SNB & CHF

Utility bills—for electricity, natural gas, water, and garbage—have by long-standing tradition been based on customer usage, measured in kilowatt-hours of electricity, therms or Btu of natural gas, hundred cubic feet of water, or number of garbage cans. Every residence and business has electric, gas, and water meters that measure utility usage.But changes are afoot in the utility business as federal and state governments urge Americans to convert from fossil fuels to...

Here are three news stories from Switzerland you shouldn’t have missed this week. Head over to SWI swissinfo.ch for the latest from the Alpine country.

The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, was created in 1948 to support Palestinians who lost their homes and livelihood when Israel was created. The agency was supposed to be temporary, but 75 years later, UNRWA is still here and now it’s in the eye of a political and media storm. Israel alleges that some UNRWA staff were involved in the October 7 attacks. The UN opened a formal investigation. So, what is UNRWA? What does it do? And why is Israel...

As the internationally recognized government in Haiti loses its grip on power, the small Caribbean country is descending into violence. The media reports about the situation are quick to, either implicitly or explicitly, place the overall blame for the violence on the absence of state institutions.Situations like this are often used to dismiss libertarians. Before Haiti, it was Somalia that experienced a so-called stateless period in the 1990s and early 2000s.While...

For lower income folks the landing is already hard. Chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab Liz Ann Sonders posted on X (and reported by Almost Daily Grant’s) that the tally of domestic temporary help employees slipped to a three-plus-year low of 2.748 million down from 3.181 million as of March 2022. The 14% comes in 4th in the category’s downward drops percentage-wise since 1990; to the early 2000s, the 2008 financial crash and the Covid debacle, each...

Overview: The US dollar remains bid ahead of the outcome of today's FOMC meeting. No change in policy is expected, but the forward guidance, partly delivered in the updated projections, is the focus. In the last iteration (December), the Fed "dot" was for three rate cuts this year. Japanese markets were closed for a national holiday today but dollar's gains against the yen have been extended and the greenback is nearing the peak seen in the last two years slightly...

A new type of extreme sport is making people see red in the Alpine town of Lauterbrunnen: tandem BASE jumping. This is when someone leaps off a clifftop strapped to an experienced jumper wearing a wingsuit and a parachute. The Swiss BASE Association says it’s very dangerous and brings BASE jumping into disrepute. --- 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...

Since the conclusion of World War II, each biennial session of Congress has ushered in a staggering 4-6 million words of additional legislation. However, amidst this flood of legal text, the State's focus on expanding regulations and enforcing compliance has overshadowed its fundamental obligation: provision of security—the cornerstone of what progressives call the social contract.This neglect is starkly evident in the steady decline of the national homicide...

Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito Website powered by Mises Institute donors Mises Institute is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Contributions are tax-deductible to the full extent the law allows. Tax ID# 52-1263436 [embedded content] Tags: Featured,newsletter

“One nice day in 1974 Europe woke up and heard that an army revolt was taking place in Portugal and that a large number of career officers turned out to be Marxists of all colors and stripes. We rubbed our eyes: officers in smart uniforms, coming from ‘nice, even noble families, and apparently a bit frivolous, falling prey to Marxism – a despicable XIX century pseudo religion, bankrupt, morally discredited as a murderous political philosophy responsible for pouring...