SNB & CHF

Lufthansa, the German parent company of SWISS international airlines, does not expect operations to return to normal until 2023. © Keystone / Christian Beutler Additional cancellations of SWISS flights are “unavoidable” because of staff shortages, a company spokesperson told the Keystone-SDA news agency on Sunday. Scheduled flights between August and October would be affected by the latest announcement, which was originally reported by the news portal blick.ch. It...

Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich on Pexels.com The cost of Swiss health insurance has risen sharply over the years. However, the amount that can be deducted from income to calculate federal taxes has remained comparatively low. This week, Switzerland’s parliament voted in favour of closing the gap between the standardised health insurance tax deductions and what people actually pay, reported RTS. The current deductions are CHF 1,700 for an adult, CHF 3,500 for a married...

The most important development in foreign exchange probably took place in the interest rate market last week. A series of disappointing US economic data and the Fed's "unconditional" commitment to rein in inflation have heightened concerns that economic weakness will limit the Fed's ability to hike rates. Specifically, for the first time, the implied yield of the December 2023 Fed funds futures contract is below the December 2022 yield. In fact, the gap implies a...

The only thing that changed was the CPI. What distinguishes 2021-22 from the prior post-crisis period 2007-20 is merely the performance of whatever consumer price index. This latter has been called inflation, yet the data conclusively support the market verdict pricing how it never was. What data? The “everything” data, the most comprehensive financial and monetary compendium yet available: The Financial Accounts of the United States, or Z1. While this doesn’t quite...

Year-over-year PPI growth came in at over 10 percent for the sixth month in a row. This will put more pressure on the Fed to “do something.” Original Article: “Wholesale Prices Rise More than 10 Percent, Pointing to Continued Price Hikes” The US Bureau of Labor Statistics released new Producer Price Index (PPI) data today, and it’s not good news for consumers. The PPI is a measure of prices at the production phase of goods and services, and is often an indicator...

(The following text is a revised update of an article that was first published in 2005.) The recent outbreak of price inflation with the jump to an annual rate of 8.6 percent in May 2022 came as a surprise to the US central bank (the Federal Reserve). Having ignored the warnings of the Austrian school economists, the policy makers were paralyzed in the face of a phenomenon they deemed impossible to happen. None of their forecasting models had triggered an inflation...

Second quarter of 2022 Report submitted to the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank for its quarterly monetary policy assessment. The appraisals presented here are based on discussions between the SNB’s delegates for regional economic relations and company managers throughout Switzerland. In its evaluation, the SNB aggregates and interprets the information received. A total of 241 company talks were conducted between 12 April and 30 May. . Key points •...

How does a former bank trader with billions of euros in assets react to an impending recession? Is the inflection in bond yields (back down) and prices (back up) starting right now? Did the European Central Bank just warn of a re-run of the 2011-12 European Sovereign Debt Crisis? ----EP. 253 REFERENCES---- Alfonso Peccatiello's Substack: https://TheMacroCompass.substack.com/ Alfonso Peccatiello's Twitter: https://twitter.com/MacroAlf Time To Buy Bonds?: https://bit.ly/3QNP7zP Jeff's...

Die Mining Hashrate ist im Monatsvergleich um ganze 10 Prozent gesunken. Ein Problem für das ETH-Projekt, welches weiterhin mit der Scalability und den damit verbundenen Gebühren zu kämpfen hat. Kommt nun auch noch ein Exodus der Miner hinzu? Ethereum News: Gesunkene Mining Einnahmen lassen Ethereum Hashrate abstürzenAuch der ETH-Preis hat im vergangenen Monat einen Absturz erlebt – ungefähr ein Drittel des Werts ging verloren. Offenbar haben infolgedessen viele...

The pendulum of market sentiment swings dramatically.  It has swung from nearly everyone and their sister complaining that the Federal Reserve was lagging behind the surge in prices to fear of a recession.  On June 15, at the conclusion of the last FOMC meeting, the swaps market priced in a 4.60% terminal Fed funds rate.  That seemed like a stretch, given the headwinds the economy faces that include fiscal policy and an energy and food price shock on top of monetary...