Englund

Barcelona https://edition.cnn.com/travel/2023-worst-destinations-overtourism-avoid-crowds/index.html Framtiden för massturism med flyg förefaller inte vara oviss https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2023/12/framtiden-for-massturism-med-flyg.html

The Navy helicopters responded with an attack that sunk three boats and killed the rebels, the US Central Command said in a post on X.   The US earlier said it shot down two anti-ship ballistic missiles launched by Houthi rebels   https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-31/us-shoots-down-anti-ship-missiles-launched-by-houthi-targeting-maersk-vessel Helicopters from the USS Eisenhower responded  US Navy helicopters destroy Houthi boats in Red Sea after attempted hijack - BBC News Happy New Year! see also Englund: Bad (englundmacro.blogspot.com)  

 DN 30 december 2023 Stadsarkitekt Torleif Falk: Så ser Stockholms framtid ut - DN.se

The government tried to stop its publication The most explosive claims had already been revealed in Their Trade is Treachery, by Harry Chapman Pincher, published five years earlier, with Peter Wright as its main - anonymous - source. ( The book publicised, for the first time, the allegation that Sir Roger Hollis — a former Director General of MI5 — had been a Soviet spy) But it was the notion that an MI5 officer could publish a detailed memoir under his own name which alarmed the prime minister. Mrs Thatcher and her advisors believed this would set a dangerous precedent. After the Security Services Act, the government publicly acknowledged the Secret Intelligence Service [SIS] - commonly known as MI6 - and UK intelligence agency GCHQ. Later, the Intelligence and Security Committee was set up in Parliament to have statutory oversight of UK intelligence. Today, MI5 has its own Instagram account and its boss gives interviews to the media. BBC 29 December 2023 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-6...

Almost everything that could go wrong with housing in Australia has gone wrong Average property now costs about nine times an ordinary household's income, triple what it was 25 years ago Sydney s the second least affordable city on Earth to buy a property, trailing only Hong Kong,  The average price of a home in Sydney is over $678,000 - typ 7 millar, som en hygglig lägenhet i Vasastan. It's not doom and gloom for everyone though. That's difficult to stomach, Ms Hickman says, especially given how many households - one in three - now own a property other than the one they live in. As a result, millions of people are trapped in the rental market, seeking to create a watered-down version of the Australian Dream as tenants. But that's no paradise either. And all of this is happening at a time when natural disasters and climate effects are wiping out swathes of housing stock, making even more parts of the vast Australian continent effectively unliveable. "Friends who ha...

Because now that advanced military technologies like drones are readily available smaller players can yield much more power and project it more widely than ever before, enabling even their bad choices to shake the world.  Just look at how shipping companies across the globe are having to reroute their traffic and pay higher insurance rates today because the Houthis, Yemeni tribesmen you never heard about until recently, have acquired drones and rockets and started disrupting sea traffic around the Red Sea and through the Suez Canal. This is why I referred to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as our first true world war, and why I feel that Hamas’s war with Israel is in some ways our second true world war. The Israel-Hamas war. It was not as inevitable as some want you to think. What is the essential ingredient that Dubai has and Gaza lacks?  The short answer is visionary leadership. And it has all been done in the shadow (and with the envy) of a dangerous Islamic Republic of Iran....

Det handlar om så kallade ”allmänna råd” som nyligen bestämdes i den statliga Bokföringsnämnden och som alla bostadsrättsföreningar ska följa.  https://www.bfn.se/wp-content/uploads/vl23-1-brf.pdf Därmed ska årsredovisningarna för 2023 ha sju olika nyckeltal.  Det är tio år sedan SvD avslöjade att många föreningar hade satt i system att skjuta sparandet på framtiden genom så kallad progressiv avskrivning, något som sedan förbjöds, våren 2014. Johan Hellekant SvD 28 december 2023 https://www.svd.se/a/eJVpzM/nya-regler-for-bostadsrattsforeningar-nyckeltal-maste-redovisas Det är ingen nyhet att svenskar är överbelånade Ett viktigt skäl till det är det generösa ränteavdraget som bidragit till att driva upp bopriserna, och som kan komma att kosta staten över 56 miljarder i år. Nu larmar HSB om att många föreningar bara höjer avgifterna runt 6 procent trots att de snarare behöver höja dem med 50 (DN 11/12).  Anledningen är att medlemmar försöker stoppa avgiftshöjningen tills de...

