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  Mercedes-Benz Earnings Slump European automakers have been lowering their expectations for the year in recent weeks, citing intense competition with local manufacturers in China and lackluster demand for electric vehicles.  An economic slowdown and property market slump have also seen Chinese buyers shy away from buying high-end cars. Manufacturers also face the prospect of an escalating trade war with China, as officials study measures such as raising tariffs on imported large-engine vehicles in retaliation to EU plans to slap tariffs of up to 45% on electric vehicles made in China.  Wall Street Journal 25 October 2024 https://www.wsj.com/business/earnings/mercedes-benz-earnings-slump-on-tough-economic-backdrop-fierce-competition-3a1387c3 Volkswagen AG plans to close at least three factories, eliminate thousands of jobs and slash wages for tens of thousands of German workers as Europe’s biggest automaker tries to halt its tailspin. The company drifted into crisis after bungling a tr

  US Stocks are trading near all-time highs, and at valuations that appear the priciest in years.  The index traded in recent days at more than 22 times its projected earnings over the next 12 months, its highest multiple since April 2021. https://www.wsj.com/finance/stocks/stock-market-magnificent-seven-earnings-valuation-dae61698 Bortsett från börsraset i augusti i år har storbolagsindexet sedan i våras handlats i en konsolidering, ett mer eller mindre sidledes intervall Stockholmsbörsens långsiktiga trend är fortsatt stigande.  En stark rörelse som följs av en paus eller konsolidering tenderar att följas upp av ytterligare en stark rörelse i trendens riktning.  Även om det lockar att trycka på säljknappen gäller det att som investerare ha mycket på fötterna för att gå emot den starka trenden.  Det är i stället mycket enklare att haka på trenden och i OMXS30:s fall är den tydligt stigande.  Det talar för att Stockholmsbörsen troligen handlas på nya rekordnivåer i vinter. Semir Hasanb

  Make Mercedes and Volkswagen great again? https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2024/10/make-mercedes-and-volkswagen-great-again.html Ukraina får 70 procent av sin energiförsörjning från kärnkraft;  en av de högsta noteringarna i världen https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2024/10/ukraina-far-70-procent-av-sin.html Helene and Milton Damage Is Just the Start of the Climate Tab Helene and Milton Damage Is Just the Start of the Climate Tab Indonesia over 350 million active mobile phones; more than the nation’s 270 million population https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2024/10/indonesia-over-350-million-active.html A Million People Play This Video Wargame. So Does the Pentagon. Militaries worldwide run battle scenarios using one family-run British company’s software, rooted in Tom Clancy novels.  Watch a video simulation to see how. https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/a-million-people-play-this-video-wargame-so-does-the-pentagon-e6388f50 Muntert på Wall Street – oljebolag mot strömmen

  When we think about the economic damage of climate change, most of us probably think about the physical destruction wrought by mammoth disasters like hurricanes, wildfires and droughts: Bungalows tumbling into the sea. Houses turned to ash. Acres of dead crops. That sort of thing.  But the quieter, longer-term effects of global warming cut even deeper. Consider western North Carolina. The state’s tab for that could be $53 billion, Governor Roy Cooper has said.  But all of that physical wreckage also means businesses are closed, tourists aren’t visiting, people aren’t working, and few are splurging on luxury goods when many are still struggling just to get drinking water.  That adds up to financial damage that dwarfs the physical one. Heat and rainfall that were unimaginable at the time of design and construction are causing roofs and HVAC systems to fail, roads and railways to buckle and foundations and plumbing to shift and crack.  Maintenance and repair costs have only begun to soa

Indonesia a potential growth market with a young, increasingly tech-savvy population. The $1 trillion economy has over 350 million active mobile phones — much more than the nation’s 270 million population, according to government data. Bloomberg 28 October 2024  https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-10-28/indonesia-blocks-sale-of-apple-iphone-16-in-bid-for-investment Tillbaka till WoS 28 oktober 2024 https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2024/10/wos-28-oktober-2024.html

  Locking the krone exchange rate against, for example, the euro; then, however, you give up the opportunity to decide the interest rate yourself in Sweden, and to set it according to the Swedish economy. A floating krona is also a shock absorber that helps keep the economy in balance. It may be useful to question the view that the weakening of the krona is due to a gigantic misjudgment of the market, and not to actual fundamentals. It is difficult to argue that the market is unable to price an asset that trades more than 15 times as much as all Swedish shares combined. Important to remember is that there are actually possible real economic explanations for the krona changing, The private bond market consists largely of property-related bonds that are not risk-free. During the 2010s, Sweden had the world's lowest policy rate. The government's surplus target may also have contributed to increasing Swedish national savings abroad. If the weakening of the krona really has real eco

