Via Pew: America’s global image plummeted following the election of President Donald Trump, amid widespread opposition to his administration’s policies and a widely shared lack of confidence in his leadership. Now, as the second anniversary of Trump’s election approaches, a new 25-nation Pew Research Center survey finds that Trump’s international image remains poor, while ratings for the
The US/China Cold War is here and how. It’s brinkmanship at sea, via The Australian: Australia has warned Beijing that the use of “intimidation or aggressive tactics” was “destabilising and potentially dangerous” following reports a Chinese navy destroyer launched an “unsafe” challenge to a US warship in the South China Sea. In the latest conflict
The Guardian, along with much of the world’s press, had a sneerfest at Donald Trump’s expense yesterday: For the rest of the world, President Donald Trump’s America is a laughingstock, not a leader. That was the takeaway from Trump’s speech to the 2018 United Nations general assembly. Trump opened his speech the same way he
Donald Trump, America’s first Jacksonian president in the modern era, launched a new broadside on China at the UN last night: America’s policy of principled realism means that we will not be held hostage to old, discredited ideology and experts that have been proven wrong over the years. This is true, not only in matters
By Leith van Onselen Australia has again taken the silver medal for having the world’s second most indebted households according to the latest data from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). The next table shows the ratios of household debt to GDP as at the March quarter of 2018. As you can see, Switzerland (128%)
Via Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (h/t Researchtime): (i) “When the next recession comes, it is going to be deeper and last longer than in the past. We don’t have any strategy to deal with it,”… a bleak scenario more akin to the depressions of the 1870s or the 1930s than anything experienced in the post-War era… a
Via Nouriel Roubini today at Project Syndicate: As we mark the decennial of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, there are still ongoing debates about the causes and consequences of the financial crisis, and whether the lessons needed to prepare for the next one have been absorbed. But looking ahead, the more relevant question is what
I like Ambrose but this is way over the top: The US and China are on a combustible escalation path that can end only when there is economic blood on the floor and the political pain threshold of one side or the other has been hit. …In reality, Beijing would slam the door closed on
Via SocGen comes a handy scorecard for EM vulnerability: External position Current account deficit currencies underperform those with a surplus in times of stress. A country with a current account deficit requires a steady inflow of foreign capital, which can dry up when sentiment toward emerging markets is depressed. Eight countries have deficits – the
By Leith van Onselen Jayati Ghosh – Professor of Economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi – has penned a thought-provoking opinion piece arguing that so-called “free trade” has entrenched corporate interests and worsened inequality: Some argue that free trade is being demonized simply because people do not understand what is in their own
Via JP Morgan: What will the next crisis look like? This year marks the 10th anniversary of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and also the 50th anniversary of the 1968 global protests. Currently, there are financial and social parallels to both of these events. Leading into the 2008 GFC, some financial institutions underwrote products
DXY was down overnight. CNY and EUR were up: AUD hit new two year lows against DMs but managed to rebound: As EMs cratered: Gold was firm: Oil weak: And base metals: Plus miners: EM stocks are puking: Led as usual by EM junk which is free fall again: Treasuries sold too: As did bonds:
Via the Federal Reserve: Information in the Yield Curve about Future Recessions Michael D. Bauer and Thomas M. Mertens The ability of the Treasury yield curve to predict future recessions has recently received a great deal of public attention. An inversion of the yield curve—when short-term interest rates are higher than long-term rates—has been a
By Leith van Onselen The short-sightedness of former RBA Governor Glenn Stevens’ comment in 2014 that macroprudential controls on high risk mortgage lending were “dreaded” and the “latest fad” has, once again, been exposed via a new working paper from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), which evaluates evidence from 56 economies over more than two
Markets just love a falling USD. DXY was down: AUD was mixed against DMs: And EMs: Gold is bouncing: And oil: Base metals not so much: But big miners caught the bid: As did EM stocks: But not junk so much: Treasuries were flogged and curve steepened a bit: Same for bunds: US stocks are
Readers and investors will know that the MB Fund’s prevailing narrative for 2018 was “reverse decoupling”. That is, that global synchronised growth would slump quickly into US leadership and a growing EM crisis around a rising USD and slowing China. This, in turn, would club commodities lower and contain US inflation and bond yields boosting
The Australian is very hopeful indeed: With the US and China set to resume trade talks, investors are expected to anticipate a breakthrough, pushing shares, commodities and the Aussie dollar higher before talks on Wednesday and Thursday. There could be some profit-taking by mid-week amid fears that the talks might not prevent tit-for-tat tariffs on
From Damien Boey at Credit Suisse: Panic! Our global strategy team have highlighted that our proprietary global risk appetite index is now in oversold, or panic territory. Risky assets have underperformed safe assets over the past six months to the point where they may be starting to look interesting from a contrarian point of view.
