Here's my wrap of what’s happened around the world overnight.
North Korea is “begging for war”. This is what the US ambassador to the United Nations has told the Security Council, as North Korea is said to be preparing to launch another ballistic missile. Nikki Haley has urged the group to impose the strongest possible sanctions against North Korea. There’s agreement across the Security Council that diplomacy, not military action, is the way to go. Nonetheless, South Korea has still flexed its muscles, firing a number of test rockets.
Instability in North Korea has seen some investors retreat to safe havens, but movements in the markets have been tempered. This is also due to a public holiday in the US.
Investor confidence in Europe is high, despite recent stock market declines and the risk of a rapidly strengthening currency. Sentix’s measure of eurozone investor confidence rose at the start of September to a near 10-year high.
China has banned fundraising through thought the launch of token-based digital currencies. The move targets initial coin offerings (ICOs), which have fuelled the spike in cryptocurrency values. The announcement has seen the value of cryptocurrencies fall. Commentators believe global regulators are pushing back at ICOs as they struggle to understand their risks.
Hong Kong’s de facto central bank is putting the lending to two of China’s massive conglomerates under the spotlight. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority has asked banks in the city for details of their loans to HNA and Dalian Wanda Group. Bloomberg’s sources say lenders are required to give the authority information on their lending, but scrutiny of these two giants has escalated in recent weeks.
The move comes as Chinese regulators also step up scrutiny of the companies behind last year’s unprecedented spree of takeovers outside the country. HNA bought UDC Finance from ANZ earlier in the year.
In New York, the UST 10yr yield remains at 2.17%.
The price of crude oil is unchanged from yesterday at US$47 a barrel, while the Brent benchmark is down slightly to US$52.
Gold has jumped to US$1,333/oz.
The New Zealand dollar has strengthened, but remains weak. It’s at 71.7 US cents, 90.2 Australian cents and 60.2 euro cents. The TWI-5 index is up to 73.9.
If you want to catch up with all the changes from yesterday, we have an update here.
The easiest place to stay up with event risk today is by following our Economic Calendar here ».
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6 Comments
(From the link mentioned above)
in the Second World War, the British had lost less than 1 percent of their population, France lost 1.35 percent, China lost 1.89 percent and the U.S. only a third of 1 percent. Put another way, Korea proportionally suffered roughly 30 times as many people killed in 37 months of American carpet-bombing as these other countries lost in all the years of the Second World War.
And we wonder why today there is still resentment towards the USA....
Huge resentment, suspicion of USA, deeply embedded. The first NK president came from the Red Army, Russia suffered WW2 casualties far exceeding any of the other allies, combat & civilian. And of course MacArthur just had to cross the 38th parallel, which escalated & prolonged the civil war, and planted the seeds of what we have today. Hard to see what sanctions can do. In need more Nth Koreans will simply die of starvation and/or cold. The whole country does not know or expect anything else. Think about it. Those born in 1948 are now approaching 70, ie in the last quarter of their lives.
The big question that doesn't get asked, because everyone is too busy asking how we can avoid war, is how can we stop the suffering of the NK people? It is probably true that they don't know they are suffering because their view of the world is that given by their leadership, but they are suffering through deprivation. How long must the rest of the world tremble at the threats of a paranoid leadership who perceive the SKs as American puppets, don't accept that America is only in SK to guarantee their security against NK (on several occasions they have seriously considered withdrawing their military presence in the past, but have been talked out of it by SK). In my opinion the region and the world would be a whole lot better off with a united democratic Korea. I don't really understand the Chinese perception, or what they are afraid of because (I believe) the Americans would be gone from the Korean peninsula if the threat to the democratic Korean was gone.
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