Dollar Is Set for Worst Year Since 2020 Bloomberg 28 December 2023 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-28/dollar-battered-by-rate-cut-bets-set-for-worst-year-since-2020

  Almost no one thought 2023 would be a blockbuster year for stocks. They could hardly have been more wrong. A mania surrounding artificial intelligence and big technology stocks sent the Nasdaq Composite soaring 44%.  It is a far cry from the doom and gloom many were bracing for at the start of 2023. WSJ 29 December 2023 https://www.wsj.com/finance/stocks/what-did-wall-street-get-right-about-markets-this-year-not-much-7d4368fe Nasdaq Set For Best Year Since 1999  Bonds set for best two-month rally on record; dollar weakens Global equities poised for highest level since February 2022 Bloomberg 27 December 2023 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-27/stock-market-today-dow-s-p-live-updates It is good practice to learn from your mistakes, but even better is to learn from other people’s mistakes.   My biggest error in 2023 was the same as everyone else’s: being in the consensus that the fastest rate hikes in 40 years would cause a recession.  I thought i...

A shared understanding of the biggest economic event of the last century would help us better navigate the current transition. I read a recent paper comparing the wildly different causes given for the Great Depression between college American history and economics textbooks  The economic consensus that produced the “ Great Moderation” was smashed by the financial crisis in 2008. But unlimited monetary and fiscal stimulus seemed to solve economic problems up to and including pandemic disruptions — mysteriously not bringing the inflation conventional wisdom predicted. Inflation returned in 2022 in a painful way and, although it appears to be under control now, few are confident we understand it. American history textbooks cite mostly causes with no support from academic economists, who in turn promote theories nearly absent from the history texts. It’s the nature of the history textbook explanations that concerns me. They are all conventional wisdom of people at the time that are not...

  LA’s Third-Tallest Tower Sells for 45% Below 2014 Price Transaction is biggest office deal in downtown LA this year Vacancy rate nears 30% for office buildings in downtown LA 23/12 LA’s Third-Tallest Tower Sells for 45% Below 2014 Price - Bloomberg

Om ett år införs ett skattefritt sparande på ISK och i kapitalförsäkringar. Rätt fördelat på flera familjemedlemmar kan många hushåll därmed spara omkring 1 Mkr skattefritt.  Frånvaron av skatt ger en extra kick till sparandet   Under 2024 beskattas kapitalet i ISK och kapitalförsäkringar med 1,09 procent Det innebär att två vuxna tillsammans kan ha ett skattefritt sparande på som mest 600.000 kronor. Finns det barn kan det skattefria beloppet bli större. Hans Bolander DI 28 december 2023 https://www.di.se/nyheter/isk-tricket-familjen-kan-snart-spara-miljonbelopp-skattefritt/ En sänkning av den redan låga ISK-skatten skulle minska statens intäkter med hela 7 miljarder kronor Den procent sparare med mest kapital på sitt ISK-konto – det rör sig om cirka 35 000 individer – har sammanlagt 550 miljarder kronor.  https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2023/12/en-sankning-av-den-redan-laga-isk.html

