Bernard Hickey details the key news overnight in 90 seconds at 9 am in association with Bank of New Zealand, including news that two large aftershocks in Christchurch may delay rebuilding efforts in the city and therefore slow a sharp rebound in the economy expected by the government next year.
See our full earthquake coverage here.
However, official reports expected within weeks to detail which parts of Christchurch could be rebuilt will go ahead, the government has announced. See more here from Stuff.
Reinsurers have also been unnerved by the latest after shocks. See more from Pattrick Smellie here at Stuff.
Financial markets priced in an increased chance that an increase in the Official Cash Rate expected for December may now be delayed until early 2012.
The New Zealand dollar initially fell as much as one US cent, but has bounced slightly in overnight trade to be opening around 81.5 USc.
Meanwhile, Standard and Poor's has downgraded Greece's sovereign credit rating to CCC from B, which means it is rated lower than Grenada.
Standard and Poor's said a restructuring of Greek debt was now increasingly likely, which it would judge a default and trigger a further cut to a D rating. The move further unnerved markets overnight, which fear a Greek default will destroy the Greek banking system and ripple across Europe's banking system.
Elsewhere, US economist Nouriel Roubini has warned there is a "meaningful probability" of a hard landing for the Chinese economy. This is one for New Zealanders to watch closely because the Chinese economy is now such a big driver for commodity prices and both the Australian and New Zealand economies.
Roubini has warned of a perfect storm hitting the global economy in 2013 as Europe's debt crisis, the United States' fiscal problems, Japan's earthquake-hit economy and China's slow down combine to slow global growth. See more here at Bloomberg.
As if to confirm those fears, the oil price fell overnight after surprise news that Chinese oil consumption fell 4% in May. See more here at Bloomberg.
No chart with that title exists.
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"House prices are falling, especially in Wellington, latest figures show.
Real Estate Institute figures for May showed the national house price index fell 1.8 per cent. House prices are down about 5.8 per cent from the peak of the real estate boom in 2007.
Wellington was the worst hit of the big-city markets, with a 5.2 per cent drop for the month, leaving the regional house price index down 3.8 per cent in the past year." stuff.co
But but... property never falls in value...Olly.......where are you when the sprookers need you!
Hudson is back
The Financial Road to Serfdom:
How Bankers are using the Debt Crisis to Roll Back the Progressive Era
By Michael Hudson
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/06/michael-hudson-the-financial-roa…
Good stuff again from Hudson, rings alarm bells for me with the Nacts sell off of public assets.
I liked this line “tantamount to selling the family silver only to have to rent it back in order to eat dinner.”
and "This new road to neo serfdom is an asset grab. But to achieve it, the financial sector needs a political grab to replace democracy with financial technocrats (NZ Treasury?). Their job is to pretend that there is no revolution at all, merely an increase in “efficiency,” “creating wealth” by debt-leveraging the economy to the point where the entire surplus is paid out as interest to the financial managers who are emerging as Western civilization’s new central planners."
yep....and the future focus for the likes of GS etc is places like India where there are few "financial products" available to the locals. The idea is now that the US (developed world) is saturated with Credit cards and debt, they want to do the same to everywhere else. they then just sit there "taxing" the life blood out of the globe....all the while the right wing retards complain about Govn taxes being too high...and they are not free enough....fools, unless they are in the top 1% they will be screwed over just as much.
regards
Oh! those left wingers: Income Disparity Makes People Unhappy: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110613151720.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29&utm_content=Google+International
For the AGW deniers out there....
A collection of video news clips on all the record weather events over the last year....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhCY-3XnqS0&feature=player_embedded#at=210
Its a wierd world. My real estate agent said yesterday that he has a lot of farm buyers, Its just that the banks wont play ball, these buyers are happy to pay top dollar but cannot get access to money via our banks. The guys with money are keeping away. As a Fed farmers rep said yesterday, anything that doubles in a year is probably not sustainable and we should be very weary about present prices being maintained for even the medium term.
Then the agent told me that there are buyers from South America looking for Dairy farms.
"these buyers are happy to pay top dollar but cannot get access to money via our banks."
