SNB & CHF

Japan Finance Minister Taro Aso, who is also Deputy Prime Minister, caused a global stir of sorts back in early June when he appeared to express something like Japanese racial superiority at least with respect to how that country was handling the COVID pandemic. For a country with a population of more than 126 million, the case counts and mortality rates suggest something in the nation’s favor. Total reported coronavirus cases didn’t top 100,000 until the end of...

Whether you have watched The Sopranos, Goodfellas, or The Godfather, the gist of those stories is always the same: a mafia boss gets involved with a private person or sometimes a businessowner and demands a fee to be paid by midnight tomorrow, otherwise said person will lose a finger or two and maybe a kneecap as well. An analogy often made by libertarians is that the government operates similarly to the mafia. The government demands money in form of taxes, which...

On October 29, the nineteenth Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party concluded its fifth plenum, a four-day meeting devoted primarily to laying the groundwork for China’s fourteenth five-year plan, which covers the period from 2021 to 2025. Most of what has been made publicly available about the planners’ thinking is hardly novel—no one would have been surprised to read that they plan to “hold high the banner of socialism with Chinese characteristics,” for...

Most EM currencies were up last week, once again taking advantage of broad dollar weakness. In addition, EM equities also performed well, with MSCI EM up for the third week in a row and for seven of the past eight. We expect EM assets to continue benefiting from the global liquidity story as well as the weak dollar trend. AMERICAS Brazil reports mid-November IPCA inflation Tuesday. Inflation is expected at 4.15% y/y vs. 3.52% in mid-October. If so, this would be the...

Resistance to vaccinations is significant in Switzerland. A survey done in November 2020 suggests only 16% of the population would get vaccinated immediately if there was an approved Covid-19 vaccine, reported 20 Minutes. More than a quarter (28%) of those surveyed said they would refuse, leaving a majority who said they would decide at some point in the future. Switzerland’s government has made it clear that Covid-19 vaccines will not be compulsory. However,...

© Mcxas | Dreamstime.com This week, Switzerland’s federal government decided to increase aid money to Covid hit businesses to CHF 1 billion. Before this announcement, Bern had already committed to providing CHF 400 million to struggling businesses. Funding for the first CHF 400 million is split 50-50 between cantonal and federal tax payers. The additional CHF 600 million will be funded 80% out of the federal tax pot and 20% out of cantonal tax revenues. This means in...

Trust in institutions, authorities and Big Pharma is scraping the bottom of the barrel, and rushing these vaccines into mass use with extremely high expectations of efficacy is setting up the potential for a devastating loss of trust in the vaccines should they fail to live up to the claims of 100% safety and 95% effectiveness. We’re being assured by Pfizer and Moderna that their Covid vaccines are 95% effective and are safe enough to be injected into hundreds of...

About twenty-four hundred years ago, the Greek philosopher Plato came up with the idea constructing the state and society according to an elaborate plan. Plato wanted “wise men” (philosophers) at the helm of the government, but he made it also clear that his kind of state would need a transformation of the humans. In modern times, the promoters of the omnipotent state want to substitute Plato’s philosopher with the expert and create the new man through eugenics,...

In his writings, Milton Friedman blamed central bank policies for causing the Great Depression. According to Friedman, the Federal Reserve failed to pump enough reserves into the banking system to prevent a collapse in the money stock.1 The adjusted money supply (AMS), which stood at $26.6 billion in March 1930, had fallen to $20.5 billion by April 1933—a decline of 22.9 percent.2 According to Friedman, as a result of the collapse in the money stock, economic...

© Artmim | Dreamstime.com The coronavirus pandemic and its consequences rank at the top of the list of Swiss concerns in 2020, according to a recent survey. This is the first time in the history of the Crédit Suisse Worry Barometer that a new issue has topped the list of people’s worries. Following in second and third place on the worry list were the state retirement provision and the issue of unemployment. A sample of Swiss citizens were asked to list their top five...