Europe

Submitted by IceCap Asset Management: April 2016 Letter to Investors

Revenge of the Risotto

If the US presidential election has devolved into a comical soundbite free-for-fall, then the UK has its hands full with Brexit, and how the two opposing camps are approaching the UK's vote to exit the Eurozone on June 23.

Automation is taking over all aspects of society.  In many cases, this is a good thing.  As we explain in Splitting Pennies - Understanding Forex - trading Forex manually (Without robots or automation) is basically impossible.  But also we've learned that when anything is done by the government, it ends up being mismanaged, overpriced, delayed, or worse.  In the most extreme example, inmates on death row that are killed by the government, are later found to be innocent with DNA or other hard evidence.

Turkey’s President Erdogan believes that western countries care more about the rights of animals and gay people than the plight of 23 million Syrians. RT reports: “Shame on those who deny the sensitivity they show to the whales, seals and turtles in the sea to the right to life of 23 million Syrians,” Anadolu Agency quoted Erdogan as saying. “Shame on those who put their security, welfare and comforts ahead of other people’s survival,” the Turkish president said, addressing the crowd in the northwestern province of Kocaeli.

One of the reasons why central banks around the globe have flooded the financial system with trillions in excess reserves is to make sure that banks no longer have to rely on potentially fleeting short term deposits (and is also why negative interest rates have become the norm in so many part of the world, that $10 trillion in bills and bonds now trade with a negative yield).