Inlägg

Visar inlägg från september, 2017

Stockholm på andra plats i UBS Global Real Estate Bubble Index.

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John Authers FT 29 September 2017

Sea Level Rise: What It Is, Why It Matters, and What Can Be Done?

Two major factors are believed to contribute to this specifically.  First, as the planet’s temperature rises, the water in our oceans begins to physically expand, and thus take up more room. Water expansion is responsible for about one-third of the change in sea level. Second, higher world temperatures also make various ice sheets at different points melt. This melting accounts for the remaining two-thirds of sea level change.  John Hawthorne,  13 September 2017

Investors are mistaken if they think yields will be able to stay low for much longer

Bond yields could react more forcefully, if and when market participants upgrade their expectations concerning future growth and inflation.  Once investors wake up to the return of the economic cycle, their expectations about interest rates and the course of monetary policy will also change.  Michael Heise, chief economist at Allianz, FT 26 September 2017

Banking remains far too undercapitalised for comfort, Wolf

Senior officials argue that capital requirements have increased 10-fold.  Yet this is true only if one relies on the alchemy of risk-weighting.  In the UK, actual leverage has merely halved, to around 25 to one.  In brief, it has gone from the insane to the merely ridiculous. Martin Wolf, FT 21 September 2017

Ovanligt varmt havsvatten i Atlanten, stark västafrikansk monsun och ingen El Niño orkan

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Vattnet i den tropiska Atlanten är alltid varmt relativt sett, men precis som det mesta så varierar även det över tid . Den här variationen kallas för den atlantiska multidekadala oscillationen, AMO, och består av en varm och en kall fas.  Dessa faser kännetecknas av 20-40 åriga perioder där vattentemperaturen i Atlanten oftare är varmare respektive kallare.  Sedan mitten på 1990-talet (ungefär från 1995) befinner sig Atlanten i en varm fas av AMO.  Read more here

How Jean-Claude Juncker's grand plan for the EU was first laid out 84 years ago

In a book called The United States of Europe. It was written by a close ally of Jean Monnet By the Fifties, Monnet realised that their dream could not be realised overnight. It should, therefore, be assembled stealthily, bit by bit, without for a long time declaring its real goal. And they should begin by pretending that it was just an economic arrangement, a “Common Market” Which was why, when Richard North and I first unearthed this story, we called  our book The Great Deception . Christopher Booker, Telegraph 17 September 2017 The Supranational Politics of Jean Monnet: Ideas and Origins of the European Community by Frederic J. Fransen Most work on Monnet's contribution begins with his later presence as an elder statesman of the European movement and reads his later pronouncements back into his earlier work. This book takes the opposite approach and, by concentrating on his earlier work, is able to show a more complicated picture of Monnet's aspirations than

Lots of people were supposed to prevent the financial crisis.

But while a few warned about the dangers in real time, most policymakers, risk managers, and academics failed in their responsibility to protect the rest of us. Matthew C Klein, FT 13 September 2017

How the dollar’s weakness is the rest of the world’s problem, El-Erian

Forex markets pose a threat to a synchronised recovery needed to validate stock prices Mohamed El-Erian, FT 13 September 2017

Some cling to the notion that stimulus is unhelpful, risky and hard. Such views need updating. The Ecnonomist

Economists of all stripes argued that the “multiplier” on stimulus—the amount by which a dollar of borrowing raises GDP—is usually low. Households save their higher incomes in expectation of offsetting future tax rises But studies since the Great Recession tend to find that multipliers are substantially higher than once thought, particularly when monetary policy is constrained.  Multipliers in such cases are often closer to two, ie, GDP increases by nearly twice the size of the stimulus. The Economist, 7 September 2017 Comment by Rolf Englund:  If the marginal tax rate is 50 per cent we have a Free Lunch.

On Sept 16 1992, the UK was forced out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM)

membership of which had been the cornerstone of the John Major government’s economic policy, which now lay in tatters. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/09/10/ignore-naysayers-competitive-pound-positive-economy/ Men den svenska regeringen, med Bildt, Unckel, Alf Svensson och Ulf Dinkelspiel, följde inte England.  Däremot lånade Ulf Dinkelspiels fondfirma, Öhmans, dagen efter, 750 miljoner kronor av Riksbanken, till en ränta om 34 % medan andra fondkommissionärer samtidigt fick betala 500 % ränta för motsvarande typ av lån. Konstitutionsutskottets betänkande 1994/95:KU30

A slowing down of the jet stream contributed to Harvey’s lingering destruction.

Charles Greene, an atmospheric scientist at Cornell University, believes that warming in the Arctic led to a slowing down of a high-altitude, circulating wind known as the jet stream, which he argues contributed to Harvey’s lingering destruction.  If that turns out to be the case, it portends more such events to come.  He suspects recent droughts in the western United States may have been exacerbated by the same phenomenon, as a more sluggish jet stream allowed masses of dry air to get locked into place. https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-09-08/another-way-climate-change-might-make-hurricanes-worse Väderkartan är konstig (inte som den var förr) Englund 5 oktober 2010 BBC och Englund om Jet Stream och vädret https://englundmacro.blogspot.se/2014/02/bbc-och-englund-om-jet-stream-och-vadret.html

U.S. trade deficit shows no sign of shrinking

The trade gap in goods with China increased to $33.6 billion in July MarketWatch 6 Sept 2017

Central bank policies introduced to mitigate the crisis may be sowing the seeds of another one

One of the inescapable truths of the past 10 years is that  the central bank policies introduced to mitigate the crisis may be sowing the seeds of another one.   As in the run-up to 2007, ultra-low interest rates have been distorting the world’s finances. Patrick Jenkins, FT’s financial editor, 31 August 2017

Western capitalism has few sacred cows left. The independence of central banks from elected governments.

Yanis Varoufakis, Project Syndicate 29 August 2017

Perhaps the macro question – is why low unemployment isn’t sparking higher inflation as the fabled Phillips curve says it should.

John Mauldin, 2 September 2017

Weak wage growth suggests the /US/ economy is not at full employment

https://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2017/09/america-s-labour-market death of the Phillips curve - Nonsens. If the economy takes off above Stall Speed the Philips Curve will be back. https://englundmacro.blogspot.se/2017/08/discussions-around-death-of-phillips.html

Sambandet mellan den fasta växelkursen och realräntechocken

Rolf Englund, oktober 2005 Tänk vad man kan hitta i sin dator. I boken Ekonomisk Politik. En vänbok till Assar Lindbeck (SNS Förlag 1995) bidrar de båda ekonomerna Hans Tson Söderström och Nils Lundgren med ett intressant kapitel kallat Kronförsvaret hösten 1992 - var det värt sitt pris? Den absoluta lejonparten av de totala kostnaderna för Riksbanken åsamkades under den sista veckan före kronans fall, när Riksbanken frångick sin tidigare strategi att försvara kronan genom räntehöjningar för att i stället övergå till direkta interventioner på valutamarknaden. Sedan kommer en anmärkningsvärd mening: - Detta strategibyte gav privata aktörer som litat på Riksbankens utfästelser om fast kronkurs möjlighet att gå ur sina valutalån, men öppnade samtidigt möjlighet för utländska och inhemska spekulanter att ta position mot kronan.  En kanske önskvärd omfördelning av oundvikliga växelkursförluster inom Sverige kunde genomföras endast till priset av ytterligare förluster för Riksbanke