SNB & CHF

Iran launched over 200 ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday. The attack began at 7:30 p.m. Israel time, after the US had warned just hours before that a strike was imminent. The Israel Defence Forces reported several of the missiles were intercepted, and reports said one person was killed in the West Bank, per Bloomberg. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vows to retaliate against Iran for a missile attack on Tuesday, but Tehran warned...

Newly-minted Chairman of the Swiss National Bank (SNB) Martin Schlegel hit newswires on Tuesday, cautioning that further rate cuts haven't been ruled out. The incoming Chairman of the SNB officially took the reins of Switzerland's central bank on early Tuesday, and has inherited a central bank still caught in the wake of last year's lopsided management of the merger between 167-year-old Credit Suisse and UBS. Key highlights The services sector...

The videos coming out of western North Carolina, of entire towns wiped off the map by flood waters of Hurricane Helene, are both tragic and shocking. Lesser, but serious, impacts have been felt across the entire region. The residents of much of southern Appalachia, Georgia, Florida, and the Carolinas are facing temporary shortages in terms of access to clear water, power, and fuel. For some social-media bomb throwers, however, the floods are an excellent opportunity...

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Minor Issues podcast. I’m Mark Thornton at the Mises Institute.We have kicked off the Fall Campaign at the Mises Institute. I humbly request that you make a small donation in the name of this podcast using the link in the show notes. It would mean a great deal to me. For every $100 or more donation, or recurring donation of $5 or more, using this link, I will send you a signed copy of my Skyscraper Curse...

These days, supporters of President Trump and others on the right are often smeared as “fascists,” and what is meant by this is that they support the Nazis. For example, the historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat says: “To get people to lose their aversion to violence, savvy authoritarians also dehumanize their enemies. That’s what Trump is doing. Hitler used this ploy from the very start, calling Jews the ‘black parasites of the nation’ in a 1920 speech. By the time Hitler got...

USD/CHF is rising within a range-bound market.  It has encountered resistance at a cluster of MAs but will probably continue higher. USD/CHF is rising up within its sideways range. It has reached a cluster of major Moving Averages which are providing firm resistance.  USD/CHF 4-hour Chart  The trend is neither up nor down but rather sideways and so the oscillating character of the market is likely to extend, given the principle that “the...

Human society is a complex and ever-evolving web of relationships, institutions, and behaviors. At the heart of this complexity lies a fundamental question: Why do people do what they do? What drives human action, and how does it shape the societies we live in? Ludwig von Mises, a prominent Austrian economist, offered a compelling answer through what he called the “action axiom.”What Is the Action Axiom?At its core, the action axiom is a simple yet profound idea:...

Many investors, businesses, and consumers cheered the Federal Reserve’s first interest rate cut since March of 2020. The Fed’s 50 basis points interest rate reduction was larger than many Fed watchers anticipated and was followed by suggestions that there are more rate cuts on the way.A drop in borrowing costs following the Fed’s rate reduction can help make people more optimistic about the general economy and their own financial situation. The uptick in consumer...

The figures published yesterday morning on the Swiss National Bank's (SNB) foreign exchange market operations in the second quarter confirmed what the statements made at the last press conference had already indicated, Commerzbank’s FX analyst Michael Pfister notes. SNB reluctant to take action against the strong franc “For the time being, the SNB appears to be continuing to rely mainly on the key interest rate as its preferred instrument, with...

Overview:   Japan will go to polls a little ahead of the US. And the US election still looks too close to call. Canada may be forced into snap elections if the Bloc Quebecois abandon's negotiating with the minority Liberal government as it has threatened to do at the end of the month. The UK's new Labour government is putting together its first budget to be delivered at the end of the month. Among the first tasks of the new French prime minister is submission of...