Tag Archives: Featured

© Tomasz Markowski | Dreamstime - Click to enlarge When 10-year mortgage interest rates fall to 1%, home ownership becomes a very attractive alternative to renting. A recent report on home ownership shows why home ownership remains out of reach of the average Swiss household despite very low interest rates. The report, by Credit Suisse, says that despite the strong desire for people to own their own home, fewer and...

© Tomasz Markowski | Dreamstime - Click to enlarge When 10-year mortgage interest rates fall to 1%, home ownership becomes a very attractive alternative to renting. A recent report on home ownership shows why home ownership remains out of reach of the average Swiss household despite very low interest rates. The report, by Credit Suisse, says that despite the strong desire for people to own their own home, fewer and...

– Physical gold is “the true currency of the last resort” – Goldman Sachs– “Gold is a good hedge against geopolitical risks when the event leads to a debasement of the dollar” – Trump and Washington risk bigger driver of gold than risks such as North Korea– Recent events such as N. Korea only explain fraction of 2017 gold price rally – Do not buy gold futures or ETFs rather “physical gold in a vault” [is] the “true...

BRI, banque des banques centrales Tel Atlas soutenant le monde, les banques centrales portent sur leurs épaules le marché financier. Cette réalité demeure largement occultée, mais elle détermine pourtant massivement l’avenir de nos économies. Nous avions déjà évoqué ce sujet l’année dernière (Les banques centrales commencent-elles à nationaliser l’économie ?). Il importe d’y revenir car de nouveaux chiffres...

During the middle 2000’s, one more curious economic extreme presented itself in an otherwise ocean of extremes. Though economists were still thinking about the Great “Moderation”, the trend for the Personal Savings Rate was anything but moderate, indicated a distinct lack of modesty on the part of consumers. In early 2006, the Bureau of Economic Analysis calculated that the rate had been negative for all of 2005. It...

Unemployment Rate (not seasonally adjusted) Bern, 08.09.2017 – Registered unemployment in August 2017 – At the end of August 2017 135’578 unemployed persons were registered at the Regional Employment Services Centers (RAV), according to the SECO (State Secretariat for Economic Affairs), 1’652 more than in the previous month. The unemployment rate remained at 3.0% in the reporting month. Compared to the previous month,...

Swiss Franc The Euro has risen by 0.35% to 1.1433 CHF.   FX Rates The US dollar is trading broadly lower. The ECB meeting looms large. Many, like ourselves, expected that when Draghi said in July that the asset purchases would be revisited in the fall, it to meant after the summer recess, not a legalistic definition of when fall begins. Still, there have been some reports, citing unnamed sources close to the ECB, that...

Two Swiss NGOs have started a petition calling for Swiss retailers to reduce or remove palm oil from their products. Present in many processed foods, cosmetics and detergents, the ingredient has a bad reputation. The NGOs Bread for All and the Swiss Catholic Lenten Fund want to see a reduction in palm oil consumption. They believe voluntary initiatives by the palm oil sector to clean up the industry have done nothing to...

The point is institutional ownership of bitcoin is in the very early stages. If I had a bitcoin for every time some pundit declared bitcoin is a bubble, I’d be a billionaire. There are three problems with opining that bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are bubblicious: 1. Everything is in a bubble now: stocks, bonds, housing, heck, even bat guano is bubblicious. Exactly what insight is being added by yet another guru...

The payroll report for August 2017 thoroughly disappointed. The monthly change for the headline Establishment Survey was just +156k. The BLS also revised lower the headline estimate in each of the previous two months, estimating for July a gain of only +189k. The 6-month average, which matters more given the noisiness of the statistic, is just +160k or about the same as when the Federal Reserve contemplated starting a...