Daily Brief – China

China

A snapshot of China today gives more than a strong indication of the likely effect on the rest of the world’s economies. In August, China had record breaking temperatures – the highest for 60 years which was further exacerbated by thunderstorms which affected agriculture sending vegetable prices 22% higher than 1 year before. Despite that inflation was up a mere 0.6%. The official line is that despite the moribund economy China will still see growth of 5% in 2024. As ever when it comes to China’s economic stats, it’s the way you tell ‘em.

EUR/USD 1.1075.

Going Dutch

When it comes to sleep and work life balance in Europe, the Netherlands are at the top of the tree: at 8 hours and 5 mins average nightly sleep Dutch health and overall optimism of life are unparalleled. Equally Dutch people average a mere 32 hours per week of work. As a result the Dutch are the least stressed while Greece, Malta, Turkey and Cyprus are sleep deprived and highly stressed. Guess that disproves the old saw that when you snooze you lose.

EUR/JPY 156.00.

Budapest v Brussels

In case you missed it Hungary introduced a law on immigration which Brussels said infringed EU obligations to immigrants. The European Court of Justice or ECJ imposed a €200 million fine plus €1 million per day as long as Budapest persists. The first deadline has passed and the final deadline is tomorrow. Budapest is not backing down and is threatening to bus immigrants to Brussels to let the bureaucrats deal with the issue at first hand. If Budapest does not pay the fines the amounts will simply be deducted from the EU allocation of funds to Hungary. Viktor Orban and Hungary is unrepentant and the row is set to escalate further.

GBP/EUR 1.1850.

Plastic Bottle Tops

Wondered why plastic bottles now have inseparable tops? The answer is that since July 3 in the EU it is mandatory for plastic bottles of less than 3 litres to come with such tops. Theoretically the UK is not obliged to comply with this EU law but in practice it makes no sense for manufacturers to churn out different unattached bottle tops just for the UK. So while many UK people are suspicious that this was a further step on the road to the nanny state, that is the reason.

GBP/USD 1.3124.

Metal Guru

This day in 1977 29 year old Marc Bolan of UK pop group T Rex was being driven across Putney Common, London by his keyboardist fellow bandmate girlfriend Gloria Jones late at night in her Mini car. In those days Minis were much smaller and less well constructed before BMW gave them a makeover many years later. The tree beside the road was substantial and while Gloria survived, Marc Bolan was no more which brought the hopes and aspirations of T Rex to a close since he was not only the frontman but the face of the band. More positively the rather small catalogue of songs lives on including this gem:

Metal guru, is it you?
Metal guru, is it you?
Sitting there in your armour plated chair oh yeah
Metal guru, is it true?
Metal guru, is it true?
All alone without a telephone oh yeah

Metal guru could it be you’re gonna bring my baby to me?
She’ll be wild you know, a rock ‘n’ roll child, oh yeah

Metal guru has it been
Just like a silver-studded saber-toothed dream
I’ll be clean you know, pollution machine

Metal guru, is it you?
Metal guru, is it you? Oh, yeah
Whoa-oh, yeah whoa, whoa
Metal guru could it be you’re gonna bring my baby to me?
She’ll be wild you know, a rock ‘n’ roll child oh yeah

Metal guru, is it you?
Metal guru, is it you?
All alone without a telephone

Metal guru could it be you’re gonna bring my baby to me?
She’ll be wild you know, a rock’n’roll child oh yeah

Discussion and Analysis by Humphrey Percy, Chairman and Founder

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