Englund

Is the world running away from American assets? This week US Treasury reported that overseas investors bought a net $1.55tn of long-term US financial assets in 2025, up — yes, up — from a net $1.18tn in 2024.  What does this imply? One obvious point is it shows that fears of a “sell America” capital flight currently are wildly overdone, whatever the world thinks of Trump. The key issue is captured in the so-called net international investment position (NIIP) data, which “measures the difference between US-owned foreign assets and foreign-owned US assets”,  to cite a handy primer from the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis. https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2025/may/understanding-net-international-investment-position But one message to absorb from this story is that if the US tech bubble implodes, the pain will spread beyond America. Forbes calculates, for example, that if US equity prices and Foreign direct investment FDI, reverted to 2019 levels,  Norway, Canada, S...

Index för kärninflationen, core PCE, steg 3,0 procent jämfört med samma månad året innan. DI 20 februari 2026 https://www.di.se/live/hogre-inflation-och-lagre-bnp-tillvaxt-an-vantat-i-usa/  Policymakers could leave their 2% target in place formally, but be all right with never quite getting there. And then some years down the line, they could adopt a higher target. https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/10/inflationsmalet-overges-i-tysthet.html Most can’t afford to buy a home. Consumers are downright gloomy about their finances nowadays, for one key reason: Most can’t afford to buy a home. A study published in January in the journal Economics Letters links consumer malaise in large part to the high cost of housing — which the Consumer Price Index undercounts. Entitled “The Cost of Money is Part of the Cost of Living: New Evidence on the Consumer Sentiment Anomaly,” The study was conducted by a group of researchers from Harvard University and the International Monetary Fund. They wr...

Administration officials leaked false information about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, which turned out not to exist. Secretary of State Colin Powell gave a deceptive presentation at the United Nations.  This mendacious campaign was shameful and despicable, and helped create today’s national atmosphere of corrosive cynicism and nihilistic paranoia.  But it was, in retrospect, a tacit acknowledgment that public opinion mattered, that a president couldn’t start a war without convincing Americans it was necessary. It was a manipulation of democratic deliberation rather than a negation of it. Compare that episode to Donald Trump’s threatened war with Iran. Michelle Goldberg New York Times 20 February 2026 https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/20/opinion/trump-iran-public-opinion.html “Data is the language of our time,” says a data analytics manager named Alex, sounding a lot like the Palantir chief Alex Karp. This week, The Atlantic reported on Mantic, a start-up whose A....

Jessica Rosencrantz – Vi är tydliga med att medlemskap ska vara meritbaserade. Vi får inte tumma på anti-korruption, på rättsstatens principer eller krav på fria medier. --- Så länge jag / Annika Ström Melin/  minns har det talats om att ett växande EU inte kan låta nejsägarna bestämma takten och inriktningen på samarbetet.  Under otaliga seminarier har jag lyssnat på idéer om att unionen därför borde bestå av olika lager – eller cirklar – där en inre sammansvetsad krets kan driva på, medan andra länder inte behöver delta i allt samarbete. Dessa tankar har delvis redan blivit verklighet. Inget land tvingas att byta sin nationella valuta till euron. Valutasamarbetet betraktas numera i praktiken, om än inte i teorin, som frivilligt.   EU:s fördrag tillåter också så kallat ”fördjupat samarbete” mellan minst nio medlemsstater, om alla först har försökt men inte lyckats komma överens.  Det senaste exemplet är det nya gigantiska lånet till Ukraina, som därför kunde drivas ...

Blytungt ras i Klarna när Wall Street rekylerad ned Klarna fortsatte nedförsbacken under eftermiddagen och kvällen och stängde till slut ned nästan 27 procent. https://www.di.se/live/blytungt-ras-i-klarna-nar-wall-street-rekylerad-ned/ Tough Day in Private Credit https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2026/02/tough-day-in-private-credit.html OpenAI Funding on Track to Top $100 Billion in Latest Round The overall valuation of the company, including the eventual funding, could exceed $850 billion. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-19/openai-funding-on-track-to-top-100-billion-with-latest-round

After Blue Owl rattled the industry by restricting withdrawals from a fund aimed at ordinary investors. Wall Street Journal 19 February 2026 https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-sp-500-nasdaq-02-19-2026/card/tough-day-in-private-credit-hits-stocks-vGjEjYLFsxuvetABMcGC Blue Owl Capital abandoning plans to let investors withdraw their money https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2026/02/blue-owl-capital-abandoning-plans-to.html

