Englund

  Even if we achieved both monetary and fiscal sustainability across the advanced world, my guess is that interest rates would fall only slightly. Why? Because the global economic forces that pushed interest rates to rock-bottom levels for more than a decade after the global financial crisis have gone into reverse. Rüdiger Dornbusch, who spent most of his career in the US, said:  “Crises take longer to arrive than you can possibly imagine, but when they do come, they happen faster than you can possibly imagine.” This roughly captures the story of fiscal policy in advanced economies over the past two decades. After interest rates stayed low for much longer than anyone imagined, they normalised faster than anyone thought they could. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/05/31/politicians-pay-price-for-getting-used-to-cheap-money/ Boräntorna stiger https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/05/borantorna-stiger.html For a time after the crash of 2008, and again during the pandemi...

Macron's speech came on the heels of a tour of Indonesia, Vietnam and Singapore in which the French politician sought to present his country as a reliable defense and business partner for countries caught between the US and China. https://www.dw.com/en/shangri-la-dialogue-macron-seeks-new-eu-asia-alliance/a-72740969 Macron at Versailles https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2024/06/macron-at-versailles.html After the Doolittle Raid, launched from the aircraft carrier Hornet, President Roosevelt answered a reporter's question by saying that the raid had been launched from "Shangri-La", the fictional faraway land of the James Hilton novel Lost Horizon.

Evan Osnos’s Haves and Have-Yachts explores growing wealth disparity and the subtle self-delusion embraced by the ultrarich. There are now more than 800 USD billionaires  in the US, up from 66 in 1990, Osnos writes. Between President Donald Trump’s first and second inaugurations alone, the scale of their wealth more than doubled.  In The Haves and Have-Yachts: Dispatches on the Ultrarich (Scribner, June 3), Osnos, a staff writer at the New Yorker, peers into these extraordinary fortunes. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-30/-the-haves-and-have-yachts-review-how-the-ultrarich-destabilized-the-us New York’s Wealthiest All Want to Live Downtown Now https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/05/new-yorks-wealthiest-all-want-to-live.html Economic Data Paint a Picture of Two Americas https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2024/06/economic-data-paint-picture-of-two.html  The US economy grew throughout, yet nobody found a way to redeploy the people impoverished by globalizat...

  Blandat slut på urstark börsmånad  https://www.di.se/live/blandat-slut-pa-urstark-borsmanad-nvidia-tappade/ Buy the dip https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/02/buy-dip.html 19.20 “I don’t have FOMO,”  “I have FOGI: fear of getting in.” https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/why-this-stock-market-makes-so-many-of-us-want-to-scream-fffd75d4 “You are going to see a crack in the bond market. It is going to happen,” JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon warned at an economic forum Friday "I'm telling you it's going to happen, and you're going to panic. I'm not going to panic. We'll be fine. We'll probably make more money," Dimon said Jamie Dimon Says Crack in the Bond Market Is ‘Going to Happen’ - Bloomberg   Stockholmsbörsen på minus  industrijättar tyngde Fastighetssektorn steg efter svag svensk BNP-utveckling  ökat hoppet om nya räntesänkningar.  https://www.di.se/live/stockholmsborsen-pa-minus-industrijattar-tyngde/ In 2005-2008, much of the hidden risk and...

When a 40-year-old economics professor at Harvard University named Dani Rodrik was preparing to publish his first book in 1997, he sent the manuscript to a fellow economist to ask for an endorsement.  The title of Rodrik’s book was Has Globalization Gone Too Far?, and it argued that without government policies to mitigate the downside of free trade, the result would be deep and corrosive social divisions.  “he said I was giving ammunition to the barbarians.” The “barbarians” were men like Pat Buchanan on the right and Richard Gephardt on the left We believed that globalization created so much prosperity around the world that the loss of jobs in places like Flint, Michigan, and High Point, North Carolina, was a small price to pay. 77 million people voted for the man who has said that “tariff is the most beautiful word in the dictionary.” Which leads to the obvious question: What did those of us who believed in neoliberalism and globalization miss?  To put it another way, w...

