Here is my summary of the key news overnight in 90 seconds at 9 am, including news from China's official news agency, Xinhua, that the Chinese government has no plans to repeat its massive stimulus programme from 2008 any time soon.
Some investors in global financial markets had hoped that China might repeat its lightening-fast stimulus programme of 4 trillion yuan of infrastructure spending to try to boost a flagging Chinese economy.
But Bloomberg reported Xinhua said a repeat of the stimulus plan, which softened the blow of the Lehman crisis for the New Zealand and Australian economies, was unlikely.
“The Chinese government’s intention is very clear: It will not roll out another massive stimulus plan to seek high economic growth,” Xinhua said yesterday in the seventh paragraph of a Chinese-language article on economic policy, without attributing the information. “The current efforts for stabilizing growth will not repeat the old way of three years ago," Bloomberg reported.
China's Communist leadership, which is also distracted with a once-in-a-decade changeover, is worried inflationary pressures unleashed by that 2008 spend-up may cause social strife.
Meanwhile, US markets were calmer overnight and US stocks closed up 1%, partly on hopes pro-bailout parties in Greece may win elections on June 17 and avoid a 'Grexit'.
However, fears remain about Spain's parlous budget situation and its weak banking system. Spanish 10 year bond yields remained over 6.4% and German 10 year bund yields remained at record lows. Roche announced it had stopped supplying drugs to 12 Spanish hospitals because local governments had not paid their bills for two years. See more here at Bloomberg.
Closer to home, the NZIER forecast stagnant economic growth over the next two years because of a weak global economy and a slow Christchurch rebuild, saying the Official Cash Rate was likely to remain on hold until 2014. NZIER said a rate cut was possible if the European situation worsened. See more here in Alex Tarrant's article.
But there is hope for some types of work. Fairfax Media has announced plans to outsource 56 sub-editing and production jobs from the Illawarra Mercury and the Newcastle Herald to editorial production centres in New Zealand.
The New Zealand dollar was steady around 76.2 US cents in morning trade.
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