The yield on the 10-year Treasury  was 4.28% MarketWatch 28 October 2024 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/bond-yields-start-the-week-higher-670c7b58 Börsen stiger på morgonen 28 oktober

  Att låsa kronkursen mot exempelvis euron; då ger man dock upp möjligheten att själv bestämma räntan i Sverige, och att sätta denna efter svensk konjunktur. En flytande krona är också en stötdämpare som bidrar till att ekonomin hålls i balans. Det kan vara nyttigt att ifrågasätta synen att kronans försvagning beror på en gigantisk felbedömning av marknaden, och inte på faktiska fundament. Det är svårt att hävda att marknaden inte klarar att prissätta en tillgång som handlas mer än 15 gånger så mycket som alla svenska aktier tillsammans. Viktigt att komma ihåg är att det faktiskt finns möjliga realekonomiska förklaringar till att kronan förändras, Den privata obligations­marknaden består till stor del av fastighetsrelaterade obligationer som inte är riskfria.  Under 2010-talet hade Sverige världens lägsta styrränta. Statens överskottsmål kan också ha bidragit till att öka det svenska nationella sparandet i utlandet.  Om kronans försvagning verkligen har realekonomiska grunder så kan en

  The US heavily taxed imports for much of its history before largely abandoning the policy, beginning in the 1930s, as government leaders embraced the idea of free trade.  High tariffs made a comeback during the presidency of Donald Trump, who adopted them in an effort to revitalize American manufacturing and to counter what the US regards as China’s unfair trade practices.  Trump’s successor Joe Biden kept the trend going. Trump proposed raising tariffs to 60% for goods imported from China and to 20% for those brought in from the rest of the world.  The US currently imposes tariffs in those ranges and higher on select categories of goods, but to levy them at that level across the board would be a radical change.  Currently, for imported industrial goods, which make up 94% of US merchandise imports by value, the country has a trade-weighted average tariff rate of 2% Bloomberg 26 October 2024 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-10-26/trump-s-threat-on-tariffs-who-pays-them-how

Nyttigt att ifrågasätta synen att kronans försvagning beror på  en gigantisk felbedömning av marknaden https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2024/10/nyttigt-att-ifragasatta-synen-att.html China; the new Japan https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2024/10/china-new-japan.html Dagens situation är helt och hållet resultatet av usla politiska beslut https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2024/10/dagens-situation-ar-helt-och-hallet.html    Why Trump’s Plan to Escalate Tariffs Has So Many Haters https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2024/10/why-trumps-plan-to-escalate-tariffs-has.html Dagen innan https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2024/10/wall-street-och-stockholm-25-oktober.html Stock Market Data CNN https://edition.cnn.com/markets  My website https://internetional.se/ about me What have I done? Caveat Emptor  

  Donald Trump enjoys a huge lead among men, while women tell pollsters they prefer Kamala Harris by a similarly large margin.  Katty Kay: What’s really behind America’s men v women election The Economist America’s glorious economy should help Kamala Harris Skolan, invandring, integration  och utanförskap, kriminalitet med dödskjutningar och barnsoldater, energiförsörjningen, sjukvården och försvaret.  Alla de större problem som återfinns i dessa sektorer och i många andra, bottnar i dåligt underbyggda politiska beslut om vittomfattande förändringar, många gånger utan något annat underlag än fromma förhoppningar och självförhärligande hållningar, förenade med en lomhördhet för varningssignaler och kritiska röster.  Inte av ondska, utan av ren dumhet. Som motiverats med sådana eftertankar som ”vi såg det inte komma” eller ”vi var naiva”. Dumheten har bestått i övertron på den egna förmågan, på politikens och politikerns överhöghet.  Men i ett öppet och demokratiskt samhälle har man de p

