Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, the world’s oldest bank, would see its capital wiped out...

in a severe economic downturn, according to European stress tests that also delivered relatively weak results for Deutsche Bank and Société Générale.

FT 30 July 2021

https://www.ft.com/content/c4207dc7-578f-428e-bb72-6aabbaf31f57

Mario Draghi Has to Explain One Last Thing. So what happened, exactly, at Monte Paschi?

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2019/07/mario-draghi-has-to-explain-one-last.html

 European Banking Authority

https://www.eba.europa.eu/eba-publishes-results-its-2021-eu-wide-stress-test

Twenty-three banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, underwent “stress tests” by the Fed that modelled the financial damage from a series of doomsday scenarios. 

These included a US stock market crash, a steep drop in economic output and substantial distress in commercial real estate.

The results, released on Thursday, pave the way for billions of dollars in stock buybacks and dividends, which bank investors have been eagerly anticipating.

FT 25 June 2021

https://www.ft.com/content/78f53986-fefa-4208-b4ea-674052a9ca3f

Why 2% in the First Place?

 The Fed has never justified 2%. It is a number dreamt up, without explanation but unfortunately now used world-wide.

2% inflation benefits banks, the wealthy, and those with first access to money.

https://mishtalk.com/economics/economic-nonsense-is-extremely-well-anchored-in-fantasyland-and-not-just-at-the-fed

Amid a wide range of options, inflation targeting remains the simplest and least bad

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2021/03/amid-wide-range-of-options-inflation.html

Interest rates haven’t been this low in 5,000 years

That’s a finding in the latest Bank of America flow show report, which, in fairness, is a number that’s been trotted out before. It’s based on a 2005 book about the history of interest rates, but the chart is still incredible to examine.

The Bank of America report pointed out there was a record weekly inflow to Treasury inflation-protected securities of $3.2 billion.  

The 10-Year Treasury Inflation-Indexed security yielded a record low negative 1.15% on Thursday.

MarketWatch July 30, 2021

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/interest-rates-havent-been-this-low-in-5-000-years-11627644496

https://www.wiley.com/en-gb/A+History+of+Interest+Rates,+4th+Edition-p-9780471732839

Vi kan mycket väl bevittna världshistoriens största och kanske farligaste bubbla.

Räntorna är de lägsta på åtminstone 5 000 år.

Detta betyder att priset på obligationer är de högsta på 5 000 år.

Andreas Cervenka, SvD 27 januari 2016

Is it too late to prevent climate change? NASA

Even if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases today, global warming would continue to happen for at least several more decades, if not centuries.

https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/16/is-it-too-late-to-prevent-climate-change/

Does the elite treat its country as a sort of luxury watch that it’s only looking after for future generations...

or as a stolen wallet full of cash? 

South Africa is a case study of what happens when the elite’s time horizon shortens.

There are only a few lucky countries whose elites reliably think decades ahead. This is an unfairly self-perpetuating system. Typically, these are old democracies, where members of the elite live in old houses. Even there, elites have varying time horizons.

Simon Kuper FT 29 July 2021

https://www.ft.com/content/73f6ba3a-c381-424d-a94d-138921a896ce

För 50 år sedan, 1971, avskaffade president Nixon dollarns knytning till guldet (at a rate of $35 an ounce))

August marks the 50th anniversary of a momentous event: Richard Nixon, then the US president, summoned his advisers to Camp David  to take the collective decision to sever the dollar’s link with the gold standard.

Jeffrey E Garten book Three Days at Camp David 

America simply did not possess enough gold to honour dollar claims. And that issue raised a bigger question that always stalks finance: what is the basis on which money commands value and trust?

David Graeber, a former anthropology professor,  in his book Debt, The First 5,000 Years.

Before then nobody thought money had value because an independent central bank had an inflation target. 

Gillian Tett FT 28 July 2021

https://www.ft.com/content/bb2bd452-727f-4fe4-877c-4d0875c187d3

John Connally, when Treasury secretary in President Richard Nixon’s cabinet, famously told his European counterparts in 1971 that the dollar “is our currency but your problem”

Trichet: "It is extremely important that the US has been saying that a strong dollar is in the interests of the US."

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2018/01/trichet-it-is-extremely-important-that.html

Could it be that changes in the jet stream or the migration of drought zones are triggering shifts we do not yet understand?

 Oreskes and her colleagues wrote in a 2012 paper, “core scientific values of objectivity, rationality and dispassion” have led to conservative projections about the impact of climate change, even in IPCC assessments.

The short answer is that scientists are divided about whether a more dangerous phase of non-linear change has begun. 

 FT 28 July 2021             

https://www.ft.com/content/3125bee9-73ae-4abf-ac58-615fe8e43396                   

Luis Buñuel's recipe for a dry martini - from "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00roxpI3Y7I

Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2016/11/le-charme-discret-de-la-bourgeoisie.html

Carl-Johan Westholm är upphovsman till uttryck som "Skapande eller bevakande Sverige"” och "Borgerlighetens diskreta skam". 

https://www.mynewsdesk.com/se/timbro/pressreleases/ny-skrift-fraan-timbro-se-staten-foer-statsblinda-92988

 

The Ilyushin Il-2 was one of the most heavily produced aircraft in military history

 The main reason for the heavy losses lay in the Il-2’s vulnerability in the air. Its heavy armor protected it from ground attacks but was less useful against enemy fighters. The Il-2 was no match for enemy fighters when it came to speed and maneuverability, as it had been designed for toughness, not agility.

https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/the-ilyushin-il-2.html

US real yields hit record low

 Negative real yields pose a big problem for pension funds and other long-term asset allocators that are also grappling with equity markets trading at high valuations.

