Bernard Hickey details the key news overnight in 90 seconds at 9 am in association with Bank of New Zealand, including news that US consumer confidence hit a seven month low in June as data emerged showing house prices fell 4% in the last 12 months.
The S&P/Case Shiller index of prices in 20 cities fell, reducing the wealth of many American consumers.
The reduction in household wealth because of falling house prices has been bigger proportionately than the slump during the Great Depression. See more here at Reuters.
Meanwhile, the Euro firmed and the New Zealand dollar strengthened overnight to 81.2 US cents as markets became a little more relaxed about the prospects for the Greek parliament voting in favour of an austerity plan that will help Greece avoid default for now. See more here at Bloomberg.
However, there was mayhem in the streets around parliament as tens of thousands of protestors clashed with police, exchanging firebombs and tear gas. See more here at Reuters.
Also, the EU has warned it has no Plan B for Greece and a French bank plan to roll over Greek debt would still trigger a formal default, Fitch has warned.
Markets are worried a default would trigger a contagion of fear about bank capital levels across level and create another 'Lehman-style' crisis on credit markets. This would make it more difficult and expensive for New Zealand to roll over its debt.
Elsewhere, the European Central Bank's Jean Claude Trichet indicated 'strong vigilance' against inflation, which has been above the region's 2% target since December.
Markets translated this to mean the ECB would increase its official interest rate from 1.25% next week, despite the apparent weakness in growth in southern Europe. See more here at Bloomberg.
No chart with that title exists.
10 Comments
I'm not kidding when I say this, the greater depression is coming and the recovery is non-existant.
All the radio advertising and business people I hear keep mentioning the recovery.
Who says we are at the bottom yet?
I think it will be years and years before we can start talking about recovery.
So far we have any had the entree.
The main course is not far away.....
Totally agree there. We won't hit the bottom for years, will be good when we come out of it though, most of the crap will be out of the system, and house prices will be so much lower its not even funny, but I reckon a lot of kiwis will be moving to aussie. In fact, long term, I am going to be living over there. More money, more people, more business.
I'm not kidding when I say this , but risk asset markets are as tight as a coiled spring , and ready to explode upwards at any time , ushering in great prosperity to holders of common stocks .
... what is the Golden Swan event to trigger this stratospheric rise in markets ?
Who knows , of course ... . That's why we call them " Golden Swan " events .
....... nonetheless , the yield differential between cash assets and risk assets is so amazingly wide that an equity resurgence is only a matter of time .
To balance our finances in order to reform and rebuild a sustainable economy/ society.
Daily costs, redundancies and bankruptcies are increasing – jobs and wages are not. Banksters remain banksters and to much greedy money causes costs in the trillions for the clean up on many levels/ fronts. Societies on the brink of collapse
A sensible option is – NZ buy gold now – in the billions – before it is to late and gold goes up above US$ 2’000.- oz.
I dont know about that aye. I have a feeling traditional investments are going to take a dive. I think you should take a look at bitcoin. I dont want to sound like a nutter, but for the purposes of covering all my bases, im buying 10 or so BTC. Bernard, I think you should google bitcoin, tell us what you think of it. Its pretty far-fetched but has some potential.
A few weeks ago, I mentioned the Bitcoin, but Bernard didn’t take the bait (no response).
Here an article :
http://blogs.forbes.com/petercohan/2011/06/28/can-bitcoin-survive-is-it…
It could go either way to be honest. Perhaps when the world is sick of fiat currencies it would take off, the no fees for anything bought via the internet is good, who knows. Makes me interested in the nature and psychology of currency, for instance, gold and silver are worth a lot because they are rare, but at the end of the day you cannot eat them or drink them.
CCC idiocy on display....
"Police and construction crews working in central Christchurch could be hit with fines when paid parking resumes next week.
Vehicles belonging to the workers have had warning notices placed on them before enforcement resumes on Monday.
City council staff have been placing notices under vehicle windscreen wipers, warning of the return to enforcement.
Yesterday, notices had been placed on police cars parked in a blocked-off section of Hereford St near the central police station.
Notices have also been put on the vehicles of construction workers repairing earthquake-hit buildings, including those working on the Hereford St civic offices" stuff.co
From what I understand, some businesses that have opened in the central city (but outside the red zone) are losing out on customers because CBD demo/construction workers etc are taking up the metered or time-limited parking spaces, all day. The businesses are stuggling enough where they are, so they do need a break.
Unmetered all-day parking spaces can now be found closer to the CBD than prior to Feb 22, since there are no office or retail workers.
That said, the CCC should be thinking about temporary parking solutions for the red zone workers - there's plenty of vacant lots opening up for starters!
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