It appears that even now some people still have to be saved from themselves. Sensible people aren't willing to pay top dollar in a down and falling market. They haggle like 40 b******* and get a good price instead of blindly paying top dollar.
My guess is your real estate friend was telling porkies because he can't sell anything when foolish sellers still expect top dollar.
Thee converstion was over a farm that was tendered. The tender failed to get any bids that were not subject to finance. The vendors felt that with record sheep and beef prices, the price should be reflective. The gap between real buyers and sellers is huge. If the banks let the farmers who had borrowed in the past have another go, farm prices would leap on a new wave of debt.
One more for the Top 10?
A follow up presentation from Jeremy Grantham - ' we face a disaster of biblical proportions', presented as a series of slides:
http://www.businessinsider.com/jeremy-grantham-commodity-prices-2011-6#…
Do forest fires and volcanic eruption emit gasses that cause climate change?
I only ask as there is a lot of stuff going around saying that a volcanic eruption pumps out several years of greenhouse gases, and there are 200 active volcanoes around the world.
P.S I don't deny we have climate change, but when politicians use it as a means to extract taxes to be used to fund other government activities as opposed to solving the problem, then I guess I become a little sceptical as to the cause of climate change. i.e. my green house gas emmissions have doubled in 10 years, but we don't light a fire to burn rubbish once a month or burn wood for heating?
John - So what if Nature contributes - is that a reason to cease our own forcing? Sounds like blame-shift to me, and I measure maturity by the extent that folk have left blame-shift behind. (Full maturity is when you can just front up and say 'mea culpa', then do what's needed to redress what you've been a'culping).
Burning woodlot-grown wood, is a zero-sum game in carbon terms. Do a bit of Googling on the build-energy of the things you use and buy - it may show you how you now use more carbon - and the carbon cracked in the process. (Energy-use is essentially cracking carbon bonds, and using the released energy - you do it eating/digesting food, a spark-plug and piston do the same thing). Start, say, with the CO2 released, and the fossil energy consumed by, concrete.
Yes, the Govt approach is flawed - it's an attempt to continue Business as Usual, and given that BAU entirely depends on carbon-cracking at an accelerating rate, with no margin.......
We won't address real carbon-reduction. We also won't reduce our population, or consumption. We will continue to vote for our hip-pockets, to deny, obfuscate, duck and weave........ We will plead that we're too poor just at the moment, and the third world will just scrabble for the next meal.
But - Climate Change won't be firat cab off the rank......in a wonderful piece of irony, the depletion of the very fossil fiuels that cause the problem, will probably beat it.
Just, too late to stop it.
Politicians taking something and using it to further their own ends isnt unusual. The science behind AGW is sound what we need to do is start doing something about it and make sure Pollies dont just twist it to their own ends or use it to support the constituants of their choice at the expense of others...but tahts probably whats gong to happen.
regards
facts? without context are meaningless, figures, well you can take any snap shot you want and get them to tell a story, take 1998 at the "hottest" year, since its been marginally cooler over tha last 11 years we must be uh cooling....plain crazy in terms of statistical work. What will be interesting is the La Nina/El nino cycle swaps over in 2012 (or 2013) which will take away the last 11 years of supression of rising temps as it was teh dominant effect....so the next 11 years look to be setting high temp records. So either 2012 or 2013 will very probably exceed 1998 (or 2005 depending in the data set you use), sit back and watch.
References, mostly when you go back to many deniers references you find they are by other deniers and in turn such "referenced" material simply lacks standing. The point is, his work and just about all of the denier work in turn is not peer reviewed by ppl in the right fields....I mean a mining professor who specialises in coal extraction techniques isnt going to be biased against GAW that will see his disapline extinct? So its oh so surpring he's a denier?
Al Gore is probably pretty close to accurate....and in fact the more recent data suggests the IPCC etc are under-estimating the effects of AGW...
If it makes you feel happy reading a book of make believe, be happy....but I'd suggest you try and harden up, simply say "I really dont care if Im ruining the planet it will be OK in my lifetime"....or " I really dont care if my children/grandchildren have very difficult, energy starved lives", or "I really dont care if at about 2150 or so the human species and indeed most species become extinct"....you know I much prefer honesty in ppl.
regards
"It has now been 1000 days since any hurricane hit the US, the longest spell since before the Civil War."
