SNB & CHF

20 Minutes. In Switzerland, home owners have to add a theoretical rent to their taxable income. This means home ownership can increase your annual tax bill, sometimes substantially. © Ana Vasileva | Dreamstime For many home owners the tax effect of the theoretical or imputed rent is cancelled out by deductions for mortgage interest and home maintenance expenses, however those who have repaid their mortgage or never...

Bundesbank has completed a transfer of gold worth €24B from France and U.S. Germany has completed domestic gold storage plan 3 years ahead of schedule In the €7.7 million plan, 54,000 gold bars were shipped and audited In 2012 German court called for inspection of Germany’s foreign gold holdings Decision to repatriate from Paris and New York was ‘to build trust and confidence domestically’ 1,236t or 37% of German...

Swisscom denies it has been defrauding its customers (Keystone) - Click to enlarge The Swiss consumer protection agency says it will file criminal charges against Swisscom for an alleged roaming charge rip-off that is said to have netted the telecommunications giant millions of francs at customers’ expense. Swisscom has flatly rejected the allegation, saying it does not charge customers fictitious foreign...

The signs are everywhere for those willing to look: something has changed beneath the surface of complacent faith in permanent growth. This is more intuitive than quantitative, but my gut feeling is that the economy just stumbled off a cliff. Neither the cliff edge nor the fatal misstep are visible yet; both remain in the shadows of the intangible foundation of the economy: trust, animal spirits, faith in authorities’...

Swiss Franc The Euro has risen by 0.11% to 1.1398 CHF. EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, August 25(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ). FX Rates The event that investors have been waiting for and the media frequently linked to whatever price action has taken place has arrived: Yellen and Draghi’s speeches later today. Yellen is first. She will speak at 10:00 am ET. This is toward the end of the European trading week. Draghi...

© Clementgreenberg | Dreamstime - Click to enlarge The report says that while it is true that, as a group, women get paid less than men, it is not because they receive less for the same work. It is because they don’t get the highest-paying jobs in the highest-paid industries. Korn Ferry’s number crunchers took pay data on more than 20 million employees across 25,000 organisations in more than 110 countries. They...

Summary Yellen has identified two challenges regarding the US labor market, the opioid epidemic and women participation in the labor force. The topic of the Jackson Hole gathering lends itself more to a discussion of these issues than the nuances of monetary policy. Dynamic world growth needs a dynamic US economy, and that requires more serious thinking about these socio-economic and political issues. The topic at...

Philipp Hildebrand was forced out of his post less than two years into his tenure as head of the Swiss central bank (Keystone) Switzerland’s highest court has imposed suspended fines on a local politician and a former bank worker for leaking the personal bank transactions of former Swiss National Bank (SNB) chairman Philipp Hildebrand. The leak forced Hildebrand to resign in 2012. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court ended a...

– Gold up over 100% in major currencies since financial crisis– Gold up 100% in USD, 124% in EUR and surged 200% in GBP– Gold has outperformed equity, bonds and most assets– Gold remains an important safe-haven in long term Gold Prices(see more posts on Gold prices, )Gold prices from August 9th 2007 to August 9th 2017 - Click to enlarge It has been ten years since the global financial crisis began to take hold. At...

In the conventional view, there are two kinds of revolutions: political and technological. Political revolutions may be peaceful or violent, and technological revolutions may transform civilizations gradually or rather abruptly—for example, revolutionary advances in the technology of warfare. In this view, the engines of revolution are the state–government in all its layers and manifestations—and the corporate economy....