Tag Archives: government

Why inflation does not bother Boris Johnson too much

After Brexit, the UK seems to be jumping randomly from one crisis to the next, and the government seems strangely unperturbed by the general distress.

Partly, this can be attributed to the politicians’ own failure to learn. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has proven again and again that he is prone to repeating past mistakes — the way he handled the multiple lockdowns in the Covid-19 crisis is the best example of this.

But what if at least part of it is deliberate? There could be a couple of reasons for which crises suit Johnson and his government very well, at least for a while.

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Was Dominic Cummings pushed to save the pound?

The abrupt fall from grace of Dominic Cummings, the much-admired and much-loathed adviser to UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, has sparked all sorts of theories as to what was behind it, and with good reason.

Cummings’ actions have been divisive and often controversial, starting with his choice of “misfits and weirdos” to replace civil servants whom he sacked unceremoniously, to the famous drive he took across the country while both he and his wife were ill with Covid-19 and a national lockdown was in place.

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Winners and losers from a Trump dollar intervention

Just as it was beginning to look like the bond market’s luck was finally running out, President Trump made some remarks that all but guarantee that the bond rally will go on for a little while longer.

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This will be a ‘summer of shocks’ or a ‘summer of stocks’

As investors ponder whether to “sell in May and go away,” strategists say we’ll either see a “summer of stocks,” or a “summer of shocks.”

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Investors ‘front-run’ the ECB, rush to buy bonds

If anyone was looking for more proof of how central banks’ actions are distorting the markets, here it is: investors are trying to “front-run” the European Central Bank (ECB) – in the words of analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch — by buying investment grade bonds.

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ECB announcement breathes life into debt funds

The European Central Bank helped credit as an asset class, and of course corporate bonds within it, become attractive to investors again.

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Bearish sentiment abounds; coordinated market intervention next?

Bearish sentiment abounds in financial markets, and the contrarian “buy” signals intensify. And yet, few analysts have the courage to say the correction/bear market is over and this is the time to jump into the market.

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‘Quantitative failure’ pushes stock markets down

Stock markets swooned again last Friday, when the US jobs report showed the number of jobs created in January was well below expectations, at 151,000 compared with the 190,000 forecast by analysts.

Investors can no longer find comfort in turning bad news into good news, as they once did because any piece of bad economic news meant the Federal Reserve held interest rates rather than hike them.

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