Chinese Businesses Target Vietnam And Mexico As Trade Tensions With US Rise

Bitcoin heads into June in fighting form as an early push puts key resistance back in play.

BTC price momentum is targeting $69,000 as TradFi markets return to the scene — will this week finally see a breakout?

This is the main question for Bitcoin market participants, and one which has fielded a variety of opinions in recent weeks.

Rangebound for nearly three months, BTC/USD, they argue, is long overdue upside continuation — but hodlers may need to wait longer still.

The coming few days could provide the fuel that bulls need to do the job: United States unemployment figures, recently a catalyst for risk-asset volatility, are due at the end of the week.

Meanwhile, on-chain indicators are lining up to call for a bullish comeback on Bitcoin, while behind the scenes, network fundamentals are inching back toward all-time highs of their own.

As price and sentiment slowly recoups lost ground, Cointelegraph takes a look at the major issues facing Bitcoin traders as June gets underway.

After some spates of volatility over the weekend, BTC/USD had ultimately come full circle by the weekly close, data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows.

No sooner had the June 3 candle begun, however, did Bitcoin bulls set the tone for the Asia trading session — higher.

Now back above $69,000 at the time of writing, BTC price action continues to pick battles around that area, with traders seeing a clear need to flip it to solid support.

“TLDR; Market needs to accept & sustain above $69K for continuation higher (new ATHs) so for now we see how things develop into monday,” popular trader Skew wrote in his latest analysis on X (formerly Twitter).

“Early week dips would be my focus for opportunities if given later (following the criteria of risk on or risk off factors).”

Describing $69,000 as “likely an important price this week,” Skew noted increasing ask liquidity above $70,000, with the majority of bids still lower down at around $66,000.

“Current Spot Demand is still around $66K - $65K, with current market bid would like to see some spot bids get moved higher towards $67K,” he summarized.

Data from monitoring resource CoinGlass showed ongoing attempts to keep price contained in its current range.

Over the weekend, Cointelegraph reported on on-chain metrics repeating key breakout patterns from earlier this year.

Popular trader and commentator TechDev added to the mood with a chart showing five-day compression at its highest levels in eight years. Prior to that, he had revealed a Bollinger Band breakout against U.S. M1 money supply, which had also been absent since 2017.

A relatively quiet start to the week in terms of macroeconomic data does not mean a complete absence of potential volatility for risk assets.

U.S. initial jobless claims come on June 6, while the day after will see further unemployment numbers.

As Cointelegraph continues to report, Bitcoin and crypto markets have been particularly sensitive to employment data, which misses expectations this year.

The implication from surprisingly high unemployment is that tight financial conditions put in place by the Federal Reserve are making themselves felt within the economy. As such, the chances of these being unwound sooner rather than later could increase.

Clarity should come later this month when the Federal Open Market Committee, or FOMC, meets to discuss interest rate changes.

“This is the last week of employment data before the June Fed meeting kicks off,” trading resource The Kobeissi Letter noted in part of X commentary on the topic.

The latest data from CME Group’s FedWatch Tool nonetheless preserves the status quo among markets — no significant chance of a rate cut until September or later.

“Even if the Fed does manage to squeeze in one rate cut this year, the central bank looks forced into holding rates higher for longer,” trading firm Mosaic Asset wrote in the latest edition of its regular newsletter, “The Market Mosaic,” on June 2.

It added that declining chances of a cut were nonetheless “not necessarily a bad thing for the stock market.”

Bitcoin and global liquidity are a match which for bulls was made in heaven — and the latest chart data says it all.

Currently circulating on social media is an “extremely bullish” comparison between BTC/USD and the U.S. M1 money supply.

M1 supply refers to the sum of cash, demand deposits and checks in the U.S. economy. Over the years, Bitcoin has exhibited a key dynamic against M1, and as of June 2024 looks to be repeating its biggest-ever breakout against it.

“Significant,” popular trader and analyst TechDev wrote in commentary while uploading the comparison to X on June 1.

“Bitcoin has only seen blow-off tops after breakouts against M1 money supply. And the longer it's consolidated, the longer it's run. This breakout follows the longest consolidation yet.”

The chart shows that the breakout phase in fact began last year, but by historical standards, it is yet to make its presence felt.