Om USA skulle anfalla Iran vill president Donald Trump använda brittiska flygbaser för amerikanska stridsplan. Men det tillåter inte Storbritannien, enligt The Times. SvD/TT 19 februari 2026 https://www.svd.se/a/zO7pL9/brittiskt-nej-till-hjalp-vid-irananfall Operation Nickel Grass was the codename for a strategic airlift conducted by the United States to deliver weapons and supplies to Israel during the 1973 Arab–Israeli War.  Meir issued a personal appeal for military assistance, which European nations declined. Nixon, however, ordered the commencement of Operation Nickel Grass, to replace all of Israel's materiel losses. Traditional European allies refused to allow re-supply aircraft to land for refueling or even overfly their territory.  Portugal seemed willing to help though, so aircraft were dispatched to Lajes Field in the Azores Islands.  https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/06/omvarldens-reaktion-ar-for-det-mesta.html

  For nearly a decade the president has badgered European leaders with his call for “strategic autonomy”. They have responded with eye-rolling or indifference.  France’s “Buy European” strategy has long been regarded by its American-equipped friends as a sales pitch for French kit. When France calls for more joint borrowing to rearm Europe, its friends hear: get somebody else to pay.  When France urges more spending on European defence, its friends hear: more contracts for French makers of fighter jets, missiles and engines. De Gaulle’s grandstanding towards America was in part an attempt to preserve the country’s great-power status despite its often brutal mishandling of the retreat from empire. France, wrote the general, “cannot be France without grandeur”.  As European leaders grapple with the implications of the transatlantic rift, a few still hope this is a passing moment. The Economist 18 February 2026 https://www.economist.com/europe/2026/02/18/that-irritating...

The nation’s trade deficit fell in 2025 by a meager 0.2% to $902 billion, but only due to a large and quirky increase in gold  Imports actually rose almost 5% last year and hit a record high.  China was the main loser, with U.S . imports of goods tumbling 28% in 2025. MarketWatch 19 February 2026 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/u-s-trade-deficit-might-be-tariff-proof-imports-jump-to-record-high-in-2025-a518d1bc EMBARGOED UNTIL RELEASE AT 8:30 A.M. EST, Thursday February 19, 2026 U.S. International Trade in Goods and Services, December and Annual 2025 The U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis announced today that the goods and services deficit was $70.3 billion in December ,  up $17.3 billion from $53.0 billion in November, revised. https://www.bea.gov/news/2026/us-international-trade-goods-and-services-december-and-annual-2025

A $1.6 billion fund at the center of concerns over private debt is now abandoning plans to let investors withdraw their money. Former Pimco CEO Mohamed El-Erian, in a post on X, raised the question of whether it was a “canary in the coal mine” moment, similar to the collapse of two Bear Stearns funds in 2007. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/fund-that-has-frozen-withdrawals-since-november-now-says-itll-never-open-up-75466c1f Fed bailout of Bear Stearns Remember Friday March 14 2008 It was the day the dream of global free-market capitalism died. Martin Wolf, Financial Times, March 26 2008 https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2023/03/silicon-valley-bank-bear-stearns-and.html The takeover of Bear Stearns by JPMorgan Chase sealed exactly a decade ago - mars 15, 2008 The knockdown price of $2 a share was a shock to Wall Street. https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-takeover-of-bear-stearns-by.html

Much of the optimism behind US AI stocks rests on the assumption that users will keep paying for incremental performance gains.  But as differences narrow, the price of AI may soon be set by the cheapest model that is good enough.  The price of using artificial intelligence is falling. In China, entry-level access to AI models has been marketed for about $3 a month by the country’s hottest AI group Zhipu.  June Yoon Financial Times19 February 2026 https://www.ft.com/content/37c91e08-d13a-45a7-a3a7-acb43fa5522e Zhipu (branded internationally as Z.ai) is a leading Chinese artificial intelligence company focused on large language models (LLMs) and related agent technologies. It is regarded as one of China’s main “AI tigers,” a group of startups developing frontier models to compete with firms like OpenAI and Anthropic. https://www.perplexity.ai/search/zhipu-KbV0cLh7SCGtF6CKtxbXrA#0

Trump’s strategy on Iran has seemed to mirror his playbook in Venezuela, where he amassed a huge naval armada and demanded concessions. This is 21st-century diplomacy backed by aircraft carrier groups and cruise missiles. But he risks creating a box for himself that it will be difficult to exit with credibility intact if it turns out that his repeated claims that Iran wants a “deal” are wrong. The kind of deal that Trump can offer Iran may be unacceptable to its clerical regime, whose top priority is perpetuating itself.  And a deal Tehran could offer Trump may be one he’d never accept, since it doesn’t want to talk about its ballistic missiles or regional proxy network, which he sees as red lines. CNN 19 February 2026 https://edition.cnn.com/2026/02/19/politics/trump-iran-strikes-nuclear-program-board-of-peace-analysis For years, Donald Trump defined himself against the architects of the Iraq War.  He cast Middle Eastern interventions as moral vanity projects paid for in Amer...

