Business

Two weeks after the first, and biggest, European bank bail-in took place under the relatively new European bank resolution mechanism, the EBRD, when Spain's Banco Popular wiped out the holders of its most risky securities, including equity and AT bonds, and then selling what was left of the bank to Santander for €1 - a process that took place without a glitch -  Italy may have just killed any hope of a European banking union, when the bailout of two small banks made a "mockery" of Europe's new regulation.

Authored by James Rickards via The Daily Reckoning,

The Federal Reserve is now setting out on a new path for quantitative tightening (QT) after nine years of unconventional quantitative (QE) easing policy. It is the evil twin of QE which was used to ease monetary conditions when interest rates were already zero.

Authored by Daniel Ruiz via Blinders Off blog,

To better understand why the automotive industry is in the middle of a perfect storm, first go back and consider the also perfect set of events that led to a robust recovery and a record setting 2016 sales year.

Our Last Recession

America’s wealthiest individuals are thriving thanks to an imbalance in wealth accumulation that favors the already asset-rich. But even though the number of millionaires and billionaires living in the US has been climbing, and is on track to increase by nearly 700,000 a year between now and 2021 – so long as the market avoids another crash – an influx of new potential buyers has done little to alleviate a supply glut that has been weighing on used jet prices for years.

Entrepreneurs have a new trick to raise money quickly, and it all takes place online, free from the constraints of banks and regulators. As Axios reports, since the beginning of 2017, 65 startups have raised $522 million using initial coin offerings — trading a digital coin (essentially an investment in their company) for a digital currency, like Bitcoin or Ether.