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  US Strikes Iran in Escalating Campaign The US conducted a wave of strikes on Iranian command centers, maritime capabilities, missile and drone launch sites, and communications networks to "further diminish" Iran's ability to attack commercial vessels and civilian mariners. The conflict has led to a rise in oil prices, with Brent crude rising almost 4% to trade above $90 a barrel, and has resulted in significant material losses and injuries in Kuwait, as well as damage to vital institutions. Bloomberg 19 July 2026 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-19/us-iran-trade-more-attacks-after-two-troops-killed-in-jordan Enligt Irans president Masoud Pezeshkian är Iran nu involverat i ett ”fullskaligt krig” mot USA, skriver AFP. Uttalandet från presidenten kommer efter rapporter om nya amerikanska attacker under måndagen. DI/TT 20 juli 2026, 19:39 https://www.di.se/nyheter/trump-vedergallning-for-varje-dodad-amerikan/ De tre ledande amerikanska börsindexen öppnade dag...

  The US and Iran engaged in another wave of tit-for-tat attacks, with US forces hitting Qeshm Island and southern cities in Iran, and Iran retaliating with drone strikes targeting US forces in Kuwait. The US embassy in Jordan said the airport and sea port at Aqaba had been evacuated due to a "specific and credible threat", but Jordanian authorities denied this and said operations continued as normal. The targeting of civilian infrastructure, including bridges, utilities and port facilities, has expanded beyond strictly military targets, with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar expressing concern over the latest escalation. Bloomberg 19 July 2026 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-19/us-iran-trade-more-attacks-after-two-troops-killed-in-jordan US troop deaths raise fears of a wider war as Iran hit by new strikes Jordanian airport and seaport were evacuated due to a 'specific threat,' as Kuwait and Bahrain intercept Iranian attacks. CNN 19 Jul...

Stock markets are not only ignoring the obvious threats, but seem imbued with extreme optimism. In the autumn of 1929, Irving Fisher, one of the greatest American economists, stated: “Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.”  This turned out to be one of the most incorrect forecasts ever made: in short order, US and global stock markets were hit by the Great Crash, which was followed by the Great Depression. Maybe markets were in some sense “right” before the crash and wrong after it. But who cared? For investors and the hundreds of millions of people across the world whose lives were upended by the disaster, the gods of the stock market had failed for a generation. Why might this story be relevant today? The answer is that the valuation of US stocks is even higher today than in September 1929.  The first global financial crisis after the disaster of the 1930s in 2007-09: the easy monetary — and relaxed regulatory — policies adopted after the stoc...

Populists are in power, either in control or playing a supporting role in Croatia, the Czech Republic, Finland, Italy, Slovakia, and Sweden; they are on the march in Latin America.  Even more importantly they have forced established politicians to discuss subjects once deemed out of bounds, such as immigration, national identity, and social disintegration. In France, the National Rally (NR) is the largest party of the National Assembly and runs swathes of the south and industrial north.   The French magazine Le Nouvel Obs warned its progressive readers that Jordan Bardella was particularly dangerous because he appeared to be “a new man, clean and smooth.” He grew up in the suburbs, the child of Italian immigrants; has two million followers on TikTok and 800,000 on Instagram Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News has been putting a populist spin on the news since 1996. Populism is evolving, splitting into new subspecies, or forming alliances with other lifeforms. The essence of populis...

  David Rockefeller found the perfect spot to build a beach house on the shores of St. Barthélemy in 1957 and bought about 140 acres, kicking off a boom that has yet to slow down. Michael Gross Treasured Island: The Story of St. Barth and Its Barbarians, Billionaires, and Beauties (Harper). https://www.harpercollins.com/products/treasured-island-michael-gross?variant=44324148248610 The island was soon developed with hotels, restaurants, and residential parcels, and became a popular destination for celebrities Bloomberg 16 July 2026 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-16/the-st-barts-famous-party-scene-undercuts-island-s-rockefeller-origins Saint Barth: Jetset, det vackra folket och pengarna - Jetsetfolket kommer för övrigt i sandaler och shorts till de fina restauranger, eller in i raden av lyxbutiker i Gustavia, som får Biblioteksgatan i Stockholm att framstå som Ullared.  Här bär man inga synliga märken på märkeskläderna. Den som vet, vet. https://englundmacro.bl...