The status quo has in fact stayed in place for a record seven years — with the implication that the fledgling breakout should be uniquely volatile to match.

“In fact, it represents a textbook breakout of a 5 year broadening wedge,” TechDev continued.

“The last 5 years have been corrective against M1. $BTC is once again impulsive against it for the first time since 2017. We've never seen a Bitcoin breakout like this one.”

The phenomenon was not lost on the trading community, being noticed by figures including veteran trader Peter Brandt.

“We never had the blowoff top in 2021 and it just all has been consolidation against M1 money supply so we're in for mega moon,” popular commentator WhalePanda continued in part of his own response.

During the 2017 breakout, BTC/USD enjoyed parabolic upside for the following nine months.

Bitcoin network fundamentals are slowly bouncing back after a rapid cooling during early May’s downward price action.

The latest data from monitoring resource BTC.com predicts a roughly 1.7% difficulty increase on June 6.

This will build on a 1.5% jump from two weeks ago, helping mitigate the 5.6% drop, which came before that which cost difficulty its all-time high position.

Hash rate, the aggregate processing power dedicated to the network by miners, continues to consolidate after hitting record highs in April, per raw data from MiningPoolStats.

According to on-chain analytics firm Glassnode, however, miners themselves face challenging conditions.

More than one month after April’s block subsidy halving, miners’ net BTC holdings are declining on a rolling 30-day basis — a trend which is accelerating.

As on June 2, the latest date for which data is available, miner balances were 2,500 BTC lower than they were 30 days prior.

Compared to the run-up to the halving, the balance reduction is not as steep. Beginning in November 2023, miners began selling BTC in moves which became the norm throughout Q1, Glassnode shows.

Amid a general trend of declining BTC balances across crypto exchanges, one in particular stood out this weekend.

Glassnode confirms that on May 30 and May 31, withdrawals at the popular trading platform totaled nearly 50,000 BTC ($3.44 billion).

The May 30 figure alone marks the second-largest daily withdrawal from any exchange in BTC terms since the end of the 2022 Bitcoin bear market. For Kraken, it was one of the largest on record.

The moves were not lost on market observers, with Vivek Vivek Sen, founder of Bitcoin public relations firm Bitgrow Lab, describing them as “wild.”

“Supply shock incoming, ATH is imminent,” he wrote in part of a further X post after the second day’s outflows hit.

Kashif Raza, founder of Bitcoin education platform Bitinning, noted coins leaving Kraken to external wallets in several transactions.

As Cointelegraph reported, exchanges have been seeing solid demand for BTC for years, with aggregate balances now at levels not seen since 2017.

As China's leadership prepares for the long-awaited Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee, announced on April 30 to be held in July, a consultative meeting on May 23 with private entrepreneurs and economists, chaired by General Secretary Xi Jinping, has stirred speculation that the top leadership might be preparing the country for a shift towards more pro-market reforms.

In recent years, communications from the Chinese leadership have predominantly emphasized the state sector and industrial policies. These industrial policies are state actions meant to allocate resources in support of selected industries to achieve goals determined by political processes with significant political stakes. While the focus on industrial policies will continue to be the core pillar of China's development strategies, the inclusion of economics professor Zhou Qiren as one of the nine selected speakers at the consultative meeting suggests that the top leadership might make use of his market-oriented views and the symbol he carries to send a signal.

Zhou contends that the drastic fall in transaction costs, organization costs, and most importantly system costs was the primary driver of China's astonishing growth rate in the three decades since its reform and opening started in 1978. He claims that system-wide institutional reforms are crucial for the Chinese economy to regain cost advantages and achieve breakthroughs, rather than relying on aggregate demand stimulus and industrial policies.

While we caution against putting too much weight on Zhou himself or academia in general regarding the Chinese leadership's deliberation on economic development models, the signalling implication is hard to ignore. Zhou has been absent from the spotlight for quite some time and is well known for his alternative views on the driving forces of the Chinese economy.

His new institutional economics roots, which were first popularized by Ronald Coase, emphasize the central roles of institutional arrangements in the economy, property rights, transaction costs, and political economy in economic development. This approach is markedly different from the New Keynesian approach that dominates the mainstream economic profession or the Marxist political economy that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) maintains as the overarching guiding principle in economic thought.

