Is the Economy Running Too Hot? | Macro Mondays: August 10, 2026

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**Andreas Steno** (1:08)
And sometimes it's maybe good, sometimes it's maybe shit.

**Mikkel Rosenvold** (1:30)
Hello, all there. Welcome to Real Vision and welcome to Macro Mondays. My name is Mikkel Rosenvold. I'm your host for the show as usual. And with me, I have also as usual Andreas Steno. Welcome to the show, Andreas. How are you doing?

**Andreas Steno** (1:44)
Good, Mikkel. It's like 30 minutes since we left each other at the office.
I'm still good.

**Mikkel Rosenvold** (1:51)
That's great. People can probably look past that. Andreas, I want to get straight into the free. We have a lot of good stuff to talk about today. But everybody's eyes obviously on the inflation numbers coming out this Wednesday. So let's get straight into the free, Andreas.
Year over year, the market expectation is at 3.4%, slightly down from last month. What's your expectations? Let's have a number here.

**Andreas Steno** (2:19)
Well, I can start by saying that the market has converged towards our now cost. So I can see that the headline inflation is 0.1 on the month and the core inflation is 0.2. We have a couple of zeros in our now costing. So we're still below the market, slightly less so than a week or two ago.
So in a sense, I think the market has actually converged towards our view, which is a bit of a surprise to me. But yeah, as said, our now costing is incredibly soft again. And I think a lot of people underestimate the impact of the tariffs being paid back to corporate America, which is a big game changer to the reverse scenario that we had for most of this year and last year with tariffs being paid net-net. Because obviously, if you're a company receiving a lot of tariffs paid back now, there's no urgency to raise prices. And I think that's exactly what we're seeing in our data right now. So you were asking about the dollar to begin with. I think we'll have a soft dollar week upcoming, given our view on inflation.

**Mikkel Rosenvold** (3:30)
That didn't really answer my question for number, Andreas.

**Andreas Steno** (3:33)
A couple of zeros, I said a couple of zeros.

**Mikkel Rosenvold** (3:34)
Okay, we'll dive much more into that. Also, your view on the timeline for the business cycle. You published a very interesting article on that, and what's or who might be the executioner for the business cycle. We'll dive a little bit into that address, and obviously also talk about the job numbers coming out last week. Before we get to that address, a little bit of fun here. You just sent me this tweet I saw yesterday as well. And you get these a lot, these map tweets on X.
Why isn't this a country? Why doesn't this country do that? Are they stupid? And this is essentially a suggestion that Germany, the Netherlands, and our country of Denmark, and half of Belgium, the Flanders region, should join together as a country. Would have twice the economy of the UK and France. I guess that's probably correct.
The Dutch king would become president, Frankfurt would become the capital, and our prime minister, Mr. Fletcher, would become chancellor somehow. What do you say, Andreas? Note the omission of Berlin, the Bantenburg area, which is probably gaining an annex by Poland or what? I don't know.

**Andreas Steno** (4:49)
That was why I laughed when I saw this map, because the way that they've just left out Berlin is absolutely amazing. I mean, for those of you who haven't been to Berlin, it's basically an economy made up by basket weavers and finger painters. So I get why you go to include it.