90 at 9: De-facto tightening; Bollard speech due; Toyota recall extended; Greek fears roil markets

Bernard Hickey details the key news overnight in 90 seconds at 9am in association with BNZ, including news New Zealand bank lending fell NZ$2 billion in December from November. Business lending slumped most and farm lending fell too.

Banks are being much more cautious because they need to preserve their own capital and their funding costs are high. This is producing a de-facto tightening of monetary stimulus even though the Reserve Bank has the OCR on hold. RBNZ Governor Alan Bollard is due to speak at 1pm today on the outlook for monetary policy. We will have extended coverage of the speech from 1pm.

Meanwhile Toyota has extended its massive recall overnight of its popular Camry and Corolla models to Europe and China (not Japan as said in video) from the United States after problems with its accelerator cables jamming. Ford has also been hit slightly in China with a few cars using cables from the same parts maker. Factory shutdowns are costing Toyota NZ$500 million a week.

Meanwhile the Dow was down 1% in late trade on global recovery fears driven by talk Greece may require a bailout from other European countries, which they quickly denied. Moody's also warned Portugal's sovereign rating may be downgraded unless it controlled its budget. Fears about European sovereign defaults drove the euro down to a six month low.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Bernard Hickey
• 90 at 9
• BNZ