Furthermore, Xi rarely chairs consultative sessions with private entrepreneurs himself. Over the past decade, besides this recent one, the previous consultative session with the private sector chaired by Xi was in July 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the one before that was in November 2018 when China and the US were embroiled in a trade war. This time, Xi held the meeting right before the Third Plenary Session, which will formulate the long-term strategic direction and development model of China. The selection of Zhou as a speaker at this meeting carries significant symbolism and could serve to send out signals. What Zhou said at the meeting is not as important as what Zhou is perceived to represent.

According to Zhou, China's economic miracle is not a result of low-cost labour but a consequence of system-wide institutional reform and the opening up of the economy that lowered the ‘system costs' of China's economy. Zhou (2017) defines ‘system costs' as the costs incurred in the operation of the institutional framework of enforcing property rights and contracts. The essence of China's reform is to “redefine property rights by decentralizing the power of the super state-firm” (Zhou, 2010). The narrative that China's economic success is solely due to cheap labour is overly simplistic.

Before the economic reforms, China's labour was even cheaper, but the country did not experience the same economic boom. Today, many countries around the world also offer cheaper labour, yet they do not replicate China's success. This discrepancy underscores that low labour costs alone are insufficient for economic transformation.

As Zhou(2023) points out, the critical factor is the transformation of these inputs into more products that are competitive. This requires effective organization and functioning within a supportive institutional framework to lower transaction costs, organization costs, and most importantly system costs. Before reforms, China's highly centralized economic system, akin to a "super state-firm," was plagued by inefficiencies and high organizational costs. By decentralizing economic control and redefining property rights, China significantly lowered these costs, thereby enhancing its competitiveness.

China's initial reforms, such as the shift from collective farming to a household farm production contractual responsibility system, followed by allowing the establishment of private enterprises to absorb the labour freed from farm activities, exemplify the impact of institutional change. These reforms not only increased agricultural productivity but also released labour for the growing industrial sector, creating a foundation for China's manufacturing boom. Moreover, China's opening to and engagement with global markets, highlighted by its economic and regulatory reforms which earned its accession to the WTO, illustrate the importance of institutional support in leveraging low-cost labour.

The problem China is now facing, according to Zhou (2023), is that system costs in China have been rising fast due to dramatic increases in costs incurred by higher taxes and charges, local governments pushing up land prices, and more regulations, as well as inconsistencies in dealing with new technologies in the private sector and the inefficiency of state-driven urbanization. These changes have stifled economic progress. His prescription for the Chinese economy is to lower system costs through reform and opening the economy and to innovate. Reducing system costs through streamlined regulations, greater transparency, and better definition and enforcement of property rights is essential for fostering growth and innovation.

In our article published in October 2023, we asked if the upcoming Third Plenary Session could mark a pivotal moment for China's economic strategy, potentially embracing pro-market reforms and emphasizing the market's "decisive role" in allocating resources, as outlined in a blueprint unveiled by the Chinese leadership 10 years ago. The “Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Some Major Issues Concerning Comprehensively Deepening the Reform,” adopted at the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee held in November 2013, pledged to deepen marketization and privatization.

However, these initiatives have petered out over the years. The May 23 meeting, as discussed above, gives a glimmer of anticipation that the upcoming Third Plenary Session this July might echo the 2013 Decision, contrary to the downbeat expectations of investors regarding its outcome.

Once again, we want to emphasize that the Chinese top leaders' adherence to focusing on fostering new productive forces, a concept rooted in the Marxist political economy, and their commitment to state-driven industrial policies to boost self-reliance and comprehensive national security, along with their strategic initiatives in deleveraging the economy and containing the monopoly power of large private enterprises, will remain.

What we are exploring is the plausibility that the top leadership is sending signals that they are preparing to fine-tune their strategic development model, at least tactically, to foster the market and the private sector. It is important to remember that the Chinese leadership has demonstrated remarkable pragmatism over the past few decades in steering the gigantic Chinese economy. A tactical change to green in the “traffic light” that regulates the reform of the institutional frameworks in which the economy functions is plausible.

We are not predicting what will happen at the Third Plenary Session in July because Zhou spoke at Xi's consultative meeting on May 23. We are simply exploring what might have happened that made Zhou's high-profile appearance at the meeting possible. We hope that thinking through this non-consensus observation as one of the possibilities of what has been going on will better prepare investors to interpret the outcome of the Third Plenary Session when it arrives in July.

