A review of things you need to know before you go home on Friday; banks raise rates, ANZ accused of cartel activity, trade deficit smaller than expected, swaps and NZD stable

Here are the key things you need to know before you leave work today.

MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
ASB, BNZ, Sovereign, and BankDirect all raised fixed mortgage rates today. In BNZ's case it was the second hike this week. ASB also sneaked up its floating home loan rate by +10 bps, although that just aligned it with its other Aussie rivals.

DEPOSIT RATE CHANGES
BNZ and ASB both raised a selected range of term deposit rates today.

'ANZ TRIED TO OPERATE UP A CARTEL'
In Australia, their competition authority has taken proceedings on a consent basis against ANZ and Macquarie Bank in relation to "alleged attempts to engage in cartel conduct". Here is ANZ's statement.

SOCIALISING THE LOSSES
The Labour Party is calling for public money to be used to help owners of quake-damaged Wellington buildings get them fixed.

NZX NOT ENOUGH
Shares in Synlait Milk are now dual-listed on the ASX as well as the NZX. They are not the first company to do this, attracted by a bigger, more liquid marketplace. More than 70% of its institutional investors are Aussie-based.

BETTER THAN EXPECTED
New Zealand's goods trade deficit came in better than expected in October at -$846 mln and lower than in any of the past three years. Exports rose +2.2% while imports rose just +0.6%. China and Japan buying more dairy, logs and horticultural products led the improvement. Crude oil imports fell -17% in value and -19% in volume and that helped todays data too.

"HIGHER COSTS MADE US DO IT"
Today, ASB raised its floating mortgage rate out-of-cycle. In Australia, UBank, an NAB subsidiary and BNZ cousin announced the same sort of move. This comes just one day after their parliamentary inquiry criticised the big four banks’ “oligopoly”. The increase will be effective December 2 and be a rise of +10 bps, the same increase as ASB's move here.

NO INFLATION IN SIGHT YET
Japan’s consumer prices fell for an eighth straight month in October in data released today. This is the longest streak of declines since 2009-2011, underlining how far they are from achieving a 2% inflation target. Still, the +0.1% CPI was an improvement on the -0.5% decline in September. Progress is undermined by cheap oil and fuel prices and it is hard to see how that actually hurts Japan.

WHOLESALE RATES STABLE
Wholesale rates are pretty much unchanged today, although one year to four year swap rates are lower by -1 bp. The 90-day bank bill is unchanged at 2.03%.

NZ DOLLAR HOLDS
The Kiwi dollar is unchanged from this time yesterday and still at 70 USc. On the cross rates it is back to 94.3 AUc, and is at 66.3 euro cents. The TWI-5 at 76. Check our real-time charts here.

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