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Bond yields are primarily driven by macroeconomic factors such as inflation and economic growth. Given their impact on inflation and the economy, the U.S. dollar and oil prices are frequently well correlated with bond yields. Therefore, bond traders often take their cue from the dollar and oil markets. The dollar (blue), as graphed on the right, has been on a tear since early October. As is typical, bond yields (orange) closely followed the dollar higher. The...

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”―George Orwell, Animal FarmThe nation’s deposit insurer (FDIC) let slip the other day which large depositors were bailed out when Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) failed last spring. SVB banked the nation’s tech illuminate.Its failure exposed fractional reserve banking’s Achilles heel when a bank run was initiated via social media and carried out with depositors moving money on their cell phone apps. The...

[Editor’s Note: In this selection from his new essay “Seeds of Resistance,” William Hartung provides some interesting context on the important role of public opinion and public pressure in pushing back against aggressive foreign policy in any presidential administration. Essentially, Hartung expresses hope that perhaps Trump will be something like Ronald Reagan whose bellicose pre-election rhetoric was far worse than the actual policies that Reagan eventually...

Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been making a lot of noise about all the federal employees it plans to fire. The DOGE people have framed total federal employment as something of a proxy for the total size of the federal government.  Cutting the federal workforce is all well and good, but in reality, the size of the federal payrolls doesn’t really tell us much about the growth of the federal government. Federal employment has been...

The history of slavery in the United States cannot be covered in a brief article, but one point that is important to address in the context of contemporary “antiracist” debates is the notion that slavery was historically supported by the South and opposed by the North. The aim of antiracists, in advancing that notion, is to justify the destruction of Confederate monuments, the proscribing of Confederate flags, and the renaming of military bases. It is, therefore,...

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Over the past few weeks, snow has blanketed many parts of Switzerland, including Bern, where we record our science podcast, The Swiss Connection. ❄️?️⁠ ⁠ Even though it's full-on winter here, our latest episode is all about heat waves and climate change with our science journalist, Luigi Jorio. ⁠ ⁠ Cities tend to get hotter than the countryside during a heatwave. So, what can be done about these urban heat traps? How can we make hot summers more bearable for city dwellers? ⁠ ⁠ Listen to our...

With much consternation, capital markets participants are watching US treasury bond yields go up while Jerome Powell and the Fed continue to lower the Fed Funds Rate in an effort to spur another round of easy money.The Fed Funds rate is a short-term interest rate used for interbank borrowing. US treasury bonds are medium-long term securities that represent the sovereign debt of the US government, so the yield on those bonds represents the US government’s cost of...

• Proof of Space nutzt freien Speicherplatz<br> • Innovative und effiziente Krypto-Mining-Alternative<br> • Proof of Space als umweltfreundliche Lösung<br> <!-- sh_cad_1 --> Proof of Space, auch bekannt als Proof of Capacity, ist ein Konsensmechanismus, der vor allem im Bereich der sogenannten speicherbasierten Kryptowährungen genutzt wird. [embedded content]...

Send us a text (https://www.buzzsprout.com/twilio/text_messages/910414/open_sms) Cities tend to get hotter than the countryside when a heatwave hits. What can be done about these urban heat traps? How can hot summers be made more tolerable for city dwellers? SWI swissinfo.ch asked an expert at the federal technology institute ETH Zurich. If you are interested in reading about this story (https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/climate-change/how-to-keep-cities-cool-during-heatwaves/87444293) or...