US regional bank jitters spread

<p>Kia ora,</p><p>Welcome to Wednesday’s Economy Watch where we follow the economic events and trends that affect Aotearoa/New Zealand.</p><p>I'm David Chaston and this is the international edition from Interest.co.nz.</p><p>And today we lead with news of rising interest rates as economic activity wanes.</p><p>But first up today, there was another <a href="https://www.globaldairytrade.info/en/product-results/" target="_blank"><strong>dairy auction</strong></a> earlier this morning and it was another positive one. Prices were up +2.5% in USD terms, up 2.4% in NZD terms. That is the second rise in a row totaling +5.9% after a string of four retreats that totaled -9.2% so we have recovered a bit more than half the falls since February. There were rises across the board led by the +5.0% rise in WMP.</p><p>But this has been a rare bright spot in today's lineup.</p><p>Not helping today are equity market pressures on more American regional bank stocks. This is coming ahead of tomorrow's Federal Reserve meeting, which is shaping up as a critical even for market confidence. A +25 bps rate rise is on the cards there taking their policy rate to 5.25% (and matching the RBNZ).</p><p>And the US <a href="https://www.redbookresearch.com/" target="_blank"><strong>retail impulse remains very weak</strong></a>. On a same-store basis, last week retail sales were up a mere +1.3% from year-ago levels and far less than accounts for price inflation. Excluding the pandemic they are back to 2017 levels when inflation was much lower, so the situation is quite weak.</p><p>In March, the number of <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.nr0.htm" target="_blank"><strong>job openings</strong></a> in the United States decreased by 384,000 to 9.6 mln the lowest level in almost two years and below the market's expectation of just under 9.8 mln, indicating that their labour market is cooling off faster now. We will know by how much when we get the non-farm payrolls data for April on Saturday, NZT. Analysts are expecting a modest rise in emp