 It’s time to end debate over whether there’s a genuine risk of attack on the alliance.  There is. In debates over Russia, the argument often comes down to a simple proposition: Having struggled for three years and seen his forces mauled in Ukraine, is it really plausible that President Vladimir Putin would take on the combined might of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization?  I spent a day this week with a group of generals and other officers in uniform from around 20 countries.  What I walked away with was the understanding that those who would have to do any fighting aren’t asking if the threat of a Russian attack on a NATO member is real, but rather where, when and in what form it comes.  Again and again, I heard something approaching admiration for the speed at which Russian forces have learned and adapted in Ukraine. In terms of drone and electronic warfare, Russia is probably ahead of NATO.  Marc Champion Bloomberg 30 May 2025 https://www.bloomberg.c...

“Tyvärr för svenska sparares del förstör kronförstärkningen gentemot dollarn en del av festen.  Globalfonderna är fortfarande på minus för i år trots att världsindex är på plus under samma period” Nordnet-sparare dumpar guld – globalfonder heta igen - Dagens PS  

De genomsnittliga bolåneräntorna i USA ligger kvar runt skyhöga sju procent vilket avskräcker potentiella bostadsköpare.  Många befintliga husägare har dock betydligt mer förmånliga lån. https://www.dagensps.se/bors-finans/makro/nastan-dubbla-svenska-bolanerantorna-avskracker-bostadskopare-i-usa/ Bolåneräntan över sju procent i USA https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/05/bolanerantan-over-sju-procent-i-usa.html

Han älskar höga tullar, men vill också ha bort EU och göra upp med länderna i Europa var för sig. EU:s föregångare, den europeiska kol- och stålunionen, skapades också delvis som en följd av att Frankrikes utrikesminister Robert Schuman kände sig pressad av USA.  Kennedy hade vissa farhågor. Kärnan i EEG var tullunionen och den gemensamma handelspolitiken och presidenten ville förhindra att världen delades upp i olika handelsblock. Det var en befogad rädsla.  EU:s handelspolitik har under perioder utformats som ett skydd av den egna produktionen och risken är uppenbar att dagens alla krav på ”buy european” och ”europeisk autonomi” åter leder för långt åt det hållet. Annika Ström Melin DN 30 maj 2025 https://www.dn.se/ledare/annika-strom-melin-forhandla-garna-men-glom-inte-att-trumps-plan-ar-att-krossa-eu/   Annika Ström Melin: Dagens EU kan inte förstås utan hänvisning till Monnets personlighet https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2023/12/dagens-eu-konstaterar-annika-strom.h...

Den tråkiga sanningen är att den som nöjer sig med bankens snittränta på 0,8 procent får se sparkapitalet minska i värde för varje år.  För att hålla jämna steg med inflationen, som antas ligga på 2 procent, behövs en sparränta på 2,9 procent. Det beror på att vid sidan av inflationen är det kapitalskatten på 30 procent som gröper ur den årliga avkastningen från sparkontot. DI  29 maj 2025 https://www.di.se/nyheter/svenska-folkets-forlustaffar-uselt-betalt-for-pengarna/   Fjolåret blev strålande för flera av de största fondbolagen https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/02/bankernas-aktieagare-kan-se-tillbaka-pa.html

https://www.internetional.se/issingiea.htm https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/10/16/euro-house-of-cards-to-collapse-warns-ecb-prophet/

  https://www.dagensps.se/varlden/konflikter/eus-nya-plan-ska-halla-putin-borta-fran-svarta-havet/ Krimkriget var en väpnad konflikt som utkämpades från 28 mars 1853 till februari 1856 mellan Kejsardömet Ryssland på ena sidan och en allians av Storbritannien, Frankrike, Kungariket Sardinien och Osmanska riket på den andra.  De mest kända skeendena utspelades på Krimhalvön i Svarta havet. https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krimkriget "det Östliga partnerskapet – en politik syftande till att förstärka och fördjupa EU:s relationer med de sex östliga grannländerna Armenien, Azerbajdzjan, Georgien, Moldavien, Ukraina och Vitryssland.", enligt ett PM från Regeringskansliet till Riksdagen. https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2010/08/alliansen-emu-och-det-ostliga.html Ukraina och EU:s östliga och sydliga partnerskap https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2014/05/ukraina-och-eus-ostliga-och-sydliga.html Germany to Help Kyiv Build Long-Range Missiles to Strike Russia https://englundmacro.blogspot....

