SNB & CHF

© Leonid Eremeychuk | Dreamstime.com The high and rising suicide rate among Switzerland’s male farmers stands in contrast to the declining rate among rural men working in other professions, according to a new study by the University of Bern published by the newspaper SonntagsZeitung. The rate among rural men working outside farming is 33 per 100,000, compared to 38 per 100,000 among farmers, a rate that has risen since...

The pound plunged against the euro, the dollar, gold and all leading currencies today as Theresa May’s UK government appeared vulnerable to collapsing and political turmoil risked creating a hard Brexit. The pound has fallen 2.6% against gold in less than twenty four hours seeing gold rise from £923 to £947 per ounce in sterling terms. The pound slumped the most in more than 17 months as several U.K. ministers resigned...

Retail sales rebounded 0.8% in October 2018 from September 2018, but it’s the downward revisions to the prior months that are cause for attention. The estimates for particularly September were moved sharply lower. Total retail sales two months ago had been figured last month at $485.8 billion (unadjusted) originally, but are now believed to have been just $483.0 billion. The difference takes the growth rate underneath...

Swiss Franc The Euro has fallen by 0.16% at 1.1353 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, November 15(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: The resignation of the UK’s Brexit negotiator after Prime Minister May had secured support from a majority of the cabinet sent sterling sharply lower. Raab’s resignation underscores the difficulty the Brexit agreement faces in the UK...

15.11.2018 – The number of employed persons in Switzerland rose by 1.2% between the 3rd quarter 2017 and the 3rd quarter 2018. During the same period, the unemployment rate as defined by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) declined by 0.6 percentage points to 4.4%. The EU’s unemployment rate decreased from 7.3% to 6.5%. These are some of the results from the Swiss Labour Force Survey (SLFS). Download press...

Swiss institutions are adapting to an increasingly cashless society The Swiss Competition Commission has searched the premises of Credit Suisse and UBS, PostFinance and the credit card companies Swisscard and Aduno for allegedly boycotting mobile payment methods such as Apple Pay and Samsung Pay. The Competition Commissionexternal link said on Thursday it had opened an investigation on Tuesday. The Swiss financial...

Other governments are keenly interested in following China’s lead. I’ve been pondering the excellent 1964 history of the Southern Song Dynasty’s capital of Hangzhou, Daily Life in China on the Eve of the Mongol Invasion, 1250-1276 by Jacques Gernet, in light of the Chinese government’s unprecedented “Social Credit Score” system, which I addressed in Kafka’s Nightmare Emerges: China’s “Social Credit Score”. The scope of...

The minor concessions continued in the revised plan presented to the European Commission are unlikely to dissuade Brussels from launching sanctions. In a letter to the European Commission on 13 November, the Italian government confirmed that it would aim for a budget deficit at 2.4% of GDP in 2019 and reasserted its real growth forecast of 1.5% for next year. Rome made only minor concessions to Brussels’ demand that it...

After the Second World War, Josef Mengele – a war criminal and the man behind experiments on human beings at the Auschwitz concentration camp - fled to South America. There he managed to hide and escape justice until his death. However, he returned to Europe once as a tourist - and came to Switzerland. --- 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...

A cheesemaker in Emmental has been ageing his cheese with music, a different genre for each wheel. The idea behind this crazy experiment is to find out if sound waves can influence the cheese's taste like humidity and temperature do. Nouvo brings you short videos about Switzerland, Swiss current affairs and the wider world. Keep up to date and watch the videos wherever you are, whenever you like. --- swissinfo.ch is the international branch of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SBC). Its...