Who’s afraid of the big bad trade deficit? Last year the UK’s trade deficit in goods stood at 8 per cent of GDP, its largest since consistent records began almost three decades ago.  That was roughly double the US figure. IMF has lumped the two countries together, as the two single largest contributors to excessive current account deficits. Soumaya Keynes 19 February 2026 https://www.ft.com/content/af9b839a-ee4b-480c-9a03-d5dc7694c1e7 Soumaya Keynes became economics columnist for the Financial Times after eight years at The Economist. https://www.ft.com/soumaya-keynes The Economics Show with Soumaya Keynes is a podcast from the FT bringing listeners a deeper understanding of the most complex global economic issues in easy-to-digest weekly episodes. Listen to new episodes every Friday on Apple, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you get your podcasts. Det är dollarn bakom allt - Monetary Creation and Destruction del 5 https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/02/det-ar-dollarn-bakom-all...

In a speech at Davos last month, President Donald Trump railed against “windmills” as “losers” and called nations that buy them “stupid people.”  Just five days later, nine European countries signed a deal to build a vast offshore wind power hub in the North Sea, the epicenter of the continent’s oil and gas industry. It is expected to produce 100 gigawatts /en misstänkt rund siffra/ of offshore wind energy — enough to power around 50 million homes — connected to countries through high-voltage subsea cables. It is framed as a way to build energy resilience, provide affordable electricity and safeguard energy security. CNN 19 February 2026 https://edition.cnn.com/2026/02/19/climate/trump-wind-europe-clean-energy-independence

Att opinionssiffrorna dalar beror helt enkelt på att Trump inte rår på inflationen. En ny undersökning visar att medborgare i en rad europeiska länder ger sina regeringar underkänt. Orsaken är att regeringarna i Europa liksom i USA inte upplevs leverera verkliga förbättringar för medborgarna.  Utan leverans kan man inte heller förvänta sig att folk ska fortsätta stödja demokratin.  Det skriver statsvetaren Francis Fukuyama i artikeln ”Delivering for Democracy: Why Results Matter”. Anders Sundell SvD 18 februari 2026 https://www.svd.se/a/y54dzx/demokratin-maste-fa-saker-gjorda Francis Fukuyama ”Delivering for Democracy: Why Results Matter” https://fsi.stanford.edu/news/democracy-autocracy-and-performance-legitimacy#:~:text=In%20%E2%80%9CDelivering%20for%20Democracy%2C%E2%80%9D%20Francis%20Fukuyama%2C%20Chris%20Dann%2C,with%20delivery%2C%20examining%20both%20backsliding%20and%20non-backsliding%20countries. Prisnivån Price Level talas det inte mycket om. De flesta kommenterar om ...

Det skulle vara ”mycket klokt” av Iran att gå med på Donald Trumps förslag i förhandlingarna med USA. Det är budskapet från Vita huset.  DI/TT 18 februari 2026, 21:42 https://www.di.se/nyheter/usa-upprepar-hot-om-attack-mot-iran/ Wall Street stängde på grönt – oljan över 70 dollar Medvinden på Wall Street mojnade efter Fed-protokollet, där det framgick att ett gäng Fed-toppar flirtar med tanken på att höja styrräntan.  https://www.di.se/live/wall-street-stangde-pa-gront-oljan-over-70-dollar/ https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2026/01/beautiful-armada.html

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has poured cold water on a troubled €100bn joint fighter jet project with France and Spain by saying it no longer meets Germany’s military needs. The German army did not need a nuclear-capable fighter jet “right now” Financial Times February 18, 2026  https://www.ft.com/content/255d40ef-9809-4855-a8c1-0413f479f582 Dassault blocking the €100bn Franco-German jet project https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2026/02/franska-dassault-inte-saab-tar-indisk.html

