SNB & CHF

Swiss Franc The Euro has fallen by 0.07% to 1.0717 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, October 11(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: Equities are softer and yields higher to start the new week. The dollar is mixed. Oil and industrial metals are higher. There are several developments over the weekend, but the focus seems to be on central bank action, inflation reports by the US and China, and the start of the Q3...

Last week, the media again tried to ratchet up the public’s fear over covid-19 by labeling it more deadly than the 1918 flu epidemic. “COVID-19 Is Now the Deadliest Disease in U.S. History,” reads one headline from an NBC TV affiliate. Considering the realities of cancer and heart disease, that headline is absurdly false. Perhaps the author meant “communicable disease.” A TIME headline was at least arguably factual, declaring, “COVID-19 Is Now the Deadliest Pandemic...

V for Vaccine? One of many masked guests at Fantasy Basel on Saturday Keystone / Peter Klaunzer The three-day Fantasy Basel festival for fans of films, games, comics, cosplay and manga has re-opened its doors after a two-year break. Fantasy BaselExternal link, also known as the Swiss Comic Con, is one of the biggest events of its kind in Switzerland. Fans of pop culture are drawn to the exhibition halls in Basel, where many visitors dress up in flashy costumes...

Bonds sold off again last week with the yield on the 10 year Treasury closing over 1.6% for the first time since early June. The yield is now down just 16 basis points from the high of 1.76% set on March 30. But this rise in rates is at least a little different than the fall that preceded it. When nominal rates fell from April through July, real rates fell right along with them. The nominal bond yield fell by 63 basis points and the 10 year TIPS yield fell by 57....

US rates and the dollar hardly responded to the disappointing jobs report.  The 194k rise in the nonfarm payrolls was the least this year, but of course, it is subject to revisions the way the August series was revised by more than 50% to 366k. One critical problem was that hiring by local governments for the start of the school season was less than usual, and with the seasonal adjustment, it turned into a decline. On the other hand, the private sector added 317k,...

"Despite some eerie echoes, the past is not the best guide to the present," writes The Economist. Jeff Snider agrees, but for entirely different reasons. Stagnation? Yes, definitely. But NOT inflation - despite the clear price increases! Wait, what? ---------SPONSOR---------- Macropiece Theater with Alistair Cooke (i.e. Emil Kalinowski) reading the latest essays, blog posts, speeches and excerpts from economics, geopolitics and more. Interesting people write interesting things,...

In my blog post yesterday entitled “Mainstream Press Silence on the JFK Deadline, I took the mainstream media to task for remaining steadfastly silent about the upcoming October 26 deadline for the release of the CIA’s long-secret JFK assassination-related records. Instead, I pointed out, the mainstream media simply continues reveling in labeling people who question the official lone-nut theory of the assassination as “conspiracy theorists.”  Well, who would have...

An attractive target: a Swiss server. © Keystone / Christian Beutler Ransomware attacks by hackers continue to increase sharply, with some 2,700 Swiss firms falling victim over the past year, Beobachter magazine has reported. The figure for the period August 2020 to August 2021 was arrived at by American cybersecurity firm Recorded Future, Beobachter wrote on Wednesday. Measured against the 4,800 attacks over the past five years as a whole, this means a big uptick,...

Tangany has received a license from the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) as the third regulated service provider for the custody of digital assets in the country to provide crypto custody business. Furthermore, Tangany plans to apply for further licenses in Germany and Europe in the future and has already received preliminary permission from BaFin to manage registers of crypto securities. Tangany is a B2B white-label crypto custodian regulated...

The Stupidity of War: American Foreign Policy and the Case for Complacency by John Mueller Cambridge University Press, 2021, 332 pp. The subtitle of John Mueller’s excellent new book suggests that something unusual is in store for the reader. If someone is called complacent, he is hardly being complimented; how then can there be a “case for complacency”? In brief, Mueller thinks that most of the threats and dangers that confront nations are really not that much to...