Here's my summary of the key news overnight in 90 seconds at 9 am, including news that US Republicans are getting into line with a bipartisan US$85 billion deal that will ease automatic US. spending cuts for two years, remove the risk of a government shutdown and cut the deficit by $23 billion.
But good news for some people is bad for others, with US stocks falling for a second day.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index was down 0.8% a little while ago, while the Stox Europe 600 Index was down 0.5% and US Ten-year Treasury yields increased for the first time in four days. Oil prices fell 0.7 percent
Peversely perhaps the reason for some of this gloom is crystalised by a suggestion that US growth, according to a Reuters poll is set to accelerate in 2014 giving the Federal Reserve room to start “tapering” its economic stimulus in March.
More than 250,000 Americans selected private health-insurance plans through Obamacare enrollment systems last month, twice as many as in October when the exchanges opened amid horrific technology errors and outages. Kathleen Sebelius, the US health secretary, called for an investigation of what went wrong with the October 1 debut and said she’s taking steps to prevent future failures.
And as if it hasn’t had enough problems, the Royal Bank of Scotland Group will pay $100 million American to resolve U.S. probes into whether the bank violated U.S. sanctions laws against Iran, Sudan, Burma and Cuba, US authorities say.
The bank entered into agreements with the US Federal Reserve, the US Treasury Department and the New York State Department of Financial Services.
The NZ dollar is mostly down this morning, off nearly about 1% against the greenback at about US82.35 cents, nearly A91c Australian and, with the trade weighted index at 77.18.
Locally today don't forget to watch our site for the Reserve Bank's latest call on interest rates, while we can also expect to see the latest monthly house sales figures from the Real Estate Institute
The easiest place to stay up with today's event risk is by following our Economic Calendar here »
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