Tag Archives: Featured

[This article is the foreword to Breaking Away: The Case of Secession, Decentralization, and Smaller Polities, by Ryan McMaken, available in PDF, at the Mises store, and on Amazon.] Classical liberal tradition defends the right of secession on many grounds. One of the main reasons is that the territorial dispersion of power limits political domination much more than formal constitutions do. Small states cannot easily adopt protectionist policies and their political...

There will be no daily commentary over the next couple of weeks.  The next post will be the January monthly outlook on December 29.  Here is to a happy and healthy New Year.  Good luck to us all.   [embedded content] Tags: Featured,newsletter

More than ninety central banks worldwide are increasing interest rates. Bloomberg predicts that by mid-2023, the global policy rate, calculated as the average of major central banks’ reference rates weighted by GDP, will reach 5.5%. Next year, the federal funds rate is projected to reach 5.15 percent. Raising interest rates is a necessary but insufficient measure to combat inflation. To reduce inflation to 2%, central banks must significantly reduce their balance...

Overview: Seven of the G10 central banks pumped the brakes between last week and this week as they purposely seek to push demand back into line with supply. And there are more signs that they are succeeding in weakening growth impulses. The dramatic surge in European bond yields continues today with 10-year rates mostly rising another 13-15 bp. Italian and Greek benchmark yields are up 22-24 bp. The US 10-year Treasury yield is up nearly five basis points to 3.50%....

Switzerland is the global leader in metal recycling, a lucrative business that attracts international interest. We visit a pioneering Swiss waste disposal and recycling plant with a delegation from Japan. Thomas Kern was born in Switzerland in 1965. Trained as a photographer in Zürich, he started working as a photojournalist in 1989. He was a founder of the Swiss photographers agency Lookat Photos in 1990. Thomas Kern has won twice a World Press Award and has...

As expected, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates by half a point yesterday. It was a drop from the .75 point rate increases that the Fed has been implementing for the past several months.  A big reason the Fed is going slower is the longstanding fear among Fed officials of bringing about another Great Depression by raising interest rates too high and too fast. That’s, of course, what happened in the late 1920s, when the Fed’s actions brought about the 1929...

The U.S. personal savings rate eased in September to 3.1 percent from 3.4 percent in August. In September 2021 the savings rate stood at 7.9 percent. By popular thinking, a decline in the savings rate during an economic slowdown is regarded as supporting economic activity. In the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA), savings are established as the difference between disposable money income and monetary outlays. Disposable income is defined as all personal...

When Credit Suisse asked its board member Michael Klein to find capital to help its painful restructuring push, the former Citibank executive with ties in the Middle East ended up in a series of meetings with a powerful Saudi bank little known outside the Gulf. Klein, who is also taking over Credit Suisse’s spun-off investment bank, walked away with a $1.5 billion (CHF1.4 billion) cheque. As recessions deepen in the west, some are looking at the investment by the...

Overview: The US dollar has come back bid after losing ground against most currencies as the markets reacted to the FOMC decision and press conference. The Antipodeans and Scandis have been tagged the hardest, illustrating the risk-off mood, and arguably the weakening growth prospects. Countries that peg their currencies to the dollar have hiked rates, as has the Philippines and Taiwan. The Swiss National Bank and Norway have also lifted policy rates by 50 bp and 25...

Ladies and gentlemen It is my pleasure to welcome you to the news conference of the Swiss National Bank. I would also like to welcome all those who are joining us today online. After our introductory remarks, the members of the Governing Board will take questions from journalists as usual. Monetary policy decision I will begin with our monetary policy decision. We have decided to tighten our monetary policy further and to raise the SNB policy rate by 0.5 percentage...