From Bloomie: China will dispatch Vice Commerce Minister Wang Shouwen to the U.S. for low-level trade talks in late August, the first official exchanges since earlier negotiations broke down two months ago. The Chinese delegation led by Wang will meet with an American group led by David Malpass, under secretary for international affairs at the
By Leith van Onselen Over the weekend, the poster boy for the globalist ‘Fake Left’, Greg Jericho, penned a spurious article in The Guardian spruiking Phil Lowe’s debunked immigration propaganda and claiming that Australia’s mass immigration ‘Big Australia’ policy was not contributing to weaker wages growth: Low wages growth, congestion, poor schooling, crime – pretty
Vai Damien Booey at Credit Suisse: Europe goes “cold Turkey” We have just published an article explaining why we are concerned about contagion risks from Turkey (attached). We argue that Europe is going “cold Turkey” in two respects: 1. The ECB has warned us about banks’ EUR exposure to Turkey. 2. The ECB still plans to go ahead with
DXY is off to the races as EUR finally breaks on the reality of clapped out European growth: Here’s why: AUD broke to two year lows versus DMs: But soared against collapsing EMs: AUD market positioning is pushing towards more rarefied bearish territory at -55k contracts: Gold held up remarkably well. Don’t expect it to
by Chris Becker Last night saw the Bank of England (BOE) raise its benchmark interest rates to 0.75%, the highest since the bowels of the GFC in 2009. This puts it in august territory with the Federal Reserve, which revealed at the latest FOMC meeting that a September rate rise is also in order, plus the
By LF Economics The US sociologist and criminologist Edwin Hardin Sutherland is widely considered the founder of white-collar criminology, and was mentored by a protégé of the well-known economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen. Although there was considerable effort on the part of journalists dedicated to investigating the crimes of the rich and powerful during the
By Leith van Onselen In May, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released a new “cutting-edge dataset” measuring private and public debt across the global economy since the 1950s, which showed that the world had hit peak debt: The first observation is that, almost a decade after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, global debt, at $164
Via CNBC comes rumours of the death of the West being greatly exaggerated: President Donald Trump on Wednesday said the United States and the European Union had launched a “new phase” in their relationship, saying that the two major economies would start negotiations immediately on a number of areas including working toward “zero tariffs” on industrial goods
By Leith van Onselen BBC News has published a fascinating report on how young Norwegians have enjoyed a 13% rise in disposable household income while their counterparts in other nations are going backwards, thanks largely to the nation’s Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF), which saved the bounty of its oil and gas boom: Best known for
Via Goldman: The tariff impact on S&P 500 EPS through lower revenues is minimal. S&P 500 firms derive just 2% of aggregate sales explicitly from China. Even a global trade war where every country imposes a 5% tariff on all trading partners would have a muted revenue impact. Our economists estimate the demand-side effects of such
Definitely. At the AFR: Treasurer Scott Morrison has warned the deepening US tariff war with China could derail a global economy that has finally shaken off the effects of the financial crisis and has directly challenged Donald Trump’s view that countries can win trade wars. As the International Monetary Fund described the US as among
By Leith van Onselen Back in March, job search website Adzuna estimated that around one-third Australian jobs could be lost to automation by 2030, with lower-skilled and manual labour jobs most at risk. Now, a new collaboration study between Marsh & McLennan’s Global Risk Centre, Mercer, and Oliver Wyman, estimates that Australian workers, like other nations,
