SNB & CHF

The month of February 2022, the calm before the latest storm. Russians went into Ukraine toward the month’s end, collateral shortage became scarcity, maybe a run right at February’s final day, and then serious escalations all throughout March – right down to pure US Treasury yield curve inversion. Given that setup, it was unsurprising to find Treasury’s February TIC data mostly unremarkable. Top to bottom, there wasn’t really much that changed. No huge negatives,...

[This article was published in in The Irrepressible Rothbard, available in the Mises Store.] Upon the collapse of centralizing totalitarian Communism in Eastern Europe and even the Soviet Union, long suppressed ethnic and nationality questions and conflicts have come rapidly to the fore. The crack-up of central control has revealed the hidden but still vibrant “deep structures” of ethnicity and nationality. To those of us who glory in ethnic diversity and yearn for...

Nothing unravels quite as dramatically as systems which are presumed to be rock-solid and forever. Here’s the default Bullish case for stocks and the economy: let’s call it Plan Zero. 1. The economy and equities can grow forever (a.k.a. infinite growth on a finite planet in a waste-is-growth Landfill Economy) 2. Higher energy costs have near-zero effect on the economy and stocks. 3. The Federal Reserve will deliver a soft landing which reduces inflation back to...

Coincub ist ein Exchange Aggreagator für digitale Assets. Laut Recherche des Unternehmens ist Deutschland das freundlichste Land für die Crypto-Community weltweit. Damit hat Deutschland im ersten Quartal des neuen Jahres Singapur als Nummer 1 abgelöst. Crypto News: Coincub bezeichnet Deutschland als Crypto-freundlichstes Land der WeltInsgesamt wurden 46 Länder auf ihre Crypto-Freundlichkeit hin untersucht. Die dabei durchleuchteten Parameter umfassen ICOs in der...

Economist Danielle DiMartino Booth sits down with Marc Chandler. About the guest: Marc Chandler is a foreign exchange market analyst, writer, speaker, and professor. On August 19, 2009, Bloomberg L.P. published Chandler's first book, Making Sense of the Dollar. Marc has been covering the global capital markets for more than 30 years, including stints as the global head of currency strategy for both HSBC and Brown Brothers Harriman. Chandler recently joined Bannockburn Global Forex as a...

Peace marchers head towards the centre of Bern on Monday © Keystone/peter Schneider The traditional Easter march has taken place in the Swiss capital, Bern. This year the “Walk for Peace” focused on issues including the climate and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Up to 1,000 people, waving rainbow-coloured peace flags, gathered by the River Aare on Monday. They walked along the river, within sight of the Ukrainian embassy at Helvetiaplatz, into the city and ended in...

Over the last two years, we’ve all witnessed state abuses of power and extreme overreaches the likes of which many average citizens had never imagined they’d see in their own lifetimes. This caused a great part of the body politic in many Western nations to revisit their previously held beliefs about what is and isn’t possible for their governments to do and to question whether there really is such a thing as going “too far” or whether anyone in the...

Trust the Fed. Ha! It’s one thing for money dealers to look upon Jay Powell’s stash of bank reserves with remarkable disdain, more immediately damning when effects of the same liquidity premiums in the real economy create serious frictions leaving the entire world exposed to the consequences. When all is said and done, the Federal Reserve has created its own doom-loop from which it won’t likely escape. The 2022 FOMC has made itself plain, incredibly hawkish to an...

Switzerland’s finance industry: a little less important than a decade ago, but still a big plank of the economy. Keystone / Gian Ehrenzeller The contribution of Switzerland’s finance industry to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) has decreased over the past ten years. The share of GDP accounted for by financial and insurance services was 9% last year, down from 10% in 2011, the State Secretariat for International Finance (SIF)External link said in a report...

In a recent episode of “The Problem With Jon Stewart,” the former Daily Show host asks former president of the Kansas City Fed Thomas Hoenig why the Fed couldn’t have bailed out homeowners, or just “quantitative ease” away the Treasury’s debt. Hoenig gives muddy answers, so Bob tries to clarify. Mentioned in the Episode and Other Links of Interest: Jon Stewart’s full interview with Thomas Hoenig Jon Stewart skewers Paul Krugman Jon Stewart interviews Kelton and...