Tag Archives: Featured

The latest two states to legalize recreational cannabis are New York and New Jersey. However, if one believes governors and legislators in those states have finally adopted a more libertarian view of the topic, one will be severely disappointed. Legalization of recreational cannabis in both states is driven by the need for tax revenue—tax revenue to plug the holes in state budgets for social programs, holes in the state budget that were exasperated by the failed...

Stöckli is one of Switzerland’s oldest ski manufacturers. swissinfo.ch / Dominique Soguel-dit-Picard Shortages of raw materials and logistics bottlenecks have made 2021 a tough year for Swiss manufacturers, and contributed to a downgrade in the government’s GDP growth forecast for the economy next year. Swissinfo.ch’s India specialist covers a wide range of issues from bilateral relations to Bollywood. He also knows a thing or two about Swiss watchmaking and is...

As we are all preparing to bid farewell to 2021, there is a general feeling that this year, much like its predecessor, will not be missed. To my mind, however, it is clear that even though the past 12 months didn’t really teach us anything new, they did help cement the lessons of 2020 and spread important ideas to people who might otherwise have never come to question anything about the status quo. To me, this is a crucial step forward and one that is absolutely...

Switzerland’s second largest bank is now bracing for several class-action lawsuits from clients, experts say. Keystone/Urs Flüeler The Credit Suisse bank has fired the managers overseeing a multi-billion-dollar fund strategy linked to the now-defunct Greensill Capital. Switzerland’s second largest bank was forced to freeze and wind down a $10 billion (CHF9.2 billion) fund range amid huge financial losses. The Zurich-based bank dismissed former head of asset...

Go ahead and become dependent on asset bubbles and the free spending of the top 5%, and optimize your economy to serve this “growth,” but be prepared for the consequences when the costs of this optimization and dependency come due. Here’s the problem with concentrating most of the income and wealth in the top 5%: the whole economy now depends on their spending and “the wealth effect” of bubbles driving that spending. As the charts below show, the top tier of...

According to a new report released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control, the life expectancy at birth in the United States fell to 77.0 iyears n 2020, falling from 2019’s life expectancy of 78.8 years. The report also noted an increase of mortality with age-adjusted mortality in the US rising from 715.2 per 100,000 in 2019 to 836.4 per 100,000 in 2020. Media reporting on the CDC’s report provide a variety of statistics on one-year percentage changes, no doubt...

© David Johnson | Dreamstime.com On 17 December 2021, Switzerland’s Federal Council put forward a plan to tax the liquids used for e-cigarettes, reported RTS. The Federal Council is proposing a tax similar to the tax on tobacco but at a lower rate in line with e-cigarettes’ lower toxicity. The government does not want to discourage tobacco smokers from transitioning to e-cigarettes and proposes a rate 77% lower than the tax on tobacco cigarettes. The aim is to...

This week, the Federal Reserve gave the most dovish “hawkish” statement ever, an apparent aggressive tapering that, in reality, means maintaining very low rates and massive repurchases for longer. Inflation has skyrocketed and aggressive monetary policy is the key factor in understanding it. I already explained it in my article “The Myth of Cost-Push Inflation.” The Federal Reserve has finally recognized this and has made a U-turn in its policy of maintaining...

If there is a better, more fitting way to head into the Christmas holiday in the United States than by digging into the finances and monetary flows of the People’s Bank of China, then I just don’t want to know what it is. Contrary to maybe anyone’s rational first impression that this is somehow insane, there’s much we can tell about the state of the world, the whole world and its “dollars”, right from this one key data source. And the timing is equally as festive;...

With the eurodollar futures curve slightly inverted, the implications of it are somewhat specific to the features of that particular market. And there’s more than enough reason to reasonably suspect this development is more specifically deflationary money than more general economic concerns. What I mean is, those latter have come later (“growth scare”) only long after the world’s real money truly began to dry up. Money then economy. How do we know? For one, sequence...