FT 26 July 2021

https://www.ft.com/content/71d6661d-7a62-4a5f-959b-4cb2f1e94d68

Investors pour $3.2bn into inflation-protected US Treasuries

FT 30 July 2021

https://www.ft.com/content/f81485d3-4796-460c-bf23-79c0857d9a3c

“Stagflation is absolutely the biggest risk for every investor”

The possibility of stagflation — an economic environment marked by high unemployment, high inflation, and low economic growth, experienced in the U.S. in the 1970s — has moved onto the radar screen of some market analysts.

MarketWatch 26 July 2021

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/stagflation-is-a-legitimate-risk-that-would-be-painful-for-u-s-markets-11627093835

Slaget på Åsundens is - riksföreståndaren Sten Sture den yngre

Slaget på Åsundens is eller slaget vid Bogesund utspelades den 19 januari 1520 tre km söder om Bogesund (nuvarande Ulricehamn). 

En svensk styrka under riksföreståndaren Sten Sture den yngre förlorade slaget mot en dansk armé. 

Sten Sture sårades dödligt, varför slaget fick långtgående konsekvenser för den politiska utvecklingen i Sverige.

https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slaget_p%C3%A5_%C3%85sundens_is

The Day After Tomorrow Was Yesterday

 It feels like we are living through the first vertiginous 15 minutes of a disaster movie, maybe one called “The Day After Tomorrow Was Yesterday.”

Crazy storms that used to hit every century now seem quotidian, overwhelming systems that cannot withstand such a battering.

As Angela Merkel and President Biden touted a climate and energy partnership on her recent visit here, nature mocked them. While the two leaders had dinner, rains submerged huge swaths of Germany, including medieval towns.

“Everything we worried about is happening, and it’s all happening at the high end of projections, even faster than the previous most pessimistic estimates,” 

Maureen Dowd Opinion Columnist New York Times 24 July 2021

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/24/opinion/sunday/climate-change-floods-wildfires.html

Scientists say the shifting pattern of the jet stream is exacerbating the effects of climate change

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2021/07/scientists-say-shifting-pattern-of-jet.html

Det är kört. Så kan man helt kort sammanfatta Jonathan Jeppssons bok ”Åtta steg mot avgrunden”.

 2050 kommer lika mycket energi att användas till världens luftkonditionering som hela Kina använder i dag för att producera all sin elektricitet”

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2020/08/det-ar-kort-sa-kan-man-helt-kort.html

Combined value of loans made by wealth management units at top US banks in second quarter exceeds $600bn

This represented 22.5 per cent of the banks’ total loan books, up from 16.3 per cent in mid-2017.

FT 24 July 2021

https://www.ft.com/content/8a328af4-b8f2-48c5-82a9-d7dc1c345e1c

Britain entering first world war was 'biggest error in modern history'

Historian Niall Ferguson says Britain could have lived with German victory and should have stayed out of war

Guardian 30 January 2014

https://internetional.se/bookskontrafaktisk.htm

Britain fighting in the First World War was 'the biggest error in modern history' 

Britain fighting in the First World War was 'the biggest error in modern history' according to leading historian | Daily Mail Online

Gray Tide in the East is the best-selling counterfactual history of the First World War, if the Germans had not invaded Belgium in 1914 and thereby brought Great Britain and, eventually, the United States into the war. 

August 1, 1914, Berlin: Kaiser Wilhelm II cancels the German invasion of Belgium over the objections of his generals, sending his armies East against Russia instead of West to France, and sets off a chain of events that will radically change the course of modern history.

https://www.amazon.com/Gray-Tide-East-alternate-history-ebook/dp/B077G9LCNZ/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=alternate+history&qid=1627151705&s=books&sr=1-4

1-16 of over 50,000 results for "alternate history"

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=alternate+history&i=stripbooks-intl-ship&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

It is my opinion (John Mauldin) that this has the potential to go down as the greatest policy error in central bank history

The systemic meltdown risk had passed. The fire was still smoldering but at that point, it was mainly a fiscal fire. 

Fire Chief Jerome Powell himself said so, repeatedly begging Congress to deal with unemployment and business failures more effectively. He admitted there was little else his fire trucks could do but he kept them there anyway in the form of massive quantitative easing and keeping rates at the zero bound. 

They are still on-scene now.

It is my opinion that this has the potential to go down as the greatest policy error in central bank history. I know that’s saying a lot.

Here’s a handy timeline summarizing the Fed’s near-daily actions in March and April 2020. 

Consumer Price Index is a terrible proxy for consumer prices.

One argument, to which I am somewhat sympathetic, is that this doesn’t matter because the Fed can’t generate inflation even if it wants to. It’s been trying and failing for over a decade. 

Stock prices and home prices both respond to liquidity, and the Fed is stuffing the economy with as much liquidity as it can. Recent activity far outstrips what they did in the Great Financial Crisis and following, which was itself unprecedented at the time.

(Nice Chart)

I would like to go back to a time when we didn’t wake up in the morning wondering what the Federal Reserve would do. Its actions have distorted the economy, repressed savers, and made the wealth and income divide far greater than it should be.

John Mauldin 23 July 2021

https://www.mauldineconomics.com/frontlinethoughts/federal-reserve-folly

Housing prices have no direct influence on our inflation measures. They do have indirect influence via the imputed, subjective “owner’s equivalent rent” methodology. Its accuracy is questionable at best.

What’s not questionable, though, is that home prices have a direct impact on the homeowner’s spending power. 

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2021/03/for-most-people-housing-is-major.html

If the ECB has the policy tools to return inflation to its objective, why does it not deploy them?

