SNB & CHF

– Italy’s Veneto banking meltdown destroyed 200,000 savers and 40,000 businesses – EU bail-in rules have wiped out billions for savers and and businesses, with more at risk  – Bail-ins are not unique to Italy, all Western savers are at risk of seeing savings disappear –  Counterparty-free, physical gold bullion is best defence against bail-ins - Click to enlarge One of Italy’s twenty regions is calling for more...

Many things that are scarce and thus valuable cannot be bought on the global marketplace. Now that almost every asset class is in a bubble, the question of where to invest one’s capital has become particularly vexing. The ashes of wealth consumed by the 2008-09 Global Financial Meltdown are still warm, at least to those who never recovered, and so buying assets at nosebleed valuations in the hopes of earning another 5%...

The Used Goods Question Retail sales in several countries like Germany, Japan and Switzerland continue to fall or they remain steady for years. In the United States they have strongly risen recently. We should remind readers, that used goods sold via Ebay or similar, are not contained in this statistics. Still they create economic value for the purchases. By mentality, Swiss, Germans or Japanese pay more attention so...

Bern, 02.11.2017 – Consumer sentiment in Switzerland remains above average. At -2 points, the overall index is virtually unchanged in October compared to the previous quarter (-3 points). Continued optimism regarding economic development and unemployment are supporting the positive outlook in particular, while expectations regarding the financial situation of households remain below average. This indicates that...

33,7 milliards de francs suisses. Voici le montant du bénéfice, réalisé par la BNS à fin septembre, dont se félicitent nos médias. Le problème est qu’un chiffre sorti de son contexte ne sert à rien. Si votre patron vous augmente de 100 et qu’en parallèle, votre loyer augmente de 200, à la fin de l’année vous êtes en déficit de 100 n’est-ce pas? Dans un ménage, une entreprise ou un Etat, il convient de garder une...

(early post ahead of start of a new business trip to Europe. Posts will continue albeit irregularly) Swiss Franc The euro has appreciated by 0.19% to 1.1637 CHF. EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, November 01(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates This is it: The next 48 hours will be among the busiest of the year. The Bank of England meets tomorrow, and it not only gives a...

A book festival in Lausanne has cancelled an invitation to Marsault, a controversial French comic book artist, after the organisers said they received threats from activists. The organisers of the Lausan’noir crime thriller book festivalexternal link say they will not be welcoming the French comic book artist Marsault to their event, which takes place in the Swiss city from October 27-29. “The conditions were not met...

– Gold versus bitcoin debate makes further headlines as tech experts weigh in – Peter Thiel tells Saudi conference he believes bitcoin is underestimated and compares to gold – Steve Wozniak tells Money 20/20 that bitcoin is a better standard of value than gold and U.S. dollar -Both men recognise that the US dollar has little value and there are worthy competitors to its crown as reserve currency – Gold continues to hold...

As central bank policies are increasingly fingered by the mainstream as the source of soaring wealth-income inequality, policies supporting credit/asset bubbles will either be limited or cut off, and at that point all the credit/asset bubbles will pop. I’ve long held that if a problem can be solved by creating $1 trillion out of thin air and buying a raft of assets with that $1 trillion, then central banks will solve...

See the introduction and the video for the terms gold basis, co-basis, backwardation and contango. Rumors Driving Short Term Price Swings The prices of the metals dropped a bit more this week, -$7 and -$0.16. We all know the dollar is going down, that it is the stated policy of the Federal Reserve to make it go down. We all know that gold has been valued for thousands of years. So why do we measure the timeless metal...