Max Hjelm    DN 27 december 2023 Max Hjelm: Regeringen fulspelar om ISK – men borde låta skatten vara - DN.se Man kan säga att medelklassen har använts som en mänsklig sköld för miljardärerna”, säger Andreas Cervenka. Den procent sparare med mest kapital på sitt ISK-konto – det rör sig om cirka 35 000 individer – har sammanlagt 550 miljarder kronor.  Det motsvarar en dryg tredjedel av allt kapital inom ISK. DI 3 juni 2023 https://www.di.se/nyheter/sverige-langt-ifran-landet-lagom/

https://cornucopia.se/2023/12/positiva-borser-i-asien-pa-tisdagsmorgonen-extrema-elpriser-tillbaka-bostadsrattsavgifterna-hojs-sex-procent-istallet-for-nodvandiga-50/ Fin bild på Liljeholmen Kraftigt höjda avgifter hotar i nyproducerade bostadsrätter Johan Hellekant SvD 4 juli 2023 https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2023/07/kraftigt-hojda-avgifter-hotar-i.html

 The Fed introduced the Bank Term Funding Program, or BTFP, earlier this year as the banking crisis roiled markets. The program allows banks and credit unions to borrow funds for up to one year, pledging US Treasuries and agency debt as collateral valued at par.  The rate for these loans — one-year overnight index swaps plus 10 basis points — is currently 4.84% and 56 basis points lower than the rate for interest on reserve balances. Bloomberg 26 December 2023 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-26/fed-likely-to-end-bank-funding-program-in-march-says-wrightson Banking Crisis Plays Out at America’s Smallest Lenders Rural community banks are at risk from giant underwater bond portfolios Industry Bancshares, with some $5 billion in assets, is the parent company of six banks in eastern Texas. Industry is currently more than $75 million underwater because it piled into long-term bonds when rates were low. Those bonds plunged in value and the bank’s liabilities have been...

  Chinese Carmaker Overtakes Tesla as World’s Most Popular EV Maker The automaker is poised to surpass Tesla Inc. as the new worldwide leader in fully electric vehicle sales. When it does — likely in the current quarter — it will be both a symbolic turning point for the EV market and further confirmation of China’s growing clout in the global automotive industry. After leapfrogging the US, South Korea and Germany over the past few years, China now rivals Japan for the global lead in passenger car exports. Some 1.3 million of the 3.6 million vehicles shipped from the mainland as of October this year were electric. Bloomberg 27 december 2023 Elon Musk's Tesla Is Losing EV Race to China's BYD - Bloomberg

‘U.S. home prices accelerated at their fastest annual rate of the year in October,’ Case-Shiller says Published: Dec. 26, 2023 U.S. home prices hit an all-time high in October, Case-Shiller says - MarketWatch

 – Bolånetagare kan gå in i 2024 med viss tillförsikt, säger Robert Boije, chefsekonom på SBAB. Han får medhåll av Frida Bratt. Joakim Hugert Lundberg SvD/TT   https://www.svd.se/a/mQqb7O/hopp-om-borantan-det-varsta-ar-bakom-oss   

he SocGen strategist’s doomster scribblings are a must-read for fund managers — even if he’s often wrong. Edwards, 62, started in the City of London 40 years ago as a Bank of England economist after completing a masters degree in economics at Birkbeck, University of London.  But he cites his three-year stint as an asset manager at Bank of America Corp., coinciding with the 1987 Wall Street crash, as fundamental to how he thinks — and writes — about the world. I, for one, look forward to his doomster scribblings, although I reckon his pessimism is currently a bit overdone. However, his dismay about the likely repercussions of central bank interference in setting the price of money in recent years is spot on. Large firms with ready access to debt capital markets are benefiting from having raised debt at super-low interest rates during the pandemic. They’re now parking cash that earns more in interest than the coupons they pay bondholders — providing a windfall, but one that will prov...

