Tausi Insider

Russia's invasion of Ukraine plunged Europe into its biggest land war since World War Two. As Putin pays up to keep his campaign grinding on, managing its fallout at home and abroad is likely to get ever harder. https://www.tausiinsider.com/russia-faces-economic-pain-and-isolation-in-2023/?feed_id=330460&_unique_id=644b7dee9f46e

The iron mine of Swedish state-owned company LKAB, in Kiruna, Sweden, on Jan. 12. JONAS EKSTROMER/AFP/Getty Images The beginning of the end of Europe’s dependency on China for precious rare earth materials may lie buried deep under the rugged reaches of northern Sweden, well above the Arctic Circle. Sweden’s iron-ore miner LKAB said Thursday it has identified “significant deposits” in Lapland of rare earth elements that are essential for the manufacture of smartphones, electric vehicles and wind turbines. The government-owned company that mines iron ore at Kiruna, almost 1,000 kilometres (nearly 600 miles) north of Stockholm, said there are more than one million tons of rare earth oxides. According to LKAB, it’s the largest known deposit of its kind in Europe. But the company warned that it could take at least a decade before mining starts. Swedish Industry Minister Ebba Busch called Sweden “a gold mine” following the discovery. Her announcement came as the EU’s executive Commission ...

At an international symposium on central bank independence in Sweden last week, Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell had a simple message for the high-powered audience about what monetary policy makers should do to preserve their freedom from political meddling. “We should stick to our knitting,” Mr. Powell said. “It is essential that we stick to our statutory goals and authorities, and that we resist the temptation to broaden our scope to address other important social issues of the day. Taking on new goals, however worthy, without a clear statutory mandate, would undermine the case for our independence.” The mere existence of the event – organized by Sweden’s central bank and attended by a who’s who of monetary policy thinkers, including the heads of four G7 central banks – would have been hard to imagine a few years ago. Central bank independence was more or less a given, at least among the world’s advanced economies. But that independence is being challenged by critics and politic...