Let’s start with the big picture.  Over the 40 years or so since Deng Xiaoping, China made a historically remarkable leap from widespread poverty to industrial prowess. Other countries have gone through this cycle, of course, but none so large and certainly not so fast. This had many global effects, including a massive boost to commodity demand. A growing but resource-constrained China imported vast amounts of energy and raw materials, which were then transformed into infrastructure, housing, and most of all exports to the West, often at prices low enough to render others uncompetitive. Chinese creativity, resourcefulness, and an impressive ability to “scale,” combined with what used to be cheap labor gave them a massive Ricardian comparative advantage. China transformed internally as rural farm workers took factory jobs in gleaming new cities. Living standards improved, at least near the coast, further boosting consumer goods demand.  The nominally Communist government seemed to be se

 “We have the lowest tariffs of any nation in the world, and we relentlessly punish our own companies for doing business in America.  I intend to reverse this model and once again turn America into the manufacturing superpower of the world,” he said. Trump’s billionaire friends say his maximalist rhetoric should be understood as a deal-maker’s trick. Talk of 20pc tariffs across the board is a sledgehammer to smash down foreign barriers, says the hedge fund speculator Scott Bessent, a Soros veteran and candidate for treasury secretary. Protectionism worked for the British Empire in the specific circumstances of mass unemployment in the 1930s, when the Gold Standard had become a deflationary doomsday machine. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Telegraph 25 October 2024 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/10/25/trumps-nostalgia-19th-century-tariffs-alarming-implications/ Hur det kom sig att England övergav guldmyntfoten 1931 Många föreställer sig gärna att Englands beslut att överge guldmyntfo

Germany nagged southern Europeans into austerity, but now its own pfennig-pinching ways look misguided.  A constitutional amendment limiting budget deficits, dating from Mrs Merkel’s time in 2009, has resulted in chronic underinvestment in public services.  Spending that could have been done at 0% interest might have made Germany fit for the 21st century.  Instead, bridges are literally collapsing and the train system is kaput due to previous neglect. The Economist 24 October 2024 https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/10/24/angela-who-merkels-legacy-looks-increasingly-terrible Den tyska grundlagen och skuldbromsen https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2024/01/den-tyska-grundlagen-och-skuldbromsen.html The UK government will change its self-imposed debt rules in order to free up billions for infrastructure spending Rachel Reeves said that she would make a technical change to the way debt is measured which will allow it to fund extra investment "so that we can grow our economy and bring

  Världen går mot tre graders uppvärmning Målet i Parisavtalet är att temperaturökningen inte ska vara mer än 1,5 grader. SvT 24 oktober 2024 https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/morka-fn-rapporten-visar-varlden-gar-mot-tre-graders-uppvarmning The UN Emissions Gap report indicates that if only “current policies” are implemented the world could warm by up to 3.1C. Today's report says that if countries put into action the promises they have already made in their carbon cutting plans then temperatures will rise by 2.6C to 2.8C. And if every country puts these plans into action and follows through on their existing net zero pledges, the Emissions Gap report says the rise could be contained to 1.9C. Let's be clear - even a rise of 1.9C would be disastrous. BBC 24 October 2024 https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn0d24w28qno Det kan kännas hopplöst att  följa utsläppen, som fortsätter att öka år efter år. – Men å andra sidan så tycker jag att vi ser framsteg. De är bara så långsamma. – D

  SvT 18 oktober 2024 https://www.svtplay.se/video/ed6MnZr/ekonomibyran/miljonarerna-drar-ifran Har den stigande svenska förmögenhets­koncentrationen på senare tid skett på övriga gruppers bekostnad? Inte mycket tyder på det.  Bostadsägande ökar jämlikheten i förmögenheter. Daniel Waldenström SvD 19 oktober 2024 https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2024/10/vi-har-i-dag-fler-miljardarer-nagonsin.html Cervenka: De senaste trettio åren har varit en fantastisk period för alla som ägt tillgångar, alltifrån bostäder till aktier. https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2024/04/cervenka-de-senaste-trettio-aren-har.html Andreas Cervenka  https://www.aftonbladet.se/av/andreas-cervenka Tillbaka till Wall Street och Stockholm 24 oktober 2024 https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2024/10/wall-street-och-stockholm-24-oktober.html

China’s massive trade surplus is fueling a backlash.  Decades ago, U.S. leaders thought bringing China into the postwar economic institutions such as the IMF and World Trade Organization would make Beijing more market-oriented and the world more stable. They now think the opposite.  China has doubled down on an authoritarian, state-driven economic model that many in the West see as incompatible with their own. Trump has prioritized reducing the trade deficit, especially with China, through tariffs, an approach the IMF has criticized.  The U.S. has been upset about the growth in China’s trade surplus since it joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, wiping out U.S. factory jobs in what became known as the China shock. The IMF’s architects believed a breakdown in economic cooperation contributed to the Depression. Countries such as the U.S. that ran large trade surpluses felt no pressure to help those with deficits, like Britain.  By the 1970s, inflation and growing trade deficits ca

