Here's my summary of the key news overnight in 90 seconds at 9 am, including news its going to be a big week for budgets.
The first one comes from Australia this week, followed by New Zealand a couple of days later.
The assumptions in these plans will be tested by external trends.
Slowing growth in China is something everyone, including the Chinese leadership, is now accepting. Over the weekend the Chinese President acknowledged it, and the IMF also is downgrading its expectations. The 'new normal' is now flowing through to the prices China is paying for its commodity imports. It says no new big stimulus programs will be used to soften the transition.
In fact, lower demand is keeping a lid on consumer prices in China. They slowed to +1.8% in April, and their producer prices are still declining. In fact, they are talking up the 'fear of deflation' now.
And that is likely to have a big impact in Australia, undermining some of the tax collection assumptions in the budget they are about to get on Tuesday evening (9:30 pm NZ time).
Late on Friday, the RBA released its Monetary Policy Statement revealing that their central bank is ready to run a loose monetary policy for as long as their weakness lasts.
We start the week with gold still languishing below US$1,290/oz, the oil price is stable at US$100/$108 for the US and Brent benchmarks, and yields on UST 10 yrs are at 2.62%, up a couple of bps.
Equities shone in New York at the end of last week with the Dow closing at a record high on a general market rise.
On the exchange rate, we start today with the NZ dollar a little lower at 86.1 USc, unchanged against the Aussie at 92.2 AUc and the TWI is just on 80.0.
If you want to catch up with all the changes yesterday, we have an update here.
The easiest place to stay up with today's event risk is by following our Economic Calendar here »
By the way, here's something you don't see every day - the World Bank touting the 'coming collapse of the international monetary system."
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