SNB & CHF

The Pound Sterling faces pressure as geopolitical tensions improve the appeal for safe-haven assets. UK’s employment and inflation data will influence speculation over BoE rate cuts. The UK economy is on track to come out of a technical recession. The Pound Sterling (GBP) remains on the backfoot against the US Dollar in Monday’s early New York session. The near-term demand of the GBP/USD pair remains downbeat due to deepening Middle East...

Today marks one year since the outbreak of the civil war in Sudan. The conflict has led to a devastating humanitarian crisis. Last year, we examined what the UN and humanitarian agencies here in Geneva can do to either prevent such conflicts from occurring or help ease the suffering. Listen to this episode of our Inside Geneva podcast to learn more. 🎧Apple podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ch/podcast/sudans-tragedy/id1506227169?i=1000613188559 🎧Spotify:...

The seventy-fifth anniversary of Ludwig von Mises’s Human Action invites us to ponder on Mises’s scholarly achievements and how the economic mainstream has not yet caught up to his advances in economics. Like Jesus Huerta de Soto points out in his preliminary study to the Spanish version of the thirteenth edition of Human Action: few are the treatises on the side of the mainstream that even try to match what Mises does in Human Action.Mises’s work is not only...

The seventy-fifth anniversary of Ludwig von Mises’s Human Action invites us to ponder on Mises’s scholarly achievements and how the economic mainstream has not yet caught up to his advances in economics. Like Jesus Huerta de Soto points out in his preliminary study to the Spanish version of the thirteenth edition of Human Action: few are the treatises on the side of the mainstream that even try to match what Mises does in Human Action.Mises’s work is not only...

Redundancies at Switzerland's largest bank will test the capacity of the financial sector to absorb jobs. Keystone A year ago Credit Suisse staff were stunned by the sudden demise of their bank. Many are now fighting for their careers with 3,000 Swiss posts set to be axed by their new employer UBS, starting this year....

15.04.2024 - The Producer and Import Price Index rose in March 2024 by 0.1% compared with the previous month, reaching 106.9 points (December 2020 = 100). In particular, petroleum products saw higher prices. Compared with March 2023, the price level of the whole range of domestic and imported products fell by 2.1%. These are the results from the Federal...

The city of San Antonio’s Status on Poverty Report was released recently, and the response was predictable. “I just want . . . some sort of an action plan.” Council should “better direct” taxpayer dollars “toward helping all San Antonians thrive.”If officials had a decent grasp of history, they’d know the likely outcomes from such efforts: more of the same.Poverty is the natural, initial state. Society wasn’t just born into affluence; it had to be created. As new...

The city of San Antonio’s Status on Poverty Report was released recently, and the response was predictable. “I just want . . . some sort of an action plan.” Council should “better direct” taxpayer dollars “toward helping all San Antonians thrive.”If officials had a decent grasp of history, they’d know the likely outcomes from such efforts: more of the same.Poverty is the natural, initial state. Society wasn’t just born into affluence; it had to be created. As new...

Interest rates surged last week on the back of a hotter-than-expected inflation report that wasn’t actually that bad (see below). Not that my – or your – opinion about these things matters all that much to the market. In the short run, all that matters is what the majority believes is the truth. What they believed last week was that inflation isn’t falling fast enough and the Fed will not be cutting rates anytime soon. That was enough to send the bond market into a...

The Anti-Concepts of Money The cash-value of promoting each of these anti-concepts is that they lead people to think that the central bank should impose a monetary policy. To make our lives better.  Our monetary policy is set by the Federal Reserve, which states that in pursuit of its mandate for price stability, it will engineer chronic 2% annual inflation. If we had nuclear reactor policy like this, power plant engineers would seek a slow, steady increase in core...