In the Blind Spot (Central bank funding models, Japan FX risk, Iron beams)
Good noon-ish, Blind Spot readers. Apologies for another Sunday send-out. It’s been a busy week, involving travel to Warsaw and sleep deprivation. Closer to home, I’m getting a foreboding sense that central bankers are about to up the ante on experimental thinking to stave off fiscal creep in their day-to-day operations. Austria’s Robert Holzmann let […]
In the Blind Spot (A big banking glitch in Japan paves the way for the digital yen)
Dear Subscribers, It’s gearing up to be a very busy October. And the big news over at the Blind Spot is that we have relaunched Spot Markets Live. The intention is to run the show until Christmas with former trader/broker turned wordsmith Julian Rimmer, and then reassess. It’s our final stab at making this work. […]
How Elon Musk made eastern Germany great again (POLITICO)
By Wilhelmine Preussen · Oct 11, 2023 GRUNHEIDE, Germany — Grünheide isn’t a household name, even in Germany — but Elon Musk’s announcement four years ago that he’d build Tesla’s first European gigafactory near the eastern German town put it on the map. Now French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian PM Giorgia Meloni and Turkish President […]
In the Blind Spot (The grand social media exodus to BlueSky begins)
Dear Subscribers, Welcome to the new look Blind Spot newsletter. We have given up on the old formatting because it was making everything look horrible in the send-out. The inspiration for the new style comes in part from how Politico organises its newsletters. They’ve been doing this a long time so emulating them is no […]
In the Blind Spot (When governments manipulate markets)
Salve Romani, How often do you think about the Roman Empire? Because the answer for me and my fellow anacyclosis-minded buddy Tim Ferguson is, obviously, hourly. To honour the fact that everyone else is thinking about the Roman Empire at least a few times a week, too, I’ve added an SPQR channel to the Blind […]
Poland’s PiS under fire for massaging inflation data (POLITICO)
By Ben Munster, Izabella Kaminska · Sep 28, 2023, A high-stakes electoral gamble over inflation by Poland’s central bank may be about to pay off, with preliminary September figures on Friday expected to show a large slowdown in consumer price rises, supporting the central bank’s contentious decision to aggressively cut rates earlier this month. But […]
In the Blind Spot (How Brussels missed its opportunity to dominate finance)
Dear Subscribers, I want to start this weekend’s newsletter with a historic tale of sour financial grapes that has had a huge bearing on how the City is regulated and how it will continue to be regulated in the near future. It starts like this. Earlier this year I sat down with the inimitable Andrew […]
In the Blind Spot (What do psychedelics have to do with power politics?)
Greetings and salutations. Turn on. Tune in. And drop out. A phrase first spoken by counterculture radical Timothy Leary in 1966. But, as Leary also noted, “In the United States in the next five, 10, 15 years, you’re going to see more and more people taking LSD and making it a part of their lives. […]
Solar sector calls for €100M EU bailout as Chinese competition pushes it to the brink (POLITICO)
By Victor Jack · Sep 11, 2023 BRUSSELS — The EU should step in and spend €100 million on solar panels made by European companies faced with an imminent wave of bankruptcies thanks to intensifying Chinese competition and slowing demand in Europe. The industry’s main lobby in Brussels, SolarPower Europe, on Monday sent a letter […]
In the Blind Spot (Russell Napier on the inevitable financial repression to come)
Plus, why the Wegovy boom is a false dawn for obesity, the alleged media conspiracy impacting the Polish central bank and former central bankers trash talking those who replaced them.