European Central Bank

Kaja Kallas there, as concerns grow over global energy supplies.

European Central Bank Chief Economist Philip Lane told the Le Temps newspaper that the new wave of high energy prices means Euro area inflation will stay elevated for longer than initially anticipated.

Meanwhile, the CEO of European oil major TotalEnergies warned on Monday that Russian refinery attacks and constraints at Hormuz have taken, quote, "Too much supply off the market."

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is calling for the UN to abolish the veto power in the UN Security Council and calling for a concrete roadmap for reform of the institution.

And for this to be happening at the same time, following obviously what happened in 2022 with the UK's kind of well-publicized issues, It's unnerving, and I think everyone is quite nervous.

And why, you know, we've seen the last two, last week Bank of Japan and Fed hiked, and the week before the ECB hiked.

The Bank of England didn't.

No. What's your snapshot for why they stood firm?

They tended to focus on the long end more than other countries.

They tended to go all in on government bonds in a way that the Fed and others didn't quite so monomaniacally.

And so by definition, the Bank of England's impact on the gilts market has been disproportionate compared with the ECB's impact on the various different bonds in Europe and analogous in America.

And I think if you look at the kind of premium that the UK has seen as a result of quantitative tightening, it has been great.

Yeah, absolutely.

Just recently, the far left in France, they're unlikely to win the election, but they just talked about debt cancellation by the European Central Bank.

And the same day or a few days earlier, one of the heads of the AFD, Alice Weidel, she said that Germany should leave the euro.

I'm not saying this is going to happen, but the fact that you have such-

And the gold story you alluded earlier to, this was really interesting because Italy's budget, they changed it in such a way to state that the gold isn't owned by the central bank, by Italy's central bank, but owned by the people.

Okay.

That received a lot of backlash from the European Central Bank.

It's interesting when you consider how the Euro system works, intra payment between the Euro countries.

All right? That's in Sweden, which for those who aren't living under a rock, is a European country.

Okay? Yesterday, Monday, September 21st, the European Central Bank rolled out the tokenization framework, the plumbing, the financial plumbing, if you will.

It's called Pontus, all right? And I know what you're thinking.

Pontus and Pontus, but they come from the same Latin root word.

I'm bullish on this project.

Now, speaking of tokenization, the European Central Bank plans to buy tokenized bonds with its own funds.

So they rolled out a new system to link its payment system to blockchain based financial markets.

But to some people, blockchain is a scam, a fad.

So one of my least favorite politicians, Christine Lagarde, who's a banker through and through.

She works for the European Central Bank.

So I'm probably not her biggest fan, guys.

So take what I'm about to say with a grain of salt, other than fuck her.

Anyway, let's read the article.

Breaking, ECB launches digital euro for banks as Pontus begins tokenized finance pilot.

President of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, announces the ECB is launching Pontus today, a platform that will connect private blockchain networks with the target system.

Here's the big one, allowing banks to settle tokenized assets directly in central bank money.

The Bank of Japan also hiked rates by 25 bps to a three-decade high of 1.25%, though on a 7.2 split vote, while the Bank of England held rates steady, with minutes signalling a growing hawkish tilt.

This marked the first time on record that Fed, ECB and BOJ have all raised rates within the same month.

On the data front, US headline inflation accelerated to 3.4% year-on-year in August.

Core inflation rose to 0.3% month-on-month.

that the midterm elections are.

And the reason that this temptation isn't so great for Europeans is any given European leader, because they can't control the ECB directly, is such a small part of the whole global economy, they can't control the price of those inputs for themselves.

But the US, given its preponderance of the global economy, and particularly preponderance of the T-bill market, which is the world's you know, market for money, has the desire to inject sugar syrup just before the thing that they want to have happen.

And you explained that so well.