SNB & CHF

Suppose you wanted to run an enterprise the right way (we know, we know, this is pretty far-out fiction, but bear with us). And, your enterprise has a $1 million dollar piece of equipment that wears out after 10 years. You must set aside $100,000 a year, so that you have $1 million at the end of 10 years when the equipment needs replacing. There’s a word, now archaic, to describe the account in which you set aside this money. From Wikipedia: “A sinking fund is a...

Narrative Economics: How Stories Go Viral and Drive Major Economic EventsRobert J. Shiller Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019xxi + 377 pp. Abstract: Much of Shiller’s new book is about how economic narratives form, spread, and fade. Drawing on medical evidence about the spread of infectious disease, Shiller argues that “economic fluctuations are substantially driven by contagion of oversimplified and easily transmitted variants of economic narratives.” But...

Dear Corporate America: maybe you remember the old Johnny Paycheck tune? Let me refresh your memory: take this job and shove it. Put yourself in the shoes of a single parent waiting tables in a working-class cafe with lousy tips, a worker stuck with high rent and a soul-deadening commute–one of the tens of millions of America’s working poor who have seen their wages stagnate and their income becoming increasingly precarious / uncertain while the cost of living has...

Even those fortunate enough to have escaped infection by the Wuhan coronavirus will by now have noticed one of the virus’ many secondary effects: the disruption of the supply chain. Sick workers at meat plants, closed restaurants, hoarding, and the sudden spike in demand for things like ventilators, masks, and comestibles with long shelf lives have thrown the global flow of goods and services into disarray. Shelves are empty, crops are rotting in the fields—supply...

It has been a full century since Mises dropped the economic calculation bomb, but the argument apparently still haunts socialists. It should, since Mises managed to show that a socialist economy is not an economy at all but calculational chaos. Yet it is curious that it does, since most have (incorrectly) concluded that Mises’s argument, after decades of debate, was debunked. Why does a presumably debunked argument still, drive even non-Austrian critics to pen new...

© Artzzz | Dreamstime.com More than two thirds are in favour of making masks compulsory on Switzerland’s public suggests a survey run by Tamedia, according to the newspaper Le Matin. In addition, the survey showed widespread support for tracing apps (60%) and reopening schools (70%). Confidence is Switzerland’s government (84%) was high. 45% thought the pace of reopening was appropriate, while 15% thought it was too slow and 38% thought it was too fast. The survey...

Legislation was introduced that allows Beijing to directly impose a national security law on Hong Kong; US-China tensions are still rising; the dollar is bid as risk-off sentiment takes hold There are no US data reports or Fed speakers today; Canada reports March retail sales; Mexico reports mid-May CPI ECB publishes the account of its April 30 meeting; UK reported April retail sales and public sector net borrowing; parts of the UK curve remain negative China...

The editors are to be heartily congratulated for putting together this book, which covers an impressive range of topics in monetary economics from an explicitly Austrian perspective. Most of the twelve essays are of a very high quality and one will learn much about money and related topics by a careful reading of them. The chapters range from an insightful interpretation of Austrian monetary theory as a rehabilitation and development of classical monetary theory to...

(Disclosure: Some of the links below may be affiliate links) If you have been investing in Switzerland, you probably have heard about the Swiss Stamp Tax or the Swiss Stamp Duty. This Stamp Tax is a tax that is collected when you do certain transactions on the stock market. Even though this stamp tax is really simple to understand, there is a lot of confusion about it. Therefore, I wanted to cover it in detail to dispel the confusion once and for all. When you are...

The yearly growth rate of the US consumer price index (CPI) fell to 0.4 percent in April from 2 percent in April last year while the annual growth of the producer price index (PPI) plunged to –1.2 percent last month against 2.4 percent in April 2019. Furthermore, the yearly growth rate of the import price index fell to –6.8 percent in April from –0.2 percent in April last year. A general decline in the prices of goods and services is regarded as bad news since it is...