Daily Brief – EU Business Sentiment

EU Business Sentiment

Looking at the overall EU business sentiment, the Germany ZEW business sentiment mirrors it: both are at a 1 year low. Maybe just maybe later today the Federal Reserve could deliver a shot of adrenaline to the US and by inference the global economy with a big booster of a cut. Meanwhile the Germans are very downbeat.

EUR/JPY 157.49.

Norway: Electric Cars by numbers

Norway, a country of 5.5 million people has 754K electric cars just in excess of 753K petrol cars. Time called for diesel and petrol cars by 2025 so maybe not surprising that the balance has already tilted. Norway has managed to roll out chargers in every town with 2000 in Oslo alone. Norway is in the happy economic position of having an extremely well funded pension fund derived from oil which has paid for this charging infrastructure and funded the raft of incentives to go electric.

EUR/USD 1.1116.

Victorians

19th century Victorian Britain has a lot to teach 21st century Britain and not least in the case of Crystal Palace that was built for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in Hyde Park, London. Approved in 1850 and built on time in just 190 days the 560 meter long structure with an immense glass roof employed 3300 iron columns to support it. It was so large that on a warm day the structure expanded by as much as 30cms. The reason for its success apart from clear and decisive planning laws was down to the first time use of the British Standard Whitworth or BSW which was the world’s first national screw thread standard. In case you are wondering GBP was worth USD 4.35 then and in today’s money GBP was worth GBP 16870.67.

GBP/USD 1.3192.

UK Productivity Boost

According to the relatively newly minted UK Business Secretary, the right to WFH will boost productivity. At a time where all the graphs on per capita productivity are unanimous and demonstrate just how output needs to reverse its decline, it is a brave call to double down by insisting that flexible working between business premises and home will achieve this given that WFH has now been a real time live experiment for over 4 years since the outbreak of the pandemic. Ironically it comes on the very day that Amazon has mandated its workers to be back in the office 5X5.

EUR/GBP 0.8437.

Imagine

The British music magazine New Musical Express or NME this day in 2012 named John Lennon as the ultimate rock icon after an astonishing 160,000 readers backed him for the crown over Liam Gallagher and David Bowie who joined him on the podium. JL’s music is distinct from his undoubted contribution to The Beatles lives on and includes this song:

Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us, only sky

Imagine all the people
Livin’ for today
Ah

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too

Imagine all the people
Livin’ life in peace
You

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world
You

Discussion and Analysis by Humphrey Percy, Chairman and Founder

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