SNB & CHF

Interview original date: September 11th, 2020 Topics - Quantitative Easing: It’s not quantitative, is it easing? Bank reserves: What can they do and what can’t they do? Consumer Price Inflation: does QE lead to rise of consumer prices? Why do the FED’s measures not cause a reac tion in the Real Economy? QE is an asset swap: Clearing House Certificates, interbank system, the FED replicates the functions of a Clearing House. Bank Reserves have no role outside of the...

Swiss Franc The Euro has risen by 0.04% to 1.0808 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, November 24(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: The contrast between the eurozone and US preliminary PMI readings caught the short-term market leaning the wrong way, and the dollar snapped back after extending its recent losses. However, today the US dollar is back on its heels and returning to yesterday’s lows against most major...

Recycling plastic to make new bottles is one thing, but using the material to create prosthetic limbs? That's another. Two Swiss designers are using their skills to improve the lives of amputees. Fabian Engel and Simon Oschwald travelled to Kenya, where they heard about the indignities people with prosthetic limbs faced in everyday life. Due to the high number of traffic accidents, amputations aren't rare. The cost of an artificial limb is prohibitively high for many people, and...

Over the weekend, Switzerland averaged 3,250 new daily recorded cases (9,751 over 72 hours). This represents a significant drop from the daily peak of 10,128 cases reported on 5 November 2020. The 7-day moving average number of new cases in Switzerland is currently more than 40% below the peak around 2.5 weeks ago. Cases in Schweiz, November 24 Source: corona-data.ch - Click to enlarge At the same time Switzerland’s hospitals remain under pressure and the death...

What we need is not a return to the corrupt, tottering kleptocracy of 2019, but a re-democratization of capital, agency and money. I’m hopeful about 2021, and no, it’s not because of the vaccines or the end of lockdowns or anything related to Covid. The status quo is cheering the fantasy that we’ll soon return to the debt-soaked glory days of 2019 when everything was peachy. The problem with this “brand” of magical thinking is that stripped of self-serving PR, the...

(Disclosure: Some of the links below may be affiliate links) A credit card is a powerful personal finance tool. But it is only a good tool if used correctly. And unfortunately, many people are not using credit cards correctly. The first important thing is to choose a card with no annual fee. You should focus on that first. Contrary to what credit card companies want you to believe, it is often better to get a credit card with no fee and smaller cashback than an...

After becoming the apparent president-elect, Joe Biden clearly promised to unify Americans. However, that promise was in sharp contrast to what his campaign promises would actually achieve. Granting unions their fondest wishes is clearly part of Biden’s labor policy, as illustrated by his statement that “I am a union man. Period” in his 2019 campaign-opening speech and his website’s opposition to the “war on organizing, collective bargaining, unions, and workers”...

There are now two entirely different notions of a coming “reset”. One has been popular among those who speculate on the gold price. They expect a revaluation of the dollar. However, the government does not set the value of the dollar. So there is no way to reset the value. Indeed, the government has been trying to push down the value of the dollar for over a decade, and mostly failing (because increasing quantity is not the same thing as decreasing value). But that...

The bid for “decoupling” has never been stronger, and, unfortunately, this time actually represents the weakest case yet for it. According to the mainstream interpretations of the most recent sentiment indicators, the US and European economies appear to be going in the complete opposite directions. Beset by even more overreactive governments, spurred oppressively forward by an increase in COVID testing, in Europe the second wave of artificial restrictiveness has...

Swiss Franc The Euro has risen by 0.08% to 1.0806 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, November 23(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: News that the AstraZeneca vaccine was 70% effective but could be enhanced by changing dosage is lifting spirits and boosting equities. Japan’s markets were closed for a national holiday, but all the equity markets in the region advanced and many by more than 1%. Strong export figures...