With cash being presented not just as a danger to society and to national security, but also as a direct health hazard due to the coronavirus, the push towards digital alternatives has been massively reinforced over the last few months…mehr hier
Dollar-denominated financial markets appeared to suffer a dramatic change on or about the 23 March. This article examines the possibility that it marks the beginning of the end for the Fed’s dollar. At this stage of an evolving economic and financial crisis, such thoughts are necessarily speculative. But an imminent banking crisis is now a near certainty, with most global systemically important banks in a weaker position than at the time of the Lehman crisis. US markets appear oblivious to this risk, though the ratings of G-SIBs in other jurisdictions do reflect specific banking risks rather than a systemic one at this stage.A banking collapse will be a game-changer for financial markets, and we should then worry that the Fed has bound the dollar’s future to their fortunes. weiter hier
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Billions upon billions of voracious desert locusts are ravenously devouring crops over a vast portion of the globe that stretches from eastern Africa all the way to India. This unprecedented plague was supposed to be subsiding by now, but instead a fourth generation of locusts has emerged that is producing swarms that are “up to 8,000 times larger” than what we witnessed Weiterlesen
“The flows into New York are unprecedented,” Allan Finn, the global commodities director at logistics and security provider Malca-Amit told Bloomberg as his company’s teams in New York have been working 24 hours a day to cope with unprecedented demand for physical gold while navigating lockdowns, flight disruptions and social distancing. mehr hier
The United Nations has put out a tweet asserting that people shouldn’t use politically incorrect terms like “boyfriend,” “girlfriend,” “husband” and “wife” in order to “help create a more equal world.” mehr hier
It used to be a running joke among traders that when markets crash, central banks step in – either directly or in the case of the Fed indirectly via Citadel – and buy stocks to prop up the market and shore up confidence. That joke is now the truth. Now that the Fed Weiterlesen
That there is a bubble, a massive one, is unquestionable. Readers will further have anticipated that it didn’t have to be a global pandemic to burst this bubble. This bubble was practically looking for a prick – any prick – to burst it. Whether it was a credit event, liquidity shortages that led to bankruptcies, a terrorist attack, a natural disaster or a bat: markets had reached a level of fragility where they could not cope with the materialising of such a tail risk event. mehr hier
By now everybody has had a chance to let Elon Musk’s Friday meltdown Twitter tirade that lobbed off almost $15 billion in Tesla market cap. Among the various disjointed statements from Musk’s Twitter account – which among other things claimed that Tesla stock was expensive, something which the market clearly disagrees with this morning – was a claim that he was going to sell almost everything that he owned, including his houses: mehr hier
Aus heutiger Sicht nicht leicht zu sagen, aber manches sprcht eher dafür. Argumente hier
“…. In most countries in Europe and North America, governments have imposed lockdowns of their populations and economies. At first glance, this strategy would seem to strike a reasonable, if painful, bargain: pay the price of (hopefully temporary) limits on civil liberties and economic recession (if not depression) to slow virus spread. The price has been very high. In the U.S. alone, the bill has already Weiterlesen
The precious thing about science is not to be seen in the results, which are hardly ever final. What is crucial is the scientific process, which is a competitive process based on disagreements about the validity and relevance of different research hypotheses. This process is especially important when it comes to new problems—such as a new virus which spreads in unheard-of ways and has unheard-of effects. It is precisely in such circumstances, when the stakes are high, that the impartial confrontation and competitive exploration of different points of view is of paramount importance. Research czars and central planners are here of no use at all. They are part of the problem, not part of the solution. mehr hier