Here's my summary of the key news overnight in 90 seconds at 9 am, including news of fiscal and monetary desperation.
France needs to deliver promised budget cuts if it wants to avoid a further credit rating downgrade, Standard & Poor's lead analyst for the country told Reuters newsagency overnight.
The credit ratings agency has already stripped France of its AAA rating, and now its seems its AA+ is under threat as well. France is stuck between unsustainably debt levels and shrinkage in its economy.
Until recently, it has been Germany arguing for austerity in the EU. But recent signs are that they too are considering a QE spending splurge.
We also need to keep an eye on the Japanese stock market because investors have marked it down more than 12% in just the last five days.
Serious doubts about the Abenomics experiment are taking hold. A Japanese crisis would be a big one and would certainly affect New Zealand.
In the international corporate bond world, a new bubble has emerged - covenant-lite offerings. Investors are starting to give up loan-quality promises in the chase for yield. Let's hope it is not a trend that invades New Zealand, although our fixed interest funds who invest overseas will need to address it.
In the latest version of the OECD's Better Life Initiative, where there is an attempt to assess and rank countries other than by GDP, New Zealand came 11th in the eleven component 36 country survey - if every component was ranked equally.
Australia came out on top, with the rest of the top ten countries from northern Europe or North America. Our strong suits are health, safety, environment and life satisfaction. We are weakest in income and housing.
That 'better life' is encouraging many more illegal asylum seekers to Australia that ever before - as many as 25,000 are now expected to arrive this year, almost five time the original forecast. I wonder how New Zealand would react if we were subject to such a growing wave.
The NZ dollar starts today at 80.8 USc, 84.0 AUc which is another four and a half year high, and our TWI is unchanged at 76.3.
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