SNB & CHF

That the neofeudal lords and their lackeys offer the debt-serfs “choices” of forced labor would be comic if the results weren’t so tragic. We know we’re close to the moment when Everything Solid Melts into Air when extraordinary breakdowns are treated as ordinary and the “news” quickly reverts to gossip. So over 4 million American workers up and quit every month, month after month after month, and the reaction is ho-hum, labor shortage, blah, blah, blah, toy...

The bank is situated at Zurich’s prestigious Bahnhofstrasse. © Keystone / Gaetan Bally Quintet Private Bank says it is closing its Swiss arm just 16 months after opening. The Qatari-owned private bank took over Bank am Bellevue last year. The Luxembourg-based private bank is closing its Swiss business, which employs 87 people, according to a statement on Tuesday. It is unclear whether the closure will happen via a wind-down or sale. The private bank, which opened in...

The Berlin “housing crisis” has, of course, many causes. But most, if not all of them, are government made. Unfortunately, however, people blame “capitalists” for their plight. Original Article: “Berliners in 2021 Want to Expropriate Private Housing” On September 6, 2021, the city-state of Berlin, Germany’s capital, held a referendum: voters in Berlin had to decide whether thousands of housing units owned by “large real estate firms” should be nationalized. 56.4...

Warum Geld seinen Wert nicht vom Staat erhält Warum hat der Geldschein in unserer Tasche einen Wert? Einigen Kommentatoren zufolge hat Geld einen Wert, weil die Regierung, die an der Macht ist, dies sagt. Für andere ist der Wert des Geldes auf die gesellschaftliche Konvention zurückzuführen. Dies bedeutet, dass Geld einen Wert hat, weil es akzeptiert wird, und warum wird es akzeptiert? … weil es akzeptiert wird! Offensichtlich ist dies keine gute Erklärung dafür,...

In today's live stream, Coach Dale Pinkert welcomes Marc Chandler who is a foreign exchange market analyst, writer, speaker, and professor. Marc Chandler has been covering the global capital markets for more than 30 years, including stints as the global head of currency strategy for both HSBC and Brown Brothers Harriman. Chandler recently joined Bannockburn Global Forex as a Managing Director and Chief Market Strategist in 2018. Marc is very constructive on The Canadian economy with the...

Checking a Covid certificate in a Lausanne café in September Keystone / Laurent Gillieron While most Swiss hotels and restaurants are critical of the need to show a Covid certificate, overall small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) do not perceive it as a disadvantage. A survey of 201 SMEs in German-speaking Switzerland found that 58% of managers in the hotel and catering industry described the consequences of the certificate as negative to very negative. Since...

There was never really any answer given by the Chinese Communists for why their own export data diverged so much from other import estimates gathered by its largest trading partners. Ostensibly different sides of the same thing, it’s not like anyone asked Xi Jinping to weigh in; they report what numbers they have and consider them authoritative. However, the United States’ Census Bureau’s tallies of China-made goods entering this country used to track very closely...

This week’s episode of the Gold Exchange Podcast explores the idea of profits, and why it matters how you get them. Much of the financial world has confused the idea of profit with price appreciation. Or as we like to say, they confuse investment with speculation. Investment is deploying capital productively in a business for a yield. Speculation is betting one’s capital on an asset price rising. There’s a reason why this confusion exists. Central Banks have...

In assessing the trajectory of Fed policy the market is discounting, we prefer using the Fed funds futures contracts over the Eurodollar futures.  The Fed funds settle at the average effective rate, while the Eurodollar futures contracts are three-month deposit rates.  The Fed funds futures seem to be implying aggressive tightening by the Federal Reserve, which as of less than a month ago, half of whom did not expect a rate hike would be appropriate next year.  The...