 Why did so many economists wrongly predict that there would be a recession in 2023? Tyler Cowen (an economist who had thought there was a reasonable chance of a recession) offers two main reasons (free read!): 1. Macroeconomics is hard. 2. When the Federal Reserve raises rates as sharply as it did over the past 20 months, it’s pretty reasonable to expect a recession. “There is a reason that so many economists had been predicting a recession — and it is not because they are out of touch, or repeating talking points from Donald Trump’s presidential campaign,” Tyler writes.  “They predicted a recession because that is what experts such as [Janet] Yellen, [Paul] Krugman, [Christina] Romer and many others had been teaching for decades.”  It’s not that those teachings are necessarily wrong, either. They were just wrong … this time. Justin Fox Bloomberg 26 december 2023  This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a Boxing Day gift of Bloomberg https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/artic...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtN7Z20ga6Y 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed Englund: 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed (englundmacro.blogspot.com) Rome fell. Will West follow suit? Englund: Rome fell. Will West follow suit? (englundmacro.blogspot.com)

Breaking international law is the wrong way to help Ukraine.  REPO for Ukrainians Act. The law, if it becomes one, would authorize the US president to confiscate billions of dollars owned by the Russian central bank but held in the US, and to give that money to the Ukrainians instead. roughly $300 billion in assets held by the Russian central bank in accounts in Western countries. Since Putin’s attack, those funds have been frozen,  The bulk of Russia’s money abroad is sitting in Europe, and in particular in Belgium, home to a securities depository called Euroclear. For REPO to help Ukraine, it would therefore have to inspire the Europeans to emulate it. Such a move would raise geopolitical questions. One practical consequence would be to signal to China and other countries that have tense relations with the US that their central-bank assets will be confiscated next  Since Putin’s invasion, the US and its Western allies have professed that Ukraine is the front line of a g...

A Roman Holiday (1953)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Je9ciRuNoYU Roman holiday - yesterday once more The carpenters (youtube.com) Dean Martin - That's Amore - Roman Holiday - Audrey Hepburn & Gregory Peck (youtube.com) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqvwZEpWLfo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIxNV9DSEwA ”Friends with benefits”/KK https://www.svd.se/a/O8xLok/dejtingordlista-kor-du-med-caspering-eller-breadcrumbing https://www.svd.se/a/abzXl7/alex-27-i-situationship-myset-sexet-men-inte-ansvaret FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS - Trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzXg-Vr1sMA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbWLE07NGcw

Det kan i dag finnas skäl att lyssna till Giuseppe Mazzinis idé om medborgarskap. Tyskland och Italien, däremot, var splittrade i mängder av mindre stater och i Italiens fall dessutom i hög grad under utländsk övermakt, inte minst det habsburgska riket, För Mazzini var medborgarskapet vägen till demokrati och frihet. I sitt ”Manifesto della giovine Italia” (Manifest för det det unga Italien) från 1831 utvecklar han flera av sina tankar på sätt som pekar framåt. Året därpå återkommer han till sina tankar om frihetens grundvalar Frihet är ingenting man får, ingenting man har, ingenting man kan ge, frihet är ett projekt som kräver arbete och det innebär att medborgarskapet för Mazzini är knutet lika mycket till plikter som till fri- och rättigheter.  Torbjörn Elensky SvD 26 december 2023 https://www.svd.se/a/nQogQx/giuseppe-mazzinis-ide-om-medborgarskap Frihetens grundvalar FA Hayek kom 1961 ut med sitt epokgörande verk The Constitution of Liberty i USA och Storbritannien. Sedan dess ...

  Half of Red Sea Container-Ship Fleet Avoids Route After Attacks Diversions around Africa take 25% longer than using Suez Canal Delays, costly insurance may raise prices on consumer goods 28/12 Red Sea Attacks Latest: Half of Container-Ship Fleet Avoids Route - Bloomberg Biden Says Iraq Strike Meant to Deter Attacks on US Personnel Iranian-backed groups warned to stop further attacks US military action comes amid fears of broader Mideast war 27/12 Biden Says Strikes on Iraq Meant to Deter Attacks on US Personnel in Middle East - Bloomberg US Accuses Iran of Indian Ocean Attack as Shipping Threat Grows New attack expands areas of risk to global shipping routes Iran’s military shows off new cruise missiles on state TV https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-24/us-accuses-iran-of-indian-ocean-attack-as-shipping-threat-grows US Strikes Targets in Iraq After Drone Attack Injures Troops Red Sea attacks, killing of Iranian general add to tensions White House says one service memb...