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2021/07/if-ecb-has-policy-tools-to-return.html

VIETNAM SAIGON THE COMMUNISTS TAKEOVER

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mknTDi70KFE

Self-regarding economics departments at prestigious academic institutions no longer bother to teach the history of economic thought

Robert Skidelsky is a historian, an epic biographer of John Maynard Keynes, and a prolific debater in the United Kingdom’s House of Lords. He calls What’s Wrong with Economics? a “primer,”

Although the neoclassical hegemony was disrupted by the Great Depression and the rise of Keynesian models, that period proved to be merely a 40-year digression. The economics profession today is as Skidelsky describes it: an army of neoclassical technicians

... academics compete for attention, citations, rankings, promotions, and – above all – the approval of those who taught them those tools in the first place.

As such, Skidelsky’s appeal for a return to an economics that is rooted in history, sensitive to ethics, and alert to the limits of the “self-regulating” market is doomed to fall on deaf ears. 

In The Age of Fragmentation, Italian economist Alessandro Roncaglia, formerly of Sapienza University of Rome, provides a wide-ranging critical history of contemporary mainstream economic thought.

Harvard University economist Stephen A. Marglin’s Raising Keynes. 

The latest group of heretics are the advocates of Modern Monetary Theory, who have developed Keynes and Hyman Minsky’s real-time, uncertainty-driven, bank-money chartalism into a full-fledged critique of fraud and regulatory failure in the financial sector. 

In leading universities, governed at their highest levels these days by financiers, this group, no surprise, is treated as beneath contempt.

James K. Galbraith Project Syndicate 23 July 2021

https://www.project-syndicate.org/onpoint/economics-captured-by-neoclassical-magical-thinking-by-james-k-galbraith-2021-07

Scientists say the shifting pattern of the jet stream is exacerbating the effects of climate change

The deadly weather that has unfolded in recent weeks has left climate scientists “shocked” and concerned that extreme events are arriving even faster than models predicted.

FT 24 July 2021

https://www.ft.com/content/9a647a51-ede8-480e-ba78-cbf14ad878b7

Väderkartan är konstig (inte som den var förr)

Rolf Englund blog 12 maj 2010

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2014/11/allt-du-behover-veta-om-vadret-och-jet.html

If the ECB has the policy tools to return inflation to its objective, why does it not deploy them?

For the past decade, inflation outcomes in the eurozone have persistently undershot the objective of the European Central Bank.

Output and employment have been lower than they needed to be to deliver on the ECB’s self-defined measure of price stability. 

For almost all of this period of inflation undershoot, the ECB has set monetary policy while its own forecasts showed inflation would not reach its objective over the usual two to three-year horizon

Malcolm Barr, head of western European economics at JPMorgan, FT 22 July  2021

https://www.ft.com/content/a590671c-7c16-4767-b54f-c6ba592b6b4e

Why the Greek deal will work

ECB President Mario Draghi effectively sidestepped both obstacles by launching a program of quantitative easing so enormous that it will finance the entire deficits of all eurozone governments (now including Greece) and mutualize a significant proportion of their outstanding bonds.

Germany, Spain, Italy, and several northern European countries required, for domestic political reasons, a ritual humiliation of radical Greek politicians and voters who openly defied EU institutions and austerity demands.

Having achieved this, EU leaders have no further reason to impose austerity on Greece or strictly enforce the terms of the latest bailout. 

Instead, they have every incentive to demonstrate the success of their “tough love” policies by easing austerity to accelerate economic growth, not only in Greece but throughout the eurozone.

Anatole Kaletsky MarketWatch July 22, 2015 

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-the-greek-deal-will-work-2015-07-22

What is both too hot and too cold? The answer: the United States economy in the summer of 2021

“We call it a whiff of stagflation,” said Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist at Capital Economics

Businesses are complaining of labor shortages and offering all kinds of inducements to attract workers. Yet the unemployment rate is a recession-like 5.9 percent. 

And the share of adults in the labor was 63.3 percent in February 2020 but has bounced around between 61.4 percent and 61.7 percent for more than a year.

In the first three months of the year, longer-term bond yields soared and the yield curve steepened. That has reversed in recent weeks. 

NYT 22 July 2021

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/21/upshot/economy-usa.html

US Home prices are rising at their fastest pace in history...

fueling concern that a new real estate bubble has formed.

So far, nothing has been done, despite protest from some Fed officials like Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren, who recently argued that a “boom and bust cycle” in real estate is incompatible with financial stability.

Former Federal Reserve Vice-Chairman Donald Kohn made a similar point in a 2017 speech that Washington regulators “need the power to put limits on loan-to-value and debt-to-income measures, when loosening standards, perhaps occurring outside the banking system, threaten financial and economic stability.”

MarketWatch 21 July 2021

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/washington-might-have-to-go-to-war-to-fight-a-housing-bubble-does-it-have-the-tools-to-win-11626881606

Vi har en hushållssektor som är mer räntekänslig än den någonsin varit tidigare, säger Stefan Ingves juli 2021

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2021/07/vi-har-en-hushallssektor-som-ar-mer.html

Housing expenses are the sleeping giant - US inflation

Shelter costs account for about a third of the overall CPI, and comprise rental prices as well as what is known as “owner-equivalent rent”, the estimated cost of a house occupied by an owner if it were rented out.

