Last week:
- UK: The Tories Brexit-iers, the group that supported the leadership of Cameron on the premise that he would deliver them a Brexit referendum, won the majority in the UK Parliament. On 22 October 2019, this group managed to have their Brexit plan approved in principal by the UK Parliament. It remains to be seen whether the three years of prolonged uncertainty is worth the UK’ s ability to start competitive regulation activity. The upcoming months will certainly be painted with disappointing macro releases on the one hand, and on the other hand wishful consecutive new deals of the UK with the rest of the world.
- US and China are finally agreeing on the phase 1 part of their deal. Phase 2 is scheduled to be negotiated after the US 2020 presidential elections on November. Tariffs that were sheduled to be implemented on 15 December have been postponed, while a small part of imposed tariffs have been waved.
- FED: Despite the fact that Jerome Powell clarified that “dots are not in the conversation, when the FED’s outlook changes”, Wednesday’s dots reveiled that the current Federal Fund rates range (1.50~1.75%) is the rate floor.
- EU announced its ambitious green deal and the target to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. Poland is the only EU country that has not commit ed in the green deal.Christine Lagarde, at her first ECB press conference used her own style of communication. “Don’t over-interpret, don’t second guess, don’t cross reference. I will be myself”. She additionally announced her plan to implement a Strategic Review of the ECB to be start within January 2020 and be finished withing 2020. She intents to include politicians in the loop. I am expecting that the whole process will add an unemployment target to the ECB’s mandate.
- The EU council did not approve Turkey‘s deal with Libya. Trump met with the Russian foreign minister Lavrov in Washighton. Ukraine and Russia reached a deal at their meeting in Paris.
- France: The pension reform plan has been introduced on Wednesday. The strikes continue.
- USA: The judiciary committee sends the impeachment case back to the House.
- Beijing is censoring Reuters on the coverage of Hong Kong protests. International experts hired to advice Hong Kong’s police internal department quited.
- Aramco debuted successfully. It’s price remains higher than the IPO price.
- The US House voted the Uighur Act of 2019 that includes sanctions against Chinese officials and export bans of Chinese surveillance technology.
- US-EU: the probability of additional tariffs on EU goods exists.
- Cryptos: Total market cap at $193bn ( –6.0% w/w, -45% from the 2019 high, -76% from the all time high of January 2018).
The weeks before:
- Turkey’s position upgraded following NATO summit,USA considers new tariffs on EU, USA votes Uighur Act and Hong Kong bill is turned into law, OPEC+ additional production cap up until March 2020, Japanese new fiscal boost, ten of thousands in Hong Kong (02-08 Dec)
Next week:
- EU Parliament discusses on Uighurs living in China.
- Monetary meetings of the Bank of Japan, Bank of England and Norges Bank on Thursday.