Will New Zealand's banks be affected?

Today's warning from former IMF chief economist Kenneth Rogoff - that the worst of the global financial crisis has yet to come - makes me wonder to what extent New Zealand's big banks (all Australian-owned) will be affected.

"We're not just going to see mid-sized [US] banks go under in the next few months, we're going to see a whopper, we're going to see a big one, one of the big investment banks or big banks," Mr Rogoff told a financial conference.

Partly in response to the crisis, I have moved $10,000 from the ANZ Bank to government-owned Kiwibank - the safest bank in New Zealand, according to some commentators. I am going to cap my investment in the ANZ at $80,000.

Globalization hits local companies

Every now and then, the effects of globalization hit close to home.

Today we learned that Everest Fashions, in Palmerston North, and Beardsley Pearce, in Levin, are being forced to close by the flood of cheap imported clothing from China.

The owner of Everest Fashions, Courtney Darby, said his company went into liquidation yesterday after 56 years of trading. About 28 women machinists were told of the closure on Friday.

Their last day at work would be this Friday, Mr Darby said. "There is no work. There's too many Chinese imports, cheap imports."

National Distribution Union president Robert Reid said about 15 Beardsley Pearce staff were advised of their fate yesterday.

HomePages Friends: Get paid for searching

I do a lot of searching during the course of my work, so I may as well take advantage of any opportunity to profit from it. That was what I was thinking earlier today, when I signed up at HomePages Friends. The passage below is from the HPF website:

When you register for FREE you get your own search homepage. Every time you search using your own search box page you earn! We partner with Yahoo! to provide this for you. Simple! It's completely FREE and you can start earning right away. What's more, you can recommend a friend and earn an additional 10 percent from us.

TheGoodBlogs: You belong here

I came across TheGoodBlogs about an hour ago, and decided to sign up. The reasons for my doing so can be found in the passage below, which is from TheGoodBlogs site.

TheGoodBlogs service helps bloggers to promote other bloggers. By putting TheGoodBlogs on your blog, your readers will see the titles of the latest blog entries of bloggers with interests similar to yours. We present a different set of bloggers each time the page is viewed. Unlike a blogroll, we show new bloggers that you or your readers may not know about and the content is always fresh. With the network effect, we can help you reach far more bloggers than any other means today and the service is free.

More Kiwis seek help from Salvation Army

In today's lead story in the Manawatu Standard, headlined No petrol to get to Sally meals, Janine Rankin says some regular recipients of help from the Savation Army "can no longer afford transport to get to low-price dinners as the cost of living bites".

As many as 140 people reportedly turn up for the Salvation Army's $3 meal every Thursday evening. Children dine free.

In the same article, Salvation Army community ministry manager Gwenda Kendrew is quoted as saying that, in June alone, 23 families who had never used the Salvation Army's foodbank before had asked for help.

"Hopefully, some of them will be just one-offs," Mrs Kendrew is quoted as saying. "But things are worse this winter.

"It's not just beneficiaries, but people in jobs, often with a number of children. A lot of people are mentioning power costs and, of course, the price of petrol."

The Toksee chat widget

I'm trying the various things offered by the Toksee community, including the chat widget below.

Kiwi dollar's decline inexorable

As in the case of the housing market, one wonders how far the kiwi dollar will eventually fall. At 1.30pm today, it was at US69.63c, after touching a low of US69.52c.

As interest rates here are still high, the fall can only reflect a lack of international confidence in the future of the New Zealand economy.