Tag Archives: Featured

Audemars Piguet is one of four independent brands that dominate the global luxury watch market. Thomas Kern Driven by strong Chinese demand, Swiss watchmaking is recovering after suffering one of its biggest economic shocks in 2020. But the crisis has further widened the gap between the few brands that take the lion’s share of the profits and the rest of the industry. My specialty is telling stories, and decoding what happens in Switzerland and the world from...

One of the mandates of the Federal Reserve System is to attain price stability. It is held that price stability is the key as far as economic stability is concerned. What is it all about? The idea of price stability originates from the view that volatile changes in the price level prevent individuals from seeing market signals as conveyed by changes in the relative prices of goods and services. For instance, because of an increase in the demand for apples, the prices...

Das US-Justizministerium (DOJ) verkauft Kryptowährungen im Wert von 56 Millionen US-Dollar, die bei der “Nummer eins der Promoter” von Bitconnect, dem größten jemals strafrechtlich angeklagten Krypto-Betrugssystem, beschlagnahmt wurden. Die Anleger wurden in betrügerischer Absicht dazu gebracht, über 2 Milliarden Dollar zu investieren. Dem Bitconnect-Promoter droht eine Höchststrafe von 20 Jahren Gefängnis. Das US-Justizministerium gab am Dienstag bekannt, dass es...

Der ägyptische Milliardär Naguib Sawiris hat erklärt, dass er nach wie vor auf Gold setzt und nicht beabsichtigt, in Kryptowährungen wie Bitcoin zu investieren, da solche Investitionen sehr riskant sind. In seinen Äußerungen, die von The National News veröffentlicht wurden, erklärt der Milliardär, dass er es für falsch hält, wenn Menschen Vergleiche zwischen Gold und Bitcoin anstellen. Sawiris, der auch geschäftsführender Vorsitzender der in Kairo ansässigen Orascom...

The labor theory of value has long undermined people’s understanding of the miracles created by markets and rationalized various incarnations of socialism which mangle those miracles. Leonard Read understood why undoing that misunderstanding by all who hold to it, as well as those who just use it as an excuse for what they want government to impose on unwilling citizens, is of immense value to each of us. And in his December 1956 Freeman article, “Unearned Riches,”...

I have taught economics long enough that I have made use of a variety of “trick” questions in introductory courses. I have found them, used well, to be pedagogically helpful. But not everyone agrees. Whether a question is considered a trick depends on one’s viewpoint. From a professor’s point of view, such questions are often a way of revealing whether students have grasped how to put a principle into action or correctly make a critical distinction in a...

This week, the government of the canton of Geneva changed a law to require non residential buildings, with some exceptions, to switch off their lights at night between 1am and 6am. Thursday’s parliamentary vote in favour of the move is expected to cut the canton’s electricity consumption by at least 1%. During parts of winter, Switzerland imports electricity to keep its lights on. In November 2021, Switzerland’s president warned the nation to prepare for electricity...

Einer Umfrage zufolge haben insgesamt rund 16 Prozent aller US-Amerikaner bereits Kryptowährungen wie Bitcoin oder Ether besessen. Eine am Donnerstag vom Pew Research Center veröffentlichte Umfrage ergab, dass etwa 16 Prozent der Amerikaner in irgendeiner Form in Kryptowährungen investiert, mit ihnen gehandelt oder sie verwendet haben. Die Zahl springt auf 31 Prozent für Menschen im Alter von 18-29 und sogar auf 43 Prozent für Männer in der gleichen Altersgruppe....

Switzerland joined the IMF in 1992 and is one of 24 members of the International Monetary and Financial Committee IMFC (Archive picture) Keystone/Stephen Jaffe/Handout The government seeks to renew its policy to support assistance measures by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It asked parliament to approve plans to continue international monetary cooperation to the tune of CHF10 billion ($10.8 billion) by 2028. The existing legal basis expires in April 2023,...

With inflation running at over 6 percent and interest rates on savings near zero, the Federal Reserve is delivering a negative 6 percent real (inflation-adjusted) return on trillions of dollars in savings. This is effectively expropriating American savers’ nest eggs at the rate of 6 percent a year. It is not only a problem in 2021, however, but an ongoing monetary policy problem of long standing. The Fed has been delivering negative real returns on savings for more...