Tag Archives: Featured

After more than $20 trillion in stimulus plans since 2020, the economy is going into stagnation with elevated inflation. Global governments announced more than $12 trillion in stimulus measures in 2020 alone, and central banks bloated their balance sheet by $8 trillion. The result was disappointing and with long-lasting negative effects. Weak recovery, record debt, and elevated inflation. Of course, governments all over the world blamed the Ukraine invasion on the...

Overview: The US dollar is consolidating in a mixed fashion today. The FOMC minutes drew much attention but failed, at least initially, to spur a significant shift in expectations. The pricing in the Fed funds futures strip is still consistent with a cut later this year, which the minutes were clear, no officials anticipate. Today's US ADP jobs estimate, and November trade balance are being overshadowed by tomorrow's nonfarm payroll figures. The Fed's Harker,...

This dynamic–making problems much worse by forcing more of whatever worked in the previous era into a saturated, increasing unstable new era–receives little attention or understanding. Eras may last decades, and only those who’ve lived long enough to recall previous eras have experienced the transition from one era to the next. The era of financialization, globalization and low-cost, abundant oil/natural gas began over 40 years ago in 1981. The era of digital /...

Wrapped around the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF), the CryptoSummit.ch will kick off on Monday, 16th January 2023 at the Hyatt Circle Conference Centre at Zurich airport. The second day of the event is set to take place on Friday, 20th January 2023 in Davos. The theme of CryptoSummit.ch 2023 The theme of the CryptoSummit.ch 2023 is regaining trust in crypto and advancing technology. It is set to open with the keynote from Charles Hoskinson, the...

The famous quote, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” is usually attributed to Albert Einstein. While intended as a parable for quantum insanity, such a quote could equally be a parable for inflation policy. With the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve seeking to maintain target rates of 2 percent, the UK inflation rate has only fallen to 10.7 percent from 11.1 percent. Considering inflation is still...

Overview:  Yesterday's greenback gains have been mostly reversed today. New efforts by China in its property market and anticipation of more stimulus helped rekindle the animal spirits today. Asia and Europe shrugged off yesterday's losses on Wall Street and the rally in bonds continued. The 8-12 bp decline in European benchmark 10-year yields comes even though the final composite PMI was better than expected fanning hopes of a short and shallow economic downturn....

Keystone / Ennio Leanza A total of 50,015 companies set up in Switzerland last year thanks to a late surge in the last quarter. The number of new firms entering the marketplace has remained stable. The total corresponds to a drop of 1% compared to 2021 and an increase of 7% compared to 2020, according to data from commercial registers compiled by Help.ch published on Tuesday. The performance in 2022 is 27% higher than ten years ago, when 39,371 companies were...

[From the Austrian Economics Newsletter, Spring 1987] The Austrian School of economics did not develop out of thin air. It built upon the work of a number of other economists and philosophers going back as far as Aristotle. Among the precursors of the Austrian School were a number of Spanish and Italian scholastic economists. Several early Italian economists influenced the development of continental European economic thought in the centuries before Carl Menger. Gian...

I don’t know how many times I’ve seen blog posts or articles or Tweets about negative consumer sentiment over the last year. These articles rightly point out that the University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey is sitting near (or at a few months ago) 50 year lows. This fact is taken as a negative for the economy and therefore stocks. The only problem is that sentiment today tells you only how people view things today – and investing is about the future. If...

Money supply growth fell again in November, and this time it turned negative for the first time in 33 years. November’s drop continues a steep downward trend from the unprecedented highs experienced during much of the past two years. During the thirteen months between April 2020 and April 2021, money supply growth in the United States often climbed above 35 percent year over year, well above even the “high” levels experienced from 2009 to 2013. Since then, the money...