Bernard Hickey details the key news overnight in 90 seconds at 9 am in association with Bank of New Zealand, including news the New Zealand dollar was the strongest performing of the most-trade currencies overnight.
The New Zealand dollar rose to 76.3 US cents overnight, back to levels last seen before the earthquake on February 22. See our interactive chart here and below.
The Australian dollar hit a post-float high of US$1.03. However, the New Zealand dollar also rose on a Trade Weighted Index basis back to 66.9, also back to pre-quake levels. See more here at Bloomberg.
Risk appetites have returned with relatively strong private jobs figures in the United States and another rise in the Dow boosting appetites for growth-related currencies. See more here at Bloomberg.
Meanwhile, New Zealand is also experiencing an influx of overseas capital, which is helping boost the currency and hurt exporters.
The New Zealand Debt Management Office will later today auction NZ$750 million of government bonds, bringing the total borrowed by the government in the last two weeks to NZ$1.7 billion. The NZDMO also announced a NZ$1.5 billion increase to NZ$15 billion in the borrowing programme for 2010/11. See Gareth Vaugahan's full article here.
Also, more than NZ$15 billion of foreign reinsurance money will flood in over the coming year to help rebuild Christchurch.
Meanwhile, the Euro rose overnight in response to fresh comments that the European Central Bank would start increasing its cash interest rate next month. See more here at Reuters.
Back in New Zealand, heavily indebted retail chain Colorado has been put into receivership. It struggled with the debt loaded onto it by a private equity investor and with the slowdown in the retail sector on both sides of the Tasman as consumers cool their spending and try to repay debt. See more here at Syd
Also in New Zealand, Jetstar has cancelled some flights to Christchurch after the quake. Visitor numbers have fallen 20% in the five weeks since the quake, according to Christchurch airport.
No chart with that title exists.
32 Comments
"House Buyers Strike!" It's not real.... until it's in the papers.....
Portugal is in the news again
Stricken Portugal 'lacks the cash to meet debt payments
Portugal insisted it could cope with looming debt repayments, after analysts warned it does not have enough money to meet its obligations.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/8416915/Stricken-Por…
I nicked this off, oftwominds.com its where I think we will head with taxation in NZ, stay liquid folks.
The ultimate tax hostage is the property owner. The business owner can pull up stakes and leave, the wage earner can transfer or get another job elsewhere, and the consumer can restrict his/her consumption to lower the burden of sales taxes, but the property owner is the perfect tax donkey because the transaction costs of selling are so prohibitive.
Andrewj
Brazil's Lula to Portugal: "Don't take bailout"
"The IMF won't resolve Portugal's problem, like it didn't solve Brazil's. Whenever the IMF tried to take care of a countries debts, it created more problems than solutions."
http://www.wral.com/business/story/9347548/
New Zealand take heed!
Colorado is owned by Affinity Equity Partners, the same outfit that OIO approval pending, is buying Tegel - http://www.interest.co.nz/news/51978/pacific-equity-partners-anz-capita…
More on Colorado - http://www.businessday.com.au/business/colorado-group-on-the-skids-2011…
"Central bankers must look to the long run. If current policy remains in place, we almost certainly will stimulate the growth of asset values and inflation. This may temporarily increase GDP and employment, but in the long run, we risk instability, damaging inflation and lost jobs, which is a dear price for middle and lower income citizens to pay."
Hoenig nails it again, but then who listens to him these days?
It is April...almost and that means just 8 months to go before Bollard changes fiddles and plucks the inflation prevention ocr tune...oh boy is that going to signal the end of days for the overly indebted who didn't sell out when that option could be had.
By then the wgtn bureaucrats will have a good view of who will go and who will stay...bound to end in tears in a falling wgtn property market....but who knows....that 7.5mag could happen just afterward and leave those who left in tears, happy to have escaped!
Nice to read about the potential labour shortage across the ditch...it just might be the best news since Helen left.
More accumulation by dispossession in the US;
But, don't panic - JP Morgan are there to help!
So do you think JK is likely to flog off the pension scheme to Goldman's...privatise the state pension...! So Goldman forks out billions (to the NZ govt in loot to buy a prescribed pension stream of cash sucked from the NZ economy each year)...borrowed from ben for nix...who moused it into being with one click...and then Goldman enjoys the money stream and takes on the pension liability in NZ.....a sort of Gold plated scheme in a way......oh yeah I can see this one having legs ....
