67%; oil unchanged and gold up; NZ$1 = 66 USc; TWI-5 = 68.7

House prices plateau -> economy slows -> CPI drops below band -> interest rates go down -> house prices go up -> CPI recovers to within band -> house prices plateau -> economy slows etc.

However now, there is only ~1% further that interest rates can go down. What happens then? Perhaps we'll need to start producing services & goods that people want to buy?

Welfare, welfare, welfare, welfare...As it began, so it continues.

They have also stopped referring to max annual flu deaths. Funny that.

Great that people are living longer, and dying less, in a catastrophic pandemic. It only cost us $200 billion that we don't have. Perhaps time to reassess our response?

The argument of lock downs causing more deaths is looking at things from a longer term perspective. There is a strong correlation between poverty & life expectancy. Presumably if we spend the next 5 years with boarder closed & going in and out of lock downs there will be severe economic fall out & a lot more poverty in the country. This will lower life expectancy.

We aren't talking about isolated singular countries. We are talking about a part of a massively interconnected network (some would say we live on a single finite planet).

I don't think we will ever be able to say for certain that one country did better than another. It will be a case of did "we" (The entire human race) handle it well.

Personally I think we have indeed sacrificed future generations for the sake of a few. But, hey the monstrous reduction in consumption may have just bought those future generations are bit more time to sort stuff out.

linklater01, I couldn't agree more. There are so many variables and unknowns that I find the certainty of some peoples claims, to be quite disturbing and depressing.

In times of great upheaval and uncertainty, the human brain seeks to reassure itself by clinging to something that helps dispel anxiety and provide certainty. Time and time again, humanity chooses beliefs, values and narratives over hard facts and objective evidence. These two forces in the human mind between quick, impulse, emotion, subjective and tribe influenced thinking vs detached, rational, slow, methodical data driven thinking have always existed. Different parts of our brains that evolved at different times and that are interwoven.

Being patient and waiting for more evidence, to accept that you cannot know yet, is hard. So many give in the emotional need for certainty.

Column by Prof Rod Jackson, NZ Herald, says it all for me. Apologies, but someone less luddite than me might cut and paste it here. Straightforward commonsense from a requisitely qualified professional.

Hi Linklater. I had a look at that paper the other day. I was a covid bedwetter in Jan/Feb but changed my mind once the Diamond Princess data came in. This has been reinforced since with the median age of death and 99.4% recovery rate. The J. Medicine article bases "success" on the antibody rate being 60% of population. This is not borne out by their single figure death rates and other reseach supports this view stating a 15% antibody rate is adequate for herd immunity. Sweden did a lot wrong and didn't protect their resthomes but at end of day you are not going to escape this virus no matter how much of the kids money your spend.
profile | 14th Aug 20, 8:36am
From your link “results from a recent sero surveillance study showed that only 15 per cent of the country’s population has developed antibodies.”

Other research stated herd immunity could be reached at 15% – which is backed up by Swedish daily deaths falling to single figures.

“Our inferences result in herd immunity thresholds around 10-20%, considerably lower than the minimum coverage needed to interrupt transmission by random vaccination, which for R_0 higher than 2.5 is estimated above 60%.”
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.23.20160762v1

This was predicted by Levitt back in May.

"If Sweden stops at about 5,000 or 6,000 deaths, we will know that they’ve reached herd immunity, and we didn’t need to do any kind of lockdown. My own feeling is that it will probably stop because of herd immunity. COVID is serious, it’s at least a serious flu. But it’s not going to destroy humanity as people thought. "
https://www.stanforddaily.com/2020/05/04/qa-nobel-laureate-says-covid-19...

Isn’t Shillers CAPE back over 30 again now? Will see if I can find the article I was reading last week. Only the 4th time in history and each time it’s reached that mark it’s been followed by a crash.

I think many of us are in agreement on this.
Everything is financialised, everything is globalised, there's no real return to be had anywhere so capital flows into assets regardless, pushing up their 'price' regardless of value.
But what stops it? There have already been so many moments that looked like tipping points, and the party just keeps going. As long as we have zero interest rates and central banks helping to roll over the ever-increasing debt, who can say this doesn't keep going?

Feels like we’re entering the ‘new normal’ where the narrative is buy a house because no matter what, you can’t lose.

He bought stocks in a Canadian mining company. Not Gold..... big difference

I’ve got this nagging feeling that there’s a banking crisis on the horizon then by extension a global monetary crisis - just MO.

'made in china', what could possibly go wrong?

Kezza - with approx 400 Million people living alongside or close to the Yangtze a Dam fail would be catastrophic and already the sluices have been opened as spillways could not cope resulting in flooding downstream, no loss of life but significant damage to infrastructure and Agriculture. With approx 800Kms of water in the Dams catchment area the risks are high should the rainfall exceed the ability to lower levels as happened when the water level rose 70 Metres in a short time span. A CGI animation on Google showed the extensive damage of a Dam failure all the way to Shanghai and an initial water wave 250 metres high. I cannot imagine the effects and the impact on ordinary Chinese and just hope the Dam is able to withstand the predicted rainfall and its operators can safely control water levels.

The high rainfall in that part of China at the moment is a 1 in100 year Event. This is one of the reasons people are worried as the ability of the surround rivers and land has exceeded capacity. There is also concern around the Build quality.

Perfectly possible to block exports of food should that become a national security issue, just as Australia blocked exports of masks and other PPE in March when China ordered their agents in Australia to send everything they could get their hands on back to the mothership.

Lets hope the CCP read & believe this, Taiwans Geography makes a land attack tough. Yes China can throw big numbers of Soldiers and equipment but having surrounded itself with powerful enemies especially Russia as CCP is claiming Vladivostock and half of Tajikistan belong to China, Vladimir will having a different opinion and could cut off oil supplies and Iran's blocked would leave China with internal supplies only. I doubt China will choose to invade Taiwan or engage in war, the CCP may be Belicose but they are not stupid.

What we really need to know is who is borrowing money?