Daily Brief – iPhone17

iPhone 17

In the last few days there have been quite a few posts about how many days work it takes to earn enough to buy an iPhone17 across the countries of the world with the subtext that life is just not fair. Broadly, Western Europe is quickest and Africa is longest. Rather than dwell on this largely unsatisfactory table, we have looked instead as to how much an iPhone 17 with 256GB of memory costs in USD and it is a broad range. At the top end is Brazil at $1472 and before you begin to think it’s to do with BRICS being disadvantaged, China is $842. The UK at $1081, New Zealand at $1007, France at $1134, and Mexico at $1074 are all expensive for differing reasons, but cheaper still than China at the very foot of the league is the USA at $799. So, if you are travelling in Latin America and feel the urge to lash out on the latest iPhone – don’t; but should you be journeying to the USA then the latest phone technology from Apple at $799 is surely worthy of consideration.

EUR/USD 1.1760.

UK Debt Relief Orders

The DRO mechanism was introduced in 2009 as a low cost alternative to bankruptcy for individuals struggling with debts. The DRO allows individuals to freeze their debts for a year and then, if their financial positions have not changed, to write them off completely. In August, 11,348 individuals entered insolvency which is both a 16% rise since a year earlier and the highest level since 2009. This statistic is more than anecdotal evidence that households are struggling with the cost of living. The less charitable view is that households are living beyond their means because the safety net of options such as the DRO being open to them makes it too easy to overspend. As always it is almost certainly both.

GBP/EUR 1.1478.

Peoples Bank of China

Much is correctly made of how much China invests in US assets – principally US Treasury Bonds – and therefore how dependent the US is on major foreign investors on China for funding its vast and growing debt. Well that situation is changing for China at least, which has fallen to 3^rd place behind both Japan and the UK when it comes to US Treasury holdings. China’s total foreign exchange reserves are at a 10 year high of USD 3.32 Trillion as at August but the PBOC has increased its holdings of Gold and also it appears European assets such as EUR, GBP, and CHF.

EUR/JPY 173.98.

UK Premier League

Ticket touts have been a feature of all sporting events and especially so when it comes to top class UK football matches for ever; but things have moved on from physical buying and selling outside football grounds to sophisticated on line sites that are not necessarily run and operated in the UK. In fact, the investigation team sleuths from the BBC are on the trail as to how these overseas operators are accessing football clubs’ sites to hoover up tickets in the thousands and then having marked up the prices selling them on. In case you are wondering, those tickets are mostly but not always genuine tickets to sold out matches at prices of between 2 and 4 times the face value of the tickets and are sold with the proviso that buyers should not speak to the Stewards at the grounds. Maybe not so different just a scaled up scalping operation.

GBP/USD 1.3504.

A Hard Rain’s A Gonna Fall

This day in 1985 the first Farm Aid concert took place drawing 80,000 with the aim of helping the American Family Farmer and which 40 years on is still going strong. The first concert featured Neil Young, John Mellenkamp, Bob Dylan, Billy Joel and Roy Orbison among a star studded line up.

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
And where have you been, my darling young one?
I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I’ve walked and I crawled on six crooked highways
I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans
I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard

And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you see, my darling young one?
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it
I saw a black branch with blood that kept dripping
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleeding
I saw a white ladder all covered with water
I saw ten-thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children

Discussion and Analysis by Humphrey Percy, Chairman and Founder

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