Here's one for all of you who enjoy the climate debate :)
Climate Change Minister Nick Smith today announced the Government’s long-term target of a 50% reduction in New Zealand greenhouse gases emissions from 1990 levels by 2050.
“Setting a long-term target provides long-term certainty about where domestic climate change policy is headed so we can plan and invest accordingly. The target is being gazetted today under the Climate Change Response Act 2002 and delivers upon National’s 2008 election promise,” Dr Smith said.
Speaking at the New Zealand Climate Change Research Institute Forum in Wellington, Dr Smith said that feedback from a recent public consultation supported setting a long-term emissions reduction target.
“A wide variety of submissions were received – from those who expressed scepticism about climate change, to those who wanted a much stronger target,” Dr Smith said. “We believe a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by 2050, or -50 by 50, strikes the right balance. It has New Zealand doing our fair share and is comparable with the targets set by our major trading partners.
“Halving New Zealand’s emissions is going to require major changes in economy over the next 40 years. The Government’s existing programme includes the emissions trading scheme, support for home insulation, solar water heating systems, biofuels, electric cars and electrification of Auckland rail, and major research initiatives such as the Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research. The Advisory Group on Green Growth established in January is about identifying the additional programmes to help achieve the reductions.
“This target will need to be regularly reviewed to take into account the latest science, development of new technologies, and progress by other countries. New Zealand’s contribution to global emissions is very small and our objective should be neither to lead nor lag but do our fair share.”
nzgold - take a deep breath and reread your history in the proper context:
Zimbabwe for hyperventilators 101
Oh dear....have a gork at the quality of advice Bollard is getting..... http://www.rbnz.govt.nz/research/bulletin/2007_2011/2011mar74_1bollardlees.pdf
"Commodity prices
have reached very high levels, driven by emerging market
demand."
Oh....so it has nothing to do with Bernanke and his QE games!.....
Does it have to?
Why can't some commodity prices just be affected by the simple the supply/demand equation?
What evidence do you have to support your theory?
I only ask because the evidence (the bond & equity markets) don't seem too concerned with Bernanke's QE program.
Kanuck check out this chart and ponder that QE2 was announced Aug2010. Note that supply/demand effects had more or less flatlined up until then.
The chart you linked to only goes back to April and is far too narrow a time-span to extract anything meaningful from.
Try this one which you can take all the way back to the mid seventies:
Thanks Nick Smith...loving the taxes for nothing
From David Evans
"Even if Australia stopped emitting all carbon dioxide tomorrow, completely shut up shop and went back to the stone age, according to the official government climate models it would be cooler in 2050 by about 0.015 degrees. But their models exaggerate tenfold – in fact our sacrifices would make the planet in 2050 a mere 0.0015 degrees cooler!"
Dr David Evans consulted full-time for the Australian Greenhouse Office (now the Department of Climate Change) from 1999 to 2005, and part-time 2008 to 2010, modeling Australia’s carbon in plants, debris, mulch, soils, and forestry and agricultural products. Evans is a mathematician and engineer, with six university degrees including a PhD from Stanford University in electrical engineering. The area of human endeavor with the most experience and sophistication in dealing with feedbacks and analyzing complex systems is electrical engineering, and the most crucial and disputed aspects of understanding the climate system are the feedbacks. The evidence supporting the idea that CO2emissions were the main cause of global warming reversed itself from 1998 to 2006, causing Evans to move from being a warmist to a skeptic.
Glorious, umm from what I have heard from fairly reliable sources is that the CBD is 70 percent gone, it's not just the Grand C thats in trouble but a number of other high profile buildings, Claredon Towers, BNZ building, Victoria Apretment, Park terrace apartments , Both Copothorne hotels, QE11 ,and so and so on...it will indeed be glorious if CHC can climb out of this..but it is going be really really expensive I think much more than they are saying and going to take a very very long time, so fingers crossed the big corporates stay and jobs outside of construction dont go.
Bloomberg reports today:
Japan considers pouring concrete over the reactor plant to prevent chain reaction.
Like Chernobyl - if you think then it's over - far from it!
Google Chernobyl and pray the wind is not blowing too hard here from the north/east.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-30/record-high-levels-of-radiatio…
Read this and discover what the next brainless step by a NZ govt is looking to be.....
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10715999
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