Authored by Daniel Lacalle via The Mises Institute,
The ECB faces the Devil’s Alternative that Frederick Forsyth mentioned in one of his books. All options are potentially risky. Mario Draghi knows that maintaining the so-called stimuli involves more risks than benefits, but also knows that eliminating them could make the eurozone deck of cards collapse.
The writing was on the wall two weeks ago when retail employment tumbled along with CBI-reported retail sales, but tonight's BDO High Street Sales Tracker should be the icing on the cake for any looming rate hike as like-for-like sales crashed 5.2% - describe by BDO as "the most horrific" October on record.
It was the worst month since right before Brexit in April 2016.
This week we discussed Algebris Investments’ ranking of the world’s largest financial bubbles. London property ranked second on the list, behind Australian property (see here). There is growing evidence the former 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 at nearly two thirds (-63%) in the capital contrasted sharply with a national average which was marginally in positive territory (+1%).
If only every year was this “easy”.
Unfortunately, the old adage of the trend being your friend becomes harder to adhere to as a guidepost as one asset market after another goes into bubble territory. As we discussed here, Alberto Gallo of Algebris Investments has ranked (see here) the top 14 bubbles worldwide, according to characteristics such as duration, appreciation, valuation and the degree of irrational behaviour.
Authored by Gail Tverberg via Our Finite World blog,
It is easy for those of us in the West to overlook how important China has become to the world economy, and also the limits it is reaching. The two big areas in which China seems to be reaching limits are energy production and debt. Reaching either of these limits could eventually cause a collapse.