90 seconds at 9 am with BNZ: Cattle futures hit record highs; Home builders Grasshopper and Sovereign go under; Fletcher sees NZ$20 bln quake cost

So Mark Weldon wants to get into politics.  God help us all.  Perhaps someone should mention that in politics you need to at least give the impression of being in touch with the people.

Ok so apparently he is doing this little stint for free.  Who is paying for his travel?  He has just been given a licence to spend the next month tripping around the world at the taxpayer expense visiting all his 'buddies' in his favourite places.  How much is actually going to get to Chch?  And what about his entourage of organisers etc?  We will be paying for that too.

Same with a prince coming out here.  Guess who is going to foot the bill for that!

Meanwhile on the planet Harcourt-

Harcourts general manager Brian King said there had been noticeable inquiry from Cantabrians, but actual sales would be a long way off as they realised money from their homes.

"We have seen a bit of inquiry about houses from people thinking of moving up," he said. "But that is still a way off and most people are not in a position to buy right now. There has been an increase in rental inquiry from people who have moved up to be with relatives and are still deciding whether they want to return home." And

"There is a lot of pre-approved money out there and most people are about to make their decision now. That wasn't happening two months ago, most were just sitting on the sideline."

. What are they on? And-

Overall buyer activity had been strong in the last month, he said.

"There is a lot of pre-approved money out there and most people are about to make their decision now. That wasn't happening two months ago, most were just sitting on the sideline."

Most people thought the market had reached the bottom, he said, which offered significant opportunities for investors.

-0.5%. What a joke. I hope the markets absolutely cr*p on the Kiwi. Clearly we no longer have an independent central bank and clearly its remit no longer covers inflation.

He slashed it haha what a champion, now lets see how far the petrol prices go up by. Granted the market already priced it in somewhat, but man, the RB is really no longer the sharpest tool in the shed.

In fact, I fully reckon that based on this cut, a lot more people are going to go out and get home loans and refinance etc and in 2-3 years when they go up because of inflation they will be buggered! Gold

Finally .... commonsense prevails .... and we get the interest rate cut that should have happened 6 months ago before the entire economy completely tanks.  Stay on floating for the next 5 years because there will be no growth widespread in this economy until the global financial system completely collapses and we are forced to obey the EU & IMF etc.

Most NZ-ers are not smart-alecks living in their rented flats playing with their paper 'investments'.

It is quite obvious that ALL Central Bankers are willing to tolerate higher than traditional inflation rates in their economies (despite protestation to the contrary)....Most are of the mind that a "little more inflation" is better than "Great Depression 2" .

After all inflation hits the poor hardest while those earning Central Bankers pay can afford a couple of hundred dollars extra expenses each week for food and petrol....."they can all eat cake " mentality is still alive and going strong.

Not to mention they have to help their banker pals clean up their balance sheet assets via inflation of assets values through currency depreation...... 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/8372004/EU-paralysis-drive…

The only possible conclusion to reach on Bollard's move is that he has been told to ignore inflation until after the election when it will be safe to raise the rate...by then the damage from the higher import costs will have been done and Bollard will have to hike the rate higher and faster. He is already behind the curve.

The quake rebuild will provide a grand chance for all those involved to raise fees and costs because the insurance companies and the state have to foot the bill.....and let's not forget....the thieving govt steals 15% from all one way or another. They will not try to prevent a cost blowout.

The indebted who manage to get a few months lower floating cost...should use it to pay down debt...because post the election they can expect Bollard to be told.."it's ok now Alan...you can raise like hell"

Wolly might be right.....

It does look as if the Govt has pressured or at the very least given the OK for the Reserve Bank to let inflation rise well above the target. Is the official target still 2%?

The problem is that some sectors of the economy are booming while others are in recession. The OCR is a pretty blunt instrument, with a lag as well.

I'm currently re-reading Paul Krugman's book "The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008". Policy-makers seem to be making the same mistakes over and over again, especially in the US and Europe.

