SNB & CHF

The human tendency to kill what one fears asserted itself on April 4, 2023, as a Manhattan district attorney called Donald Trump into his office to issue a vague threat. What crime Trump was being charged with is known only to Alvin Bragg, but the rest of the world is left playing a guessing game. Trump supporters are rallying everyone with a heartbeat to support their candidate. It’s survival time. Even a few Trump haters are finding a way to support Trump. Not that...

Overview:  The market took a dovish message away from the Bank of Japan and sent the dollar above JPY136, its best level since March 10 and spurred a sharp rally in JGBs. Japanese equities led the rally among the Asia Pacific markets. Europe has not been able to follow suit. It disappointed with Q1 GDP (0.1% rather than 0.2%). The Stoxx 600 is of about 0.3%, leaving it off about 1.3% this week, its first weekly loss since the middle of March. US equity futures are...

Scalia: Rise to Greatness, 1936–1986by James RosenRegnery Publishing, 2023496 pages James Rosen, who has written biographies of John Mitchell and Dick Cheney, and was for many years a reporter for Fox News, is a neoconservative and Reagan Republican. He has found an ideal biographical subject in Antonin Scalia, a Reagan Republican, who served for thirty years on the Supreme Court. The volume under review, the first of two, covers the time from Scalia’s birth to his...

What if the world’s states were to come together and create a single world currency? From a purely economic point of view, there would be significant advantages if every nation didn’t operate with its own money but with the same currency. Not only for an individual economy, but for the world economy as a whole, the optimal number of currencies is one. Let’s take a look. The decisive factor is how this single world currency comes about, and who issues it. In a free...

On Sunday morning, March 12, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told CBS there would be no bailouts. Later in the day the Fed declared quantitative easing to infinity and beyond. What’s going on? Quite simply, the Fed is willing to overpay for debt (again). They call it the Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP), and as far as one can tell, its dollar value is limitless. The term sheet reads: Program: To provide liquidity to U.S. depository institutions, each Federal Reserve...

Contrary to Krugman, DeSantis and others warning about a CBDC aren’t being paranoid: they are simply drawing the obvious conclusions from history. Original Article: "It’s Not Paranoid to Worry about a Central Bank Digital Currency" This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.  [embedded content]...

Mere inflation—that is, the mere issuance of more money , with the consequence of higher wages and prices—may look like the creation of more demand. But in terms of the actual production and exchange of real things it is not.—Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson Money is among the most important forms of technology. It solves the fundamental human problem of barter and allows us to transfer value across geography and time. By enabling efficient trade—and thereby...

Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Western leaders have declared that Ukraine was defending not only its own freedom, but ours too. President Joe Biden, to whom apparently “freedom is priceless,” vowed to support Ukraine for “as long as it takes.” In turn, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that the American support for Ukraine is not charity but an “investment in global security”. Other commentators also argue that a Ukrainian victory would strengthen...

Understanding what turns an ordinary currency into a global reserve currency can help us understand how the dollar could go into decline and give way to competing currencies. Original Article: "Why the Dollar Still Beats the Euro and the Yuan" This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.  [embedded content]...

The allure of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals has hypnotized corporate America into offering ESG funds that score investments for prioritizing social goals. Companies that account for environmental, social, and governance goals in their decisions collectively held $8.4 trillion in US investment assets at the beginning of 2022. Leading investment firm BlackRock more than doubled its holdings to over $500 billion and other players are following its...