“We calculate the market won’t be fully in balance until 2023 or 2024. So I’m not sure that the uptick in rents is particularly shortlived,” said Ali Wolf

FT 21 July 2021

https://www.ft.com/content/efdf1845-6138-4af7-8d2b-c20df9fed218

ATT DEN POLITISKA KLASSEN STÅR HANDFALLEN OCH FÖRVIRRAD ÄR INTE KONSTIGT

 I veckan skrev jag en krönika om min djupa känsla av osläktskap med politikerna, om att jag hatar Annie Lööf för hennes lögner och väljarsvek. 

https://www.fokus.se/2021/07/anna-bjorklund-darfor-kanner-jag-avsky/

Den partipolitiska låtsasleken håller jag inte på med och det gör få smarta människor jag känner. Och det är väl det som är grundproblemet. Politik har en gång varit ärofyllt och hedersamt, till och med snobbiga näringslivspersoner och kulturmänniskor har engagerat sig. Nu är återväxten usel, de flesta håller med om att landet har problem, men de som vill arbeta med att lösa dem blir allt färre. 

Anna Björklund Fokus  2021-07-19

https://www.fokus.se/2021/07/att-den-politiska-klassen-star-handfallen-och-forvirrad-ar-inte-konstigt

The pandemic-induced recession ended more than a year ago — but

Some 9.3 million Americans remain unemployed, according to the June unemployment report published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

Some 4 million people have been unemployed for more than 27 weeks — that’s 2.9 million more people than there were in February.

MarketWatch 20 July 2021

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-pandemic-induced-recession-ended-more-than-a-year-ago-but-the-u-s-economy-isnt-out-of-the-woods-yet-11626788581

Fiscal and monetary largesse in the advanced states overwhelm the residual pockets of Covid damage in the OECD bloc

 Pent-up savings and a capex restocking cycle should pick up the baton as state support fades (the US fiscal impulse turns negative this quarter).

The UK is the world’s laboratory for opening up. Unfortunately it has done so with breathtaking incompetence and given the process a bad name.

It will soon become clear to market traders across the globe whether British hospitalisations will remain manageable or whether the pandemic again approaches the catastrophism of Professor Neil Ferguson. 

Every time the US Federal Reserve in particular has tried to extricate itself from the great QE experiment, it has set off bond market turmoil. The attempt in late 2018 to unwind QE by ‘automatic pilot’ led to a plunge in yields and a major Wall Street scare. The Powell Fed was forced to retreat.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Telegraph 20 July 2021

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/07/20/markets-fear-inflation-much-delta-variant/

Covid: UK faces a difficult summer, says leading scientist

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-57877033

Man who started QE; Lord Mervyn King, now member of committee that slams QE

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2021/07/man-who-started-qe-lord-mervyn-king-now.html

Forntid Framtid Nuets Ansvar

 

Värnhems klosterkyrka Götiska Förbundet

Reklam för film på Amazon Prime

Buy the dips.Väldigt många har väldigt länge blivit väldigt rika genom att följa detta råd

Men om många av dem nu säger att den här dippen skall jag inte köpa in i. Vem skall då köpa?

When the walls come down, investors will scavenge the news for “catalysts.” Don’t fall into this trap. Undoubtedly, some “catalyst” will be found, but the mistake will be in believing that the collapse is caused by that piece of “bad” news. 

The important question to ask is “What drove the bubble?” That’s where the lessons are. 

John P. Hussman

Världsberömd Permabjörn.

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2021/07/what-triggered-crash-hussman-funds.html

“The market appears ready to take on a more defensive character...

 as we experience a meaningful deceleration in earnings and economic growth,” wrote Mike Wilson, Morgan Stanley’s chief U.S. equity strategist, in a note Monday. 

“Market breadth has been deteriorating for months and is just another confirmation of the mid-cycle transition, in our view. It usually ends with a material (10-20%) index level correction.”

The morning sell-off in stock futures is accelerating with Dow futures now down 450 points

PUBLISHED SUN, JUL 18 20216:06 PM EDT

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/18/stock-market-futures-open-to-close-news.html

Monday 19 July

Wall Street fredag 16 July

US inflation today is much more like good news than bad - Rogoff

In fact, economic theory gives very little robust guidance on whether, say, 3 per cent inflation is better than 2 per cent in normal times, so long as it remains reasonably stable and predictable. 

When Olivier Blanchard was IMF chief economist in 2010, he argued that inflation targets should be raised to 4 per cent.

Kenneth Rogoff FT 16 July 2021

The writer is a professor of economics and public policy at Harvard university and former chief economist at the IMF

https://www.ft.com/content/a7c101be-7361-4307-981d-b8edf6d002be

Riktiga karlar är inte rädda för lite inflation

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2010/02/riktiga-karlar-ar-inte-radda-for-lite.html

Did inflation targeting fail?

Martin Wolf, Financial Times, May 5 2009

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2020/07/the-troubling-bit-is-that-these.html

Riksbankens mål om 2,0 procents inflation tillkom i all hast för litet mer än 20 år sedan

Inflationsmålet skulle inte ha funnits där, om Sverige hade klarat att hålla fast växelkurs.

Johan Schück, DN 2015-05-08

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2020/05/weve-now-had-nearly-30-years-of.html

What Triggered the Crash? - Hussman Funds

When the time comes to ask the question – “What triggered the crash?” – remember that this is the least important question. A market crash requires nothing more than a shift in investor psychology from careless speculation to even modest risk-aversion.  

With valuations at the most extreme level in history, the one thing that the market simply cannot tolerate is the eager attempt of a substantial number of investors to exit. 

When the walls come down, investors will scavenge the news for “catalysts.” Don’t fall into this trap. Undoubtedly, some “catalyst” will be found, but the mistake will be in believing that the collapse is caused by that piece of “bad” news. 

The important question to ask is “What drove the bubble?” That’s where the lessons are. 

