Tag Archives: Featured

For about ten bucks a month, Netflix will give you all the movies you can watch, plus tons of TV show series and other programs, such as one-off science documentaries. They don’t offer all movies, merely more than you can watch. Oh, and there are no commercials. They don’t just give you old BBC reruns, which you know they can get for a pittance. Netflix is spending money (well Federal Reserve Notes) producing its own...

Das latente Aufwertungsrisiko des Frankens beschränkt ihren Handlungsspielraum: SNB in Bern. (Foto: Keystone/Gaetan Bally) - Click to enlarge EZB-Präsident Mario Draghi konstatierte letzte Woche zufrieden, dass die aktuellen Turbulenzen in einzelnen Staaten auch dort bleiben und nicht andere Länder anstecken. Seine Kollegen in der Nationalbank, die diese Woche ihren geldpolitischen Entscheid fällen, dürften das etwas...

Not up to scratch, says FINMA of CS’s efforts to run a clean operation (© KEYSTONE / WALTER BIERI) Swiss bank Credit Suisse has failed to meet its obligations to prevent money laundering, says Switzerland’s financial supervisory authority. According to FINMA, the Financial Market Supervisory Authorityexternal link, the misconduct is related to the alleged corruption cases around FIFA, world football’s governing body,...

The trajectory of monetary policy in the US and Europe has been fairly clear. There is practically no doubt that the Fed will hike rates on September 26. Despite softer than expected PPI and CPI figures, the market has become more confident of another move in December. The Federal Reserve’s balance sheet unwind reaches its maximum velocity of $50 bln a month in Q4. Eurozone It is also understood that ECB will reduce...

Stock Markets EM FX ended mixed in Friday, capping off an up and down week.  RUB and TRY initially firmed on their respective rate hikes but gave back some of those gains heading into the weekend. Trade tensions are likely to remain high, as press reports suggest President Trump is pushing ahead with tariffs on $200 bln of Chinese imports even as high-level talks are planned. With US rates pushing higher, we think the...

© Hai Huy Ton That | Dreamstime.com Ticket machines once replaced many of the people selling ticket from counters. Now the internet and mobile phones threatens ticket machines. As more and more people use dash past ticket machines with an electronic train ticket in their pocket, Swiss Rail is looking at phasing out some machines according to various newspapers including 20 Minutes. The 150 machines selling fewer than 20...

EuroAiport is located in France, in the tri-national Upper Rhine Region, just a few kilometres northwest of the Swiss city of Basel. The EuroAirport Basel-Mulhouse-Fribourg Airport should be accessible by rail by 2028. Project leaders are convinced that trains will replace the buses currently connecting the city of Basel to the airport within ten years. The French national railway company SNCF said on Thursday that is...

Cushing, OK, delivered what it could for the CPI. The contribution to the inflation rate from oil prices was again substantial in August 2018. The energy component of the index gained 10.3% year-over-year, compared to 11.9% in July. It was the fourth straight month of double digit gains. Yet, the CPI headline retreated a little further than expected. After reaching the highest since December 2011 the month before,...

But there is room for further improvement. This week euro area employment data confirmed that labour market recovery remains on track. Employment grew at 0.4% q-o-q in Q2 2018, marking the 20th consecutive quarter of expansion. Employment is now 2.4% above its pre-crisis (2008) level. Since Q2 2013, 9.2 million jobs have been created in the euro area. One development of note is that employment growth has been broad,...

© Denis Linine | Dreamstime.com Broadly, Switzerland’s agricultural sector costs the country CHF 19.9 billion while contributing only CHF 3.4 billion, concludes a study published by the think tank Avenir Suisse. The CHF 19.9 billion cost the report’s authors calculate is made up of tax breaks and direct federal and cantonal payments to the sector (4.9b), the cost of artificially inflated consumer prices due to import...