- Det handlar inte om mig. Vårt mål är att skademinimera inflytandet från extremhögerpopulisterna och vänsterpopulisterna. Hon tänker, till skillnad från Moderaterna, kämpa ”stenhårt” för att Sverige ska byta valuta. – Det är självklart att det gynnar svenska folkets plånbok och alla företagare. Hurdå? SvD 24 december 2023 https://www.svd.se/a/O8VeJl/anna-maria-corazza-bildt-pa-liberalernas-eu-lista  Christer Gardell kräver att riksdagen fattar beslut om euromedlemskap .- en euro cirka 7,50 i stället för strax över 11 kronor. SvD 23 december 2023 Englund: Christer Gardell kräver att riksdagen fattar beslut om euromedlemskap.- en euro cirka 7,50 i stället för strax över 11 kronor. (englundmacro.blogspot.com) S och M förbereder statskupp? Ett införande av euron är en i praktiken irreversibel process, jfr Grekland. Då måste vi följa med på tåget mot ett federalt rike.  De som vill avskaffa vårt lands suveränitet, i strid med tidigare folkomröstningsresultat, får faktiskt besvära ...

At least five times, a biological catastrophe has engulfed the planet, killing off the vast majority of species from water and land over a relatively short geological interval. The most famous of these mass extinction events — when an asteroid slammed into Earth 66 million years ago, dooming the dinosaurs and many other species — is also the most recent. But scientists say it won’t be the last. Many researchers argue we’re in the middle of a sixth mass extinction, caused not by a city-size space rock but by the overgrowth and transformative behavior of a single species — Homo sapiens. Humans have destroyed habitats and unleashed a climate crisis. Calculations in a September study published in the journal PNAS have suggested that groups of related animal species are disappearing at a rate 35% times higher than the normally expected rate. And while every mass extinction has winners and losers, there is no reason to assume that human beings in this case would be among the survivors. Micha...

Förstärkningen av svenska kronan rubbar inte fondprofilen Christer Gardell Han menar att den långsiktiga försvagningen nästan helt beror på att internationella investerare undviker att vara exponerade mot svenska kronan. Christer Gardell var motståndare till euron under folkomröstningen 2003. Christer Gardell tror att Sverige skulle kunna knytas mot euron utifrån den danska kronans kurs. Om det vore idag skulle en euro kosta cirka 7,50 svenska kronor i stället för strax över 11 kronor.    USD/SEK 1 Y 22 december 2023 Finns en realistisk väg för Sverige att gå med i Euron? – Det intressanta är hur stark opinionen är och hur politikerna positionerar sig. De två stora partierna Socialdemokraterna och Moderaterna, deras väljarbas är splittrad i frågan, vilket gör det lite knepigt kanske. Det vore kul att tvinga de stora partierna att ta ställning. SvD 23 december 2023 Christer Gardell om svenska kronan: För svag – vill ha euro | SvD Vi har nyss hyllat Gustav Wasa .Ett antal person...

OpenAI is in early discussions to raise a fresh round of funding at a valuation at or above $100 billion, people with knowledge of the matter said, a deal that would cement the ChatGPT maker as one of the world’s most valuable startups. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-22/openai-in-talks-to-raise-new-funding-at-100-billion-valuation Bitcoin  The sense of doom that gripped crypto markets at the end of 2022 following a $1.5 trillion wipeout has 12 months later given way to a very different sentiment: avarice. Bitcoin stormed back with a more than 160% advance this year that added some $530 billion to its market capitalization. 23/12 Bitcoin (BTC) Rallied $530 Billion in 2023, Boosted by Gamble on Spot ETFs - Bloomberg