The status quo, in all its various forms, is dominated by incentives that strengthen the centralization of wealth and power. As longtime readers know, my work aims to 1) explain why the status quo — the socio-economic-political system we inhabit — is unsustainable, divisive, and doomed to collapse under its own weight and 2) sketch out an alternative Mode of Production/way of living that is sustainable, consumes far...
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Gold Price Gains Due To Declining Dollar Rather Than Interest Rates – Investors should not be put off by higher interest rates, World Gold Council research finds they do not always have a negative impact on gold – Only short-term movements in gold are ‘heavily influenced by US interest rates’ – Correlation between US interest rates and gold is waning, with US dollar a better indicator of short-term gold price – New...
Read More »- Click to enlarge Als Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) zur Finanzierung des „American Civil War“ bei den Banken um Kredit nachsuchte, sah er sich mit Zinsen von 24 bis 36% konfrontiert. Lincoln sträubte sich gegen solchen Zinswucher und suchte nach einer anderen Lösung. Sie kam von Colonel „Dick“ Taylor, einem Geschäftsmann aus Illinois. „Just get to Congress to pass a bill authorizing the printing of full legal...
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This week’s Eurostat releases revealed that public finances continue to improve in most euro area member states. As a result of falling deficits, low interest rates and stronger nominal growth, the ratio of euro area government debt to GDP fell to a six-year low of 86.7% in Q4 2017. Although sovereign debt sustainability remains shaky in countries like Italy, it is fair to say that we have moved from self-defeating...
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Still an issue in 2018: Women calling for equal pay on women’s day in Geneva (© KEYSTONE / MARTIAL TREZZINI) The workers’ union umbrella group Travail Suisse is calling for the introduction of a blacklist to shame Swiss companies that fail to pay women and men equally. This is one of 28 recommendations which feature in a position paper published by Travail Suisse external linkon Monday, on the eve of International...
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Swiss Franc The Euro has fallen by 0.03% to 1.1944 CHF. EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, May 03(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates The Australian dollar is higher for a second session. It has been helped today by stronger than expected data in the form of a larger than expected March trade surplus (A$1.57 bln vs. expectations for A$865 mln) and building permits up...
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On 19 April, the price of a barrel of oil reached USD69.56 for West Texas Intermediate (WTI) and reached USD75.27 for Brent, today, the highest price since 2014. Since 9 April, oil prices have been significantly above their longterm fundamental equilibrium value. Three factors explain what has happened: Geopolitics. Between Saudi Arabia’s Prince Mohammed bin Salman visit to the US at end March, new US sanctions against...
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On 17 April, Turkish news publication Ahval published a report stating that during 2017, Turkey withdrew 26.8 tonnes of gold that it had stored in the vaults of the New York Federal Reserve, and moved this gold under the custodianship of the Bank of England and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). The source of the Ahval report was a Turkish language article from the popular Hürriyet newspaper in Turkey....
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Die Schweizer Konjunktur brummt wie schon lange nicht mehr. Vor allem zeigt der kürzlich publizierte Bericht der Seco-Expertengruppe, dass die Erholung auf breiter industrieller Basis stattfindet. Der Frankenschock von 2015 ist definitiv überwunden (Quelle). Foto: Peter Klaunzer (Keystone ) - Click to enlarge Belässt die Bilanzsumme auf Rekordniveau: Thomas Jordan, Präsident der SNB, wird nach seiner Rede von Jean...
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The Used Goods Question Retail sales in several countries like Germany, Japan and Switzerland continue to fall or they remain steady for years. In the United States they have strongly risen recently. We should remind readers, that used goods sold via Ebay or similar, are not contained in this statistics. Still they create economic value for the purchases. By mentality, Swiss, Germans or Japanese pay more attention so...
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Swiss Economicblogs.org