After three years of extreme volatility, many experts predicted that commodities prices would broadly stabilize in 2024. However, adverse weather conditions, escalating geopolitical tensions and soaring shipping costs are turning those predictions on their heads. According to data gathered by the the United States’ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (CCCS), the United Nations World Meteorological Organization (WMO), last year not only broke 2016’s heat record but shattered it by a wide margin. 2023 was 1.48°C warmer than the pre-industrial period, with global average temperatures at least 1°C warmer than pre-industrial averages on every single day. Well, 2024 could be even hotter, with the National Centres for Environment Information (NCEI) predicting a 22 percent chance that the current year will be the warmest year on record and a 99 percent probability that it will rank in the top five warmest years. NCEI data reveals that the first four months of the current year were the warmest in 175 years.

Wild weather driven by climate change is elevating the cost of energy, food and fuel; increasing the frequency of natural disasters and raising insurance costs. According to Munich Re, last year, extreme weather and earthquakes inflicted global losses of $250 billion, a new norm for insurers. These wild weather patterns--coupled with geopolitical tensions--have changed the outlook for certain commodities. Gary Cunningham, director of market research at Tradition Energy, has predicted that U.S. natural gas futures could soar to $4 per million British thermal units later this year if the ongoing hot weather persists and increases cooling demand. That would mark a large 60% jump from the current Henry Hub price of $2.50/MMbtu. The same case applies to Europe. European natural gas prices held around €35 per megawatt-hour in the last week of May, close to a 5-month high amid expectations of lower supply and robust cooling demand. New weather forecasts anticipate hotter temperatures in Northern Europe at the beginning of June; aggressive heat waves in Europe later in the summer and excessive heat in France and Spain.

“This summer will almost certainly bring a rash of debilitating heat waves, particularly in the US midsection and Europe,” said Jennifer Francis, a senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center, has predicted.

Meanwhile, soaring temperatures in Asia have intensified bidding competition for LNG in major hubs, underscored by the 16.7% annual increase in imports from Japan in April. Europe now competes with Asia for LNG cargoes from exporters like the US, Qatar and Nigeria.

However, ample reserves in European storages and added capacity in Norwegian gas fields are helping temper shortage risks.

Hot weather and dry conditions have triggered shortages of several agricultural commodities resulting in price spikes. Wheat futures have hit the highest since July, reversing bearish bets by hedge funds they held for almost two years. In North America, much of Kansas is still suffering from extreme drought, though harvests are expected to improve from last year when drought was so bad many fields didn’t make it to harvest. Still, with hot conditions prevailing more than a month before the harvest season kicks in, experts are warning that those rosier forecasts might not be realized.

“It better start raining pretty quick to get these numbers,” said Dave Green, executive vice president of the Wheat Quality Council and leader of the crop tour.

Meanwhile, Citigroup analysts have predicted that extreme weather could see prices of Arabica coffee jump about 30% to hit $2.60 a pound over the next few months if adverse weather and production issues prevail in Brazil and Vietnam.

Shipping stocks have so far been the biggest winners in the energy sector. From tankers to dry bulk to containers to LPG, shipping equities are constantly taking out fresh highs. Indeed, with the exception of the pandemic, 2024 is on track to be the best year for shipping equities since the shipping supercycle in 2004-2008.

With shipping rates soaring, leading commodity shipping stocks are firmly in the green this year, and show no signs of slowing down.

GBP/NZD dropped 2.25% in April, the biggest monthly drop since September 2023. This is a signal that the tide has turned in favour of the Kiwi recently.

The New Zealand Dollar has been buoyed by expectations that the antipodean central banks will be amongst the last of the major central banks to cut interest rates, bestowing a degree of support via the interest rate channel.

A broader recovery by the Pound following April's above-consensus inflation print and the calling of a general election stabilised GBP/NZD. However, it's important to note the potential risks of further downside in the near term, urging our audience to exercise caution.

At the time of writing on Monday, we're back below the 200-day moving average, and we will be watching to see whether the exchange rate closes below here today and in the coming days. The RSI is at 39 and pointed lower, confirming the downside is favoured in the next few days.