The root causes of a crash are always the factors that nurtured and encouraged the “happy” period of carefree and irresponsible speculation that led to the bubble extreme.

John P. Hussman, Ph.D. President, Hussman Investment Trust

July 2021

https://www.hussmanfunds.com/comment/mc210715/

Hussman’s claim to fame includes forecasting the market collapses of 2000 and 2007-2008. 

Long-suffering market bears, like John Hussman

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2019/05/long-suffering-market-bears-like-john.html

 

Man who started QE; Lord Mervyn King, now member of committee that slams QE

The House of Lords committee on which Lord Mervyn King sits has laid into the policy he initiated.

FT Alphaville 16 July 2021

https://www.ft.com/content/ce450316-d149-4ede-b4c6-5bc507e4f004

 

Mervyn King inflation fiscal union

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2020/06/mervyn-king-inflation-fiscal-union.html

Get ready for the most severe correction since the bull market began in March 2020.

Hayes Martin bases his sobering forecast on the increasing divergences within the U.S. market, as indicated by fewer and fewer stocks participating in the headline-grabbing strength of the leading indices.

Martin reports that the only area of the market not showing dangerous divergences right now is the large-cap dominated S&P 500. 

Mark Hulbert MarketWatch July 15, 2021 at 4:23 p.m. ET

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/expect-a-10-correction-in-u-s-stocks-by-mid-august-says-this-forecaster-with-a-proven-track-record-11626380633

 

Ständigt denna Jet stream

 

Severe flooding in western Europe

BBC 16th July 2021

https://www.bbc.com/weather/features/57862526

The Omega-Shaped Jet Stream Responsible for Europe’s Heatwave

Englund blogg 26 juni 2019

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-omega-shaped-jet-stream-responsible.html

Why Was the Discovery of the Jet Stream Mostly Ignored?

Maybe because it was published in Esperanto.

Between 1923 and 1925, Ooishi completed almost 1,300 observations of fierce high-altitude winds, later named the jetstream. The somewhat eccentric Ooishi was not only the director of Japan’s Tateno atmospheric observatory but also the head of the Japan Esperanto Society. Ooishi announced his discovery of the swift, high-altitude river of air in the Tateno observatory’s annual reports, which he published in Esperanto. Not surprisingly, his research was ignored, and the U.S. military was caught off guard by two consequences of the invisible jetstream.

Thanks Wayne.

https://www.airspacemag.com/as-next/as-next-may-unbelievablebuttrue-180968355

 

Yanis Varoufakis: De vägrade ägna sig åt ekonomiska argument

Vägrade. Man la fram ett argument som man verkligen hade jobbat på och säkerställt att det är logiskt konsekvent, och du möts av ansikten med tomt stirrande blick. Som om du aldrig sagt något. Man hade lika gärna kunnat sjunga den svenska nationalsången – och fått samma svar.

Det fanns sympatiska personer, som IMF-chefen Christine Lagarde, men eurogruppen däremot bestod av några otrevliga typer med mycket makt som stirrade på honom och sa: "Du har rätt i vad du säger, men vi kommer krossa dig ändå".

SvD 14 juli 2015

https://www.svd.se/yanis-varoufakis-basta-citat

Have you wondered how two Nobel laureate economists, sometimes sharing the same year’s prize, can consider each other charlatans? This would never happen among Nobel laureate physicists or biologists. 

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2021/02/trump-is-more-dangerous-than-mere-liar.html

Den amerikanska finanspolitiken handlar om reformer som får Marshallhjälpen efter andra världskriget att framstå som löjligt futtig

Henrik Mitelmam DI 14 juli 2021

https://www.di.se/analys/sluta-oroa-dig-for-ranteelandet/

Marshall-hjälpen och nästa svenska devalvering

Med dagens kurs SEK/USD på cirka 5:60 uppgick alltså den totala  Marshall-hjälpen till 382 miljaaarder svensk kronor.

Enligt dagens Dagens Industri (2/11) uppgår Sveriges utlandsskuld till 454 miljaarder kronor:

Den privata räntebärande nettoskulden till utlandet är uppe i 473 miljarder. 

Det är en ökning med mer än 200 miljarder på ett år.

Rolf Englund 1990 11 02

Sänt till Carl Bildt 90-11-02

Utlagt på Internet 96-10-29

https://www.internetional.se/cabpm.html

Gordon Brown’s Seven Ways to Change the World

The dilemmas of globalisation lie at the core of Seven Ways to Change the World, which joins an expanding library of works offering answers to the problems in the global system and describing a path to a better, post-pandemic future.

If anything, Brown downplays the central role he played getting the G7 to write-off debt of the poorest developing countries in 2005, and rallying the G20 in 2009 to agree a bold plan for managing the global financial crisis.

FT 18 June 2021

https://www.ft.com/content/544eb226-71a4-4aeb-b6c0-3100f85eca32

Gordon Brown räddade England och världen

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2017/11/gordon-brown-raddade-england-och-varlden.html

Political Economy Club essay prize-winners

Among the founder members were two heavy hitters in the history of economics, Thomas Malthus and David Ricardo. 

Martin Wolf 14 July 2021

https://www.ft.com/content/95f2dcd9-937b-4f02-b6be-2d69c86a5370

The winning essays

WE NEED TO LOOK BEYOND THE MARKET TO BEAT CLIMATE CHANGE

https://www.ft.com/content/bb92c7aa-aa1d-4797-9739-81ce1054ceaa

CONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION CAN NO LONGER BE OUR ECONOMIC ENGINE

https://www.ft.com/content/29aadf7b-10c3-4a02-b70e-dc87c474fa9d

 

Tanken att stater kan fortsätta att låna och spendera till negligerbara kostnader riskerar att bli nästa dyrköpta läxa

Vi riskerar att två kriser utbryter samtidigt: 1970-talets stagflation med ekonomisk nedgång och stigande konsumentpriser – och nya skuldkriser, eftersom både stater och hushåll är extremt belånade. 

