Here's my summary of the key news overnight in 90 seconds at 9 am, including news and warnings from the The Bank of International Settlements.
They are the central bankers bank and they said over the weekend that its members need to get back to their core role of fighting the upcoming rise in inflation.
Rising interest rates in countries like the US and Japan risk blowing out debt loads unless economic growth can keep pace - and things are made riskier because spending on the elderly is rising, they say. In fact, central banks can't do more without compounding the risks they have already created.
They criticised companies and households as well as the public sector for not making good use of the time bought by ultra-loose monetary policy, which they said had ended up creating new financial strains and delaying rather than encouraging necessary economic adjustments.
Bondholders in the United States alone would lose more than US$1 trillion if yields rise sharply, showing how urgent it is for governments to put their finances in order.
They also say, global banks have improved their capital ratios in part by understating the riskiness of their assets, not by raising their ability to stem losses. This window dressing could be avoided by regulating via leverage ratios, they say.
Meanwhile, last week developing nations around the world scaled back or cancelled billions of dollars of bond sales as borrowing costs climbed the most since 2008, just as spending needs increase amid slowing economic growth.
Closer to home, the BIS says the big four Aussie banks are the world's most profitable on a returns-on-assets basis. A league table shows Australian banks have lower costs than most of their peers and enjoy wider interest margins, a measure of profitability from lending.
The NZ dollar starts the week at 77.4 USc, 84.2 AUc, and the TWI is at 73.2.
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