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 Yield plunge spurs advance in stocks, credit, emerging markets Investors see scope for more gains with Fed cuts on horizon https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-30/biggest-blowout-in-bonds-since-the-1980s-sparks-everything-rally

 Sannolikheten för att Europeiska centralbanken (ECB) efter aprilmötet 2024 har sänkt sina styrräntor med 25 punkter (0,25 procentenheter) är nu i princip 100 procent, om man tittar på prissättningen på räntemarknaden. Samtidigt börjar allt fler tro att sänkningen kommer redan i mars, där sannolikheten just nu är uppe i 45 procent för en sänkning. Synen på ECB-räntan nästa år har förändrats snabbt bland spekulanter och investerare Marknaden säker: ECB sänker i april | SvD

The row underscores the awkward position that Euroclear has found itself in over how to apply western sanctions on assets linked to Russia and its allies over the invasion of Ukraine. The settlement house is one of the pillars of the global capital market, tracking and finalising millions of securities trades a day.  It has been withholding payments to and from sanctioned entities in Russia and elsewhere, and has earned more than €3bn this year to October in income related to frozen Russian assets.  EU leaders plan to spend the money on helping the recovery in Ukraine. FT 30 November 2023 https://www.ft.com/content/64807c8a-f764-4620-a900-d22e83cb4920 In the 20 months since, however, the western sanctions coalition has got itself into ever more contortions trying to avoid the morally obvious next steps: seizing the reserves and deploying them for Ukraine’s benefit. The ostensible justification is legal obstacles. But ... The fear that confiscating Russia’s assets will make oth...

  According to our simulations, having her own currency would have helped the export of Finland to recover from the GFC and also from the long recession of 2012-2015.  Moreover, the depreciation of the markka, combined with the strong growth of the world economy in 2016-2018, would have pushed our exports to new heights.  At the Q1 2020, if we had remained in markka, our exports would have been more than 40 percent higher than what they are now. Euro, markka and the exports of Finland 2020-06-13  by Tuomas Malinen Eurozone, Recession, Uncategorized There has been a lively debate on the effect of national currencies on the economic performance of the members of the Eurozone. In 2012, we published a report, where we simulated the potential development of the export of Finland, if we had remained in our own currency, markka. Now we have updated those simulations. Our updated simulations draw a very straight-forward picture. According to them, our export would have been ...

How to balance FOMO against overcrowding in the same index-distorting tech giants. This chart from Apollo Group’s Torsten Slok compares an “S&P 7” index with an S&P 493 that includes all the rest. The gap is astonishing: Magnificent Seven Need Weight-Loss Plan to Balance FOMO Versus Index Distortions - Bloomberg The Old Military-Industrial Complex Won’t Win a New Cold War The West has long assumed that it enjoys a substantial technological advantage over any potential military rival. But for how much longer?  The People’s Liberation Army is not only challenging the West in terms of conventional and nuclear weaponry — China’s navy is now the biggest in the world, and its nuclear arsenal may reach 1,000 warheads by 2030, according to the US Department of Defense.  It is roaring ahead in high-tech. China has overtaken the West in  hypersonic missiles  — those capable of traveling at five times the speed of sound and evading air defenses. It is also pioneering la...

   China’s Energy Revolution Nations will be urged at COP28 to triple renewable energy capacity this decade. The world’s top polluter is already on track, propelled by President Xi Jinping’s strategy to use remote regions to host vast green projects. It’s a campaign that promises an upheaval across the energy sector: curbing China’s demand for fossil fuels, trimming its reliance on energy imports and steering the world’s biggest polluter toward a feasible path to zero out its greenhouse gas emissions. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-china-solar-wind-power-cop28/ China’s carbon emissions have either peaked already or will do this winter,  seven years ahead of schedule. They may plateau for a year or two but will then go into exponential decline for mechanical and unstoppable reasons. The country’s target of net zero by 2060 is likely to be achieved a decade earlier than previously assumed, and perhaps earlier than in Europe.  This is a remarkable turn of event...

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier met with German-Palestinians who were evacuated  from Gaza recently. At a reception in Berlin, they had the chance to share their stories. More than 200 German nationals have left Gaza through the Rafah border crossing to Egypt. https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-president-meets-evacuated-german-palestinians/video-67549598 Ukraine: the new fissures in a society under strain No one will quite say it, but the fear in Kyiv is that their war will be “forgotten” and the west’s supply of funds and arms will slow. Then there is the concern that Donald Trump will win re-election in the US and promptly do a deal with Putin to end the war. Is the clock ticking, I asked? “ This clock has been ticking for us since 2014,” said Shmyhal, referring to the year Putin annexed Crimea and irredentists seized a chunk of the eastern Donbas.  (Visitors soon learn to refer to February 2022 not as “the invasion” but as the “full-scale invasion”.) https://www.ft.com...

Tyskland -  Regeringen planerar att lägga fram ett förslag om nationellt nödläge – för att komma runt skuldregler i grundlagen. https://www.di.se/live/tyskt-budgetkaos-nodlage-kan-utlosas/ “The stupid thing is now in the constitution and you can’t get rid of it.” When Germany enshrined a “debt brake” in its constitution in 2009, it was celebrated as a victory for fiscal rectitude and a definitive break with the profligacy of the past. https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2023/11/rod-oppning-red-opening-23-november-2023.html Redefining Success in Ukraine A New Strategy Must Balance Means and Ends circumstances necessitate a comprehensive reappraisal of the current strategy that Ukraine and its partners are pursuing. Such a reassessment reveals an uncomfortable truth: namely, that Ukraine and the West are on an unsustainable trajectory, one characterized by a glaring mismatch between ends and the available means.  Kyiv’s war aims—the expulsion of Russian forces from Ukrainian land ...

Big News: Argentine will abolish their currency and adopt the US Dollar. Ha! That it was the countries witch adopted the Euro has done. They gave up their printing press.

  Kronan tappar 7 öre  mot euron, Nordea beskriver i en snabbkommentar beskedet som duvaktigt. Arbetsgivarorganisationen Svenskt Näringsliv är i sin tur positiva till beskedet.  Duvaktigt räntebesked enligt Nordea (di.se) Här är aktierna som lyfte mest på räntebeskedet Aktiemarknaden jublade efter att en enig Rikbanksdirektion beslutat att lämna styrräntan oförändrad på 4,00 procent.  Fastighetsbolag  https://www.di.se/nyheter/har-ar-aktierna-som-lyfte-mest-pa-rantebeskedet/ Det var rätt beslut.   Och även om räntebanan innehåller en varning om mer är det med största sannolikhet färdighöjt. Viktor Munkhammar https://www.di.se/analys/nu-ar-det-fardighojt/ Nationalekonomen Klas Eklund anser att Riksbanken gör klokt i att lämna räntan oförändrad. Samtidigt menar han att vi kan komma att se sänkningar av räntan redan 2024. "Räntekänsliga hushåll kläms ju väldigt hårt eftersom de tidigare höjningarna inte har slagit igenom ännu på lånekostnaderna", säger Klas Ek...