SNB & CHF

In September 2024, undergraduate students will have an opportunity to participate in the Fall Mises Book Club, a program that promotes deep reading in Austrian economics.The reading for this book club will be Murray Rothbard’s Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays. This year marks its 50th anniversary.Rothbard smashes myth after myth in this collection of essays. In the first essay, Rothbard questions the goals of egalitarianism...

In recent days, we have had brought home to us what “show trials” are like. They are not confined to Soviet Russia and it satellite countries during the Cold War but are a very present reality to us in America today. Political opponents of Donald Trump charged him with felonies for acts that were entirely legal. The judge in the case was a political opponent of Trump and worked artfully to prevent the trial jury from hearing testimony that would have exposed the...

Robert Reich has embarked on an intellectual journey- he intends to debunk 10 economic myths. The first of these 10 supposed myths is the idea that economics is a value free objective science. Reich offers a brief history lesson, in which he describes how Adam Smith developed economics as a branch of moral philosophy . Patrick Carroll has pointed out that Reich’s argument entails a fallacious appeal to tradition. Reich’s reference to Adam Smith is also argument by...

The individual’s natural right to life antedates the state apparatus.Let us not commit the Sin of Abstraction—the sin of escaping into theory, and in so doing, avoiding reality—the reality of Israel’s real sins, real crimes, the crime of all crimes.When Americans reflect on history’s tragedies and travesties, they habitually extol the virtue of Pax Americana, but never the horrors of it. Having shaped the annals of the past, regime historians, naturally, speak a...

The city of Lausanne in western Switzerland has been massively contaminated with dioxin, a potentially highly toxic pollutant found around the world. Pioneering research using lab-grown bacteria offers hope for the huge clean-up ahead. -- 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, interviews and videos visit swissinfo.ch or...

Price discovery in commercial real estate, which had been frozen while sellers insisted on prices from the good ol’ ZIRP days, is starting to thaw. Real Estate giant Related Companies has unloaded the property at 321 W. 44th St., New York, New York for less than $50 million, reports Bloomberg. Not only is that a 67% discount from the nearly $153 million that Related Fund Management paid for it in 2018, but the lenders including Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce...

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, which aimed to protect people affected by armed conflict. But how relevant are these, and international law in general, especially for younger generations? With war raging across the world, host Imogen Foulkes held a special edition of our Inside Geneva podcast at the Geneva Graduate Institute to understand whether international law is still alive. She spoke to Andrew Clapham, Professor of International Law at the...

Low-tax and wealthy Zug is invariably a net contributor to the Swiss financial equalistion system. Keystone / Urs Flueeler Redistribution payments between regions will rise by 4.8% to CHF6.2 billion ($6.91 billion) in 2025, the Federal Finance Administration (FFA) said on Tuesday. According to provisional calculations, annual compensation payments to cantons with low resource potential – the main component of the equalisation scheme – will climb by CHF331 million...

American Compass, a think tank promoting a conservatism lacking even a rhetorical commitment to free markets, recently called for Republicans to support tax increases. The organization claims a GOP embrace of higher taxes will enable the uniparty’s left (Democratic) and right (Republican) wings to create a deficit reduction plan balancing tax increase with spending cuts.American Compass is correct that both parties need to prioritize deficit reduction. The 35...

Gold rolls over after retesting key resistance as the outlook for US interest rates remains elevated.  This keeps the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding Gold high, making it less attractive to investors.  Gold (XAU/USD) trades a quarter of a percent lower on Tuesday after being rejected by key support-turned-resistance at $2,315 late Monday. Higher interest-rate expectations in the US are weighing on the precious metal. The release of better-than-expected US...