Bloomberg (October 10)
“Betting against the dollar has been the dominant trade this year in the $9.6 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market, but the wager is starting to stumble. The world’s primary reserve currency is around a two-month high even as the US government shutdown drags on, and traders in Asia and Europe say hedge funds are adding options bets that the rebound versus most major peers will extend into year-end.”
Tags: $9.6 trillion, Asia, Dollar, Dominant, Forex, Government, Hedge funds, Market, Options bets, Rebound, Reserve currency, Shutdown, Stumble, Trade, Traders, Two-month high, U.S.
Realtor.com (October 9)
Moody’s Analytics has determined that 22 states “making up nearly a third of the national gross domestic product are either in or at high risk of recession, with another third just holding steady, and the remaining third growing.” Aside from potentially lower interest rates, this doesn’t bode well for the U.S. real estate market, though Realtor.com® senior economist Jake Krimmel identifies one silver lining. “The states at highest risk, especially those located in the Northeast, happen to have the strongest housing markets right now,” while the “states with the softest housing markets…are flagged by Moody’s as having still-expanding economies. This could “limit the downturn in housing” and lessen the risk of major economic downturn provided “local economic fundamentals and housing markets don’t weaken simultaneously.”
Tags: Weaken
Barron’s (October 8)
“The near-simultaneous collapse of two companies tied to the U.S. auto industry is shedding new light on a fast-growing part of the financial ecosystem little known outside Wall Street.” Non-depository financial institutions (NDFIs) “now account for some 33% of all commercial and industrial loans originated by large banks” and, at the end of the month, stood at $1.7 trillion (up over 400% since 2015). “These hard-to-track loans fall outside systems that regulators can track to assess where risk is concentrating.”
Tags: $1.7 trillion, Auto industry, Banks, Collapse, Commercial, Concentrating, Fast-growing, Financial ecosystem, Industrial, Loans originated, NDFIs, Regulators, Risk, U.S., Wall Street
Wall Street Journal (October 7)
“French President Emmanuel Macron has lost his fourth prime minister in just over a year, a sign of how the country’s political crisis has engulfed his ranks and constrained his options for pulling France out of a fiscal spiral.” After just a month in office, “Sébastien Lecornu stunned the country by resigning as prime minister…. Lecornu’s benighted tenure—the shortest in the history of France’s modern Fifth Republic—is a measure of how a political system that was once a cornerstone of stability in Europe has fallen into disarray.”
Tags: Benighted, Cornerstone, Disarray, Engulfed, Europe, Fifth Republic, Fiscal spiral, France, Lecornu, Macron, Options, Political crisis, Resigning, Shortest, Stability, Stunned, Tenure
Bloomberg (October 7)
Should Trump’s “signature tariffs” be overturned by the Supreme Court, “it would unleash a bureaucratic nightmare involving reams of refund paper checks.” This could involve refunding “the bulk of the $165 billion in customs duties collected so far this fiscal year back to companies that paid them. But they won’t have an easy time getting their money back.”
Tags: $165 billion, Bureaucratic nightmare, Companies, Customs duties, Overturned, Paper checks, Supreme Court, Tariffs, Trump
New York Times (October 6)
“For companies and governments worldwide, defending their digital operations is a constant challenge.” Recent cyberattacks at big British brands demonstrate how they can “upend company operations.” Marks & Spencer, Co-op, and Jaguar Land Rover have all been “severely disrupted by cyberattacks this year, bringing pain to the lives of customers, workers, suppliers and government officials.” In fact, “Jaguar Land Rover hasn’t built a single car” since shutting its systems down on September 1. This has halted “production at its factories in England, as well as sites in Brazil, China, India and Slovakia.”
Tags: Brazil, Challenge, China, Co-op, Companies, Customers, Cyberattacks, Defending, Digital, Governments, Jaguar Land Rover, Marks & Spencer, Officials, Operations, Suppliers, UK, Upend, Workers
Reuters (October 6)
Though “Sanae Takaichi likens herself to fiscal disciplinarian Margaret Thatcher,” she’s “no Iron Lady.” Takaichi “wants to up spending. Nor is she an unalloyed heir to mentor Shinzo Abe. Rather, her priorities portend either political discord or a sharp swerve that shatters economic consensus and pummels the yen.”
Tags: Abe, Economic consensus, Fiscal discipline, Heir, Iron Lady, Mentor, Political discord, Priorities, Shatters, Spending, Swerve, Takaichi, Thatcher, Yen
The Economist (October 4)
“Vladimir Putin is testing the West—and its unity.” Whether it’s “drones over Poland” or airspace incursions, “mysterious explosions and assassinations” or cyber-attacks, “Vladimir Putin is waging a grey-zone campaign against NATO: a cheap, deniable and calibrated effort to unsettle Europe that is carefully short of outright conflict…. NATO must resist Russia’s efforts to corrode it from within.”
Tags: Airspace, Assassinations, Calibrated, Campaign, Conflict, Cyber attacks, Deniable, Drones, Europe, Explosions, Grey-zone, Incursions, Nato, Poland, Putin, Testing, Unity, Unsettle
The Economist (October 2)
Donald Trump has remade, rather than destroyed, American financial diplomacy. He has refashioned it “in his image. It is now nakedly self-interested. Money flows to ideological allies, to leaders who control something he covets and to countries he hopes to lure away from China. In the long run, spending on these goals may outpace what was once allocated to poverty alleviation.”
Tags: China, Control, Covets, Destroyed, Financial diplomacy, Ideological allies, Leaders, Lure, Money, Outpace, Poverty alleviation, Remade, Self-interested, Spending, Trump, U.S.
Bloomberg (October 2)
“The European Union plans to hike tariffs on steel imports to 50% and cut by nearly a half the volume of steel that’s allowed in before that higher rate is imposed.” In recent years, “European steel imports have risen as production has fallen.” This move is designed to “align the bloc’s rate with the US, which has sought to push back against overcapacity from China.”
Tags: Align, EU, Imports, Overcapacity, Production, Steel, Tariffs, U.S.
