SNB & CHF

. The pound is now trading close to a 6 week high to against the Swiss franc which has come as welcome news to the Swiss central bank. Swiss policy makers appear to favour a weaker currency as they aim to control low inflation. Inflation in Switzerland has remained below 1% for quite a while even though interest rates have remained in a negative territory. Since the start of the year as markets have lacked volatility...

Can team Trump keep the economy going until after the 2020 election? Journalist and book author Charles Hugh Smith says, “I think you are pushing a little bit on a string to get a 10 year long expansion to stretch out to 12 years. It’s like you are pushing sand uphill at some point. . . . Inflation is roaring in assets. Housing is unaffordable in many areas, and the stock market is at nosebleed levels. So, it’s kind of hard to say we are going to get another two years of growth, but I...

About 80% of women in Switzerland work, and of these, about 40% work part time The number of people working in Switzerland is on the rise. Meanwhile, part-time work is much more widespread in Switzerland than in the rest of Europe. In Switzerland, 84.2% of the population aged 15 to 64 had a job in 2018 – an increase of 2.9 percentage points since 2010. Within the European Union (EU), only Iceland has a higher level of...

If the “equation” CNY DOWN = BAD is valid, and it is, then what drives CNY downward in the first place? In conventional Economics, authorities command the currency to affect the level of exports. In reality, that’s not at all how it works. The eurodollar system of shadow money is almost purely calculated risk versus return. Before August 2007, everywhere there was believed (far) more return than risk. It’s the nature...

Gold, in my worldview, can be a “heads I win, tails you lose” proposition. If it goes up, that’s fear. Nothing good. If it goes down, that’s collateral. In many ways, worse. Either way, it is only bad, right? Not always. There are times when rising gold signals inflation, more properly reflation perceptions. Determining which is which is the real challenge. Corroboration and consistency are paramount. Gold had been...

We have a postscript to last week’s article. We said that rising prices today are not due to the dollar going down. It’s not that the dollar buys less. It’s that producers are forced to include more and more ingredients, which are not only useless to the consumer. But even invisible to the consumer. For example, dairy producers must provide ADA-compliant bathrooms to their employees. The producer may give you less milk...

People in Switzerland are buying weapons online, sometimes without even knowing that they're illegal here. From 2015 to 2017, around 4,000 illegal weapons a year were confiscated by customs. In 2018, this amount almost doubled. The majority of the weapons confiscated has been sent here by post. (SRF/swissinfo.ch) --- swissinfo.ch is the international branch of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SBC). Its role is to report on Switzerland and to provide a Swiss perspective on international...

Swiss twin brothers and musicians Peter and Walter Keiser, whose mother is a famous yodeller, have played on some of the world's biggest stages. But they prefer not to be in the spotlight. For their 65th birthday, the pair are releasing a CD of their own songs. (SRF/swissinfo.ch) --- swissinfo.ch is the international branch of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SBC). Its role is to report on Switzerland and to provide a Swiss perspective on international events. For more articles,...

Swiss Franc The Euro has risen by 0.15% at 1.1447 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, April 23(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: Financial centers that have been closed for the extended holiday have re-opened, but the news stream is light and market participants are digesting developments and positioning for this week’s central bank meetings and the first look at Q1...

People in Switzerland are buying weapons online, sometimes without even knowing that they're illegal here. From 2015 to 2017, around 4,000 illegal weapons a year were confiscated by customs. In 2018, this amount almost doubled. The majority of the weapons confiscated has been sent here by post. (SRF/swissinfo.ch) --- swissinfo.ch is the international branch of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SBC). Its role is to report on Switzerland and to provide a Swiss perspective on international...