Bernard Hickey details the key news overnight in 90 seconds at 9 am in association with Bank of New Zealand, including news the BNZ business confidence survey for May showed a big improvement to its best levels in 18 months.
Confidence about the outlook improved to a net 42% positive from a net 21% negative as recently as March immediately after the earthquake.
It suggests confidence is stronger than many had previously seen and suggests either the Reserve Bank's emergency rate cut on March 10 has been very effective or was not needed.
See the full confidence survey results here on BNZ economist Tony Alexander's site.
Meanwhile, Australia will announce its budget later today, including a likely forecast for growth this year of 3.75%, almost 4 times our growth rate. Also, Australia's budget is expected to return to surplus by 2012/13, two years earlier than us. See more detail here at The Australian.
Meanwhile, Chinese and US officials are talking about their trade and currency tensions.
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has again called on the Chinese to spend more domestically, which would in theory reduce its trade surplus and ease some of the capital imbalances causing such grief in the global financial system. See more here at BBC.
Elsewhere, the oil price rose back over US$103/bbl overnight and gold rose again, suggesting the slump in commodity prices last week may be shortlived. Goldman Sachs forecast a rebound in commodity prices. See more here at Bloomberg.
Meanwhile, Standard and Poor's downgraded Greece's credit rating overnight by a further two notches to single B, which is 5 notches below investment grade and is lower than the BB+ rating given by Fitch to Hanover Finance in 2007. See more here at Bloomberg.
Greek 10 year bond yields rose to 15.7% on the single B rating, which indicates a one in five chance of default in the next five years. The euro fell on more fear about European financial market turmoil.
Hanover was offering 8.7% on its two year debentures back in 2007, suggesting Hanover's bonds were underpriced for the level of risk involved or that the risk of Greek default is over priced. Hanover Finance collapsed less than a year after that BB+ rating. Fitch gave no warning.
Greece is widely expected to default in some form in coming months.
The New Zealand dollar is back up to 79.5 USc on the firmer commodity prices.
No chart with that title exists.
We welcome your comments below. If you are not already registered, please register to comment
Remember we welcome robust, respectful and insightful debate. We don't welcome abusive or defamatory comments and will de-register those repeatedly making such comments. Our current comment policy is here.