  ` Frågan är när Europa senast gick i en så entydigt positiv riktning. Kanske var det när Storbritanniens marknadsliberala ledare Margaret Thatcher och den franske teknokraten Jacques Delors fann varandra i det arbete som under 1980-talet rev gränshinder, harmoniserade regler och skapade den inre marknaden, som sjösattes 1992. Mattias Svensson SvD 18 februari 2026 https://www.svd.se/a/m0rwOg/hogern-far-det-att-varas-for-europa Maastrichtfördraget undertecknades den 7 februari 1992 i Maastricht.  Genom fördraget upprättades Europeiska unionen med bland annat en gemensam utrikes- och säkerhetspolitik, en ekonomisk och monetär union  https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maastrichtf%C3%B6rdraget Jacques Delors, the European Commission president who presided over the creation of a single marketin the 1980s, said frankly: “We’re not here just to make a single market – that doesn’t interest me – but to make a political union.” https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2010/02/eu-emu-marx-och-...

A stagnant economy at home and America’s use of financial sanctions is pushing some to diversify their holdings.  Many private investors are looking beyond Singapore, long favoured by China’s rich-listers, in search of another sunny, safe and low-tax jurisdiction.   According to China’s own estimates, 370,000 of its citizens live in the UAE. More than 15,000 of its firms operate there. Both figures have roughly doubled since 2019. For globetrotting Chinese the lesson is clear: nowhere is entirely safe from Western sanctions, but Dubai is a safer place than most. The Economist February 15, 2026  https://www.economist.com/china/2026/02/15/dubais-crazy-rich-chinese Almost 20 per cent of banks’ cross-border dollar funding is now supplied by entities based in the Cayman Islands https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2021/12/a-sunny-place-for-shady-online-business.html

Katalys https://www.katalys.se/ Har staten överskott får hushåll och företag underskott. Räntorna på statsskulden försvinner i den finansiella sektorns labyrinter.  https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2026/01/budgetunderskott-och-rantor.html Svenskt Näringsliv avstyrker det föreslagna finanspolitiska rådet eftersom vi anser att aktiv stabiliseringspolitik inte skall bedrivas. https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2023/06/svenskt-naringsliv-avstyrker-det.html Till och med ramverkets vakthund, Finanspolitiska rådet, anser att det är motiverat av regeringen att tillfälligt strunta i överskottsmålet och det så kallade skuldankaret, som säger att den svenska statsskulden bör ligga runt 35 procent. https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2023/05/alla-gor-plotsligt-helt-om-och-ansluter.html Historien om det finanspolitiska ramverket Överskottsmålets födelse, liv och död i Sverige och Tyskland https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/03/historien-om-det-finanspolitiska.html  

Jeremy Grantham has a new and provocative argument for why the U.S. stock market will produce mediocre returns this year. Jeremy Grantham  has been bearish on the U.S. stock market for more than a decade and, so far at least, he’s been wrong. Yet Grantham commands a wide following on Wall Street.  Though early in forecasting both the bursting of the internet bubble and the bear market during the global financial crisis, Grantham had the last laugh.  Most stock-market analysts would disagree with Grantham’s current bearishness, but worry that they dismiss his arguments at their peril. “My prediction is that 2026 is going to see a level of IPO excitement that we haven’t seen in a while. My guess is that at least two of the private giants (OpenAI, Anthropic, SpaceX) will go public, and this is likely to put pressure on the U.S. market later in the year. … Post-IPOs, initially, maybe the market rises, but longer term, as more stockholders are able to monetize, that will creat...

Hur enade står Europas länder mot två hotfulla ledare?  Vad krävs för att Europa ska klara sig utan USA?  Medverkande: Cecilia Malmström, fd EU-kommissionär, Mikael Odenberg, fd försvarsminister https://www.svtplay.se/video/KZxgoD7/utrikesbyran/sta-upp-mot-mobbarna The secretary of state Rubio Points makes a forceful case for Trump’s policies without his stylistic excesses. https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2026/02/rubio-forceful-case-for-trumps-policies.html Cecilia Malmström https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2026/01/cecilia-malmstrom-tidigare-eu.html

The secretary of state Rubio Points makes a forceful case for Trump’s policies without his stylistic excesses. It was all delivered in a way that earned him a standing ovation from the assembled Euro-elites.  It’s amazing what you can achieve if you resist the temptation to say you’re going to annex Greenland. The Republican Party in office in this century was defined by a hubris and a myopia that combined to produce  one of the worst foreign-policy disasters in American history  Two Decades Later, the Iraq War Is Hard to Defend https://www.wsj.com/articles/two-decades-later-the-iraq-war-is-hard-to-defend-invasion-9-11-bush-afghanistan-terrorism-national-security-defense-terrorism-7a223799 and the most serious economic crisis in three-quarters of a century. The financial crisis that began 13 months ago has entered a new, far more serious phase. Lingering hopes that the damage could be contained to a handful of financial institutions that made bad bets on mortgages have ev...