Lets keep perspective on these weather events shall we. Warmists are ignoring the dismal inaccuracy of the IPCC climate model graphs as compared to the HadCrut and UHA actual data Before you attack me as "denier" I should say I am an ardent environmentalist . Every thinking person should ( for their own moral protection) look into all sides of an issue. Graph here http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/09/comparing-ipcc-1990-predictions-w…um,
1) "wattsupwiththat.com" is a denier site that pumps out twisted "truths" and even downright lies, pure and simple...there is no science on the entire site.
An "ardent environmentalist" who reads rubbish like this, isnt.....IMHO.
2) What he has done is take 20 year old models and compared them with actual...A far more reasonable person would take the newer models that are 20 years younger and take a look, and these are running far more accurately.
3) There is nothing to preclude that particular unusual events will occur / not occur...what it does say is that they will occur more frequently...so all the 1000 days say is its unusual but not without precident. This is in effect a 1 in 300 year event. Now if we had a similar event say 2 years from now we would be looking at 2 x 1 in 300 year events in 2 years....which is the point.
regards
Totally not surprised by that. The survey http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/christchurch-earthquake-2011/5139229/GNS-upgrades-earthquake-strengths on Stuff is a bit worrying. Apparently almost 20% are planning to leave Chch, and that's on top of the people that have left already.
Greece has been cut again
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/gilts/8573780/Greeces-cred…
jonlivesey I see a lot of comments about Greece needing to resist, but the ironic thing is that although Germany is bullying Greece more and more with each passing day - old habits die hard, I guess - Greece really does need reforms.We're all so focused on bailout or not that we forget to ask what makes the Greek economy so uncompetitive in the first place, and it's not the climate.
Greece's problem is that the Government runs forty to fifty percent of the economy, and since the Government and civil service are corrupt the economy is really being run for the benefit of their cronies, not for the benefit of the Greek people.
Banks to Cut U.S. Debt Exposure http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/06/debt-ceiling-fight-…FYI from JP Morgan on the latest quakes:
The series of new quakes not only will dent confidence, but also will delay the reconstruction phase that RBNZ officials are banking on to lift growth to an above trend 4.6% in the March 2013 year. The likelihood of the RBNZ resuming the tightening cycle this year has, therefore, diminished even further. Just last week, in the statement that accompanied the decision to leave the cash rate unchanged, Governor Bollard appeared more confident in the post-earthquake recovery underway, and that the negative impacts of the earthquakes had been contained to the Canterbury region. The latest disasters probably have curbed this optimism. While we maintain that start of the tightening cycle will be delayed until next year, with March our preferred month, the next rate hike ultimately will be determined by the pace at which the rebuilding phase materializes. On the assumption that no further earthquakes hit Christchurch and surrounding areas before next year, we believe that in the early months of 2012, evidence should be building that the risks to the recovery from the recent quakes have well and truly abated. RBNZ officials also will be wary of the boost to inflation from reconstruction phase, and the possibility that these price rises could lead to second round effects, particularly given that inflation expectations already are rising.The 'Queen of spin'.. at it again...." Labour's deputy leader, Annette King, .... said half of the 200,000 children now living in poverty were from working families whose wages were so low they could not adequately care for them."herald.....good one Queenie...first step for you...take a couple more and kaplonk the penny will drop inside that tiny brain of yours...family planning is the answer...fewer children means the low incomes go further....doh.
I read it as well...and what he is saying is quite close to how quite a few others are writing it....and I see it going....the problem is its not easy for NZ to do a thing about it...
The problem is the USA and a few other countries like the UK that have financial centres and desperately need them to keep the GDP from crashing....these Govn's have sold out and will do anything to retsain the financial income....its really a tax on the world centered in a few places.....I can understand why JK wants NZ to be one a) it would finish any possibility of centre or left Govn's here or at least their policies and b) If you are not such a centre you are a slave. c) Huge amounts of money for some....
regards
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