Here's my summary of the key weekend news in 90 seconds at 9 am, including news of government shutdowns.
Italy has been plunged into chaos after former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi pulled his centre-right ministers out of the cabinet on Saturday, effectively bringing down the government.
US govt debt limit negotiations drag on, even though there is cross-party agreement that it will all get resolved soon. The markets are not taking the politics seriously.
Governments may be having leadership problems, but other economic issues are settling. Spain has announced a new budget that needs no new austerity measures. Italy has posted a record trade surplus with non-EU countries. And the US budget deficit is narrowing fast, ironically allowing the politicians to play chicken for longer.
The UN's IPCC Report due to be released tomorrow, although they have been openly briefing media in major countries. We will need to wait to find how they think it will affect us.
The British government has successfully floated its Royal Mail SOE in the face of opposition and employee strikes. Australia may be about to do the same with a range of state assets, including Australia Post, apparently.
China is on its Golden Week holiday this week and has taken measures to ensure that it does not have a repeat of its cash crunch that wobbled its financial markets during a similar break in June. But before going on holiday, China's cabinet announced the rules for the Shanghai free-trade zone, pledging to ease restrictions on the service and financial sectors as a testing ground for reform.
It's a big day of local data releases with building consents this morning and business confidence this afternoon, followed by a raft of RBNZ data on the state of the credit markets in New Zealand.
The NZ dollar starts the week at 82.8 USc, 89.0 AUc, and the TWI is at 77.1.
The easiest place to stay up with today's event risk is by following our Economic Calendar here »
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2 Comments
The first part of the IPCC report, including the Physical Science basis was released a few days ago. Stronger severe weather events, more drought in the North and East of New Zealand. That is why Federated Farmers have been calling for more dams over the past few days (though I see a distinction between dams intended to protect against drought and dams which are going to be used to increase production, the former need more reserves (so are more expensive) than the kind of dams FF seem to have been calling for in the past).
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