Tag Archives: Featured

Swiss cantons have very different tax bases, tax rates and costs. To even things up, and temper tax rate competition between cantons that jockey to attract the wealthiest residents with the lowest tax rates, Switzerland has a system known as la péréquation financière nationale in French, or Finanzausgleich in German, which requires “rich” cantons to give money to “poor” cantons. Yesterday, the Swiss federal government...

Anyone wondering why gaps and volatility in FX, and especially cable is reaching on the absured today, with 100 pips swings in minutes the norm, the reason is that there is virtually no liquidity, and a main catalyst for this is that as HFTs conduct their usual stop hunts to stop out proximal limit orders, they simply find no such stops. They can blame banks such as Barclays for this development: as of 600 GMT...

Click to see the video. I had the privilege to be on CNBC’s Trading Block show to discuss how the market is positioned for the UK referendum.  The markets are strongly anticipating the UK to vote to stay in the EU, even though polls remain very tight. Given that leveraged participants and speculators have rallied sterling more than nine cents from last week’s lows.   This makes us wary of the risk that...

Authored by Peter Cleppe, originally posted at Euro Insight, If Brexit marks the beginning of the end for the European project, Brussels will take its share of the blame If Britain leaves the EU and if the reaction to Brexit causes years of uncertainty, the EU will reap what it has sowed. British discontent is only a precursor to unrest on the Continent, where populists from across the political spectrum feel they...

There is a nervous calm in the capital markets today. The focus is squarely on tomorrow’s UK referendum. Brexit According to a BBC focus group, the leeave camp won the debate 39%-34%. The last polls show a contest that it too close to calls in that the results are within the margin of error.  The Financial Times poll of polls has it at 45%-44% in favor of Brexit. However, the betting markets appear to be telling a...

Werner’s main points: The “EU Movement” has been created by the US Government and their secret services in order centralise their influence over Europe. Big business, banks, central banks and the IMF want to excercise their power through unelected officials. The free trade area with the EU is beneficial and will surely be maintained, even in the Brexit case. The election outcome is not so clear as it seems to the...

Submitted by Danielle DiMartino Booth via DiMartinoBooth.com, “Kings have long arms, many ears, and many eyes.” So read an English proverb dated back to the year of our Lord 1539. And thus was born an idiom that today translates to the very familiar Long Arm of the Law. It stands to reason that such a warning was born of feudal times when omnipotent and seemingly omnipresent monarchs personified the law, possessed...

What happens on the 18th floor of the main tower at Centralbahnplatz 2 in Basel, stays on the 18th floor of the main tower at Centralbahnplatz 2. That’s because this is where every other month the world’s central bankers meet in complete secrecy – no minutes are ever kept – to discuss the global economy completely unfettered of any concerns of accountability, and decide on what monetary policies they will implement to...

Summary Younger voters are more supportive of the EU. There has been an increase in the intention of younger cohorts to vote. There has been a decline in the intention of some older cohorts to vote. We showed that younger age cohorts in the UK are more inclined to vote to stay in the EU than their elders. However, some suggested that this consideration is blunted by the fact that the younger people are less...

Swiss Franc The Swiss Franc was the strongest currency. The euro fell from 1.0877 to 1.0808. Two fundamental reasons: Speculator anticipate that German investors buy Swiss francs in response to the court decision in favor of the OMT (see below) The German ZEW (see below) that was better than expected. We know that CHF acts as a proxy for the German economy via strong trade ties and the tradition that German...