A review of things you need to know before you go home Monday; Kiwibank falls into line, tracking policy changes, WMP goes positive, CPI expectations slip, swaps rise, NZD holds

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

MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
Kiwibank has dropped its three years 'special' by -14 bps to 5.09% - but this just matches all its main rivals. (AMP Home Loans made the same change.) NZCU Baywide have increased their floating rate by +20 bps to 6.15%.

DEPOSIT RATE CHANGES
No changes to report today.

STAYING ON TOP OF POLICY
Our policy comparison pages are suddenly getting a lot of traction. The first six days of August has seen as much traffic to them as for all of July - and July 2017 saw twice the traffic than for July 2014. Today we updated the pages to include Labour's 'light rail to the airport' policy for Auckland. (In the 2014 election, we delivered 171,000 pages in the six months around the last election. We are on track to deliver almost 300,000 this year.) As policy changes are coming faster these days, we are updating them as they come in. We also have a page for the party lists. (And, we are linking to all the TOP policies, via their logo on each comparison page.)

GOING UP?
The dairy derivatives market has sparked into life today, with WMP prices reflecting a +4% rise above the last auction results. It is still a week and a half until the next auction event, but some market participants are getting excited now.

GOING DOWN?
The latest survey conducted for the RBNZ about consumer expectations for inflation shows that they have softened a little from last time. The June quarter survey recorded an expectation of a 2.17% CPI in two years. That was the highest expectation since December 2014. The latest September quarter survey has seen this slip to 2.09%.

BIG CLAIMS ABOUT A CLEANUP CAN'T BE DELIVERED
Reuters is reporting that a much vaunted plan to clean up China's banking industry has been delayed - because it was putting too much strain on some institutions.

DOWN THE LIST
New Zealand a 'safe' place? Not especially, according to the Gallup Law & Order Report for 2017. We are 42nd in the world, after Singapore as #1. Then again, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Algeria all made the top ten. So maybe it is not so bad not being ranked so high in this review.

WHOLESALE RATES RISE
Following Wall Street, local rates are firmer today and the curve even steeper with the 2 year rate rising +1 bps, the five year us up +2 bps, and the 10 year rate is up +3 bps. All that does is reverse the falls we had on Friday. The 90 day bank bill rate is up +1 bp, now to 1.95%.

NZ DOLLAR SLIPS
The NZD is marginally lower today and now at 74.1 USc. On the cross rates we are stable at 93.3 AUc and at 62.8 euro cents. The TWI-5 is at 76.6, the same as it was at this time on Friday. The bitcoin price is sharply higher, up +14.9% on the day at US$2,237.

You can now see an animation of this chart. Click on it, or click here.