If the pair registers a string of closes below the 200 DMA, we will take that as confirmation of a decisive flip in fortunes from the upside to the downside of GBP/NZD. A break below horizontal support at 2.0677 is being threatened as part of this mix; moves below here would take the market back to the February lows at 2.04 in the next two to four weeks.

A breakdown of this support then opens the door to the late-2023 lows at 2.01.

There are no significant calendar events due from New Zealand or the UK this week, leaving the focus squarely on the global setup.

We will be watching Thursday's European Central Bank (ECB) policy decision where interest rates are to be cut by 25 basis points. But, we see risks of policymakers warning it is too soon to speculate about further rate cuts owing to recent signs Eurozone inflation is proving resilient.

This would add to the sense that global interest rates won't be falling quickly, which will act as a headwind to stock markets and risk-sensitive currencies like the NZD.

In the same vein, Friday's U.S. labour report will be instrumental in determining when the U.S. Federal Reserve cuts interest rates.

The market is looking for a headline non-farm payroll reading of 180K and an unemployment rate of 3.9%. Average hourly earnings are expected to have risen 3.9% year-on-year.

If the data comes in at softer-than-expected levels, the New Zealand Dollar would potentially be a leading beneficiary.

This is because a soft print would suggest to the market that U.S. interest rates will be cut sooner than previously expected, which can boost global investor sentiment and stock markets.

NZD is a 'high beta' currency, meaning it tends to benefit when stock markets are rising and investors are confident. Under such a scenario, a breakdown in GBP/NZD and a resumption of the April selloff might ensue.

"If U.S. labour market data are on the soft side, markets may upgrade the likelihood of a first rate cut in July, which would weaken the USD even more," says Dominic Schnider, a strategist with UBS' Chief Investment Office.

An above-consensus job report would have the opposite effect, as markets would be resigned to a belief the Fed will struggle to get away with a rate cut before year-end.

Indeed, the risks would grow that the Fed will not cut rates until 2025, potentially meaning the Fed cuts after the RBNZ and diminishes any yield advantage the Kiwi Dollar has recently garnered.

Falling stocks and souring investor sentiment can lead to notable NZD underperformance and a potential break by GBP/NZD back towards 2.09 and into a more constructive technical setup.

The European Central Bank could open the door to a weaker euro on Thursday as its first interest-rate cut of the cycle puts the region on a divergent policy path from the US.

For the first time in two decades policymakers get to start a monetary-easing cycle without having their hand forced by a financial emergency. Instead, investors are signaling confidence about the euro area and keeping yields in check. European Central Bank.

For the first time in two decades policymakers get to start a monetary-easing cycle without having their hand forced by a financial emergency. Instead, investors are signaling confidence about the euro area and keeping yields in check.

But despite the calm on the surface, the economy is starting to see the consequences of problems that have been decades in the making. Increasingly eclipsed by the dynamism of the US and the rise of China, the euro zone is languishing with anemic growth, weak productivity, poor demographics, and bloated public finances in key countries.

Benign markets and a recovering economy offer Brussels and national capitals rare breathing space to try to address those challenges. If politicians — navigating European elections this week — don’t take advantage to deliver growth-enhancing reforms and public-finance repair soon, the region risks sliding ever further into irrelevance.

“Without a major jolt, the European Union will become a much-diminished global power, leaving the US battling it out with China for economic supremacy,” said Jamie Rush, chief European economist for Bloomberg Economics.

The sense of a turning point for the euro region right now is palpable. The ECB rate cut comes as worst bout of inflation in the currency’s history seems largely over and a shallow recession just ended with an unexpected growth surge.

The spread between Italy’s bonds and German equivalents, a key measure of risk, narrowed earlier in 2024 to a two-year low. While yields have risen somewhat as investors assess just how much the ECB can cut given a more resilient than expected economy, there’s no sign of the fragmentation fears that stalked the market before the first hike in 2022.

“‘Europe’s a basket case’ — it’s all you ever used to hear” from investors outside the region, said Roger Hallam, global head of rates at Vanguard Asset Management. “You don’t hear that now.”

Supporting that view is a more cohesive policy backdrop at regional level, encompassing the European Union’s previously unthinkable pandemic-era recovery program — NextGenEU — that even involved the pooling of debt, and new crisis-fighting tools unveiled by the ECB to deliver stimulus and to keep bond markets in check.