President Trump absorbs the world’s media oxygen and he likes it that way, so let’s check in with the political competition for a change. Progressive Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York turned up at the Munich Security Conference over the weekend for a taste of geopolitics, but she couldn’t answer one of the biggest questions in world affairs. Would and should the United States commit troops to defend Taiwan if China were to move on the island democracy?  Give Ms. Ocasio-Cortez credit for an unscripted answer: “Um, you know, I think that, uh, this is such a, you know, I think that this is a, um, this is of course a very long-standing, um, policy of the United States. Uh and I think what we are hoping for is that we want to make sure that we never get to that point and we want to make sure that we are moving in all of our economic research and our global positions to avoid any such confrontation and for that question to even arise.” The Congresswoman from New York w...

Thawing permafrost release greenhouse gases such as carbon and methane    Financial Times February 17, 2026  https://www.ft.com/content/2ffab7c1-07a7-4fbb-812a-3d69dc0c2aea High temperatures in Siberia threaten to unlock methane deposits from melting permafrost, potentially unleashing runaway climate reactions prompted by higher greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.   The Copernicus models combine data from scientists in the U.K., France, Germany, Italy and the U.S. https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2021/01/earths-margin-for-error-narrows.html

  The Economist February 16, 2026  https://www.economist.com/international/2026/02/16/how-governments-are-increasingly-soaking-the-rich https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2026/02/bessent-kill-line-and-k-shaped-economy.html

Valutatorskarnas nota för den starkare kronan sväller och en sjättedel av resultatet åts upp. Nästa kvartal hotar smällen att bli ännu värre. Totalt slutade valutanotan för dem på 59 miljarder kronor i lägre intäkter än det annars hade varit. Det motsvarar en tiondel av försäljningen mot samma kvartal året innan.  För rörelseresultat var den negativa effekten ännu större, en sjättedel av rörelseresultat eller 12 miljarder kronor.  Mikael Vilenius DI 17 februari 2026 https://www.di.se/analys/kronrallyts-varsta-forlorare/ Kronans oväntat kraftiga lyft ställer till det för både Riksbanken och svensk export    https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2026/01/kronans-ovantat-kraftiga-lyft-staller.html

Last week, a post written by tech entrepreneur and investor Matt Shumer went viral on social media. Titled, Something Big Is Happening https://x.com/mattshumer_/status/2021256989876109403 It was a rundown of all the ways artificial intelligence would, in short order, decimate professional jobs. A post by Matt Shumer about the impact of artificial intelligence on jobs went viral on social media, with over 80 million views on X, and has struck a nerve amid market turmoil. The post's claims about AI displacing professional jobs are based on anecdotes and testimony rather than quantifiable data or concrete evidence. Artificial intelligence is a genuinely useful technology, but its impact will be uneven, gradual and impossible to predict. That’s the boring truth, however unlikely it is to go viral. Parmy Olson Bloomberg February 17, 2026 https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2026-02-17/investors-ai-panic-ignores-the-facts Tekniken kan tekniken inom kort automatisera stora delar av ...

För dig som ofta tänker på antikens Rom. 13 avsnitt https://www.sverigesradio.se/poddar-program/teman/9014901 Lisa Magnusson: De som säger att de tänker på romarriket ljuger. Ju äldre jag blir, desto mer ödmjuk blir jag inför skillnaderna mellan män och kvinnor. Dessa skillnader till trots vet jag en sak, och det är att ingen – utom Ida Östenberg, professor i antikens kultur, och en handfull andra specialintresserade – tänker så värst mycket på romarriket.  https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2023/09/lisa-magnusson-och-martin-wolf-om.html ”Gladiator” gjorde omedelbart succé, nominerades till tolv Oscar och vann fem, bland annat för bästa film. USA:s förste president, George Washington, både inspirerades av och liknades vid den romerske hjälten. Medan Atens demokrati betraktades som ett opålitligt mobbvälde sågs den romerska republiken som förebildlig.  Grundlagsfäderna försökte konstruera ett system som skulle förhindra framväxten av en amerikansk Caesar. Ida Östenberg, professo...