Welcome to the December 10 2008 editions of the BNZ Weekly Overview and Offshore Overview.
This week's issues are being sent one day early as one will be on annual leave tomorrow. We've learnt little new about
the New Zealand economy over the past week. Residential construction activity fell away strongly during the September
quarter while non-residential construction activity held up. Wholesale interest rates have sat virtually unchanged over
the week while the Kiwi dollar has firmed marginally assisted partly today by the Reserve Bank Governor warning about
continued inflationary pressures in some parts of the economy. He has called for a wide range of companies to pass on
cost decreases and for sectors bereft of competition such as electricity and local authorities to keep price increases
below general inflation. Good luck. Regulation is probably necessary.
Overseas the main two pieces of news came out of the United States with the labour market weakening far more than
expected over November but President-elect Obama announcing plans for a very large fiscal stimulus package centered
around infrastructure spending.
There will probably be another Weekly Overview released next week but if there is it will be relatively small. There
will be no Offshore Overview.