The US: a rate cut to come ?
January 5, 2019The US Federal Reserve, as we know, is in the process of “normalising” its monetary policy stance. That means it’s committed to gradually raising its guideline rates, after the extreme efforts during the finance crisis that led to quantitative easing. After increasing its rates four times in 2018, it has just announced two or three…
Brexit is populist – and farewell 2018!
December 21, 20182018 wasn’t a vintage year. In fact, I’d be more tempted to call it a year of gloom and doom. Trade wars, stalling stock markets, extreme oil price volatility, geopolitical tensions, con games in the Middle East, and serious questions about Macron’s presidency that had brought some much hope are only a few examples of…
Saudi Arabia is no longer ‘too big to fail’
December 5, 2018Is Saudi Arabia still an important partner to the US? The question answers itself, at least partially, with the Middle East having drastically changed since the strategic and fundamental alliance made in 1943 by President Franklin Roosevelt and King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud. It’s now a distant time when FDR boldly, vociferously claimed that “the defence…
The cabal against Carlos Ghosn
November 21, 2018Carlos Ghosn’s deposition? This is in no way a legal matter, and even less so a penal one: it’s rather a palatial revolution. Nissan is profiting from crime, mainly its CEO Hiroto Saikawa, who struggled to hide his joy at dethroning Ghosn after nineteen years of sole reign over not just the companies that he…
USA 0 China 1
November 19, 2018China is about to win the first leg of the trade war against the US. The latest statistics are actually shocking for the US Government, with the trade deficit with China at its highest historical level. These figures – that show a Chinese surplus of more than 37 billion dollars for the month of September,…
A precarious euro in a Europe with no ambition
November 8, 2018The dollar has been an integral part of America’s foreign policy for decades. Much more than the currency of reference for global trade, greatly surpassing the privileged status of reserve currency for the central banks, the Greenback is the supreme arbiter. With the simple press of a button, the US can refuse access for any…
Welcome to the worst of worlds
October 31, 2018How could we not recall the British cult TV series from the ‘60s, The Prisoner, where a giant bubble frantically pursued the hero played by Patrick McGoohan? Our world now finds itself in a similar situation: we are all hostages to the now-plentiful bubbles, and not only the speculative bubbles that infect our markets. It’s…
Keynes’s shadow is looming over Brexit
October 27, 2018“When the facts change, I change my mind”: this was one of Keynes’s maxims that became an established way of thinking. What would his attitude to Brexit have been? For or against it, he would nonetheless have been part of the negotiations to try and extract the best agreement possible, despite the strongly unfavourable conditions…
1929, 2008, and 2019?
October 9, 2018Why get worried about exaggerations – aberrations even – over current stock market prices when the American index of reference, the S&P 500, is only showing drops in the way of 1%? While US public debt is reaching astronomical heights of nearly 22 trillion dollars and while companies listed on this S&P 500 index have…