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A review of things you need to know before you go home on Friday: Third Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine dose may be needed, new order boost for manufacturers, govt trumpets subsidised Amazon deal

A review of things you need to know before you go home on Friday: Third Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine dose may be needed, new order boost for manufacturers, govt trumpets subsidised Amazon deal

Here are the key things you need to know before you leave work today.

MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
There were no changes today.

TERM DEPOSIT RATE CHANGES
The Nelson Building Society increased its two-year rate by 10 basis points to 1.35% from 1.25%.

THIRD COVID VACCINE DOSE MAY BE NEEDED WITHIN 12 MONTHS
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla has suggested people may need a third dose of his company's COVID-19 vaccine, and potentially also an annual revaccination. The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is the one New Zealand has gone big on. Currently it involves two doses about three weeks apart. “A likely scenario is that there will be likely a need for a third dose, somewhere between six and 12 months and then from there, there will be an annual revaccination, but all of that needs to be confirmed. And again, the variants will play a key role,” Bourla told CNBC.

NEW ORDERS BOOST FOR MANUFACTURERS
The manufacturing sector received a good boost in new orders and production during March, according to the latest BNZ- BusinessNZ Performance of Manufacturing Index (PMI). The seasonally adjusted PMI for March was 63.6, up 9.4 points from February, and the highest monthly result since the survey began in 2002. A PMI reading above 50.0 indicates that manufacturing is generally expanding; below 50.0 that it is declining.

GOVT TRUMPETS SUBSIDISED AMAZON DEAL
Economic and Regional Development Minister Stuart Nash is trumpeting what he describes as a landmark deal with Amazon for The Lord of the Rings TV series, which is being filmed in New Zealand. The deal sees Amazon, which Nash estimates is spending up to $650 million in NZ for Season One, entitled to a potential rebate of 25% of this expenditure, or approximately $162.5 million. Nash is touting multi-year economic and tourism benefits. (There's background to the deal from Stuff here and here).

MORTGAGE DEFERRALS DROP
The Reserve Bank says that, as of April 2, $219 million worth of mortgages remained COVID-19 deferred, down from the peak of $22.2 billion as of May 29 last year.

BIG BOUNCE IN CHINA'S GDP
China’s gross domestic product surged a record 18.3% in the first quarter of 2021 year-on-year. However, this was largely as expected and the figures are skewed by comparisons from a year ago when the economy was in COVID-19 enforced lockdown. According to Bloomberg, a better reading of the economy’s momentum is quarter-on-quarter growth, which slowed to 0.6% from a previously reported 2.6% in the prior quarter.

NZ DOLLAR SLIGHTLY LOWER AGAINST GREENBACK
The Kiwi dollar was at US71.60 cents at the time of writing, down from US71.70c this morning. It was slightly higher against the Aussie, at AU92.56c versus AU92.50c, and at €59.88c versus €59.90c.

SHARE MARKET HIGHER
The NZX50 was up 0.44% at 12,692.140 at the time of writing.

BITCOIN SLIGHTLY HIGHER
At US$63,031.80, bitcoin is a little higher over the past 24 hours.

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21 Comments

Look who's is talking :

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/14/coinbase-powell-calls-cryptocurrencies-…

Reserve bank governor talking about vehicle for speculation............actually who will know better then them.

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So he dismisses gold as a store of value as well. In that case, the Fed should dump all their gold.

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I think he says that for thousands of years humans have ascribed gold a value which does not align purely to it's usage as an industrial metal, or words to that effect. If you acknowledge that humans have maintained the same view over thousands of years, I think that is an admission that gold does have an embedded and ingrained reputation as a store of value.

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Quote: "“For thousands of years, human beings have given gold a special value that it doesn’t have” as an industrial metal, he said."

Take way what you want, but to me, it suggests that he's saying gold has no value outside industrial use.

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“For thousands of years, human beings have given gold a special value that it doesn’t have as an industrial metal"

Just adjusting the speech marks to give the proper context.

It is in the nature of humans to give certain things a value outside of their pure 'industrial' usage. Think works of art, vintage cars, rubies, emeralds, memorabilia and collectables.

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So gold has value but crypto doesn't, right? Or is he suggesting that they're similar?

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He's saying that if people collectively ascribe value to something, then it subjectively promotes that thing above it's usefulness as a commodity. What he doesn't say is the reason why humans ascribed value to gold, and that USD can equally lose promotion over what it is: coloured pieces of paper backed by nuclear weapons.

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Yellen: "an “extremely inefficient way of conducting transactions.”

You can have a feeless, instant transaction that side-steps the need for institutions or payment-network providers entirely using cryptocurrencies. Given the lag/delay in inter-bank banking, how is that less efficient? Hell, even EFTPOS gets collated and transferred at midnight, not at the actual time of transaction. Visa/MC take days. AMEX can take even longer.

The bar for 'efficient transactions' is pretty low these days and cryptos have already blown it out of the water.

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Yet coinbase is an 86 billion dollar company. Shouldn't they be irrelevant?

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And in other crypto news:
Doge Coin to the MOON!
Bloody crazy.. my $117 from last year is worth over $10,000 now if I still had it all lol.
https://www.tradingview.com/x/V5HOfD4x/

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Fancy a few Jimbo coins? I can't see how they would be any more ridiculous...

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The worst thing about the blockchain business is that if you say anything negative the advocates will bore you witless in retaliation.

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Stats NZ reported NZ's R&D expenditure as a % of GDP at 1.4 today.

This particular piece of stat along with gross capital formation should be watched closely to assess whether productive investments witness a boost due to recent policy changes around housing investments.

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Subsidising Amazon? Pardon me while I throw up.

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According to newshub it will result in 1000 jobs.
That's $162,000 per job or am I calculating wrong.

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Yep that is right, although they may be several years long. I guess if you are going to spend close to a billion you would want a discount wouldn’t you?

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By the time they pay for the lattes and smoothies , probably 60 k per job.

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It's more a subsidy for Wellington landlords.

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How many jabs do Pfizer think they can get away with? Even actual sheep are only drenched so many times

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and then they go to the works....maybe thats our future

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