The Toba catastrophe hypothesis was one prominent school of thought for many years. It proposes that the Toba supereruption caused a global cooling event that lasted up to six years.  Its effects, according to the hypothesis, caused human population sizes to plummet to fewer than 10,000 individual people living on Earth. The Conversation. "A supervolcano nearly wiped out humanity 74,000 years ago, but humans did something incredible." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 11 May 2026. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/05/260510234711.htm

Chipfrossan förvärrades under fredagen. Halvledarsektorn gör därmed sin sämsta vecka på över ett år.  S&P 500 backade 1 procent, Dow Jones 0,8 procent och Nasdaq handlades ned 1,4 procent. ”Frågan nu är om detta kommer att bli ännu ett tillfälle att ’köpa dippen’, eller om försäljningstakten accelererar när alla samtidigt rusar mot utgångarna”, säger David Morrison. https://www.di.se/live/usa-stanger-pa-rott/ Vändpunkten 31 mars 2026 "Snart blir det fred" https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2026/07/vandpunkten-31-mars-2026.html Merz, Macron plan closer nuclear cooperation Germany is expected to soon take part in a nuclear drill with France, Germany's Merz said after meeting France's Macron.  Deutsche Welle 17 jui 2026 https://www.dw.com/en/germany-news-merz-macron-plan-closer-nuclear-cooperation/live-77998510 The U.S. and Iran Creep Toward a Wider War With Escalating Attacks. Strikes on more sensitive targets across the Persian Gulf risk setting off a spiral as neit...

Bloomberg beskriver fredagen som ett nytt "Deepseek-ögonblick”. Den kinesiska AI-startupen Moonshots nya Kimi K3-modell. Artificial Analysis, som jämför AI-modeller, placerar K3 före Anthropics premiummodell Opus 4.8 inom vissa ledande testområden, skriver Bloomberg. Gavekal Capital-förvaltaren Leonid Mironov håller med analysföretaget. DI  17 juli 2026, 16:17 https://www.di.se/live/deepseek-20-skakar-wall-street/ Chips Stocks Tumble Into Bear Market  A surprise breakthrough from Chinese AI startup Moonshot has driven the selloff, with investors likening the decline to the market shock unleashed by DeepSeek’s breakthrough last year. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-17/chips-stocks-tumble-into-bear-market-as-105-ai-rally-fizzles Wall Street tech stocks head for $1tn sell-off; DeepSeek Financial Times 27 January 2025 https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/01/wall-street-tech-stocks-head-for-1tn.html DeepSeek Chief’s Journey From Math Geek to Global Disruptor https...

  In late 1945, as the Iron Curtain was falling across Europe, a Soviet club played several British teams on a goodwill mission.  George Orwell was unimpressed. In his essay The Sporting Spirit, he argued that sport was “an unfailing cause of ill-will.” -  Even if one didn’t know from concrete examples (the 1936 Olympic Games, for instance) that international sporting contests lead to orgies of hatred one could deduce it from general principles… The significant thing is not the behaviour of the players but the attitude of the spectators: and, behind the spectators, of the nations who work themselves into furies over these absurd contests, and seriously believe — at any rate for short periods — that running, jumping and kicking a ball are tests of national virtue. Writing when the World Cup was still a small tournament that the British teams didn’t bother to enter, he warned that you couldn’t do better to “add to the vast fund of ill-will” in the world “than by a series of...

KD-partiledaren tillika den vice statsministerns skönhet har alltid varit en faktor i debatterna om henne, liksom hennes klädval. Busch är nämligen stilsäker. För några år sedan bar hon en tjusig vit klänning under en partiledardebatt, och Borås Tidnings Boel Ulfsdotter menade att detta var ett försök av se oskuldsfull och jungfrulig ut. Ulfsdotter blev rättmätigt kritiserad för sitt utspel. Vi andra fick upp ögonen för Buschs eleganta garderob. Men den luttrade minns även hur Ebba Busch en gång poserade i en t-shirt med IDF-loggan, i sällskap av den före detta partikollegan Sara Skyttedal (vart tog hon vägen förresten?). Det var tider det. Josefin de Gregorio SvD 17 juli 2026 https://www.svd.se/a/L4PmE9/det-gar-inte-att-komma-runt-busch-ar-snygg Sara Skyttedal och Jan Emanuel har fler falukorvar än Ebba Busch. Sara Skyttedal, Kristdemokraternas ledamot i Europaparlamentet, lanserade med stor schvung en ny politisk gruppering, Folklistan, häromveckan. Som andranamn på listan – efter ex...

