Crypto News: 100 cold days to come

Back in the summer, do you remember all we talked about was winter? That was before mini-budgets and iceberg lettuces entered the fray and indeed, the mild weather lasted longer than expected. Until this week. Now the Met Office is forecasting plummeting temperatures.

The wind has shifted from the east and is now due to hit the UK from the Arctic — it possibly brings snow to Scotland and temperatures of minus 8 or 9 to parts of England and Wales, too.

Bloomberg's Javier Blas is worried: "Listen to the energy bulls, and everyone is worried about high pressures over Greenland, which can block Atlantic storms, pushing freezing air from high latitudes into Europe and causing cold, windless days that are terrible for electricity markets. The bears believe the threat is hyped, and see instead the potential for several Atlantic storms blowing into the continent, pushing up wind generation and keeping temperatures closer to average."

Javier errs on the side of the worst being yet to come. Governments have shielded populations from high prices: "The subsidies cannot last forever."

Interestingly though, today Bloomberg's reporters show the UK's natural gas is actually flowing to mainland Europe: "Underlining the country's key role in keeping the continent warm this winter."

At least footie fans have a coping strategy — for five more days at least, national attention shifts to this weekend's quarter final against France. The pundits predict this is where our squad's World Cup comes to a halt, but in our heads, for a little bit longer, it's Qatari T-shirt weather.

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The stories you need to know about this evening

Institutions outside the US are holding an estimated $65 trillion in "missing" dollar debt off their balance sheets.
The UK has failed for years to take seriously the issue of rising asylum-seekers, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama said.
Vodafone CEO Nick Read was ousted after he failed to halt a years-long slide in the company's share price.

The other thing many have waited for is detail on what Labour will do if it wins office.

Transfer power to mayors and the regions, that's what — according to Keir Starmer, speaking this morning in Leeds.

It's a constitutional agenda that feels a little desiccated for a population pummelled by bread-and-butter issues — a point put to Starmer today by journalists attending. The Labour leader insisted his reforms would create economic wealth in communities, making the agenda deeply relevant to cash-strapped voters.

Journalists asked whether, after waiting for more than 12 years for power, handing it away was a counter-intuitive opening pitch. Starmer insisted his agenda is "putting power where it should be."

Keir Starmer speaks in Leeds, UK on Nov. 5. Photographer: Danny Lawson/PA Wire

Promising a Labour government would keep Britain out of the EU's single market, he had quite a neat inversion of the fact he was a Remainer voter, at odds with many Labour leave voters: "During the Brexit referendum I argued for remain. But I couldn't disagree with the basic case that many leave voters made to me. They wanted democratic control over their lives."

Today, the CBI reinforced Starmer's call for growth with analysis showing that the UK faces a "lost decade" without action on investment tax reliefs, the Northern Ireland protocol and the shrinking workforce.

Bloomberg

As chancellor, Rishi Sunak did have a policy on super-deductions to encourage investment by businesses, and there appear to be optimistic noises on the Northern Ireland Protocol from all sides. Indeed, today Bloomberg shows the pound "is at its highest since June, defying economic gloom" and the cost of a two-year mortgage has gone below 6% for the first time in nine weeks. Friday looks like it will bring the announcement of the government's long-awaited City of London "Big Bang" reforms.

Nonetheless, there are many saying the headwinds for Sunak remain torrid — including Bloomberg Opinion's Martin Ivens. For Ivens, the sharpest end of the problem is the advent calendar of union strikes running up to Christmas: "No 10 disavows confrontation, hoping to win over the public as the unions' strikes begin to bite with the voters. But ministers need to keep the country moving or face another downward spiral in their electoral fortunes."

More than 200,000 Britons who left the UK labor market in the year to July reported suffering from long Covid, official statistics show.

Read more from Philip Aldrick.

Get ahead of the curve

Sports, direct. Coventry City FC got handed an eviction notice by the new owners of their stadium: Mike Ashley's Frasers Group.

Crypto crystal ball. A 70% slide in Bitcoin is among the surprises financial markets could spring on investors next year, according to StanChart.

Commodity conundrum. Russia's oil price cap will please the US, and no one else, writes Bloomberg Opinion's Julian Lee.

Battle for bargains. Sainsbury's is investing an extra £50 million to keep prices down as the cost-of-living crisis grows in the UK.

Cheers! The biggest Black-owned vintner wants to help more women break the (wine) glass ceiling.

£400 million

Thames Water posted this profit for the past six months despite a jump in leaks during the summer.

One key story, every weekday

Indonesia wants to build a new city to help it reach high-income status by 2045. Source: Indonesia Ministry of Public Works and Housing

With its gleaming offices, electric buses and economically productive residents, Nusantara is the quintessential modern metropolis—smack in the middle of a vast rainforest.

At least, that's what the government brochures depict. What they don't show quite so clearly is where Indonesia will find $34 billion to build a new capital city from scratch.

Read The Big Take.

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