SNB & CHF

Swiss Franc The Euro has fallen by 0.18% to 1.0981 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, May 20(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: US equity indices finished lower, but the real story was their recovery. Asia Pacific equities were mixed, with Australia’s 1.5% rally leading the recovery in some markets, including Tokyo and Singapore.  Europe’s Dow Jones Stoxx 600 is up a little more than 0.5% near mid-session, led...

Authored by Egon von Greyerz via GoldSwitzerland.com, “Everything is on fire” – Heraclitus (535-475 BC) What Heraclitus meant was that the world is in a constant state of flux. But the big problem in the next few years is that the world will experience a fire of a magnitude never seen before in history. I have in many articles and interviews pointed out how predictable events are (and people). This is particularly true in the world economy. Empires come and go,...

Pension schemes are as diverse as the cultures of the countries whose working population they insure. Nevertheless, they all aim to guarantee a certain level of income in retirement. The UBS International Pension Gap Index, first released in 2017, analyses the sustainability and adequacy of the pension promises across 24 jurisdictions. This is done on the basis of the private savings rate required by an average person of 50 today to maintain their standard of living...

The social distancing measures introduced in response to the Covid-19 pandemic has forced many people to work from home and accelerated the trend of remote working. Eurostat have released some interesting new data showing the share of employed people aged between 15 and 64 in Europe who usually do home office. As Statista’s Miall McCarthy notes, over the past decade, that has been hovering at around five percent and the pandemic has seen it rise to 12.3 percent....

A Covid credit programme has helped boost the reputation of Swiss banks, despite some of them being the target of climate protests. © Keystone / Christian Beutler Swiss people’s trust in their country’s banks is at its highest in 20 years, boosted by Covid credits and a commitment to sustainability, according to a new survey. People from almost all political camps have a positive perception, with 75% describing their attitude towards Swiss banks as positive or very...

Do not forget to subscribe to the new Fed Watch: Bitcoin and Macro new feed. Search for “Fed Watch - Bitcoin and Macro” on your podcast app. In this episode of Bitcoin Magazine’s “Fed Watch” podcast, hosts Christian Keroles and Ansel Lindner welcomed back to the show Jeff Snider, head of global research at Alhambra Partners. Snider writes a great blog at Alhambra, is syndicated elsewhere and creates a very thought-provoking podcast with Emil Kalinowski called...

Swiss Franc The Euro has risen by 0.27% to 1.0999 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, May 19(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: A setback in commodities and technology are roiling equity markets today. The inability of US equities to sustain yesterday’s rally provided an initial headwind to trading in the Asia Pacific region today. Hong Kong and South Korea markets were closed for holidays, but most of the...

Authored by Matthew Piepenburg via GoldSwitzerland.com, Bias vs. Logic We’ve written elsewhere about the ironic over-use of logic to justify otherwise illogical biases. As Swiss-based precious metals professionals who see physical gold and silver as currency protection outside of an openly illogical (and dangerously fractured) banking system, it is more than fair for some to challenge our own “logic” (bias?) when it comes to precious metal ownership. We understand...

While rich Swiss residents figure in Bloomberg’s top 500 world’s wealthiest, there are nine Americans in the top ten slot. © Keystone / Gaetan Bally In the latest version of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, eight Swiss or Swiss-resident names figure among the 500 richest people in the world. The richest of the Alpine-based billionaires is Geneva-based Ernesto Bertarelli, who according to his own self-description is a “Swiss entrepreneur active in the fields of...

“Every change in the money relation alters … the conditions of the individual members of society. Some become richer, some poorer.” – Mises, Human Action, p. 414. New money enters the economy at a particular point. It does not enter in the form of a proportional and simultaneous increase in everybody’s incomes. This means that there are uneven effects of monetary expansion, including exacerbated income and wealth inequality. When we trace the consequences of...