Roubini är förvisso en känd dysterkvist, men var en av dem som långt i förväg varnade för finanskrisen.

Även om det skulle gå att fortsätta som nu ett tag till är frågan vad som skulle kunna uppnås. Japan har fört en expansiv ekonomisk politik i 30 år, men det som växt är statsskulden, inte ekonomin.

Mattias Svensson SvD 13 juli 2021

https://www.svd.se/sloseri-ger-ingen-ny-ekonomi

MMT Public Debt: How Much is Too Much?

Listen especiallly to the girl with a background at the Fed.

Impressive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kqo2F9pIAb4

The French and Indian War (also known, much less poetically, as the Seven Years’ War

 

I had encountered it originally through a public television version of “The Last of the Mohicans,” but I soon found that the real conflict exceeded even James Fenimore Cooper’s romantic imagination

In world history it was folded into the larger categories of colonial warfare and endless Anglo-French conflict

The war that evicted the French from North America was not only incredibly fascinating but also one of history’s most important wars. Indeed, from a certain perspective, it was more important than the American War of Independence: 

The Revolution merely determined in what form Anglo-America would spread to embrace continental empire and global power, while the French and Indian War determined whether that continent-spanning America would come into being at all.

Ross Douthat NYT July 2021

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/13/opinion/french-indian-war-american-history.html

Vi som barn läste Den siste mohikanen vet att mohikanerna, som stred på engelsmännens sida, var ädla och tappra, medan irokeserna, som stred på fransmännens sida, var svekfulla och blodtörstiga. 

https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Den_siste_mohikanen

Britain, France, and the 18th-Century Quest for a Peaceful World Order by John Shovlin

‘The Victory of Montcalms Troops at Carillon

John Law urged the French monarchy to adopt his “System” of public credit and paper money. Law fell out of favour and was exiled in 1720, when the failure of his joint-stock vehicle, the Mississippi Company, caused France’s newly established Banque Générale to collapse. 

https://www.ft.com/content/c5ed3cfb-2f0c-4700-a20b-992ec52928aa

We live in a globalised world on a shared planet

Are we capable of acting upon the implications? 

That is the biggest question of the 21st century. 

The answer, I fear, is no.

Martin Wolf FT 13 July 2021

https://www.ft.com/content/c9448d15-8410-47d3-8f41-cd7ed41d8116

CPI climbed 0.9% last month. Economists polled by The Wall Street Journal had estimated a 0.5% advance

The rate of inflation in the 12 months ended in June climbed to 5.4% from 5%.

The last time prices rose that fast was in 2008, when oil hit a record $150 a barrel.

MarketWatch 13 July 2021

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/consumer-inflation-posts-biggest-increase-since-2008-cpi-shows-11626180086

‘I worry about inflation. I do not believe inflation is going to be transitory"

Larry Fink, chairman and CEO, BlackRock Inc.,the world’s largest asset manager

MarketWatch 14 July 2021

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/i-worry-about-inflation-says-blackrocks-larry-fink-warns-its-unlikely-to-be-transitory-11626275810

There is an unsettling technical explanation for the perverse behaviour of the bond markets over recent weeks

The junk bond market is euphoric. Funds are happily mopping up the weakest CCC-rated corporate debt in the US as if there was no tomorrow, compressing risk spreads to levels that surpass the giddiest days of the pre-Lehman debt bubble. 

The spread on BBB-rated debt has fallen to a record 1.11pc.

Meanwhile, Bank of America says the trailing price-to-earnings ratio for the S&P 500 index on Wall Street is also at an all-time high of 29.8, topping the dotcom peak in 1999.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Telegraph 13 July 2021

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/07/13/global-growth-scare-false-alarm/

The EU’s €750 billion recovery fund will not be enough to achieve anything close to a convergence...

between southern and northern member states; indeed, it will not even be enough to prevent them from drifting further apart. 

Since the EU’s poorer member states are already over-indebted, they cannot borrow much more, particularly if interest rates rise. 

Whenever inflation begins to increase again, the European Central Bank’s implicit policy of monetizing member-state debt (through the unlimited purchase of government bonds from poorer countries) will have to end.

Under these conditions, the only remaining way out would be a “transfer union"

Sigmar Gabriel, former federal minister and vice chancellor of Germany, Chairman of Atlantik-Brücke, Project Syndicate 12 July 2021

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/how-eu-germany-can-support-biden-democracy-agenda-by-sigmar-gabriel-2021-07

- Jag vill inte ha en federativ utveckling. Svenska folket har inte gått med i en federation.

 - Logiken i det hela rör sig i federativ riktning... Sch! säger Kohl åt mig när jag tar upp det

Prodi, Göran Persson och federalismen

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2020/05/prodi-goran-persson-och-federalismen.html

TINA Is Stupid

John Mauldin 9 July 2021

https://www.mauldineconomics.com/frontlinethoughts/tina-is-stupid

12 juli 2021

Increasingly the function of the primary equity market is to fund operating losses...

until such companies achieve profitability (or not as the case may be). And the structure of capital markets generally is dictated increasingly by ultra-loose monetary policy. 

In effect they outsourced liquidity management to the central bank with liquidity risk ultimately falling on the taxpayer.

