The Paris Olympics are in full swing, with Celine Dion’s opening ceremony rendition of ‘L’Hymne à l’amour’ proving to be an even greater performance than that of European propane this week, despite the contract rising more than E-Coli levels in the Seine following the weekend’s heavy rainfall. However, if it was a big week for Paris, it was an equally important week for central banks, with the Federal Reserve keeping rates stable at 5.5%, the Bank of England cutting rates by 25bps to 5%, and the Bank of Japan increasing rates by 15-25bps to 0.25%. This saw USDJPY fall to below 150 per dollar, the greatest show of Japanese strength since the Olympic Women’s Skateboarding on Monday. In oil markets, Brent oscillated between $78/bbl and $81.70/bbl, like Australian Kyle Chalmers in the 100m freestyle, on lingering fears about Chinese (economic) performance. However, far from Paris, some potentially even more valuable international diplomacy took place in the form of a Russia-Western prisoner swap, the largest such exchange since the Cold War. And whilst Team GB has already amassed an impressive 20 medals, including 6 golds, a Brit who will likely not be celebrating on the top step of the podium this week is Glencore’s former head of oil, who has been charged with corruption by the UK’s Serious Fraud Office about payments made to state-owned oil firms in Nigeria and Cameroon. We only hope that the case can be handled with a tad more neutrality and transparency than Venezuela’s recent presidential election…
