Tag Archives: Featured

Since the awarding of the Nobel Prize in economics to Ben S. Bernanke, Douglas W. Diamond, and Philip H. Dybvig, most of the media interest has, understandably, concentrated on Bernanke. Mark Thornton wrote a scathing takedown of bailout Ben, while Tyler Cowen inexplicably praised him to the skies (Cowen at least provides a good overview of some of Bernanke’s contributions, such as they are). This has allowed Diamond and Dybvig (DD) to escape much scrutiny, which is...

Overview: The dollar has come back from the weekend bid. After the ECB and BOJ meetings last week, the focus has shifted back to the US where the FOMC meeting concludes in the middle of the week and the October employment report is out ahead of the weekend. Sterling and the yen are the weakest performers among the G10 currencies and are off 0.45%-0.50%. The Antipodeans are performing best and are straddling little changed levels. Emerging market currencies are lower,...

The Internet today offers us a ton of alternatives that make our everyday lives easier. Products can be bought online, services can be booked and paid games can be played, among other things. However, all of this requires secure payment methods that meet the needs of their users. In recent years, the number of financial providers on the Internet has increased significantly. And since the selection is so large, the decision is not that easy. That’s why we took a...

Mainstream economists view the economy as fickle, unstable, and always in danger of utter collapse. They see the outlook as very bleak if not for the enormous existing superstructure of government intervention, including constant stimulus of “aggregate demand.” In their minds, this essential stabilization would also include the existing intricate arrangement of regulation and restriction, the army of technocratic bureaucrats overlording every market, and the rollout...

Liberation in the real world is the result of self-reliance and investing in our own well-being. Liberation has many contexts. It can mean being freed from imprisonment or servitude, freedom from gnawing want or oppression, or being liberated from prisons of the mind. Note that the first form of liberation is external / material, the second is internal / psychological / spiritual. Many confuse the two, blaming an oppressive system for their unhappiness rather than...

Swiss hotels and holiday apartments are raising their prices by around 5% this winter, largely due to higher energy prices. Ski passes are also likely to go up by a similar amount, a newspaper reports. According to a survey by the Hotelleriesuisse association, seen by NZZ am Sonntag, most Swiss hotels are planning to pass on the higher costs of electricity, gas and oil to their guests. Three-quarters of all hotels expect to raise prices this winter compared to the...

With this month's hike, the Federal Reserve would have raised overnight rates by 300 bp while doubling the pace that its balance sheet is shrinking over the past 100 days. The US economy is the largest in the world, and US interest rates and the dollar are vital benchmarks. America's centrality remains in what has been dubbed a G-Zero world, even if its share of the world economy is a bit less than it used to be, or the dollar's share of global reserves has been...

Home price growth of the sort we’ve seen in recent years simply cannot be sustained without a continued commitment to easy money from the central bank, and it shows. Home prices continued to slide in August as the economy cooled, and as the Fed hit the Pause button on quantitative easing while allowing interest rates to rise. Home prices in August were 13.0 percent higher nationally compared with August 2021, according to newly released data from the S&P...

Credit Suisse is banking on petrodollars from Saudi Arabia to shore up its precarious situation. Keystone / Oliver Berg Swiss bank Credit Suisse has returned to the Middle East to shore up its finances amid mounting losses and a deteriorating balance sheet. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, the Qatar Investment Authority, built up a 5% stake in Switzerland’s second largest bank. Now the Saudi National Bank has accepted...

Money supply growth fell again in September, dropping to a 37-month low. August’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. During September 2022, year-over-year (YOY) growth in the...