Evidence of the region’s resilience emerged last year when investor panic brought down banks in the US and Switzerland. There were no such casualties in the euro zone, which will mark a decade of a unified supervision regime later this year.

And yet the region’s long-term problems look more ominous than ever.

“While Europe is doing better now, deep structural challenges — aging, climate change, and global fragmentation — await,” Alfred Kammer, a senior official at the International Monetary Fund, warned in May.

Weak productivity — and with it, poor potential growth — is one such problem. The EU as a whole has done consistently worse than the US on that since the current century dawned. Slower improvements in living standards and a “decline in global economic power” are the outcome, the European Centre for International Political Economy said in a study in May.

The gap between the European and US economies since 2000 reached about 18% of potential GDP in 2023 — equivalent to more than €3 trillion ($3.3 trillion), according to Bloomberg Economics, which reckons the shortfall will reach almost 40% by 2050.

“It is on us as Europeans to do more,” German Finance Minister Christian Lindner told reporters in Italy last month at a meeting with peers that focused on the disparity between the US and Europe.

Another major problem is an aging population — adding to low potential growth and debt sustainability concerns, not least since pensions across the region are largely publicly funded out of current tax revenues.

“The birth rate is much worse than expected,” said Oliver Rakau, an economist at Oxford Economics. “This is not a problem in two, three or five years, but it is a big problem in the longer-run.”

Most pressing is the deterioration of public finances in countries already struggling to impose fiscal restraint. Italy will have Europe’s biggest pile of borrowings in just three years, according to Scope Ratings.

IMF forecasts now show debt as a percentage of gross domestic product creeping up there and in France and Belgium — with deficits well above the 3% ceiling that the EU seeks to enforce.

While bond markets show investors to be unperturbed, the region’s previous sovereign turmoil offers salutary lessons in how quickly sentiment can shift.

“The risks are rising,” said Moritz Kraemer, chief economist at LBBW and a former senior ratings analyst at S&P Global Ratings. “I think there’s not enough anxiety in the market.”

For all the effort that governments might make to bring debt deficits under control through spending cuts or tax increases, their best prospects to repair public finances in the long run will be through achieving better economic growth.

That’s one area where EU-level ideas are currently proliferating.

In mid-April former Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta presented a report on the future of the bloc’s single market. Among other things, he urged consolidation for telecom operators and further integration of energy markets.

Former ECB President Mario Draghi will soon publish an eagerly-awaited report on the future of European competitiveness, which will attempt to stop the rot with a call for “radical change” that could include a lower regulatory burden and, in some cases, massive subsidies.

“Without strategically designed and coordinated policy actions, it is logical that some of our industries will shut down capacity or relocate outside the EU,” he said in April.

Meanwhile French president Emmanuel Macron is pursuing an agenda of his own that includes pushing for greater capital market integration to emulate the success of the US in creating huge pools of finance.

“My concern is not just France, it is Europe in comparison with the US and China,” he told Bloomberg last month. “My top priority is to have a European policy saying we have to be much more innovative, we have to create a much more efficient capital market, we have to invest much more from a common budget as Europeans and from the private sector.”

There’s arguably greater momentum than usual to the EU’s drive for self improvement, even if the bloc has never been short of ideas that struggle to come to fruition.

“I’m hopeful that, with both the Letta report and upcoming Draghi report and the EU elections acting as a sort of catalyst, there’s an opportunity for policymakers to focus on what matters,” said Paul Hollingsworth, chief European economist at BNP Paribas.

But Konstantin Veit, a portfolio manager at Pimco, notes that Europe’s record of delivery isn’t great. “Such reports contain a lot of the right things, but, if history is any guide, probably little will actually be implemented,” he said.

Big reports and initiatives used to be a more normal way for European integration to proceed, as evidenced by its 1980s push to create one of its signature successes, the single Market.

But more recent innovations, such as Draghi’s creation of a market-calming tool in 2012 and the recovery fund measure during the pandemic, were born out of turmoil.

“I would love to see a NextGeneration EU 2.0 or even a permanent one, in combination with the capital markets union,” said Michala Marcussen, group chief economist at Societe Generale. “I hope that we don’t have to go through another crisis to move on.”