SNB & CHF

In any year when gasoline prices rise 18%, that’s not going to be good for anyone except maybe oil companies who extract its key ingredient from out of the ground (or don’t, as the case can be). Yet, annual rates of increase that size do happen. After August 2017 up to and including August 2018, the BLS’s CPI registered a seasonally-adjusted 20.5% year-over-year gain in its motor fuel component. Economic pain followed thereafter, though not entirely the fault of...

The Covid-19 pandemic has failed to rattle the Swiss property market. Prices for apartment buildings have hit a record high. But now the war in Ukraine and rising interest rates threaten to turn the tide. The Swiss real estate market recorded a bumper year in 2021. The total return, comprising rental income and value changes on properties, was higher for real estate investors than it had been in seven years. Prices have been heading in just one direction – up – for...

Western companies should end their business relations with Russia. It is their moral duty to contribute to peace-making by their actions, says a group of business ethicists in Switzerland and Austria. Some large corporations are currently breaking off economic relations with Russia, removing Russian products from their product ranges, and closing their production facilities or branches in the country. Among these are Ikea, Apple, all the major credit-card...

(Richmond, Virginia – April 12, 2022) – By signing sound money legislation last night, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin has ended Virginia’s discriminatory practice of assessing sales taxes on smaller purchases of gold, silver, platinum, and palladium bullion and coins. Virginia’s House Bill 936, originally introduced by Del. Amanda Batten, was considered by multiple House and Senate committees before passing overwhelmingly out of both chambers and reaching the...

The four-star SeePark Hotel in the lakeside town of Murten in western Switzerland has opened its doors to refugees from the war in Ukraine. They get to stay for free in rooms that would normally cost more than CHF200 ($214) a night. The hotel is owned by a limited company of ethnic Russians based in western Europe. The hotel administrator, Ukrainian-born Lyudmyla Rigert, persuaded the director to help her compatriots fleeing the war. So far, 200 refugees from Ukraine have stayed there. But...

According to a new report released Wednesday by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Consumer Price Index increased in March by 8.6 percent, measured year over year (YOY). This is the largest increase in more than forty years. To find a higher rate of CPI inflation, we have to go back to December 1981, when the year-over-year increase was 9.6 percent. March’s surge in consumer price inflation is also the twelfth month in row during which the increase is well above...

Inflations have an inbuilt mechanism which works to burn them out. Government (including the central bank) can thwart the mechanism if they resort to further monetary injections of sufficient power. Hence inflations can run for a long time and in virulent form. This occurs where the money issuers see net benefit from making new monetary injections even though likely to be less than for the initial one which took so many people by surprise. Ultimately at some point...

Vincenz is a former Swiss ‘banker of the year’. © Keystone/Michael Buholzer A Swiss court has sentenced former Raiffeisen bank chief Pierin Vincenz to almost four years in prison for fraud, forgery of documents and criminal mismanagement. Judges on Wednesday handed down a jail sentence of 43 months as well as a suspended fine of CHF840,000 ($899,858). Vincenz was also ordered to refund CHF236,000. He was accused of making millions through illicit deals while he was...

This week on GoldCore TV, Dave Russell welcomes Tim Price of Price Value Partners. Tim sees the current inflationary pressures as simply the beginning of a bigger move that could end in a new monetary system. [embedded content] Make sure you don’t miss a single episode… Subscribe to our YouTube channel [embedded content] You Might Also Like Gold Price Today – Gareth Soloway 2022-03-24...

German optimism was predictably, inevitably sent crashing in March and April 2022. According to that country’s ZEW survey, an uptick in general optimism from November 2021 to February 2022 collided with the reality of Russian armored vehicles trying to snake their way down to Kiev. Whereas sentiment had rebounded from an October low of 22.3, blamed on whichever of the coronas, by February the index had moved upward to 54.3. It currently stands at -41.0, collapsing...