Tag Archives: Featured

Buildings near Kyiv destroyed by a Russian airstrike on December 14. The war in Ukraine is one factor weighing down the Swiss economy. Keystone / Oleg Petrasyuk Growth forecasts for Switzerland have been revised downwards for the current year and 2023 by the KOF Swiss Economic Institute, amid fears of a global recession and the war in Ukraine. The economists also changed their predictions for inflation. The KOF Consensus Forecast expects gross domestic product (GDP)...

We do not like Purchasing Power or Real Effective Exchange Rate (REER) as measurement for currencies. For us, the trade balance decides if a currency is overvalued. Only the trade balance can express productivity gains, while the REER assumes constant productivity in comparison to trade partners. Who has read Michael Pettis, knows that a rising trade surplus may also be caused by a higher savings rate while the trade partners decided to spend more. This is partially...

UBS has closed the first tokenized debt transaction for Asia Pacific investors, underlining its commitment to expand regional investment opportunities. UBS AG London branch issued USD 50 million in digital fixed rate security tokens (‘digital securities’) using blockchain technology to a series of high net worth and global family and institutional wealth investors across Hong Kong and Singapore. The US dollar-denominated instruments carry a tenor of 6 months and are...

Copyright: PHOTOMORPHIC PTE. LTD You may be wondering why some companies seem leaps and bounds above others when it comes to creating comprehensive marketing strategies that guarantee positive results. Well, they are actually successful for one simple reason, and that is that they have knowledge that their competitors do not have. These secret objectives help them promote their businesses effectively, and, as such, draw in potential customers to consume their...

Christmas shoppers on Zurich’s Bahnhofstrasse © Keystone / Gaetan Bally Swiss consumers have budgeted more for Christmas presents this year despite the growing spectre of inflation. The average shopper plans to splash out CHF343 ($367) on presents, up CHF9 from the average spend in 2021. The cost of consumer goods has risen around 3% in recent months, which is well below the inflation rate of other countries but still above the 2% target set by the Swiss National...

Those who see the madness for what it is have only one escape: go to ground, fade from public view, become self-reliant and weather the coming storm in the nooks and crannies. A great madness sweeps the land. There are no limits on extremes in greed, credulity, convictions, inequality, bombast, recklessness, fraud, corruption, arrogance, hubris, pride, over-reach, self-righteousness and confidence in the rightness of one’s opinions. Extremes only become more extreme...

Over the past year, governments and regulatory bodies from around the world have increased their focus on the taxation of the cryptocurrency industry, a trend that comes on the back of increasing investment, adoption and innovation in the space despite collapsing prices and high profile business failures, a new report by consulting firm PwC says. PwC’s 2022 Global Crypto Tax Report, released earlier this month, looks at the state of crypto taxation globally,...

Together with their partners Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Swisscom and Clarafinds, eForesight has revised the Swiss Fintech Map and expanded the database as well as deleted some old and inactive players. The main business area categories contain now 130 Swiss Investment Management Fintechs, 106 Banking Infrastructure Fintechs, 48 Deposit&Lending Fintechs and 55 Payment Fintechs. On top of that, the fintechs in the main categories on the map...

Austerity works. We know what it is and don’t like it, but it works. It usually means cutting your consumption and spending, paying down your debts, pawning assets, and working more hours to restore your economic situation. You might invoke “austerity” because you lost your job, your house burned down, or you have an unexpected child on the way. You might take similar actions if the economy was in crisis. It’s essentially the same thing as cutting expenses to save...

The Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) on Wednesday announced it will raise the target federal funds rate by 50 basis points, bringing the target rate to 4.5 percent. Wednesday’s rate hike followed four hikes in a row of 75 basis points, and is the smallest rate hike since March. According to the FOMC’s press release, the committee voted unanimously for the half point hike, pointing out that “[price] inflation remains elevated” while also...