SNB & CHF

Zurich has less-demanding requirements over the transparency of company audits © Keystone / Walter Bieri Chinese companies are flocking to Switzerland to raise capital after being discouraged from listing in the US by geopolitical tensions and in Britain by tougher audit standards. Nine Chinese companies floated in Zurich last year, raising $3.2 billion (CHF3 billion) in the European country, according to SIX, the operator of the Swiss stock market. That far...

Swiss National Bank Chair Jordan threatened FX intervention! A couple of posts from Tuesday ICYMI while Powell was hogging the spotlight: ECB Knot: ECB can be expected to keep raising rates for quite some time after March ECB can be expected to keep raising rates for quite some time after March And, SNB Chairman: We cannot rule out that we will have to tighten monetary policy again We can use interest rates but also sell foreign currencies to get the right monetary...

On Friday, residential real estate brokerage firm Redfin released new data on home prices, showing that prices fell 0.6 percent in February, year over year. According to Redfin's numbers, this was the first time that home prices actually fell since 2012. The year-over-year drop was pulled down by especially large declines in five markets: Austin (-11%), San Jose, California (-10.9%), Oakland (-10.4%), Sacramento (-7.7%), and Phoenix (-7.3%). According to Redfin, the...

Neo-Calvinist economic thought claims that prices and private property cause scarcity. However, they provide no methodology for their claims. Original Article: "Making Nonsense from Sense: Debunking Neo-Calvinist Economic Thought" This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.  [embedded content]...

The unencumbered realist concludes that there are no solutions within a status quo structure that is itself the problem. Realists who question received wisdom and conclude the status quo is untenable are quickly labeled pessimistsbecause the zeitgeist expects a solution is always at hand–preferably a technocratic one that requires zero sacrifice and doesn’t upset the status quo apple cart. Realists ask “what if” without selecting the “solution” first. The...

Is the main problem with the US healthcare system that hospitals have gotten too large since the 1990s? That seems to be the remarkable conclusion of two of the nation’s most distinguished health-policy analysts, David Dranove and Lawton R. Burns. Dranove is an economist and Walter J. McNerney Distinguished Professor of Health Industry Management at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Burns is a sociologist and James Joo-Jin Kim professor of...

The American Left has decided that the so-called meritocracy is a bad thing. In a typical example from the Los Angeles Times this week, Nicholas Goldberg points to a number of issues exploring how merit is not actually the key to power and riches in America: The United States is supposed to be a meritocracy. The story goes that if you work hard and play by the rules, especially with regard to education, you can compete, rise and succeed here. . . . But Americans are...

In the name of "fighting racism," a number of writers and pundits are making social relationships between people of different races and ethnic groups more contentious. Original Article: "The New Racism of the Elect" This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.  [embedded content] Tags:...

Overview: The US dollar is trading with a firmer bias against nearly all the G10 currencies ahead of Federal Reserve Chairman Powell's semi-annual testimony before Congress. Speaking for the Federal Reserve, the Chair is likely to stay on message which is higher rates are necessary to cool the overheating economy. This comes on the heels of the Reserve Bank of Australia's 25 bp hike and indication that it is not pre-committing to an April hike. The Australian dollar...

Intellectuals and politicians often try to verbally summarize or justify conventional thinking in pithy ways. Milton Friedman (in 1965) and Richard Nixon (in 1971) both said different versions of the phrase “we are all Keynesians now.” . . . Friedman and Nixon were describing the thoughts behind the implementation of Great Society redistribution programs and an inflationary monetary policy designed to offset the cost of those programs. —Brian Wesbury and Robert...