SNB & CHF

The oceans produce one in every two oxygen atoms. Coral reefs are like the ocean's rainforest. But it's disappearing, and fast. Ulrike Pfreundt has made it her life's work to find a solution. Pfreundt is a marine biologist at the Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zurich who gets emotional when she talks about coral death. Through 3D printing, she's found a way to make artificial reefs and replace some of the coral that's being lost by providing structures for new coral to grow. She's...

Alain Berset speaking about his experience as health minister in 2020 SRF In an interview with Swiss public television, SRF, Health Minister Alain Berset has acknowledged that Switzerland made mistakes in managing the coronavirus outbreak. “We were too lax,” Berset said, pointing out that in the summer – after the first wave – people had the feeling that the worst was over. “And then we were far too optimistic when we thought we could reopen the big events in the...

The coronavirus has dominated all of our lives in recent months. Radical paths were taken by politicians in the form of lockdowns to contain the pandemic. But we should recognize that even if the coronavirus is a (major) challenge for us, we always have to keep a holistic view of world events. Just as there are epidemiological factors to consider in this crisis, there are also economic, social, cultural, political and other health factors at play. It is precisely...

So party on, because “the worst year ever” is ending and the rebound of financial markets, already the greatest in recorded history, will only become more fabulous. Of the lavish banquet of absurdities laid out in 2020, one of the most delectable is Time magazine’s December 14 cover declaring that 2020 was the “worst year ever.” You’re joking, right? In history’s immense tapestry of human misery, it’s not even in the top 100 worst years. Consider 1177 B.C., when...

The term environmental social governance (ESG) investing is relatively new. As described in Forbes, [An] approach that is slowly on the rise is ESG activism, where an activist fund will take a position in the security of a company with the aim of campaigning to make its business better in terms of governance, less environmentally unfriendly and more socially responsible. But the concept of morally selective investing is not totally new, as it gained a good deal of...

21. Dezember 2020 – von Michael Rectenwald [Dies ist die Abschrift des gleichnamigen Vortrags, der auf dem Ron Paul Symposium des Mises Institute am 7. November 2020 in Angleton, Texas, gehalten wurde.] “Sei nicht böse” ist zwar nicht mehr länger Google’s offizielles Unternehmensmotto, aber es verbleibt Bestandteil des letzten Satzes in seinem Verhaltenskodex. Unter ‘nichts Böses machen’ versteht Google nach wie vor, dass «alles [was es tut] in Verbindung mit...

Twenty-twenty marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of a book that has had an expanding influence on the public conversation about market competition. Robert Frank and Philip Cook’s 1995 The Winner-Take-All Society argued that there are an increasing number of markets in which small differences in performance give rise to enormous differences in rewards. As John Kenneth Galbraith described it in a review of that book, the consequence is that “the one who wins gets it...

The quiet lakeside town of Montreux has become a mecca for Queen fans. They make pilgrimages here each year to leave messages at Freddie Mercury's statue and join in the annual birthday celebrations for the late star, who died in 1991. Now there's even a Freddie Tour - you can follow in the footsteps of the flamboyant singer and visit the Studio Experience in the town's casino. That exhibition is based on the recording studios Queen owned, where the group recorded seven albums. swissinfo.ch...

This is happening a lot in Switzerland. © Keystone / Gaetan Bally Even good drivers might struggle to fit their cars into the allotted parking spaces in Switzerland. Yet Swiss cities don’t necessarily want to provide larger spaces. The Swiss Association of Road and Traffic Experts has presented a proposal to increase the standard size of parking spaces. Currently, the Swiss standard width is 2.35 metres for private parking spaces and 2.50m for public ones. The new...

With the development of the Austrian Business Paradigm and the Austrian Business Model, and tools such as the “Value Learning Process,” businesses of all kinds can utilize the deep insights of Austrian economics to further enhance how they facilitate value for their customers. John Boles — an avid listener of the Economics for Entrepreneurs Podcast — provides an example of how he applies these insights at his accounting firm. Here is a summary resource and a...