Under the rules of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, liquidity has since been rebuilt

John Plender FT 12 July 2021

https://www.ft.com/content/fb3cddae-daca-4f4f-b0b7-aa58656041a0

Is there still the possibility of an orderly exit?

 What is clear to me is that we are moving irresistibly closer to a critical question for the economy and markets, and not just in the US: 

is there still the possibility of an orderly exit from what has been a remarkably long period of uber-loose monetary policies?

Mohamed A. El-Erian FT 12 July 2021

https://www.ft.com/content/ae158a9c-b783-4301-85c6-8ff8bc55a6b8

Fed needs to consider seriously how best to slowly lift its foot off the monetary accelerator

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2021/02/fed-needs-to-consider-seriously-how.html

Currently, the cyclically-adjusted earnings yield on the S&P 500 is only 2.6 per cent.

This is at crash-warning levels, by historical standards. 

Should a prolonged bear market occur, equity valuations might collapse. The valuations of the mid-1960s did not return for 30 years. 

The big threat, then, is that, as John Maynard Keynes allegedly said, “the market can remain irrational longer than you can stay solvent.” In effect, there is a shortage of speculators able to prevent equities from remaining durably mispriced. 

Martin Wolf FT 11 Julu 2021

https://www.ft.com/content/e3a621d3-5cfc-4410-bd3c-0fde3535582b

Las Vegas matched its all-time temperature high of 47.2C

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57794263

The President of the Republic asked Olivier Blanchard, Professor Emeritus at MIT, and Jean Tirole, Honorary President of the Toulouse School of Economics, to chair a commission of renowned international experts

The major future economic challenges, by Olivier Blanchard and Jean Tirole

https://www.strategie.gouv.fr/english-articles/major-future-economic-challenges-olivier-blanchard-and-jean-tirole

Inequality and the Macron Commission

DANI RODRIK STEFANIE STANTCHEVA

Procet Syndicate July 8, 2021

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/inequality-report-of-macron-commission-by-dani-rodrik-and-stefanie-stantcheva-2021-07 

 

Berlin Airlift, a turning point in the Cold War.

 At Yalta in February 1945, Winston Churchill, a dying Franklin Roosevelt and the cagey Joseph Stalin carved up Germany

The British writer Giles Milton brings this epic story to exhilarating life in “Checkmate in Berlin: The Cold War Showdown That Shaped the Modern World,”

WSJ 9  July 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/checkmate-in-berlin-review-breaking-the-blockade-11625836185

Yalta Conference

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yalta_Conference

Ben Bernanke, January 3, 2010

"Having experienced the damage that asset price bubbles can cause, we must be especially vigilant in ensuring that the recent experiences are not repeated."

Source John P. Hussman

https://twitter.com/hussmanjp/status/1412127964230258689?s=27

An investor consensus that took months to build has been coming apart

An investor consensus that took months to build, namely that robust economic growth and elevated inflation would bring about substantially higher interest rates, has been coming apart, and the pain for those caught in that trade has heightened with moves in the past couple of days.

FT 8 July 2021

https://www.ft.com/content/23e57d39-193f-4fcb-b896-8dc3960ccb8d

ECB decided to revise its inflation target and allow consumer prices to overshoot when deemed necessary

  ECB President Christine Lagarde: 

... there might be some moderate, temporary deviation in either direction of that 2% and that is okay. What we are very concerned about is any sustainable, durable, significant deviation from the target and that will require forceful action.”

CNBC 8 July 2021

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/08/ecb-lagarde-presents-first-policy-review-in-almost-two-decades.html

Fed officials suggested that they might need to pull back their support for the economy sooner than they had anticipated

 Officials still expect recent inflation surges to be temporary

WSJ 7 July 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/fed-debated-how-to-begin-pulling-back-on-stimulus-at-june-meeting-11625680801

Near Zero until 2023. Really?

The market will force the Fed to act earlier, I think.

Englund blogg 17 June 2021

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2021/06/near-zero-until-2023-really.html

We all love Mutti Merkel but

 German outperformance compared to the rest of Europe - but not the world, which it lags badly - is mostly the fruit of an ‘internal devaluation’ within the closed eurozone system. This was made possible by the Hartz IV wage compression policies 

Angela Merkel inherited a regime in which German industry had acquired a competitive edge of 20pc to 30pc against the Club Med bloc, which was nigh impossible for the South to reverse without going into debt deflation and making matters even worse. Ultimately this was untenable for a currency union, as became all too clear.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Telegraph 2 July 2021

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/07/02/love-mutti-merkel-leaves-trail-wreckage-across-europe/

Tyskland lyckades genomföra vad ekonomerna kallar en interndevalvering.

Hur kunde då Tyskland lyckas med det som i dag framstår som omöjligt för länderna i Sydeuropa?

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2011/12/wolodarski-och-tysklandss-framgang-med.html

The Hartz IV reforms – so widely praised as the foundation of German competitiveness, and now being foisted on southern Europe – did not raise productivity

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard 8 Oct 2014

http://www.nejtillemu.com/tyskdebatt.htm#1112ambroselysande

Large swathes of the Continent will be in an incontrovertible fourth wave by the end of this month, before they are sufficiently vaccinated

Yet Europe’s internal borders remain wide open. The imperative of saving this year’s tourist season has paralysed political leaders.

The ECB has been funding the entire budget deficits of the Latin bloc throughout the pandemic, drawing a veil over the underlying deterioration of sovereign debt profiles. 

