SNB & CHF

With the apparent failure of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) potentially causing a crisis in the American and even the global financial system, we will be treated to all manner of explanations, very few of which will accurately state the cause of these troubles: fractional reserve banking. In modern banking there is little separation between warehouse and investment banking. The downside of investment banking is a potential loss of money since no investment can be a sure...

Overview: The capital markets remain unsettled. Asia-Pacific bourses rose, but European markets are sharply lower, with the Stoxx 600 off 1.3%, giving back the lion's share of yesterday's gains and US equity futures are lower. Benchmark 10-year yields are off 3-9 bp in Europe, with widening core-periphery yields. The yield on the 10-year US Treasury is off a dozen basis points to about 3.56%. Two-year yields are also sharply lower, led by the 15-16 bp decline in...

The federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released new price inflation data today, and according to the report, price inflation during the month decelerated slightly, coming in at the lowest year-over-year increase in eighteen months. According to the BLS, Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rose 6.0 percent year over year in February before seasonal adjustment. That’s down from January’s year-over-year increase of 6.4 percent, and February is the...

Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations in 1776, at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The book was the result of twenty years of observation of human action and identification of the mechanisms and processes that lead to economic efficiency and to our well-being. The book was written at a time when guilds had not yet completely disappeared, even though it was already known that the guild system was a brake on innovation and freedom of trade, that guilds...

It’s time to re-imagine how entrepreneurs bring their innovative value propositions to market at the appropriate scale to meet the important needs of millions of people. The new way of thinking is for entrepreneurs to focus all their energy on designing, refining and strengthening the value proposition, and then plugging in to a network of resources assembled by others so that customers enjoy the full realization of the value experience the entrepreneurial has...

Resources are scarce even when money is not. Original Article: "A Permanent Wartime Economy" This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.  [embedded content] Tags: Featured,newsletter

“Economics,” wrote Henry Hazlitt, “is haunted by more fallacies than any other study known to man.” True. No epoch is immune to the scourge of economic illiteracy. Yet, we find ourselves in a moment of especially unprecedented economic ignorance. We’ve come a long way since the days of Hazlitt’s editorializing in the New York Times. In the 1930s, believe it or not, the Times held the line on economic orthodoxy in the face of emergent quackery. Fast forward and here...

Overview: The dramatic shift in expectations for Fed policy is a potent shock, with reverberations throughout the capital markets.  The business press was full of accounts putting the nearly 50 bp decline in the US two-year note in an historical perspective. Yesterday, it fell by 61 bp as the market continued to unwind Fed hikes and reprice the chances of a cut as early as Q2. While the poorly received bill auctions suggests not significant deposit flight, the KBW...

In October, Swiss voters elect their political representatives for the next four-year term. Parliament is made up of two chambers to balance the interests of the different cantons (political regions): the House of Representatives and the Senate. For a law to pass, it must win approval in both chambers separately. They also meet for joint sessions, notably to elect the members of the Swiss government and the courts. The Swiss political system has remained relatively stable over time...

Welcome to Whose Economy Is It, Anyway?, where the rules are made up and the dollars don’t matter. Or at least that seems to be the view of the Yellen regime. As Doug French noted last week, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) was the canary in the coal mine. Over the weekend, Signature Bank became the third-largest bank failure in modern history, just weeks after both firms were given a stamp of approval by KPMG, one of the Big Four auditing firms. While some in the crypto...