Utredningarna påbörjades 2019 och har bedrivits i Sverige, Estland och USA. De har rört Swedbanks arbete med att motverka penningtvätt och terrorfinansiering, samt informationsgivning under perioden 2007–2019.   ”DFS utredning rör händelser ett årtionde tillbaka. Vi kan nu lägga den bakom oss”, säger Jens Henriksson, vd på Swedbank. ”Swedbank kan nu fullt ut fokusera på kunderna, utveckling av affären och att skapa värde för aktieägarna”, säger den tidigare statsministern Göran Persson som är styrelseordförande för Swedbank. DI 16 juli 2026 https://www.di.se/live/swedbank-natt-uppgorelse-far-betala-en-halv-miljard/ Att den tidigare Swedbankchefen Birgitte Bonnesen mörkat har HD redan fastslagit Nu ska Högsta domstolen avgöra om den tidigare Swedbankchefen ska sitta i fängelse för att ha mörkat bankens problem.   https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2026/03/att-den-tidigare-swedbankchefen.html Birgitte Bonnesen frias av Högsta domstolen. ”Vi mottog domen med förvåning,...

I natt genomförs den första testflygningen av Elon  Musks raket Starship DI 16 juli 2026 https://www.di.se/live/raketen-ska-lyfta-da-nar-space-x-ny-bottenniva Genomrött Wall Street     Nedgångarna inom halvledarsektorn tilltog under torsdagen. Sämst gick det för Sandisk som föll 12,6 procent. Nvidia backade 2,4 procent, Micron 5,7 procent och Broadcom 5 procent. Det taiwanesiska chipbolaget TSMC handlades ned 2,3 procent trots att ha rapporterat ett 23 procentigt resultatlyft. https://www.di.se/live/chipjattarna-tyngde-genomrott-wall-street/ EUs dråpslag mot Stegra och SSAB  Stegra och SSAB har satsat hundratals miljarder på att kol ska bli dyrt och fossilfritt stål lönsamt. Nu pekar mycket på att EU mildrar utsläppskraven för den gamla stålindustrin. Det kan bli ett dråpslag för hela den gröna industriomställningen i Norrbotten. DN 16 juli 2026   https://www.dn.se/ekonomi/eu-kan-sla-undan-kalkylen-for-sveriges-grona-stal/ Familjen Wallenberg räddar Stegra....

Bara under den senaste natten säger sig Ukraina ha anfallit ett 20-tal ryska olje- och gasfartyg i Svarta havet. Den nya strategin innebär att man utvidgar en intensiv offensiv från Azovska sjön. SvD 15 juli 2026 https://www.svd.se/a/oEwQxm/ny-ukrainsk-taktik-dronarvagor-i-svarta-havet Baku - plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, Gunnar Hökmark och Alfred Nobel https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/07/baku-plus-ca-change-plus-cest-la-meme.html Nu har EU momentum i Svartahavsregionen And they were clear with their intentions - "the future of Ukraine belongs with the EU," said EU President Herman Van Rompuy.  Gavin Hewitt BBC Europe editor 2 March 2014 https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/10/nu-har-eu-momentum-i-svartahavsregionen.html  

$68bn - 656 miljarder kr - wiped off IBM on its worst day ever; more than 25pc https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/07/14/ibm-loses-68bn-in-worst-day-on-record/ ”Den första ronden i sjöslaget är slut. Nu tar vi Svarta havet” https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2026/07/den-forsta-ronden-i-sjoslaget-ar-slut.html Donald Trump’s return to war with Iran offers no clear path to victory - Behind his bravado it remains unclear how the US president will limit the economic, political and diplomatic costs of the latest escalation, particularly as the autumn midterm elections loom. Financial Times 15 July 2026 https://www.ft.com/content/7a993639-28aa-442a-8ea6-2abaa695b698 One reason prices have not risen further is that oil markets still deem it likely that, with midterm elections four months away, Mr Trump will cave. https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2026/07/14/trumps-hormuz-brinkmanship-is-worsening-a-global-fuel-crunch Ja, vad kan vara viktigare än the midterm elections? T...

Bill Dudley, US inflation and financial conditions US inflation remains elevated, with a broad range of underlying measures ranging from 2.4% to 3.3%.  Inflation has exceeded the central bank’s 2% objective for more than five years.  When this is the case, monetary policy should be restrictive. There is little evidence that US monetary policy is currently restrictive.  The federal funds rate has been at the current level or higher for almost four years and the unemployment rate has been quite stable, at a level consistent with full employment for the past 2 years.  If policy had been restrictive then we should have expected to see the unemployment rate rising and inflation falling. The notion that monetary policy is not restrictive is supported by the buoyancy of financial market conditions: high stock prices, tight credit spreads and moderate bond yields.  For example, the Fed’s financial conditions index estimated that the stance of financial conditions last m...