Tag Archives: Featured

Overview: The sharp sell-off in US equities yesterday, led by tech, is weighing on today’s activity. Most of the large Asia Pacific markets excluding Japan and India lost more than 1% today. The three-day rally in Europe’s Stoxx 600 is being snapped today. US futures are posting small losses. The US 10-year yield is little changed around 3.17%, while European benchmarks are narrowly mixed, with the periphery doing better than the core. The dollar is enjoying a firmer...

Health Savings Accounts (HSA) for retired folks. Isn’t that a novel idea? But it’s being considered in Congress—The Health Savings for Seniors Act, H.R. 3796. As it stands right now, the only people eligible for an HSA are those aged 65 years and younger who have a high-deductible health insurance plan meaning you have to pay $1,400 out-of-pocket for an individual or $2,800 for a family before the insurance plan pays anything. You get to deduct your contributions to...

Seit Jahrzehnten senken die Notenbanken ihre Leitzinsen bei jedem Anzeichen einer wirtschaftlichen Korrektur. Sie versuchen damit, das Problem der sich von den Konsumentenbedürfnissen entfernenden Produktionsstruktur («Zombifizierung») mit billigem Geld zuzudecken. Dabei wären laufende Anpassungen der Angebotsseite an die sich wandelnden Bedürfnisse der Nachfrager eine zentrale Voraussetzung für eine sich langfristig gesund entwickelnde Wirtschaft. Aufgrund der immer...

The economy consists of a huge chain of the division of labor that is interlocked to such a limit where there exists hardly any single individual or firm that produces the whole of the product alone. This is famously illustrated in the essay “I, Pencil,” by Leonard Read. Each element of this complex chain is a firm that consists of many individuals, therefore one of the first questions one might ask is, “Why do individuals engage in these complex economic...

We’re pleased to republish this guest post by Paul Belanger. Paul is the author and owner of the website, Evidence Based Wealth, and the YouTube channel belangp, where he’s published over 10 years of research and analysis of gold. He’s also the author of Evidence Based Wealth: How to Engineer Your Early Retirement, available for purchase at Amazon.com. This post does not necessarily reflect the views of Monetary Metals. In my last article and video I discussed the...

It’s not recession fears, those are in the past. For much if not most (vast majority) of mainstream pundits and newsmedia alike, unlike regular folks this is all news to them (the irony, huh?) Economists and central bankers everywhere had said last year was a boom, a true inflationary inferno raging worldwide. For once, CPIs (or European HICPs) seemed to have confirmed the narrative. Unlike 2018 when inflation indices kept policymakers and their forecasts out in the...

Lufthansa, the German parent company of SWISS international airlines, does not expect operations to return to normal until 2023. © Keystone / Christian Beutler Additional cancellations of SWISS flights are “unavoidable” because of staff shortages, a company spokesperson told the Keystone-SDA news agency on Sunday. Scheduled flights between August and October would be affected by the latest announcement, which was originally reported by the news portal blick.ch. It...

Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich on Pexels.com The cost of Swiss health insurance has risen sharply over the years. However, the amount that can be deducted from income to calculate federal taxes has remained comparatively low. This week, Switzerland’s parliament voted in favour of closing the gap between the standardised health insurance tax deductions and what people actually pay, reported RTS. The current deductions are CHF 1,700 for an adult, CHF 3,500 for a married...

The most important development in foreign exchange probably took place in the interest rate market last week. A series of disappointing US economic data and the Fed's "unconditional" commitment to rein in inflation have heightened concerns that economic weakness will limit the Fed's ability to hike rates. Specifically, for the first time, the implied yield of the December 2023 Fed funds futures contract is below the December 2022 yield. In fact, the gap implies a...

The only thing that changed was the CPI. What distinguishes 2021-22 from the prior post-crisis period 2007-20 is merely the performance of whatever consumer price index. This latter has been called inflation, yet the data conclusively support the market verdict pricing how it never was. What data? The “everything” data, the most comprehensive financial and monetary compendium yet available: The Financial Accounts of the United States, or Z1. While this doesn’t quite...