Tag Archives: Featured

“Literally On Fire” This week brought forward more evidence that we are living in a fabricated world. The popular story-line presents a world of pure awesomeness. The common experience, however,  falls grossly short. There are many degrees of awesomeness, up to total awesomeness – which is where we are these days, in the age of total awesomeness, just a short skip away from the Nirvana era. - Click to enlarge What is...

The cliché of Swiss trains always being on time is challenged by data published on the website opentransportdata.swiss. © Arne9001 | Dreamstime.com - Click to enlarge Analysis of this data by 20 Minuten, shows the most frequently delayed trains arrive from Italy. Mendrisio, near the Italian border in the canton of Ticino, was the worst performing station with 30% of trains delayed by 3 minutes or more. Italian delays...

How do we explain our obsession with relatively low risk dangers and our collective blindness to manufactured/marketed scourges that kill tens of thousands of people annually? If you’ve bought a new vehicle recently, you may have noticed some “safety features” that strike many as Nanny State over-reach. You can’t change radio stations, for example, if the vehicle is in reverse. Who knows who or what you’ll run over in...

Global demand for gold is increasing while new discoveries of gold remain small Gold mining output in Australia is forecast to decrease by 50% in the next eight years Decline in global gold mining supply makes a price increase almost certain The demand for gold is increasing, yet new discoveries of the precious metal have not kept pace with the demand. Funds for exploration are historically high, $54.3 billion, up 60...

Schneider-Ammann told reporters in Bern that he would be happy if EFTA-Switzerland secure a free trade deal with Mercosur six months after the EU (Keystone) - Click to enlarge Switzerland is close to concluding a free trade agreement with the four Mercosur countries – Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay – within the framework of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), Swiss Economics Minister Johann...

Chinese exports rose 12.9% year-over-year in April 2018. China Exports, Jan 2008 - Apr 2018(see more posts on China Exports, ) - Click to enlarge Imports were up 20.9%. As always, both numbers sound impressive but they are far short of rates consistent with a growing global economy. China’s participation in global growth, synchronized or not, is a must. The lack of acceleration on the export side tells us a lot...

A Movie We Have Seen Before – Repatriation Effect? There was a sizable increase in the year-on-year growth rate of the true US money supply TMS-2 between February and March. Note that you would not notice this when looking at the official broad monetary aggregate M2, because the component of TMS-2 responsible for the jump is not included in M2. Let us begin by looking at a chart of the TMS-2 growth rate and its...

Before the financial crisis, the real estate bubble and the parallel growth in borrowing meant that the indebtedness of Spanish households spiralled ever higher, reaching a peak of 84.7% of GDP in Q2 2010. Since then, Spanish’s households have tightened their belt, with indebtedness falling to 61.3% of GDP in Q4 2017. However, recent data suggest that the situation might be changing again. Indeed, in 2017, households...

Swiss wealth managers are still struggling to attract new assets, according to Deloitte (Keystone) - Click to enlarge Switzerland remains the world’s largest wealth management centre for international assets, but the air is getting thinner at the top and other financial hubs are gaining ground, according to a global report. A total of $1.84 trillion (CHF1.85 billion) of international assets were managed in...

The Swiss economy appears to be on a roll. Pictured here: a worker at the Lantal Textiles rug factory in Melchnau (© Marcel Bieri) - Click to enlarge The Swiss unemployment rate was 2.7% in April – a level last seen in July 2012. Last month, 119,781 people were registered as without work in Switzerland – 10,632 fewer than the previous month. This brought the overall unemployment rate down from 2.9% in March...