To Brexit or not to Brexit

Ok guys so a while back it seemed like Greece would be forced to leave the European Union, the so called Grexit. Actually the Greeks themselves didn't want to leave, they just wanted more loans without any tough labor laws and austerity being forced down their throat. Their creditors on the other side talked a lot more about the Grexit trying to pressure the Greek government into submission.

With Great Britain is a whole different story. Now the British (or some of them) consider that having to respect some directives from Bruxelles is definately not good for their business, accepting immigrants is undesirable (although London was already full of them before UK joining EU) and other so on. We should remember however that the UE already made some concessions to Great Britain that are not applicable to other smaller countries (how about that equality between state members no?).

Anyway the markets went into a frenzy over this voting. Asking me I was sure the Remain side would win eventually because everyone knows the benefits of staying in the EU are better that the ones gained by leaving it. But it was also a tricky way to put more pressure on the EU leadership and other countries to accept Great Britain's demands and gain these concessions.

Now that we've seen that it can be done which country will follow next in threating to leave unless they get a better deal?

Arriving shortly - Get rich, get free

Well folks now that I have more free time I have decided to write an ebook - "Get rich, get free"  based on my experience and financial education taken in the past years. I plan to sell it very cheap at first to see how it works so be on the lookout. :)

Maybe I got what it takes to be the next great financial education bestseller-writer or maybe I get to help some people to get their personal finances straight. Wish me luck! :)

Last spike before the great fall!

We see some really strange occurances on the US capital markets, stocks started to raise as if we all missed the news on how great economy is recovering and growing. Have you read such news? Me either, must have missed the story.

The oil markets are still struggling leaving many countries whose economy depend on the oil price struggling. And I'm not only mentioning Middle East countries, we can count at least Russia and Venezuela for example.

How about China? Who forgot about the 1000 punds gorilla (or dragon) in the room? The unprecedented boom in China’s $3 trillion (really!!!) corporate bond market is starting to unravel bigtime.
Spooked by a fresh wave of defaults at state-owned enterprises, investors in China’s yuan-denominated company notes have driven up yields for nine of the past ten days and triggered the biggest selloff in onshore junk debt since 2014. Now that's some serious concerns.

So rather than getting your high hopes for new bulls markets prepare to face the bears.

Deutsche Bank, ready to fall?

Well one of the big surprises of the start of the year is undoubtely the stocks price fall for Deutsche Bank. Once considered the safest bank in the safest EU country (Germany) the shock send panic waves through the financial markets all arround the world.

It's like how no one asked how in debt in Deutsche Bank after all? How much money is frozen in assets that lost much of their value in the past years, how much is speculated in risky investment and how much (or how little) is actually put in solid placements.Count that next to the slow-down in China and other Asian markets, lethargy of Japan economy, plunging commodity prices (especially oil) and heavily indebted energy firms, as well political upheaval from Greece to New Hampshire—all weigh heavily on banks in particular.

Speculators could also show their ugly heads and put more pressure on the bank's already falling stock - short -selling anyone? This could be all prerequisites for the perfect storm, one leading to an ever bigger disaster than Lehman Brothers.

Oil price getting to the ground

So yes, we're seeing the oil price dropping every day, seems like a free fall. Where it will end? It already reached some levels we though impossible a few years ago. One other question is how this affects who?

Well you have the oil producing countries first. Yeah, Arabs and all that but also Russia. The oil price going down means Russia will have to do with a reduced budget after all. Less money for weapons and researching that new line of Suhoi airplanes.

On the other hand it affects consumers, regular Joes like you and me. Or it should have. The fuel price has dropped a litlle but not dramatically, maybe those oil businesses want to keep the extra dollars for themselves as profit. And really how can blame them? As long as the people pay for what they charge they have no reason to lower their price just because the oil barrel price falls no?

New nuclear test from North Korea - The H-bomb

Well it seems little old Kim is really boring these days, left out of party people to execute with cannons and decided it's time to do another nuclear bomb test. He knew it would upset the Americans, South Koreans, Japanese but he didn't really cared. According to the official agency in North Korea the test was a success but then again how would they dare it to present it otherwise?

Except for the case it fell dirrectly on Kim's head and exploded sending the only fat boy in that country in outer space it's safe to assume the news report would present it as a glowing victory of the nation and the communist party. Maybe the proud citizens would forget about their hunger for a few days. "Let's begin the year of 2016 ... with the thrilling sound of our first hydrogen bomb explosion, so that the whole world will look up to our socialist, nuclear-armed republic and the great Workers' Party of Korea!" Kim wrote in a handwritten message near his signature ( Oh and bring me some peperonni pizza!)

However the fat boy knows he can count on its big neighbouring friend China to help in times of trouble. Theoretically they share the same Communist regime but actually none of the countries government has anything else to do with it rather than a thin facade to fool the masses. Will more and hader sanctions be imposed on North Korea this time or it's again bluffing and cowardice from the UN superpowers?

Terrorist attacks in France, terrorist attacks in Syria and Iraq

It seems that again the authorities in a major country have been taken by surprise with the recent terrorist attacks. Could they prevent them? Hard to say, on one hand it's difficult for the police, special services, secret services and all the bunch to prevent them but on the other hand different organizations have threatened for months that they will react and commit these acts.

Now it seems that no one took these threats seriously, like yes a couple of terrorists would really blow up our civilized city. Did they ignore them on purpose or they treat them as bluff? Even more they raised the stake when France decided to increase its support again ISIS by sending their biggest aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle to help with the bombing campaign. They pretty much said : we don't care about your threats, you can't touch us and we're really pushing you some more.

No the French are outraged and cry and for good purpose. Did they expect these terrorist attacks? Did they take the ISIS threats ever seriously? Did the common man ever asked why the French military goes bombing Iraq and Syria? Did they take into account and accept that this would cause ISIS to react?

The world is of course outraged by the events but much of this outrage is because the victims are from a major EU country. Hundreds of innocent victims were collateral victims in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan because of the US / UK / French planes? When a hospital was blown up by the anti-terrorist forces how many tweets and facebok posts did we see showing compasion for the victims and demanding justince against the aggressors. Oh yeah, the truth is that Europeans, Americans and the rest don't really care about those victims, they are third world country citizens so why bother? It's a sad world we live in and we get to see millions and millions fooled by the media every day and manipulated as sheep.