SNB & CHF

Tension between Switzerland’s scientists and politicians is rising, according to RTS. Bern_© Petr Pohudka _ Dreamstime.com - Click to enlarge On Saturday, Christian Althaus, an epidemiologist working for the Swiss National COVID-19 Science Task Force, Switzerland’s scientific Covid advisory team, announced his resignation and voiced his frustration on Twitter. “One of the reasons why I left the scientific task force this week. Politicians must finally learn to face...

Recent research based on information from 3,762 Long Covid sufferers shows most still have symptoms after 7 months. © Tero Vesalainen | Dreamstime.com - Click to enlarge The study uses patient-driven research and is based on a survey created by a team of patients with COVID-19 who are members of the Body Politic online COVID-19 support group. The group conducted its first survey in April 2020 and issued a subsequent report in May 2020. Participants were not randomly...

Revolving consumer credit declined again in November 2020, according to data released by the Federal Reserve last week. Though the monthly seasonally-adjusted change was small, it still represents significant uncertainty and material mistrust of the underlying economic condition among a broad section of consumers. Those who are paying down their credit card balances, while avoiding taking on higher revolving debts, they are the very consumers Fed policymakers are...

Something good is coming out of the covid lockdowns. Economist David Rosenberg released a special report via the eponymous Rosenberg Research, concluding “the pre-COVID-19 ‘norm’ of a 7% personal savings rate will morph into a post-COVID-19 norm of 10%.” Rosenberg makes frequent TV appearances after he was chief North American economist at Merrill Lynch in New York from 2002 to 2009, when he was consistently included in the Institutional Investor All-Star analyst...

Swiss Franc The Euro has fallen by 0.06% to 1.0784 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, January 14(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: The capital markets are becalmed today. There does not appear to be much reaction to the news that the House of Representatives impeached President Trump an unprecedented second time with greater bipartisan support than previously (10 GOP voted with the Democratic majority). Nor has...

Probably not on the chopping list: UBS headquarters in Zurich. © Keystone / Gaetan Bally The closures will affect 44 of the bank’s 239 branches in the country, mainly smaller ones, UBS confirmed on Tuesday. The bank plans to continue beefing up its online offers. The announcement, which had been rumoured for a few months already, was confirmedExternal link by UBS Switzerland director Axel Lehmann to the Neue Zürcher Zeitung newspaper on Tuesday. Lehmann said the...

If you don’t discern any of these dynamics in the present, what are you choosing not to see? The reason why history rhymes is that humanity is still using Wetware 1.0 and so humans respond to scarcity, abundance and conflicts over them in the same manner. I am struck by similarities between the conflict-torn mid-1600s and the present: global climate change (The Little Ice Age in the 1600s), political upheavals and wars which intertwined civil and imperial conflicts....

House Democrats will move ahead with impeachment proceedings today; December CPI data will be the US highlight; heavy UST supply this week wraps up with a $24 bln sale of 30-year bonds; December monthly budget statement will be of interest the Fed releases its Beige Book report; several Fed officials pushed back against notions of tapering anytime soon Italian political noise continues; UK and Germany warned of more restrictive measures; Russia will restart its...

Once a State has been established, the problem of the ruling group or “caste” is how to maintain their rule.1 While force is their modus operandi, their basic and long-run problem is ideological. For in order to continue in office, any government (not simply a “democratic” government) must have the support of the majority of its subjects. This support, it must be noted, need not be active enthusiasm; it may well be passive resignation as if to an inevitable law of...

[unable to retrieve full-text content]In the early 1980s few outlets existed for anyone interested in the Austrian school of economics or robust libertarian scholarship. Few universities taught Hayek, much less Mises or Rothbard. Libraries and bookstores carried little of interest for serious economists and thinkers in the old liberal tradition.