Pimco dumps US treasuries

"the ongoing decline in that asset class now leads us to believe that Bill Gross is now convinced there will be no QE3 at all, at least based on his just putting his money where his monthly pen is!"

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/exclusive-bill-gross-dumps-all-treasuries-brings-total-government-related-holdings-zero-flee?page=1

"In a stunning vote of no confidence in the policies of the US central bank, the world’s largest bond fund, PIMCO, has dumped all of its investments in US government-related debt, including US Treasury bonds and agency debt.

Gross questioned whether quantitative easing actually healed, as opposed to merely covering up, the symptoms of a sick economy. The real test of whether the US central bank’s policies had been successful would come when the current round of bond-buying – dubbed QE2 – came to an end."

http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/PIMCO-Bill-Gross-bonds-Ben-Bernanke-QE2-pd20110310-ESSLW?opendocument&src=rss

So QE3 not looking so certain after all, and given that Bernanke's QE program has contributed massively to surging commodity prices 

http://blogs.forbes.com/greatspeculations/2011/03/08/fed-exports-inflation-stokes-revolutions/

commodity-based economies could well be toast come 30 June 2011.

Oops that's us.

Our economy is buggered, they can do what they want with interest rates with all this debt there is no where to go. Asset prices will collapse and we get to pay the piper. If commodities crash then even more wealth gets destroyed until we have none left, just more debt. The high comodity prices are leading producers over a cliff.

 We will end up in a deflationary spiral its just a timing issue we are debating, or we could destroy our currency.

Agree with andrewj's comment, there's a big picture thing going on out there in the world economy at that moment and in a year's time that could make a 0.5% ocr cut look utterly trivial 

Aj, Late last night we had a call from a RE saying he had heard that our sharemilker was leaving and would we therefore like to sell the farm.

He said that demand in Southland for 450-600cow farms was alive and well again with prices $28-$35kg/ms. Large farms aren't shifting. 

Heard this week that the MilkPride farm staff on the farm at the back of ours have all up and left, except for one.  I sure hope they won't be involved in running the Super Fund farms - despite what FarmRight have been saying.

CO, Ive a friend selling today . He has good interest, lots of equity partners about to get done over. Dreamers everywhere again. Had I guy tell me that he can make $3000 a hectare farming deer, wanted to know if I would to sell my deer block.

 Crazy,Crazy world, a time to be carefull out there.

CO, are we talking about the same guy's

http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/4752444/Details-of-Crafar-abuse…

South Island-based sharemilking company MilkPride, its directors and two employees are facing a total of 714 charges under the Animal Welfare Act 1999.

The charges are connected to their management in 2009 of the-then Crafar family-owned Taharua Farm in Rangitaiki in the Taupo district.

Yep.  Ross Cottier was a director of FarmRight and is a founding shareholder of FarmRight. He resigned as a director just prior to the Super Fund announcement.

MilkPride grew like Topsy.  It is not always difficult to get a contract to milk cows, but when you are a corporate sharemilker, it can be very difficult to get enough good staff to staff all your contracts. 

Henry van der Heyden has told Fonterra suppliers today that due to unrest worsening in Libya Fonterra is having to divert product.  He also rasied the issue of high oil prices and the impact on global food prices as production costs increase. PDK and others here have been saying this for a while now.

Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) food price index highest since their records began in 1990.

 We will get the biggest monthly milk cheque we have had, this month.  I still think we will get good prices for the next short while, but expect final payout for 2012 to be less than predicted at the start of the season. More than happy to be proved wrong of course!;-)

$3000 per ha for deer farming - good luck to him on that.  We inherited some deer (just a few) when we bought some land quite a few years ago.  They were fun and we did ok out of them but divested of them to change the stock policy on grazing out young stock.  We have a friend that had deer.  He makes more $ and sleeps better at night now he's taking in dairy grazing.  Even for him, a life long farmer, deer were too volatile on a long term basis when you got a mortgage.

All the talk of OCR, house prices etc will pale into insignificance when the war that is coming finally arrives.