China battles economic fears

Kia ora,Welcome to Wednesday’s Economy Watch where we follow the economic events and trends that affect Aotearoa/New Zealand.I'm David Chaston and this is the international edition from Interest.co.nz.And today we lead with news our credit rating has been held with a stable outlook, and WMP prices didn't fall further, as expected.But first in the US, job openings edged down in July and the number of people quitting their jobs fell. They declined by -338,000 from the previous month to 8.827 million in July, the lowest level since March 2021. These are early signs of an easing labour market, and that the Fed's tightening policies are having the 'desired' impact on their economy. Markets expect the rise in non-farm payrolls, to be reported for July on Saturday NZT, to be up a modest +170,000. The pre-cursor ADP employment report also sees a modest +195,000 rise in the employed workforce when they report tomorrow.As we noted last week, there is a good move up in bricks & mortar retail sales underway in the US. They were up a creditable +4.2% last week from the same week a year ago on a same-store basis. Given they have 3% inflation, this is actually a quite positive sign and ends a six month dry patch, or a 10 month patch on an inflation-adjusted basis.But you wouldn't know that from looking at the latest update from the Conference Board consumer sentiment survey. It dipped unexpectedly. They say consumers are noticing a cooling labour market and interest rates biting. But they also found consumer fears of an impending recession continued to recede.The follow-up Dallas Fed survey of the Texas service sector was less negative than their factory sector and less negative that expected. But it was still negative in their region.The US 7yr bond auction yield rose from 4.02% to 4.16% earlier today, reinforcing the bite of rising interest rates, although savers will be cheering and in the US there are more savers than borrowers.In Japan, their unemployment rate rose for the first time in four months in July. It rose to 2.7% from June. Analysts had expected the reading to hold at 2.5%. The number of workers fell by -100,000 from the previous month to 67.5 mln, while those without jobs rose by +110,000 to 1.8 mln.In China, Beijing is leaning on its large state-owned banks to cut home loan interest rates to encourage home buying, and cut deposit rates to discourage saving. There is fear in the air in the Chinese economy. But you wouldn't know it from their equity markets as the 'home team' buys aggressively to keep up appearances. Unfortunately for them it is foreign investors who are taking advantage of the 'market' and selling.And despite 'opening up' rhetoric from China, US officials say American firms tell them China is now 'uninvestable' after all the fines, raids and other political measures like embedding Party committees inside their firms.In Singapore,