Economy

Last month’s summit in Berlin on “European Digital Sovereignty” gathered +900 policymakers, industry leaders, investors and researchers from the 27 EU Member States. Initiated by France and Germany, measures were presented aimed at fostering innovative solutions and infrastructures while reducing technological dependencies and protecting strategic assets. The summit served as ...

The inflation crisis in the Euro Area is over, but the real story is how stubborn services price inflation has become. On Tuesday, Eurostat published its flash estimate for euro area inflation in November, which came in at 2.2% year-on-year, up slightly from 2.1% in October. The HICP inflation estimate for Belgium stood at 2.6%. While inflation remains above the ECB’s target, ...

Japan is slowly transitioning into a new financial era. Headline inflation has remained above the Bank of Japan’s 2% target since April 2022, marking the longest period of above-target inflation in more than 35 years. While the initial surge was driven largely by higher fresh food and energy prices, underlying inflation has also firmed, albeit more gradually. During this perio ...

Of course, our MacroFriday is focused on macro-economic developments, but some companies have grown so large and/or important that their impact on the economy and financial markets can no longer be overlooked. One such company is Nvidia, which has rapidly become the largest company in the world. On Wednesday, investors followed the publication of Nvidia’s third-quarter results ...

I would prefer not to touch upon this sore spot, but unfortunately the current environment leaves me with no other choice. Despite some fragile survey-based optimism about the European industry, industrial production continues to trend lower in the eurozone.   Last week in our MacroFriday, we discussed industrial production in the US, which showed a decade without growth once ...

Industrial Production in the US has barely risen since 2017, especially excluding high-tech. The blue line suggests little output growth in the broader manufacturing base once high-tech components are excluded. While consumer spending has clearly grown since then, this suggest the continued offshoring of industrial production, something the current US administration is actively ...

After last week’s research trip to Boston, where we focused on developments in automatization, robotics and of course AI, we dedicate this week’s MacroFriday to the remarkable surge in construction spending in US manufacturing related to this fields.  Although reshoring manufacturing to U.S. soil might be the current talk of the town, these developments have actually been unde ...

The last time we discussed this graph in our MacroFriday was in February, when the gold price hit a record high of 2882 USD per ounce. Eight months later, gold is trading at around 4,240 USD per ounce, marking an impressive 47% price increase.   The high (negative) correlation between the gold price and the US real rate broke in 2022. A key driver of gold's rally since th ...

Last wednesday, the U.S. government entered a shutdown after Republicans and Democrats failed to agree on a new federal funding bill. As a result, non-essential government functions have been suspended: ‘non-essential’ federal workers are furloughed without pay, while others in ‘essential’ roles continue to work temporarily unpaid. President Trump’s renewed threats of potential ...

After Wednesday’s Econopolis Economic Encounter, with guest speaker Professor David Criekemans discussing his new book Hyperrealism, it is only logical we dedicate our MacroFriday to geopolitics. The lack of resources in some regions, or the strategic control over them in others, can play a vital role in economic developments. And China holds considerable leverage over the West ...