SNB & CHF

A Russian soldier guards an area of the Mariupol Sea Port in eastern Ukraine. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, commodity prices have soared and trade flows have been redrawn. Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. Geneva-based Trafigura reported record half-year profits as volatility and disruption in commodity markets, exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, supercharged earnings for the world’s biggest traders. The group’s net...

Forget about digital gold. The only truth is the yellow metal. As Keith Weiner notes, real gold “is the one financial asset that is nobody else’s liability.” Weiner, the founder, and CEO of Monetary Metals explains to Mike Green how his company boosts gold’s value proposition by paying interest on bullion holdings. He also talks about the inevitable debasement of fiat currencies and the inherent volatility of #Bitcoin. Weiner believes it won’t be too long...

US consumer prices rose 8.6% year-over-year for the month of May 2022, says the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Economists, financial media and central banks implicitly conflate this price expansion with money expansion (inflation) and economic expansion (booming) - that's a mistake. ----EP. 246 REFERENCES---- CPIs Aren't the Economy, and They're Not Inflation: https://bit.ly/3MMn8NX United States Inflation Rate: https://bit.ly/3MNJ3nY No Pandemic. Not Rate Hikes. Doesn’t Matter...

Overview: The prospect of a more aggressive Federal Reserve policy has spurred a sharp sell-off in global equities and bonds and sent the dollar sharply higher. The large Asia Pacific bourses were off mostly 2%-4%. Europe’s Stoxx 600 is off 2.2%, its fifth consecutive losing session. US futures are off also. The NASDAQ was down 3.5% before the weekend and the S&P 500 fell 2.9%. The dollar rocks. The Scandis and Antipodean currencies are bearing the brunt and are...

What changed? For over a month, the Treasury market had the Fed and its rate hiking figured out. Rising recession risks had been confirmed by almost every piece of incoming data, including, importantly, labor data. It is the jobs market where much of the official “inflation” jawboning is centered, all that Phillips Curve stuff. So, whatever might seriously undermine Phillips would put the end to the rate hikes in sight. Short-term Treasuries therefore ignored...

© Ys7485 | Dreamstime.com On 10 June 2022, Switzerland’s government adopted the latest set of EU sanctions against Russia and Belarus, including an embargo on crude oil and certain refined petroleum imports from Russia. The sanctions are the sixth package and were adopted by the EU on 3 June 2022. An embargo on oil imports from Russia by sea will be introduced progressively from early December 2022, and a ban on all Russian oil imports will then start two months...

Almost half of respondents backed a levy of CHF30 for short-haul flights and CHF120 for long-haul flights Keystone / Salvatore Di Nolfi Almost three-quarters (72%) of respondents to a Swiss survey are in favour of increasing the price of airline tickets for climate reasons. In the event of an introduction, 42% of respondents back a levy of CHF30 ($30.40) for short-haul flights and CHF120 for long-haul flights; 50% agreed with higher charges. Younger people were more...

Fears of a growing totalitarian tendency in the US have swelled during 2020–22. But how close are we really to a totalitarian state? How have such regimes come about historically and what are the warning signs? This article will answer these questions by examining totalitarian regimes in the eighteenth and twentieth centuries and the pattern by which they came to power. Stage 1: Discontent and Rumblings Every new order rises on the ruins of the old. Those who would...

The firmer than expected US CPI did not change expectations that the Federal Reserve will hike the Fed funds target by 50 bp on June 15.  What it did was boost the chances that the 50 bp steps will continue through at least November. The market also sees a greater chances of a 75 bp move.The reaction to the ECB's indication that it could raise rates by 50 bp in September failed to impress the foreign exchange market. By the end of Q3, the ECB may have hiked by 75 bp...

Booking.com says it levies a 12% fee on reservations made over its online platform for a variety of services including promotion. © Keystone/Gaetan Bally Parliament has approved restrictions on online reservation platforms to protect the Swiss hotel sector. Senators on Wednesday came out in favour of a legal reform to fight unfair competition. In line with the House of Representatives, the Senate approved proposals to allow hotel websites to undercut prices and other...