SNB & CHF

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Modern Economics – It’s All About Central Planning. We are hereby delivering a somewhat belated comment on the meeting of monetary central planners and their courtier economists at Jackson Hole. Luckily timing is not really an issue in this context.

What would it be like to live underground in a bunker if a major disaster struck Switzerland? Zora Schelbert, a guide at the Sonnenberg bunker in Lucerne, shows us what we could expect from some of the rooms and living quarters deep under the city. (Jo Fahy, swissinfo.ch) --- 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 articles, interviews and...

[unable to retrieve full-text content]There were several developments that took place while US markets were closed for its Labor Day holiday. Most of the economic news was favorable. This included a strong snap back in the UK service PMI, more evidence that the moral suasion campaign to lift wages in Japan is yielding some success and a rise in the Caixin's China's service PMI.

[unable to retrieve full-text content]The “Scientific” Fig Leaf for Statism and Interventionism. To the economic and political detriment of the Western world and those economies beyond which have adopted its precepts, 2016 marks the eightieth anniversary of the publication of one of, if not, the most influential economics books ever penned, John Maynard Keynes’ The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money.

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Keith Weiner's weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

[unable to retrieve full-text content]The Swiss hotel industry registered 4.1 million overnight stays in July 2016, which corresponds to a decrease of 0.4% (-18,000 overnight stays) compared with July 2015. Foreign visitors generated 2.3 million overnight stays, representing a decline of 2.0% (-46,000). Domestic visitors registered 1.8 million overnight stays, i.e. an increase of 1.6% (+29,000). These are provisional results from the Federal Statistical Office (FSO).

[unable to retrieve full-text content]As momentum builds in the developing deflationary spiral, we are seeing increasingly desperate measures to keep the global credit ponzi scheme from its inevitable conclusion. Credit bubbles are dynamic — they must grow continually or implode — hence they require ever more money to be lent into existence.

[unable to retrieve full-text content]"We will colonize you with your democratic laws." — Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Egyptian Islamic cleric and chairman of the International Union of Muslim Scholars. "Beaches, like any public space, must be protected from religious claims. The burkini is an anti-social political project aimed in particular at subjugating women.

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Net-net, the September Fed funds futures contract was little changed on the week. Four high-income central banks meet in the week ahead; the ECB is the only one in play. China accounted for a full three quarters of the US trade deficit in July.

[unable to retrieve full-text content]The great “science” of economics once discovered an empirical relationship between GDP and unemployment that has been dubbed Okun’s Law. It simply states that the unemployment rate rises as GDP contracts, or vice versa, as production shrinks less peo...