  USA-börser mattades – Nvidia steg https://www.di.se/nyheter/usa-borser-mattades-nvidia-steg/ President Donald Trump träffade Jerome Powell  Presidenten har länge kritiserat att Fed hållit räntan kvar  i intervallet 4,25–4,50 procent  https://www.di.se/nyheter/trump-motte-fed-chefen-misstag-att-inte-sanka/

  There is just now a great pressure in the mercantile world, in the consequence of the breaking of so many of these scheming stock company bubbles… Sound familiar? These were not bubbles in high-tech stocks or in mortgage lending and house prices, however, but bubbles in shipping lines, canals, and textile-spinning factories.  And, of course, the bank of which young Henry had been a partner for only four months had gotten itself badly undercapitalized. 1825 just as in 2009, no bank can borrow cash on the one day it really needs to, for every other bank really needs that very same on that very same day.  Which is why there came for Marianne’s brother Henry and for her a “dreadful Saturday I shall never forget,” when a run on the bank was made, with “one old steady customer” withdrawing, without warning, his entire £30,000, leaving the bank vault “literally empty." Brad DeLong 29 May 2025 https://braddelong.substack.com/p/one-year-and-sixteen-years-ago-on 1929 What turned ...

 ... has warned that the survival of the country’s heavy industry is vital to Europe’s sovereignty,  as she pleaded for Brussels to approve a plan to support German energy-intensive companies. Katherina Reiche said she was hopeful the European Commission understood the need for Berlin to subsidise electricity costs for sectors such as chemicals and steel to help end Germany’s longest postwar period of stagnation. Financial Times 29 May 2025 https://www.ft.com/content/cb9783f7-778e-4594-9af9-67e879dcc256

  Moderaterna och Liberalerna backar i ny opinionsundersökning från SvD/Demoskop

  “The massive air strikes on the city of Kyiv in particular over the weekend do not speak the language of peace, but rather the language of a war of aggression,”  Merz said Wednesday alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy Merz balked at questions about German deliveries of Taurus cruise missiles, which Berlin has refused to send. Germany is the second-biggest supporter of Ukraine after the US Bloomberg 28 May 2025 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-28/germany-to-work-with-kyiv-on-long-range-missile-production Tyska Taurus till Ukraina https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/04/tyska-taurus-till-ukraine.html 1914 - 2014. Jämnt 100 år. NATO hävdar sig ha bildbevis på att ryska trupper har gått in i Ukraina. Börsen i New York har just nu sjunkit 0,18 procent. https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/03/1914-2014-jamnt-100-ar.html

Principles for navigating the big debt cycle, where we are headed, and what we should do https://www.adlibris.com/se/bok/how-countries-go-broke-9781398551466 Ray Dalio’s upcoming book, "How Countries Go Broke: The Big Cycle", is generating significant buzz ahead of its release on June 3, 2025.  Ray Dalio  https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/search?q=Dalio+

  Wall Street Bets the Worst of Trump’s Trade War Is Behind It Dow gains more than 700 points after the U.S. and EU made progress on trade talks Wall Street Journal 27 May 2025  https://www.wsj.com/finance/stocks/trump-tariff-trade-war-eu-markets-55c1c54e?mod=finance_lead_story Risken för att finansiell instabilitet ska uppstå har ökat. https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/05/sverige-ar-ett-dollarberoende.html RE:Finansiell instabilitet är en omskrivning för det obehagliga ordet Crash Crash https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/search?q=crash Abercrombie & Fitch rusar efter rapport som överträffade analytikernas förväntningar. https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/05/abercrombie-fitch-rusar-efter-rapport.html Man blundar för det faktum att en stor del av industrin i Sverige kommer att ha ett sämre resultat 2025 jämfört med 2024. https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/02/buy-dip.html

