SNB & CHF

12.05.2020 – In 2019, people spent 7.929 billion hours working. Between 2014 and 2019, the actual weekly hours worked by full-time employees fell by 15 minutes on average, reaching 41 hours and 2 minutes. At the same time, the number of weeks of annual holiday continued its gradual increase to 5.2 weeks, according to the latest results from the Federal Statistical Office (FSO). The results in this press release concern the hours worked in 2019. The effects of the...

© Ocskay Mark | Dreamstime.com Over the weekend, hundreds rallied against lockdown measures across Switzerland in the cities of Bern, Zurich, Basel and St. Gallen. Anti-lockdown protesters in these cities flouted rules introduced in mid-March banning public groups of more than five people, designed to reduce the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The protestors consider the rules in breach of their fundamental rights. In Bern and St. Gallen, dozens were stopped by the...

Falcon is offering a social plan to staff who will lose their jobs. (Keystone) The Abu Dhabi-owned Falcon private bank says it is winding down activities in Switzerland and is in talks with a Swiss rival to take on its existing clients next year. Falcon was taken to task by regulators in both Switzerland and Singapore for its role in channelling assets from the Malaysian 1MDB fraud. The company says it has changed its name to “Falcon Private” but will remain under...

Over the past two months we have witnessed historic turmoil followed by unprecedented intervention by policy makers and central banks in supporting the capital markets (and more). In many ways the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic is very different from the 2008 global financial crisis, but for some, certain old concerns still linger. In the face of short selling bans and worries about market liquidity, we discuss below how best to navigate some of the common objections and...

Watch Video Update (Live 12/05/2020 ◆ The massive global debt driven “Everything Bubble” is bursting due to the pandemic and more specifically the governments draconian economic lockdowns ◆ A dollar crisis is inevitable with U.S. government debt surging by some $2 trillion in a matter of weeks and ballooning to over $25 trillion ◆ Wall Street has just been bailed out at the expense of Main Street and families and businesses in the U.S. and throughout most of the...

From a monetary policy perspective, smooth is what you are aiming for. What central bankers want in this age of expectations management is for a little bit of steady inflation. Why not zero? Because, they decided, policymakers need some margin of error. Since there is no money in monetary policy, it takes time for oblique “stimulus” signals to feed into the psychology of markets and the economy. Thus, a little steady inflation as insurance against the real evil....

Swiss Franc The Euro has risen by 0.02% to 1.0515 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, May 12(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: Investors seem to be in want of new drivers, leaving the capital markets with little fresh direction. While Japanese and China equities were little changed, several markets in the region, including Australia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and India, were off more than 1%. European bourses are mostly...

The Swiss National Bank announced the establishment of the SNB COVID-19 refinancing facility (CRF) on 25 March 2020. This facility allows banks to obtain liquidity from the SNB by assigning credit claims from corporate loans as collateral. In so doing, the SNB enables banks to expand their lending rapidly and on a large scale. To date, the SNB has accepted as collateral for the CRF only credit claims in respect of loans guaranteed by the federal government under the...

As Jackson Browne put it: Don’t think it won’t happen just because it hasn’t happened yet. We can summarize all that will unfold in the next few years in one line: The way of the Tao is reversal. This is the opening line of Chapter 40 of Lao Tzu’s 5,000-character commentary on the Tao, The Tao Te Ching. There are many translations of this slim volume, and for a variety of reasons I favor the 1975 translation by my old professor at the University of Hawaii, Chang...

© Hdesislava | Dreamstime.com A survey published on 7 May 2020, suggests only 36% of Swiss support the government’s calendar for reopening the country after the Covid-19 shutdown. 23% think the plan to reopen is too slow, while 42% think it is fast or too fast. However, 60% said they had confidence in the government. The most controversial aspects of the plan were reopening schools and reopening restaurants, bars and nightclubs. 37% thought restaurants were opening...