US factories in healthy expansion; ditto global factories; global airfreight up +5.9%; Japan has momentum; China bans violent debt collection by payday lenders; UST 10yr yield at 2.36%; oil and gold up; NZ$1 = 68.9 US¢, TWI-5 = 71.6

Bitcoin smashes through USD 10k mark...now and nzd
$17,034

OMG Q.V. figures show the DGZ has been hit. Mayday, mayday, she’s going down.

Reserve Bank warns: 'It's not our job to protect you from the housing market

Deputy governor Geoff Bascand says the central bank's job is to monitor the health of the financial system, not protect consumers. Read more

Equally, it's duty does not extend to transferring wealth from one cohort of society to another.

Bascand could better serve the nation if he took time to comprehend instruction from his betters at BIS.

A monetary policy regime narrowly focused on controlling near-term inflation removes the need to tighten policy when financial booms take hold against the backdrop of low and stable inflation. And major positive supply side developments, such as those associated with the globalisation of the real side of the economy, provide plenty of fuel for financial booms: they raise growth potential and hence the scope for credit and asset price booms while at the same time putting downward pressure on inflation, thereby constraining the room for monetary policy tightening. Borio page 12 of 38.

And:

More importantly, the banking system does not simply transfer real resources, more or less efficiently, from one sector to another; it generates (nominal) purchasing power. Deposits are not endowments that precede loan formation; it is loans that create deposits. Money is not a “friction” but a necessary ingredient that improves over barter. And while the generation of purchasing power acts as oil for the economic machine, it can, in the process, open the door to instability, when combined with some of the previous elements. Working with better representations of monetary economies should help cast further light on the aggregate and sectoral distortions that arise in the real economy when credit creation becomes unanchored, poorly pinned down by loose perceptions of value and risks. Borio Page 17 of 38

The Ex Southern Clueless MP - the gift to National and NZ that keeps on giving (taking actually)

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11951474

This article would have caused the billshitter to choke on his weetbix yesterday morning.

What did turdy have on the Double Dipper to not have been cast aside ruthlessly by his "strong and fearless" soon to be "two time loser" PM - possibly the straw that consigned farmer to the wilderness once again.

Kwaussie sounds so like quasi, a word which truly represents the true residential status of kiwis in Australia.

Big Wall Street banks have begun to rebuild their trading arsenals under the lighter-touch regime of Donald Trump, who has promised to rip up Obama-era rules designed to rein in risk-taking.

The likes of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley spent the years since the crisis winnowing their inventories of stocks and bonds held for trading, as new constraints on capital, and new rules such as the Volcker ban on proprietary trades, bit hard.

But over the past nine months the trading arsenals of the big six banks have grown by more than $170bn, bringing the total to $1.71tn, the highest level since the end of 2012, according to an FT analysis of public filings. Read more

Will greater US bank trading activity alleviate the global dollar shortage?

The Chinese have lent Angola, or at least banks within that impoverished African country, at minimum $20 billion (the exact balance isn’t known and is of some debate depending on the source) since its long civil war ended in 2002. Repayment of those loans has become very difficult for the oil producer, what with dollars in short supply due only in part to the mercantile effect on that supply due as the oil price crashed (and failed to recover).

Repayment has increasingly taken the form of crude oil, which for Angola only makes their situation that much more unbearable. Dollars never make it to the real economy, one which is starved for them as the primary means of exchange inside and out.

“They [the Chinese] have, in fact, turned a virtual currency into a real commodity by pawning it off on those more desperate for it. In other words, they conjured “dollars” that they themselves don’t really have so that they could position trade factors financially in their favor…From that perspective, the eurodollar is like a highly contagious virus with a long incubation period. Everybody just creates “dollar” IOU’s and spreads them everywhere, leaving behind the contamination of now being ‘short.’”

We entered the systemic situation on August 9, 2007, where global banks who used to conjure and redistribute unreserved dollar IOU’s to every corner of the planet no longer want the job. That makes these IOU’s a far less fluid medium of exchange, and in plain economic terms acts as a clear and present danger for global economic demand – showing up in demand for crude that “somehow” hasn’t yet balanced with ongoing massive inventory stocks. Read more and more

Barfoots must be due to release its monthly numbers. There was no November bounce. Peter's commentary will be an essay of a balanced market, where vendors and purchasers are settled in this new paradigm, with a hint of its a good time to buy.. In the run up to Xmas I wonder how the agents , feel about this new balance

So the Chinese have banned'''violent debt collection'''.
Pretty sure that there must be a way around this ban. Hmmmmmmm