Here's my summary of the key events overnight that affect New Zealand, with news Aussie bank behaviour has cost them the support of their centre-right government.
But first, in the US, the latest data out on jobless claims came if slightly worse than expected. And June factory orders fell - although this was just a confirmation of an earlier 'flash' report. Economic news is slim out of the world's largest economy at present as they are in annual holiday mode.
In Australia, their government has moved to force the banks to explain their key policies to parliamentarians in a formal way. This follows anger at the big commercial banks capturing about half of the recent policy rate cut by their central bank for themselves and not passing it on to customers. Anger at banks behaviour has risen particularly sharply this year. Until recently, the centre-right government has insulated them from many consequences, but it looks like that cover is is now withdrawn.
In China, they are about to launch their own credit default swap market, a hedging tool that protects investors in case of bond defaults. Chinese corporates have been increasingly defaulting on their debt recently.
In Europe, the EU has imposed anti-dumping tariffs on some Chinese and Russian steel imports for the next five years in a fresh effort to protect their own local steel makers who are struggling with the consequences of overcapacity in the world steel making industry.
In England, their central bank cut its core policy interest rate to a new low of 0.25% and said it would buy government and corporate bonds as part of a new program to stimulate the their economy that has taken a sharp economic shock following the Brexit vote. The immediate market reaction was a fall in bond yields, and a fall in their local currency.
In New York, UST 10yr yields are lower today at 1.50%. And the re-rating of the credit risk for NZ sovereign debt continued its impressive improvement yesterday. And keep an eye out on the local 2 year swap rate today - it could well fall below 2%, accentuating its track lower that started way back in June 2014. It went below 4% in October 2014, below 3% in July 2015, and has fallen another 100 bps since then.
The US benchmark oil price has had another day of rises. Crude is now just under US$42/barrel and the Brent benchmark is over US$44/barrel.
The gold price is up as well, now at US$1,361/oz.
The NZ dollar is marginally higher than this time yesterday, opening at 71.8 US¢, at 94.1 AU¢, and at 64.5 euro cents. The TWI-5 index is still at 75.
If you want to catch up with all the local changes yesterday, we have an update here.
The easiest place to stay up with event risk today is by following our Economic Calendar here ».
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