Tag Archives: Featured

© Tomnex | Dreamstime.com According to the European Patents Office (EPO), once again Switzerland topped the per capita patents ranking in 2016, with 892 applications per million inhabitants. Second and third places went to the Netherlands (405) and Sweden (360), followed by Denmark (334) and Finland (331). The first non-European country was Japan in ninth place (166), well above the EU average of 122. The EPO published...

Summary: Populism-Nationalism is not sweeping the world. The populist-nationalist party in the Netherlands will most likely not be a member of the next govt. There is little appetite for a referendum on EU. Nexit may be a clever slogan, but is highly improbable. The conventional narrative is that a wave of populism-nationalism is a sweep in the US and Europe. This is not as obviously true as many seem to...

US trade statistics dramatically improved in January 2017, though questions remain as to interpreting by how much. On the export side, US exports of goods rose 8.7% year-over-year (NSA). While that was the highest growth rate since 2012, there is part symmetry to account for some of it. Exports in the latter half of 2015 and for that first month of 2016 were contracting at double digit rates, the base effects of the...

The Swiss National Bank will have difficulties to weaken the Swiss Franc, because she is obliged to maintain her mandate, the avoidance of inflation. Already in January 2015, she gave up, because continuing interventions – at the excessively high euro rate of 1.20 – could have endangered her inflation mandate. Therefore we expect that EUR/CHF moves towards parity, for more read here. Year on year inflation was 0.6%...

Swiss Franc Switzerland Consumer Price Index (CPI) YoY, February 2017(see more posts on Switzerland Consumer Price Index, ) Source: Investing.com - Click to enlarge GBP/CHF The pound to Swiss Franc rate has deteriorated further in the last 24 hours as uncertainty over the Brexit and economic data for the UK weigh on the performance of the pound. I would suggest rates are going to continue to struggle for Swiss...

In a new ranking by US News, Switzerland is described as a nation with cultural contributions disproportionate to its small size. Swiss citizens have won more Nobel Prizes and registered more patents per capita than any other nation. © Janos Gaspar | Dreamstime.com - Click to enlarge Switzerland takes first place by being a solid all rounder. Out of the 80 countries included, Switzerland ranks between 3rd and 30th...

Summary The 94 mln people POTUS claims are not working is true but terribly misleading. What happened to agriculture a century ago is happening to manufacturing. New industries are less labor intensive than smokestack industries. In a speech to the joint session of Congress that was widely recognized as “presidential,” US President Trump said twice that there are 94 mln Americans out of the labor market.  It is...

The fact that China reported a small increase in official “reserves” for February 2017 is one of the least surprising results in all of finance. The gamma of those reserves is as predictable as the ticking clock of CNY, in no small part because what is behind the changes in those balances are the gears that lie behind face of the forex timepiece. Yet, each and every time the delta pushes positive there is the same...

The BIS in its quarterly review published yesterday included a reference to the eurodollar market (thanks to M. Daya for pointing it out). The central bank to central banks, as the outfit is often called, is one of the few official institutions that have taken a more objective position with regard to the global money system. Of the very few who can identify eurodollars, or have even heard of them, the BIS while not...

The Economist magazine placed Switzerland first in a recent ranking of currency manipulators. According to the analysis, China, commonly thought of as the world’s champion at keeping its currency’s value artificially low, appears to be doing the opposite: actively trying to push the value of its currency up. On the other hand, Switzerland that has been working hardest to artificially devalue its money. © Ginasanders |...