Here's our summary of key events overnight that affect New Zealand.
Markets have found some solace in an announcement that China and the US will hold trade talks this month. Yet with lower-level officials to do the negotiating and the gap between demands from the two superpowers remaining large, analysts aren’t holding their breaths for a breakthrough.
Turkey’s finance minister has sparked a small recovery in the lira. He has pledged to support local banks and cut public spending, in an attempt to rebuff concerns that a funding squeeze on Turkish banks, and a trade war with the US will force him to seek a bailout from the IMF. The Minister has added bank deposit withdrawals by panicked investors remain low and he won’t impose capital controls to stop money flowing abroad. The US has eroded the slither of confidence instilled by the Minister, saying it’s preparing for further sanctions against Turkey.
AMP is under fire in the Australian banking royal commission for essentially clipping the ticket from customers who didn’t make an active choice about where they wanted to invest their super. The Government had required fund managers to shift these customers’ savings into low-cost default-type funds by 2014, but AMP dragged its heels for three years in some cases, in fear that shifting customers from higher-cost funds would dent its revenue by A$86 million.
Meanwhile the commission has heard ANZ was worried it could lose its financial services licence over the way it mis-sold a superannuation product over the counter. Its regulator was concerned bank staff gave personal financial advice in breach of the law if they helped customers transfer their super into ANZ funds. ANZ has paid a $1.25 million penalty for this breach.
Looking briefly at some data, the August Philadelphia Fed Business Outlook survey has fallen to its weakest point since August 2016. UK retail sales rose 0.7% month-on-month in July. And the European Union’s trade surplus remained on the weaker side in June.
The UST 10yr has risen overnight to 2.89%.
Gold has inched up to US$1,180/oz.
Oil is stable. The US crude price is at US$65/bbl, while the Brent benchmark is at US$71/bbl.
The New Zealand dollar has tracked up a little to 65.9 USc, 90.7 AUc and 58.0 euro cents. The TWI-5 is at 70.0.
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15 Comments
I see Bayer has taken a hiding since buying Monsanto, back over %20, now it's not a USA company there won't be much sympathy.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-13/bayer-drops-after-mo…
Could be a buy AJ - I wouldn't bet on the appeal. "The World Health Organization's cancer agency dismissed and edited findings from a draft of its review of the weedkiller glyphosate that were at odds with its final conclusion that the chemical probably causes cancer.
...The edits identified by Reuters occurred in the chapter of IARC’s review focusing on animal studies. This chapter was important in IARC’s assessment of glyphosate, since it was in animal studies that IARC decided there was “sufficient” evidence of carcinogenicity.
One effect of the changes to the draft, reviewed by Reuters in a comparison with the published report, was the removal of multiple scientists' conclusions that their studies had found no link between glyphosate and cancer in laboratory animals.
In one instance, a fresh statistical analysis was inserted - effectively reversing the original finding of a study being reviewed by IARC.
In another, a sentence in the draft referenced a pathology report ordered by experts at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It noted the report “firmly” and “unanimously” agreed that the “compound” – glyphosate – had not caused abnormal growths in the mice being studied. In the final published IARC monograph, this sentence had been deleted."
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/who-iarc-glyphosate/
There are also concerns that it destroys beneficial gut bacteria, leading to a multitude of immune system malfunctions. No idea where the research is at, you need to be a forensic statistician to interpret the stuff and toss out the rubbish. Let alone the logical problems of trying to prove the null hypothesis.
The global economy in its current state is no free market either. Currently, in global affairs there is an element of planning involved to a great extent; the difference here is the planning is done by large corporations behind closed doors. As the world gradually adopted capitalism, there was a transfer of control over major industries of the world from governments (centralized planners) to oligarchs and cartels (decentralized planners).
There is planned allocation of resources which involves a transfer of wealth from the have-nots to the haves of the world.
I don't think the emperical evidence supports your conclusions. Since the end of the WWII the economies around the world have moved away from planning to more of a free market - not there yet of course. And 100s of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty and the living standards of billions have dramatically improved.
Only temporarily - something that money doesn't account for.
Biologically what you are talking about is known as overshoot.
But that aside, I suggest you study the Monroe Doctrine, then read Jason Hickel's Divide. Follow up with Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival. All is not what it is reported as....
I would like to see labour's share of profit in those poor countries that Charles Smith says factories were moved to from western countries. I bet that their income, wealth, working condition, life expectancy etc. have all increased in a relatively short time.
I am the first one to admit that capitalists exploit all resources at their disposal with no regards whatsoever for humans or environment. I have no problem with people who want to apply pressure over them to stop them doing so. But just to say western labour is not making as much as before, without even looking at if their loss has benefited anyone beyond capital owners looks inadequate to me.
Or Charles could include people who have been lifted out of extreme poverty by those evil capitalists.
blob:https://ourworldindata.org/6871d958-e659-429b-aa8b-2d6142625211
The most evil capitalist pigs of them all haven't being doing a bad job on the environment either.
" In a recent NBER working paper, Georgetown economist Arik Levinson estimated that more than 90 percent of the drop in US factory pollution since 1990 was due to companies adopting cleaner production techniques — things like switching fuels, becoming more efficient, recycling, or adopting pollution-capture technology.
And what he found was that the decline in pollution wasn't driven by offshoring. US factories were genuinely finding ways to cut emissions. In fact, the industries that saw the biggest drops in pollution intensity actually grew as a share of output."
https://www.vox.com/2015/2/8/7999417/US-factory-pollution-offshoring
"If the financial carnage continues (and that is a big “if”), this could be the beginning of another financial crisis like we experienced in 2008, and that would almost certainly mean a crippling global recession.
And of course once the next global recession begins, it is likely to be more painful than we have ever seen before in modern history, because the global debt bubble is far larger than it has ever been before.
We live at a time of great global instability, and there are so many ominous warnings about our future. A lot of people reach out to me for advice on how to get prepared for what is coming, and I hope to share quite a few tips in future articles."
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-08-16/get-prepared-chaos-come-snyde…
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