A review of things you need to know before you go home Wednesday; low dairy prices may bring reduced payout; strong vehicle sales, job ad growth stops, AU GDP underwhelms, swaps lower, flatter, NZD up, bitcoin jumps

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

MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
No changes to report today.

DEPOSIT RATE CHANGES
None here either.

DISPARATE SIGNALS
The latest dairy auction brought no meaningful rise in prices, so analysts are now eyeing a cut in Fonterra's farm gate price estimate. That might come as early as tomorrow morning. And despite the virtual no-change in the auction price, the derivatives market is doubling down on the higher-price expectation for WMP.

VOTING WITH WALLETS
We reported the strong November new vehicle sales on Monday. Now we have the data for used imports and they are equally strong, if not more so. 14,924 used cars were imported in November, the highest month ever. That takes the annual flow in for this class of vehicle to 164,733, also an all-time record. Add that to the 108,535 new cars and the 51,244 commercial vehicles and you can see Kiwis are voting with their wallets for updating their personal transportation. All up, that is a +29,600 or +10.0% rise in twelve months.

TOPPING OUT
The ANZ job ads data fell slightly in November from October. But the volumes are actually +5.7% this year than in the same month a year ago. Annual job ads growth in Canterbury and Wellington eased to +6% and +8% respectively while Auckland is slowly heading towards a flat out-turn. Maybe that is to be expected because 46.7% of all job ads are for Auckland positions. ANZ says there is plenty to ponder with recent labour demand indicators. Job ads are perched at high levels but growth rates are easing. Official labour market data has been volatile of late, while a timely read on business hiring intentions from their Business Outlook survey indicates apprehension about the business environment. Still, they expect a modest pick-up in wage growth.

THE JOB ENGINE
And speaking of Auckland jobs, up to 10,000 new jobs could be created by 2041 on land in the proposed Silverdale West Dairy Flat Business Area. The area has been brought forward for development to between 2018 and 2022 in the refreshed Future Urban Land Supply Strategy.

UNCONSTRAINED
And speaking of local authorities, the rate of growth in rates and other regulatory revenue by local authorities is starting to moderate. They were up by just +3.1% in the year to September, a far more moderate pace than the +8.9% rise in the year to June 2015. Still, this monopoly revenue is now +4.1% higher in the year to September than in the prior full year. Local authorities aren't constrained by real world inflation (wages +1.7%, consumer prices +1.9%).

CONSTRAINED
But the Government is moving to constrain the private sector. It will now probe petrol prices (up +16.1% in six months) and beef up the Commerce Commission powers by enabling the consumer watchdog to undertake broad market studies.

PUBLIC SECTOR FAULT, VICTIMS TO PAY
An official inquiry into Havelock North water contamination finds 'widespread' and 'systemic' failures among NZ's water suppliers. Local councils and the Ministry of Health are to blame they say. The consequences? well, they will fall on ratepayers and taxpayers, the very people who are the victims of the failures.

UNDERPERFORMING?
The September quarter economic growth in Australia has disappointed markets, coming it at +2.8% when they were expecting +3.0%. The AUD got marked down as a result. (The New Zealand Q3 GDP outcome is due to be released on December 21 and markets are expecting a +2.6% annual growth rate here.)

WHOLESALE RATES LOWER, FLATTER
Swap rates fell and flattened today with all the reductions coming at the long end. The 90 day bank bill rate is unchanged at 1.90%.

NZ DOLLAR HOLDS
The NZ dollar is unchanged at 68.9 USc. On the cross rates we are up at 90.9 AUc on the disappointing Aussie GDP data and 58.3 euro cents. The TWI-5 is now at 71.8. Bitcoin has just taken off again, now up to US$12,124 an new all-time record (NZ$18,420).

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