The Banco de España says Spain’s debt has jumped 30 percentage points to 125pc of GDP since Covid arrived. Portugal has hit 137pc. Italy is flirting with 160pc of GDP this year.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Telegraph 6 July 2021

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/07/06/europes-fourth-covid-wave-freighted-political-consequences/

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/07/07/eurozone-panic-delta-variant-escalates/

Climatologists are nervous of being accused of alarmism - Mrs T. was alarmed in 1989

Margaret Thatcher in 1989 at the UN  warning that greenhouse gases were "changing the environment of our planet in damaging and dangerous ways".

Mrs Thatcher - formerly a research chemist - continued: "The result is that change in future is likely to be more fundamental and more widespread than anything we have known hitherto. It is comparable in its implications to the discovery of how to split the atom. Indeed, its results could be even more far-reaching.

"It is no good squabbling over who is responsible or who should pay. We shall only succeed in dealing with the problems through a vast international, co-operative effort."

This was extraordinarily prescient, and her words were even more devastating from the lips of a towering, right-wing world leader who couldn't be dismissed as a fretful hippy.

The world is probably heading for 1.5C of heating early next decade, and temperatures will push onwards to 2C and above unless policies radically change

Some scientists are warning that areas of the world will become uninhabitable if current trends continue. So what are our leaders doing to keep us safe?

Well, they're talking a good show, and doubtless some really mean to curb climate change. But the impacts of global heating are happening right now, whereas major nations plan to phase out emissions by 2050.

BBC 7 July 2021

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57729502

Här i fd Metodistkyrkan har min farfar spelat orgel, typ 1900...

 och min dotter sjungit med Adolf Fredrik.

https://www.stadsmissionen.se/st-paul-en-motesplats-alla/st-paul-byggs-om

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

 

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/162120.Extraordinary_Popular_Delusions_and_the_Madness_of_Crowds

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2020/11/what-south-sea-company-can-teach-us.html

The blistering temperatures in the US and Canada arise when the jet stream...

a band of fast-moving air high in the atmosphere, develops a large wave pattern that keeps the dome locked in place. 

Scientists are studying whether climate change is contributing to the jet stream’s unusual behaviour. 

FT 2 July 2021

https://www.ft.com/content/8b33177e-e17f-4668-b3a0-5554af8c8293

Allt Du behöver veta om vädret och The Jet Stream

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2014/11/allt-du-behover-veta-om-vadret-och-jet.html

“Hell is truth seen too late.”

― Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/622711-hell-is-truth-seen-too-late

Cement - the hardest problem of carbon emissions

The industry accounts for about 2.6bn tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, or about 6 per cent of global emissions. If it were a country, it would be the fourth-biggest emitter, just behind India, ahead of Russia and Japan.

FT 4 July 2021

https://www.ft.com/content/24d610a0-fb65-45bb-b747-e015e1f10c1a

Man måste vara blind om man inte ser att EU skaffar sig statens alla institutioner och symboler, flagga, mynt, president, parlament, domstol, försvar - och - som man nu försöker - en grundlag.

 Rösta inte på dom. Det bara uppmuntrar dom

Rolf Englund 2009-05-18

https://www.internetional.se/egoeuvaletmaj2009.htm

Posterity will regard the economic performance we are now witnessing as a golden age.

 It will also know, although we do not, how long this era lasts.

Martin Wolf, FT, 2/5 2007

https://www.internetional.se/svdbu.htm

The greatest wealth transfer in modern history has begun

Baby boomers and older Americans have spent decades accumulating an enormous stockpile of money. At the end of this year’s first quarter, Americans age 70 and above had a net worth of nearly $35 trillion

Older generations will hand down some $70 trillion between 2018 and 2042, according to research and consulting firm Cerulli Associates. Roughly $61 trillion will go to heirs—increasingly millennials and Generation Xers

WSJ 2 July 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/older-americans-35-trillion-wealth-giving-away-heirs-philanthropy-11625234216

The more urgent question, in many economists’ minds, is whether the aging of the population will be a drag on economic growth overall,  as has already been a problem in Western Europe and Japan.

MarketWatch 29 December 2014

https://www.internetional.se/shares.htm#overwhelm

When former Fed Chair Paul Volcker hiked rates to tackle inflation in 1980-82...

the result was a severe double-dip recession in the United States and a debt crisis and lost decade for Latin America. 

But now that global debt ratios are almost three times higher than in the early 1970s, any anti-inflationary policy would lead to a depression, rather than a severe recession.

Nouriel Roubin MarketWatch 1 July 2021

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-looming-stagflationary-debt-crisis-will-deliver-a-one-two-punch-to-markets-and-economies-11625078897

Remember: the Volcker shock triggered the Latin American debt crisis

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2021/06/remember-volcker-shock-triggered-latin.html

The U.S. trade deficit jumped in May to $71.2 billion

That’s the second highest on record, only surpassed by the $75 billion trade gap in March.

Exports rose to $206 billion while imports rose to $277.3 billion.

MarketWatch 2 July 2021

Roubini: The warning signs are already apparent

 For now, loose monetary and fiscal policies will continue to fuel asset and credit bubbles, propelling a slow-motion train wreck. 

The warning signs are already apparent in today’s high price-to-earnings ratios, low equity risk premia, inflated housing and tech assets, and the irrational exuberance surrounding special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), the crypto sector, high-yield corporate debt, collateralized loan obligations, private equity, meme stocks, and runaway retail day trading. 

Nouriel Roubini Project Syndicate 30 June 2021

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/stagflation-debt-crisis-2020s-by-nouriel-roubini-2021-06

Upplägget Spac är en form av uppköpsskalbolag

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2021/03/upplagget-spac-ar-en-form-av.html

WAITING FOR THE LAST DANCE

“So long as the music is playing, you’ve got to keep dancing. We’re still dancing.” 

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2021/05/i-vividly-remember-meeting-in-late-2007.html