  Dollarexponeringen är stor både inom banker och företag. Och den svenska valutareserven består också till stor del av dollar Med det är fonder som drabbas av stora uttag som pekas ut som primär riskfaktor i Riksbankens första stabilitetsrapport för i år.  Fonduttagen kan nämligen i nästa steg skapa finansieringsproblem i svensk fastighetssektor – där fonderna tillsammans med banker spelar en helt avgörande roll. Svenska banker har också mycket upplåning i dollar, när de drar in pengar och bygger upp buffertar. Och det krävs även dollar när pensions- och livbolag ska valutasäkra sina positioner. Utgångsläget för Sverige bedöms som bra – med stabila statsfinanser och starka banker. Men flera strukturella sårbarheter finns kvar, som högt belånade hushåll och kommersiella fastighetsbolag. DN 28 maj 2025 https://www.dn.se/ekonomi/riksbankschefen-oroas-av-skakig-dollar/ Risken för att finansiell instabilitet ska uppstå har ökat. https://www.riksbank.se/sv/press-och-publicerat/nyhe...

 DI 28 maj 2025 https://www.di.se/live/sma-rorelser-pa-wall-street-kladbolag-rusar-tvasiffrigt/ Who, exactly, is buying all of this stuff? https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/03/who-exactly-is-buying-all-of-this-stuff.html Abercrombie & Fitch  https://www.abercrombie.com/shop/eu

  https://www.ft.com/content/c89c220b-b083-42ae-a599-1f1a88a20aca This Time Is Different. Förut var räntan låg under många år. Dollarn var hög aka Den svaga svenska kronan. Nu är räntan stigande och dollarn fallande. https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/05/det-ar-latt-att-vara-efterklok.html

 ... ska kunna hyra ut dem samtidigt och till marknadshyra, enligt de friare regler som föreslås.  Och en villaägare får genom lagförslaget tydlig rätt att hyra ut både till exempel ett Attefallshus och en lägenhet eller rum i villan. Fri hyressättning blir norm Johan Hellekant SvD 28 maj 2025 Lättare hyra ut privat – fri hyressättning blir norm

In 2005-2008, much of the hidden risk and excess leverage in the system was located in banks and mortgages.  Steve Diggle said: “In 2025, financial markets are riddled with several fault lines but now the bubble and the dangerous leverage is centered on private equity and private credit.” First, given the enormous budget deficits and huge debts incurred by a decade of QE and then the global pandemic,  Diggle says “central banks are simply not in a position to implement similarly accommodative monetary policy again.” MarketWatch 30 May 2025 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-star-fund-manager-sees-2008-parallels-as-he-returns-to-the-volatility-business-4e6cec30 No dead institution looms larger over the financial system than Drexel Burnham Lambert. The investment bank, which collapsed in 1990 Drexel’s great innovation under Michael Milken was introducing risky borrowers to bond markets; its junk bonds fuelled private equity’s leveraged-buy-out boom during the 1980s.  Re...

Republicans have embraced former Vice President Dick Cheney’s 2002 dictum that deficits don’t matter.  US investors may be about to disagree. If passed by the Senate, last week’s vast House budget bill would add between $3 trillion and $5 trillion to deficits over the next 10 years. Cheney’s comment was provocative and meant to be: It drew attention and was argued over.  Not any longer. Nobody in Congress or the White House thinks it necessary to insist that deficits don’t matter. They’ve simply stopped caring. Perhaps the public debt is now so big, and on such a fast-rising trajectory, that bringing it back under control seems impossibly difficult. A politician might therefore ask, why worry about it?  For a time after the crash of 2008, and again during the pandemic, the real interest rate was not just less than the growth rate but actually negative.  Under such conditions, budget deficits and a falling ratio of debt to GDP can go hand in hand. Unfortunately, the r...

