Eden Island, an artificial island near the capitol of Victoria, on the island of Mahé, Seychelles.Photographer: Kamlesh Bhuckory/Bloomberg
Sun, Sand and ‘Unlimited’ Leverage
Offshore havens like the Seychelles are enabling online trading firms to offer high-risk bets to retail investors.
Officials are leaving the country’s key appeal — the complete absence of leverage limits — untouched,
defying a global effort to protect retail investors and enabling brokers to provide risky wagers they’d be forbidden to offer if they were based in places like the US or European Union.
Seychelles-based firms offering these amplified trades say they’re simply responding to investor demand. The country’s finance minister and central bank governor say that authorities are continuously improving the nation’s “robust” financial framework.
Similar booms unfolding in other offshore destinations like Mauritius, Vanuatu and Belize.
In the past two decades, under international pressure and increased scrutiny from anti-money laundering bodies, it has gradually tightened its rules to better align with global standards.
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) leads global action to tackle money laundering, terrorist and proliferation financing.
For regulators, the whole trend underscores the limits of jurisdiction-specific rules.
“You can impose regulations directly on the firms,” said Rawley Heimer, associate professor of finance at W.P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University. “But then they move to some other spot.”
Bloomberg April 17, 2026
What the heck is happening in the Cayman Islands?
Almost 20 per cent of banks’ cross-border dollar funding is now supplied by entities based in the Cayman Islands
Gillian Tett 10 October 2019
“Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity” (TRIPP)
Turkey plan to reopen frontier with Armenia to unlock a Trump-backed trade route between Europe and Asia.
Orsaken är att Iran anser att USA bryter mot överenskommelsen när man fortsätter blockaden mot iranska hamnar i Persiska viken.USA:s president Donald Trump har sagt att om Iran inte håller sundet öppet så kommer kriget att återupptas.
– Då kommer vi dessvärre att släppa bomber igen, sade han natten mot lördag.
SvT 18 april 2026
https://www.svt.se/nyheter/snabbkollen/iran-hormuz-sundet-stangs-igen
Iran’s Military Says Strait Is Closed Again, Prompting Ships to Turn Back
Iran fired on tanker near Oman, U.K. authority reports, as confusion reigns in the waterway
https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/iran-war-us-talks-2026
Därför är Hormuzsundet nästan omöjligt att inta
Den speciella geografin – med trånga farleder, höga berg, vikar och öar – gör området mycket svårt att kontrollera i en militär konflikt.
Sundet är drygt tre mil brett, men farleden för stora fartyg är betydligt smalare och kantas av höga berg, branta klippor, vikar och befästa öar.
SvT 17 april 2026
https://www.svt.se/nyheter/utrikes/svts-kommentator-darfor-ar-hormuzsundet-nastan-omojligt-att-inta
RE: Man vågar inte tänka på vad som skulle hända om fredsprocessen havererar.
https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2026/04/17-april-otmar-issing.html
Fed’s alleged 2% target
"Look Through" the Hormuz Shock if You Want. U.S. Inflation is Still Running Hot.
Policymakers could leave their 2% target in place formally, but be all right with never quite getting there. And then some years down the line, they could adopt a higher target.
The global implications of the war stunning in their impact and scope
This war began with a devastating strike by the US and Israel. It sprawled and escalated from there.
Iran retaliated against targets throughout the Persian Gulf and beyond; it used drones, missiles and other asymmetric capabilities to snarl traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.
Within hours of the first shots being fired, a US-Israeli campaign against Iran became a regional war with global effects.
The war occurred amid a multisided competition for Persian Gulf supremacy, pitting the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia against Iran — and against each other. It happened as post-Cold War globalization was being reshaped by great-power rivalries.
America’s years-long effort to crimp China’s access to high-end semiconductors, for example, or Beijing’s more recent rare-earth export controls that threatened to idle dependent industries worldwide.
Amid the Middle Eastern war that followed the Hamas attacks on Israel of Oct. 7, 2023, the Houthis showed that their drones and missiles could close the Bab el-Mandeb Strait at the entrance to the Red Sea.
Advanced AI models helped the Pentagon trawl a sea of intelligence and promptly turn that information into 1,000 targeted strikes on the first day of the campaign.
At the same time, the war has revealed that weaker powers can use other modern weapons — drones and missiles — to impose stark costs on an opponent unready for the test.
Hal Brands Bloomberg April 12, 2026
Dagen innan
https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2026/04/17-april-otmar-issing.html
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