Europe

Of all people…

The former head of the conservative Bundesbank believes that central banks need to embrace digital currencies and he’s concerned that they’re being left behind. This might be interesting, we thought. Axel Weber has been talking to the FT but, it turns out, he hasn’t shaken off his bureaucratic roots since he took on the Chairmanship of UBS. Instead of embracing Bitcoin, Ethereum, decentralisation and private enterprise, Weber thinks central banks, and the likes of UBS, will benefit from creating their own versions. According to the FT.

After transferring over the bulk of his personal wealth to his “Open Society” Foundation - the umbrella organization for a network of dozens of political groups that push Soros’s far-left agenda across the US and Europe, Soros is still comfortable enough to justify giving away even more of his money - this time to the US federal government.

The last 48 hours has been quite a chaotic one in precious metals markets with massive volumes of 'paper' gold flushed in and out of the futures markets. This morning - shortly after the US open failed to spark a panic-bid in stocks - gold futures bounced off their 200-day moving average on huge volume (around $4.5 billion notional) breaking above the 100DMA...

At a moment of widespread acknowledgement that the short-lived Islamic State is no longer a reality, and as ISIS is about to be defeated by the Syrian Army in its last urban holdout of Abu Kamal City in eastern Syria, the US is signalling an open-ended military presence in Syria. On Monday Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon that the US is preparing for a long term military commitment in Syria to fight ISIS "as long as they want to fight."

German GDP growth for Q3 2017 printed at 0.8% Q/Q, easily beating the consensus estimate of 0.6%, which was in line with growth in the previous quarter, driven by fixed capital formation amid stable household and government consumption. While year-on-year GDP growth was reported as 2.3%, the underlying growth was 2.8% after adjusting for calendar effects. The data confirmed that German growth was on track for its best year since 2011, and pushed the EUR higher for the fifth day, rising above 1.1700 for the first time in 3 weeks.

More from Bloomberg: