Englund

A rare solar eclipse Wednesday will pile pressure on Europe’s “tight” power system, as heatwaves have forced nuclear and coal plants to switch off across the continent and low water levels curtail hydropower stations. Financial Times 8 August 2026 Solar eclipse threatens to tighten Europe’s electricity squeeze

Italians may help Germany get its trains to run on time.  Opening up national markets has worked wonders for European railways. The Economist 6 August 2026 https://www.economist.com/europe/2026/08/06/italians-may-help-germany-get-its-trains-to-run-on-time Did Mussolini really get the trains running on time? Say what you like about Mussolini, he made the trains run on time. That was the famous last excuse for Fascism, conveying the idea that while dictatorship might not be very nice, at least it got things done. But did Mussolini really do it? Did Il Duce, in his 20 years of absolute power, really manage to make the railway service meet its timetable?  The answer is no. Like almost all the supposed achievements of Fascism, the timely trains are a myth, nurtured and propagated by a leader with a journalist's flair for symbolism, verbal trickery and illusion. The Independent 3 April 1994  https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/rear-window-making-italy-work-did-mussolini-reall...

Wall Street vänder till rött medan oljepriserna tar fart uppåt.   Iran kommer inte låta fartyg kopplade till USA eller Israel få passera Hormuzsundet i det kommande avtalet med Oman. DI 6 augusti 2026, 19:22 https://www.di.se/live/iranutspel-far-wall-street-att-vanda-ned/ Iran will seek to bar US and Israeli ships from the Strait of Hormuz  and require compensation from hostile countries before they’re allowed to use it, according to local media reports on a proposed Iran-Oman deal to manage the crucial waterway. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-06/iran-seeks-bar-on-us-ships-in-hormuz-as-deal-with-oman-advances Iran has said a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz is in its "final stage" if the US doesn't obstruct it.  https://www.dw.com/en/middle-east-hormuz-deal-near-idf-soldiers-dead-in-lebanon/live-78263014 Indexen vände ned under dagen efter utspel från Iran om Hormuzsundet. https://www.di.se/live/lang-rad-rapportforlorare-pa-rott-wall-street/ Nu ho...

  SpaceX Needs to Make Its Bigger Rockets Work None of the company’s most ambitious plans are possible without the success of its Starship rockets https://www.wsj.com/finance/spacex-needs-to-make-its-bigger-rockets-work-c800f9c2 Iran Is Staking Everything on Controlling the Strait of Hormuz. Wall Street Journal Aug. 4, 2026 10:00 pm ET https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/iran-strait-of-hormuz-trump-talks-ec566cd7 An agreement on the Strait of Hormuz is taking shape – but not one Trump wants Control or supervision over the chokepoint has become just as much a red line for Tehran as the right to nuclear enrichment. https://edition.cnn.com/2026/08/05/middleeast/hormuz-iran-oman-agreement-analysis-intl Iran och Oman har enats om de geografiska koordinaterna för en föreslagen sjöfartsrutt genom Hormuzsundet, enligt Irans utrikesdepartement.   https://www.di.se/live/iran-och-oman-eniga-om-hormuz-rutt/ Since attacking Iran in February, Trump’s immediate demands have shrunk fro...

Fredsförhoppningarna gav nya rekord på Wall Street. Utsikterna för ett tillfälligt avtal med Iran gällande Hormuzsundet ser ut att stärkas. https://www.di.se/live/wall-street-firade-fredshopp-med-kraftiga-lyft/ EU agrees to send border aid to Spain https://www.dw.com/en/eu-agrees-to-send-border-aid-to-spain-after-ceuta-talks/a-78233082 President Donald Trump said his latest offer of talks is a “last chance” for Iran after he called off what he said was a major attack on the Islamic Republic. “I want to give them every last chance before decapitation,”  “You’ll find out today or tomorrow. I mean, they’re going to go quickly, one way or the other. It’s not very complex.” Bloomberg 3 August 2026 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-03/trump-says-talks-are-iran-s-last-chance-after-strikes-scrubbed Trump står fast vid blockad: ”Avtal eller kapitulation” https://www.di.se/live/trump-star-fast-vid-blockad-avtal-eller-kapitulation/ Stockholmsbörsen går mot den fjärde uppgångsdag...

Vitaliy Katsenelson, chief executive officer of Investment Management Associates, says:  I wrote in the past that the AI rollout feels a lot like déjà vu of the 1999 telecom bubble. Today it is also starting to feel like the 1999 bubble is being supersized into something closer to what led to the 2008 financial crisis. This is not a good change. Comparisons with 1999 provided some perverse reassurance. Burst stock market bubbles are in many ways a price of technological innovation as investors balk at trying to price new inventions years into the future.  They didn’t stop canals, railroads, cars, or the internet from remaking the economy, and a stock market selloff needn’t stop the growth of AI. Now, investors are beginning to hear the rhyme with a different bubble — the 2008 collapse of a massive edifice of mortgage-backed credit that caused the Global Financial Crisis Book extract: The Fearful Rise of Markets, Authers   https://www.ft.com/content/6d6ad426-63ac-11df...

 Techrally gav nytt rekord på Wall Street.  Fallande oljepriser eldade på riskaptiten. https://www.di.se/live/techrally-gav-nytt-rekord-pa-wall-street/ Vändpunkten 31 mars 2026 31 mars Irans president uppges vara beredd att avsluta kriget. Sales of Bacardi’s St-Germain liqueur are growing faster than Campari’s Aperol this summer. Campari, Aperol and the Italian group’s hot pink Sarti Rosa have flown off the shelves thanks to their use in spritz cocktails, popular for their Instagram-friendly bright colours and lower alcohol content. Financal Times 2 August 2026 https://www.ft.com/content/9b9a6587-fef4-41c7-864f-4e29dff74afc?syn-25a6b1a6=1 This time Japan’s Ministry of Finance had help from a significant quarter — US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.  This matters beyond Japanese shores because the carry trade — the strategy of borrowing in yen and parking in a higher-yielding currency like the Mexican peso — has been an ultra-reliable source of profits.  Over five ye...

One day the bust will be the big one, but for now the pullback in AI-related stocks has been almost completely offset by gains elsewhere The S&P 500 is only 1.6% below its record, and the equal-weighted version—a measure of the average of all stocks in the index—hit a new high this past week. The post-financial-crisis era of easy money has led to repeated booms and busts in small, and sometimes not-so-small, parts of the market in the past 15 years.  Jag tycker det är skriande uppenbart att räntan världen över är för låg och att en större del av stimulanserna borde ske via finanspolitiken. Rolf Englund blogg 5 december 2009 My best guess on the reason for all these bubbles is a mix of easy money, the gambling instinct and hopes for new technology. These are the standard ingredients of bubbles from canals and railroads to the Great British Bicycle Bubble.  But they’ve been on steroids since the 2007-09 financial crisis. Where the money comes from varies—in the 2010s it was...