In a surprising, and unexpected warning - which seemingly came out of nowhere - Russia's Finance Minister Anton Siluanov cautioned Washington yesterday that "If our gold and currency reserves can be arrested, even if such a thought exists, it would be financial terrorism."
Authored by Nick Cunningham via OilPrice.com,
OPEC is on the verge of extending its production cuts for an additional nine months, pushing the deal through the end of 2018.
But the determination to keep the cuts in place comes at the same time that U.S. shale seems to be accelerating in response to higher oil prices.
DB’s Jim Reid has released his “2018 Credit Outlook”. In our first pass on this 60-pager earlier, we noted that Reid characterised 2017 as the most “boring year ever”, since it will go down as one of, if not the least, volatile year for the majority of asset classes.
Earlier this month, we noted further evidence that London’s housing bubble is bursting. In its October 2017 survey, the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) reported the largest proportion of respondents seeing a drop in London house prices versus the previous month since 2009. The net balance was nearly two thirds (-63%) in favour of declines, which contrasted sharply with a national average which was marginally in positive territory (+1%).
If it were a competition, BnkToTheFuture would be a shoo-in for “most meta business plan” of 2017. To wit, the company is building a blockchain-based trading system for selling and trading stakes in blockchain companies in a play to capture a subset of investors who are growing increasingly wary of the sketchy ICO market.