SNB & CHF

Left: the first IKEA store located in Älmhult in Sweden, near the residence of the company’s founder (nowadays the store is a museum); right: a Task Rabbit car. - Click to enlarge Amassing Unproductive Debt Last week, we discussed the marginal productivity of debt. This is how much each newly-borrowed dollar adds to GDP. And ever since the interest rate began its falling trend in 1981, marginal productivity of debt...

For over 30 years, Santiago Calatrava has been designing buildings in his office in Zurich which are writing architectural history. The Spanish-Swiss architect is now planning the world’s tallest building: an observation tower in Dubai – and is pushing the limits of what is technically possible. (SRF/swissinfo.ch) The Spanish-Swiss architect Santiago Calatrava lives between New York and Zurich. He's known for his futuristic structures and forms that are often inspired by living organisms....

Gabriela Hug aims to make a significant contribution to the energy revolution by taking a mathematical approach.  The 38-year-old associate professor at the Federal Institute of Technology Zurich could make a substantial contribution to the shift to renewable energy.  The challenge is to overcome the discontinuity of renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind power, which vary depending on the time of day and weather conditions.  Hug has turned to math as part of her work to make...

Swiss Franc The Euro has fallen by 0.27% to 1.1656 CHF. EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, October 26(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates It is all about the ECB meeting today. The market was hoping for more details last month, but Draghi pointed to today. The broad issue is well known. While growth has been strong, price pressures are still not, according to the ECB, on a...

Im zweiten Teil dieser Analyse wurde zu zeigen versucht, weshalb es für das eigentliche Verständnis unseres heutigen Geldsystems und dessen spezifischen Eigenschaften wenig sinnvoll ist, in der Kritik desselbigen zwischen Staat, Zentralbank und Geschäftsbank zu unterscheiden. Alle drei Akteure sind für die in Teil Zwei beschriebene «monetäre Revolution» unabdingbar und haben die von der natürlichen Knappheit losgelöste...

Living in a castle or even a fort might seem like a dream come true, but the reality can make that dream extremely expensive. Nouvo brings you short videos about Switzerland, Swiss current affairs and the wider world. Keep up to date and watch the videos wherever you are, whenever you like. --- swissinfo.ch is the international branch of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SBC). Its role is to report on Switzerland and to provide a Swiss perspective on international events. For more...

Switzerland: Far from Flawless, but still a Unique Country – An Interview with Claudio Grass Our friend Claudio Grass has discussed Switzerland in these pages before, and on one of these occasions we added some background information on country’s truly unique political system (see “The People Against the Establishment” for  the details). People are generally aware that direct democracy in the form of frequent ...

– Next Wall Street Crash looms? Lessons on anniversary of crash – 30 years since stock market  ‘Black Monday’ crash of 1987 – Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 22.6% on October 19, 1987 – S&P 500, FTSE and DAX fell 20%, 11% & 9% respectively – Gold rose 24.5% in 1987 (see chart), acting as safe haven  – Prior to crash, stocks hit successive record highs despite imbalances – Imbalances that lead to 1987 crash are...

A Swiss Post apprentice serves a customer in Basel Switzerland has the second-best labour market for young Europeans behind Denmark, according to a ranking of over 30 countries. Denmark came top, followed by Switzerland, Austria, Germany and the Netherlands in the latest KOF Youth Labour Market Index, which analysed the year 2015. The ranking is produced annually by the Economic Institute (KOF) at the Federal Institute...

Earlier this summer, Tezos smashed existing sales records in the white-hot IPO market after the company’s pitch to build a better blockchain for cryptocurrencies made it one of the buzziest ICOs in the world. As we noted at the time, the company capitalized on that buzz by courting VC firms and other institutional investors with a $50 million token pre-sale. After the company opened up selling to the broader public,...