We’re hot-wired to do so; condense something complicated into a story, and we understand it more easily.  That raises the risk of over-simplification and narrative fallacy — a notion from Nassim Taleb — in which we grab hold of a version of events and allow it to color incoming data. Any good tale, even if it’s untrue, can change prices — and thereby the economy surrounding it — if enough people believe it. The S&P 500 had a great, broad advance Tuesday. It’s up 19% since its nadir on April 8, one of the biggest rallies ever for the index.  But it’s equally true that the S&P is lower than six months ago, and from the close on the day after the election.  How should we view it? Here are the narratives driving markets now: 1. The Bond Vigilantes Have Gone Away This is a reversal of last week’s “The Bond Vigilantes are back, and this time they really mean it” story.  2. US Consumers Are Back Americans continue to be the world’s spenders of last resort 4. The TAC...

The only force that has so far been able to stop Donald Trump, or at least make him rethink But twice now, US Treasury bond prices have dropped sharply in tandem with a weakening dollar.  Until now, the bond markets were unfazed. What has changed? The Ernest Hemingway cliché — that America has been going bankrupt gradually and now suddenly — is doing the rounds. The markets are very much in the glass half full camp.  Whenever Trump pulls back from the brink — by pausing tariffs, say, or promising not to fire US Federal Reserve chair Jay Powell — he triggers a relief rally. The conditions for a global financial crisis, on the other hand, should be taken seriously. Edward Luce Financial Times 27 May 2025 https://www.ft.com/content/d9c762c5-64dc-42a6-bf87-b830808ec5b6 Buy the dip https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/02/buy-dip.html A Big, Beautiful Deficit, updated

  Beijing has achieved its key goal — modernising a manufacturing sector that once relied entirely on cheap labour.  Financial Times 28 May 2025 https://www.ft.com/content/724431ad-26db-4f6d-acab-ccb3cad11daa

https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/trump-putin-russia-sanctions-truth-social-79738b06 https://www.ft.com/content/607c56ab-4259-424c-b7e7-c04e43001ca9   President Trump agreed over the weekend to delay 50% tariffs on the EU until July 9 Muntert på Wall Street  – Tesla och Nvidia lyfte  https://www.di.se/live/muntert-pa-wall-street-tesla-och-nvidia-lyfte-1/ Två böcker jag vill anbefalla till läsning: The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 by Christopher Clark Augusti fjorton, av Alexander Solsjenitsyn https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/03/1914-2014-jamnt-100-ar.html

... to bring down long-term yields. But will it work? The plan is to soon lower the supplementary leverage ratio for banks, which should theoretically allow them to hold more U.S. government debt, lend more freely or both.  The SLR, established in 2014, is aimed at ensuring that banks have sufficient capital to absorb losses, particularly during periods of stress, and requires them to hold a specific amount of high-quality capital relative to their total leverage exposure. A potential revamp of the SLR  has already gained support from the banking sector.   Vivien Lou Chen MarketWatch 27 May 2025 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/treasury-secretary-bessent-has-a-plan-to-bring-down-long-term-yields-but-will-it-work-bbe73dfe

  That’s a problem when locals are being priced out. In the capital, the average cost of a new apartment has topped ¥100 million ($700,000) The spotlight is falling on foreign buyers, particularly wealthy Chinese, seeking a safe place for their capital and drawn by Japan’s political stability and social safety net. Bloomberg 26 May 2025 https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-05-26/it-s-too-easy-for-foreigners-to-buy-property-in-japan

  — from defending Ukraine to knocking down domestic barriers to growth — and not just patiently negotiate tariff carve-outs. As former Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently told French newspaper Le Figaro: “President Trump respects strength, and when he looks at Europe strength is not what he sees.” Lionel Laurent Bloomberg 27 May 2025 https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-05-27/trump-tariffs-big-tech-is-a-target-if-50-eu-tariff-threat-stays