  Men 2022 tog experimentet med de historiskt låga räntorna plötsligt slut. För miljontals svenskar blev det en påminnelse om Riksbankens makt över vår ekonomi. Vilken roll spelar egentligen Riksbanken i samhällsutvecklingen, och vilka konsekvenser har de låga räntorna fått? Stefan Ingves var Riksbankens chef i många år. Ett filmteam följde honom under hans sista, dramatiska tjänsteår. https://www.svtplay.se/video/KZm2m6v/skuldfeber Stefan Ingves; världen ändrar sig hela tiden och då får man försöka förstå världen så gott det går; The Great Moderation DI 4 maj 2021 https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2021/05/stefan-ingves-varlden-andrar-sig-hela.html Stefan Ingves: "Enligt vår uppfattning stod det finansiella systemet i Sverige inför en kollaps den 24 september 1992." https://www.internetional.se/9803ingv.htm - Den stora risken var att Grekland skulle utlösa en kris i italienska, franska och tyska banker. Nu finns i praktiken en EU-garanti för de utestående grekiska statsobliga

  Defense spending is likely to go up significantly over the next few years. (Photo by Getty Images) ‘No idea’ of when market might view debt as too large, says president of the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget Many people in financial markets liken the U.S. fiscal position to a bubble, she said. But there’s a lot of money to be made while the bubble persists. And being able to time a crisis is impossible, MacGuineas said. During her talk, MacGuineas said politics on fiscal sustainability in the U.S. “are terrible” at the moment. “It’s not just that Republicans want tax cuts and Democrats want spending. They both want both,” she said.  It is “political suicide” to advocate deficit reduction, she added. MarketWatch 24 October 2024 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/a-u-s-fiscal-crisis-would-happen-incredibly-quickly-and-theres-no-way-to-predict-when-says-head-of-budget-watchdog-b5c27d20 Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget The Twin Deficits of the U.S. https://

Vice President Kamala Harris deepened her closing argument to undecided voters that Donald Trump is unfit to serve a second term, classifying her opponent as a fascist in response to a question during a CNN town hall in key swing-state Pennsylvania. Bloomberg 24 October 2024  https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-10-24/harris-calls-trump-a-fascist-in-bid-to-sharpen-election-contrast Mussolini; Den förste fascisten  För 100 år sedan tog Mussolini makten i Italien, och han är en av 1900-talets mest kända diktatorer. I över 20 år utövade han total kontroll över sitt folk genom införandet av fascism. Det här är berättelsen om den makthungriga tyrannens uppgång och fall. Del 1 av 2. https://www.svtplay.se/video/Kv14vrn/mussolini/1-den-forste-fascisten The Economist 23 October 2024 https://www.economist.com/china/2024/10/23/ambiguity-or-madness-where-harris-and-trump-stand-on-china https://www.aftonbladet.se/ledare/a/KMG3L6/sexism-forklarar-trumps-overtag Tillbaka till Wall Street och

  – Det är djupt oroande och otroligt farligt att Donald Trump lovordar Adolf Hitler. Mannen som är ansvarig för döden av sex miljoner judar och hundratusentals amerikaner. Detta ger en inblick i vem Donald Trump verkligen är och kommer från de som känner honom bäst, säger hon. SvD 24 oktober 2024 https://www.svd.se/a/OozgAb/kelly-trump-lovordade-hitler-fler-ganger-an-en Harris Calls Trump a Fascist - Mussolini; Den förste fascisten  Harris Calls Trump a Fascist - Mussolini; Den förste fascisten Under 10 års tid var det nästan gratis att låna i Sverige; Stefan Ingves https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2024/10/under-10-ars-tid-var-det-nastan-gratis.html , Dollarmiljonärer i Sverige; Ekonomibyrån China Shock 2.0 https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2024/10/china-shock-20.html A U.S. fiscal crisis would happen incredibly quickly — and there’s no way to predict when https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2024/10/a-us-fiscal-crisis-would-happen.html Tesla rusade med 22 procent.  https://www.di.se/li