Morning Brief – China Politburo

China Politburo

China’s monetary policy will be more flexible and its fiscal policy more proactive in H2 2020. While a long way from embracing Western human rights values as we know, China is demonstrating that its economic approach is completely different today to how it was when the First 5 year Plan focussing on rapid industrial development was decided on in 1953; this gave way to the Second 5 year Plan in 1958 when the focus under the Great Leap Forward was on agricultural communes and smaller industrial enterprises. In other words when China used to set a course and a 5 year Plan, that was it-no deviation at all. Looking at the direction of 5 year USD versus CNY graph, the 12% CNY devaluation to where it stands today at 7.00 has certainly not been a straight line and reflects China’s efforts to establish the credentials of the CNY as a major global currency.

UK Residential Property

It is anecdotal, but the UK Chancellor lifting Stamp Duty Land Tax to kick in at GBP 500,000 is injecting life into the moribund UK residential property market- in London at least. SGM-FX Operations Officer Jisun has been up with the lark over the past few weekends to join long viewing queues for houses in North East London. Jisun and her husband have encountered that old chestnut of agents informing them that only offers at or above the asking price will be countenanced. However their persistence has finally paid off and they have managed to beat off other hopefuls and snag the house that they wanted at below the asking price.

1,540,556 Miles

British Airways mailed yesterday to advise me that in the past 28 years I have flown more than 6 times the distance from the Earth to the Moon with them. Right now long distance and regular air travel is looking to be a long way away from making a comeback, but just to motivate their customers, BA is offering double Avios.  In recent years I have also regularly patronised both Singapore Airlines and Virgin Atlantic to Asia and North America respectively so my total is well over 2 million miles but still close to home against the 34 million miles between Earth and Mars. The question was certainly on David Bowie’s mind in 1971 with this classic from Ziggy Stardust:

Life on Mars

It’s a God-awful small affair
To the girl with the mousy hair
But her mummy is yelling “No”
And her daddy has told her to go

But her friend is nowhere to be seen
Now she walks through her sunken dream
To the seat with the clearest view
And she’s hooked to the silver screen

But the film is a saddening bore
For she’s lived it ten times or more
She could spit in the eyes of fools
As they ask her to focus on

Sailors fighting in the dance hall
Oh man! Look at those cavemen go
It’s the freakiest show
Take a look at the lawman
Beating up the wrong guy
Oh man, wonder if he’ll ever know
He’s in the best selling show
Is there life on Mars?

Discussion and Analysis by Humphrey Percy, Chairman and Founder

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