Meat bans and “de-Brexit”? A bank’s predictions for 2023 are “outrageous”

Saxo Bank’s “terrible predictions” for 2023 include a ban on meat production, a skyrocketing gold price and Britain’s vote to “cancel Brexit”.

The Danish Bank’s annual report, published earlier this month, predicts that global economies will shift into a “war economy” mode, “in which sovereign economic gains and self-reliance trump globalization”.

And while the forecasts do not represent the bank’s official views, it looked at how policymakers’ decisions next year could affect both the global economy and the political agenda.

Gold reached $3,000

Among the bank’s “outrageous” calls for next year, Saxo’s head of commodity strategy Ole Hansen predicted that spot gold could top $3,000 an ounce in 2023 – about 67% above its current price of $1,797 an ounce.

sets the report expected height Down to three factors: an “incremental war economy mentality” that makes gold more attractive than foreign reserves, significant investment in new national security priorities, and increased global liquidity as policymakers try to avert debt catastrophe in their recessions.

“I wouldn’t be surprised to see commodity-driven economies want to go for gold because of a lack of better alternatives,” Steen Jacobsen, chief investment officer at Saxo, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Dec. 6.

“I think gold will fly,” he added.

While analysts expect an increase in the price of gold in 2023, a rise of this magnitude is unlikely, according to global commodity intelligence firm CRU.

“Our price outlook is much more moderate,” Kirill Kirilenko, chief analyst at CRU, told CNBC.

“A less hawkish Fed is likely to lead to a weaker US dollar, which in turn could give gold bulls more breathing room and energy to make a rally next year, pushing prices to around $1,900 an ounce,” he said.

However, Kirilenko made it clear that it all depends on the Fed’s moves. “Any hint of a ‘hawkish’ increase from the US central bank is likely to put pressure on gold prices lower,” he said.

Britain will vote to cancel Brexit

Next year, according to Jacobsen at Saxo, “disgraceful expectations” are likely to be triggered by another referendum on Britain’s exit from the European Union.

“I actually think this is one of the things that will have a lot of potential,” he told CNBC.

Jessica Amir, strategist at Saxo Market, said UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his Finance Minister Jeremy Hunt could take the Tories’ ratings to “unprecedented lows” because “their brutal fiscal program is throwing the UK into a crushing recession”.

The Bank predicted that this could prompt the English and Welsh public to rethink the Brexit vote, with young voters leading the way, and forcing Sunak to call a general election.

The opposition Labor Party could then win the election, Amir said in Saxo, promising to hold a referendum to cancel Brexit on November 1, with “re-join” winning the vote.

“Businessmen say the only thing they gain from Brexit is the UK’s own GDP,” Jacobsen at Saxo told CNBC. “The rest is just a routine hike,” he said.

Anand Menon, director of the UK think tank’s Center for a Changing Europe, said the forecast “just doesn’t count”.

“I don’t think there will be another referendum and the idea of ​​that [Labour leader Keir] Starmer will adopt this attitude to the birds.”

Starmer said at a business conference in September that his party would do so Make Brexit work.

Menon said public sentiment towards Brexit had changed since the referendum, after the vote resulted in a slim majority of 52% of voters choosing to leave the EU again in 2016.

“Public opinion certainly seems to be shifting,” he said.

Research conducted by YouGov In November 59% of the 6,174 people surveyed thought Brexit had gone “somewhat bad” or “very bad” since the end of 2020, while only 2% said it had gone “very well”.

ban on meat production

Meat is responsible for 57% of the emissions from food production, according to research he published nature foodsAnd with countries around the world making net-zero commitments, Saxo says it is possible for at least one country to cut meat production altogether.

A country “looking to run others up front” on its climate credentials, said Charo Chanana, a strategist at SaxoMarket, may decide to introduce significant meat taxes from 2025 and could ban all domestically produced live meat from animal sources entirely by 2030.

“I wouldn’t be surprised to see schools in Denmark and Sweden ban meat altogether, it’s definitely going that way,” Jacobsen of Saxe told CNBC. “It seems crazy for us old people,” he added.

The United Kingdom, countries in the European Union, Japan, and Canada are among the countries that have legally binding undertakings not to use zero.

The UK’s Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Agriculture said there were “no plans” to introduce a tax on meat or ban meat production when contacted by CNBC.

2023 eventful year?

Among other “disgraceful predictions” for the coming year from Saxo were the resignation of French President Emmanuel Macron, Japan’s peg of the yen to the US dollar at a rate of 200, and the formation of a united European Union army.

However, all predictions should be taken with a pinch of salt. Saxo’s Jacobsen told CNBC that there is a 5-10% chance that each prediction will come true.

The bank has issued a handful of “outrageous predictions” every year for the past decade, and some have actually come true — or at least come close to them.

In 2015, Saxo predicted that the UK would do just that Vote to leave the European Union In the aftermath of the UK Independence Party’s landslide, Germany is expected to enter recession in 2019 – and the country has. Hardly avoided – and bet on it Bitcoin will see a meteoric rise in 2017.