{"id":7917,"date":"2024-05-28T09:28:29","date_gmt":"2024-05-28T08:28:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/test-hcfx.pantheonsite.io\/?p=7917"},"modified":"2024-05-28T09:28:29","modified_gmt":"2024-05-28T08:28:29","slug":"morning-update-48","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hamiltoncourtfx.com\/es\/morning-update-48\/","title":{"rendered":"Morning Update"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Travel Tuesday: South Africa<\/strong><\/h5>\n
The only country in the world with three capital cities. Pretoria is the executive capital, Cape Town is the legislative capital, and Bloemfontein is the judicial capital. This unique arrangement reflects the country\u2019s commitment to its diverse cultural and historical heritage.<\/h5>\n
GDP\u00a0<\/strong>$405.27 billion<\/h5>\n
Biggest Industry<\/strong>\u00a0Mining<\/h5>\n
Biggest Trading Partners<\/strong>\u00a0China, USA, Germany, Mozambique, Japan, UK, India<\/h5>\n
Political System<\/strong>\u00a0Unitary parliamentary democratic republic<\/h5>\n
National Animal<\/strong>\u00a0The Springbok<\/h5>\n
Next Election<\/strong>\u00a029 May<\/h5>\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
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News over the weekend from the UK\u2026<\/h2>\n <\/div>\n
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\u2026has been very election-centric. Rishi Sunak probably won the battle for the headlines with his proposal for National Service for all 18-year-olds. The plan would be that by the end of the next parliament, all 18-year-olds would have the choice of a year in the military full-time, for which they would be paid, or a weekend a month volunteering in the local community, or with blue light services. It will be compulsory; there will be exemptions from it, but they haven\u2019t worked out how to enforce it as James Cleverly confirmed that there\u2019d be \u201cno criminal sanctions\u201d \u2013 though parents might get a fine!<\/p>\n

The \u201cTriple Lock Plus\u201d is another pledge aimed squarely at the retiring and retired voter. It\u2019s basically the promise to maintain the triple lock and increase the tax-free allowance in line with the same measures of the existing triple lock (the higher of 2.5%, inflation, or average earnings).<\/p>\n

That was the good news from Rishi; the bad news was that he\u2019s lost a few more MPs from the re-election campaign, including Michael Gove and Andrea Leadsom. Perhaps more damning was MP Lucy Allan, who is also standing down at the election, publicly backing the Reform candidate in her constituency! Ms Allan has been suspended from the party, but given that she won\u2019t be standing again, that feels like a pretty hollow punishment!<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n

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Away from the campaign trail<\/h2>\n <\/div>\n
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Jeremy Hunt was in Italy for the G7 finance ministers meeting. The Chancellor used the platform to warn other nations about the potentially damaging \u201ccreep back into protectionism\u201d. Mr Hunt was referencing the tariffs that the US and EU are preparing against China. Though the UK government will have no doubt been considering whether they align with the US and Europe, the election stops them from passing any new laws for the next couple of months.<\/p>\n

His tone does suggest that the UK position is more balanced, though with the UK automotive industry so important to the UK economy, there will no doubt be calls from the industry to match tariffs that the US is imposing or risk the UK becoming a dumping ground for cut-price Chinese EV vehicles that UK manufacturers cannot compete with on price.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n

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G7 ministers\u2026<\/h2>\n <\/div>\n
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\u2026have agreed in principle to use frozen Russian assets to fund loans to Ukraine. The agreement paves the way for the G7 leaders\u2019 summit in June to potentially sign the proposal off. Russia has about \u00a3160bn in assets frozen in Euroclear, based in Belgium, for which the interest could comfortably support large loans to Ukraine.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s an awful lot still to be worked out, not least how the burden is to be shared if Ukraine were to default, or the returns on the Russian funds weren\u2019t to materialise. Still, this feels like a step forward.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n

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In the US \u2013 it\u2019s the economy, stupid.<\/h2>\n <\/div>\n
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Well, not quite, but the person that coined that phrase, James Carville, has hit out at Joe Biden for risking the election for talking about \u2018the wrong issues\u2019. He\u2019s critical of Biden for focusing on Gaza and student loan forgiveness, which are really far down the list of things that Americans care about, according to polls. He says Biden shouldn\u2019t be sitting back and assuming that people will be voting for him because the economy is so strong when people\u2019s big three issues are inflation, immigration, and the economy\/jobs.<\/p>\n

Mr Carville is suggesting taking more imaginative approaches to policies that would excite voters \u2013 one that he\u2019s proposed is taxing universities with endowment funds greater than $5bn and using that money to give their former students relief on their student loans \u2013 rather than just pledging to write it off. He puts it succinctly: \u201ccome up with simple, understandable, popular proposals\u2026 don\u2019t spin the polls, change the polls\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n

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Looking to the week ahead<\/h2>\n <\/div>\n
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We\u2019ve got US consumer confidence numbers today, The Fed\u2019s Beige Book tomorrow, Thursday sees US GDP numbers, and on Friday we get European inflation data and German retail sales \u2013 both key numbers in the markets\u2019 narrative that the ECB will be the first central bank to cut. Meanwhile, the dollar remains on the back foot, while equities continue to push higher.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Travel Tuesday, weekend news from the UK centers around the election, Jeremy Hunt attends G7 finance ministers meeting, Biden receives a hit for concentrating on the ‘wrong issues’ ahead of the election, and what’s happening this week.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":2898,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"rp-language":[16],"class_list":["post-7917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-morning-updates","rp-language-en_gb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncourtfx.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncourtfx.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncourtfx.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncourtfx.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncourtfx.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7917"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncourtfx.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7917\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7921,"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncourtfx.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7917\/revisions\/7921"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncourtfx.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncourtfx.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncourtfx.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncourtfx.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7917"},{"taxonomy":"rp-language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncourtfx.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rp-language?post=7917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}