Peter Isackson | Two months after the departure of Donald Trump, the world is seeking to understand the contours of the new administration’s still hesitating foreign policy. US President Joe Biden made a bold step forward this week when he vowed to pursue the fantasy of Russiagate, the Democratic equivalent of QAnon.
Arman Hassanniakalager via The Conversation | The global market in government bonds has been bleeding red lately. The US ten-year strongly influences the price of everything from mortgages to business loans in the US, and by extension around the world, so such a sharp rise has the potential to reduce borrowing and weaken the economic recovery from COVID –especially when there is so much debt in the global system.
The Social Security gained an average of 9,328 foreign affiliates in February (+0.4%). As a result, the second month of the year closed with 2,053,997 immigrant workers registered in the system, as reported Thursday by the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration. Of the total number of foreign workers, 1,309,920 came from countries outside the EU (63.77%) and the rest (744,077) from EU countries (36.05%).
Telefónica has been awarded 40 MHz blocks in the 3.6 GHz band and 20 MHz in the 700 MHz band in the latest spectrum auction in the UK. This is the second one held in that country to accelerate the deployment of the new mobile technology. To do so, it has had to pay £448 M (near €532 M). This amount is much lower than initially estimated by the market, which had calculated that Telefónica’s investment in new spectrum in the UK would amount to £700 million (approximately €820 M).
Monex Europe | Chair Powell doubled down on the tone struck by the SEP and policy statement in his press conference yesterday emphasising the need to witness substantial progress in the recovery before signalling the exit of post-pandemic policy measures. The tone taken by Powell suggests the Federal Reserve will happily sit behind the curve as inflation overshoots in the coming years, helping to further push back rate expectations and anchor real rates in bond markets.
Comments on dividends and buybacks for Q4’21 have dominated the publication of banking sector results. Although regulatory restrictions still apply, most banks want to compensate their shareholders for the dividends they did not pay through special dividends and buybacks in Q4’21. This will result in high payouts at the end of the year. So far, dividend futures of December 2021 STOXX Banks EUR Price index are up 55% year- to-date versus the index which is up 12%.
When it comes to improving the rental market, the parties in the government coalition, PSOE-Unidas Podemos, have very different conceptions. Both agree to include mechanisms to help control rental prices on an ad hoc basis and in the most stressed areas, but Pablo Iglesias’ party is demanding the establishment of limits on rental market prices, while the socialist part of the government has confirmed that they prefers to fiscally stimulate those owners who rent below the prices set by reference indexes.
Monex Europe | The March 17th FOMC meeting is likely to be one of the most important for Powell, with many drawing comparisons with the task presented to his predecessor Bernanke back in 2013. However, the meeting doesn’t require a decision on policy measures by the FOMC beyond what they wish to do with the Supplementary Leverage Ratio (SLR) relief. Instead, the challenge is one of communications. Since the January meeting, the US yield curve has substantially steepened with the 10-year yield rising some 60bps to trade above the 1.6% handle.
Hans-George Betz (Via Fair Observer) | There is an unwritten rule in politics: If you are incompetent, at least you should not be corrupt. It seems nobody ever informed the German Christian Democrats that this was the way of things. How else to explain why Christian Democratic MPs thought it was perfectly fine to take advantage of Germany’s COVID-19 crisis to line their own pockets? In German, we have a word, “Raffzahn,” to refer to somebody who cannot get enough, never satisfied with what they have. In the concrete case, a member of the German Bundestag from the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) pocketed €250,000 ($298,000) in commissions for brokering a deal involving the procurement of FFP2 face masks by the federal and the state governments.
Banco Sabadell | A federal court in Mexico has temporarily suspended the government’s legislative reform for the electricity sector. The reform would prioritise energy production by state-owned company CFE when it comes to feeding energy into the grid. In turn this would harm private renewable generation firms which, by producing more cheaply, would enter the market earlier. The impact of for the Spanish firms with presence in the Mexican market, Iberdrola, Acciona and Naturgy is limited.