Here's my summary of the key news overnight in 90 seconds at 9 am, including news of lending trends in the US, China and elsewhere.
In the US, banks made it easier for Americans to get loans in recent months and demand for credit has also increased, signs their recovery is gaining steam. The Federal Reserve reported this morning that banks eased their lending standards "for many types of loan categories amid a broad-based pickup in loan demand."
There are loans, and their are 'loans'. In China, their central bank has made a loan of US$162 bln to a state development bank which sees them using a similar technique the Americans used at the height of the GFC.
For China, its an expanded form of monetary easing to shore up growth. It's their central bank doing subsidised lending and is more 'qualitative' rather than 'qualitative' easing. It's a pretty important line for a central bank to cross as it's more in the fiscal than monetary policy sphere. But lines are crossed easily in China, it seems.
Europe's largest bank HSBC has warned that regulator efforts to punish wrongdoing was putting its staff off taking reasonable business risks. You do wonder what it means by 'reasonable risks' given the amazing things they and other banks have been fined for. It reported a 12% fall in first-half profit on a slowdown in their Asian business but is optimistic about 2015.
Although equity markets are staging a small recovery in New York today, UST 10yr yields fell again to 2.47%.
The oil price has stopped falling on the US benchmark and is now just over US$98/barrel. On the Brent benchmark it is now just over US$105/barrel. Gold however fell and is now at US$1,288/oz.
We start today with the NZ dollar up slightly overnight. We are now at just under 85.2 USc, just under 91.4 AUc. The TWI is at 79.8.
If you want to catch up with all the changes on Friday we have an update here.
The easiest place to stay up with today's event risk is by following our Economic Calendar here »
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