Tag Archives: Featured

Over the weekend, Bitcoin tumbled again. Reaching an ultra-ugly low of $17,641 (before retracing back above $20k), even the self-styled premier digital “store of value” has thrown in the towel. As I wrote last week, winter isn’t coming it is here. One crucial reason why, the Japan’s Ministry of Finance reported last week how imports into that country during the tumultuous month of April surged by a frankly ridiculous 48.9% year-over-year. It was the biggest annual...

Hypotheken sind bereits massiv teurer geworden. (Bild: Shutterstock.com/Michael Dechev) Die Inflation und die Leitzins-Erhöhung durch die Schweizerische Nationalbank (SNB) am 16. Juni 2022 (investrends.ch berichtete) haben Auswirkungen auf den Hypothekarmarkt. Die Richtzinssätze für Schweizer Festhypotheken sind seit Anfang des Jahres beispiellos angestiegen. Seit Juli 2011 notierten die Festhypotheken laut moneyland.ch nicht mehr so hoch. Obwohl sich die...

Die Zahl der bei Banken in der Schweiz beschäftigten Mitarbeitenden stieg im vergangenen Jahr gemäss der Bankenstatistik der SNB um 0,7 Prozent auf 90’577. Trotz anspruchsvollem Umfeld und der Pandemie-Situation ist das zum zweiten Mal in Folge ein leichter Anstieg. Der Anteil der weiblichen Beschäftigten in der Schweizer Bankbranche bleibt mit knapp 38% im Vergleich zum Vojahr unverändert. (Bild: Shutterstock.com/Fizkes) Wie die am Donnerstag veröffentlichte...

Goldman Sachs discusses CHF outlook and maintains a bullish bias over the medium-term. ‘The SNB surprised markets with a 50bp hike last week and a change to its intervention framework. The move confirms our bullish view on the Franc and is the strongest evidence yet of our “Reverse Currency Wars” thesis-the era of targeting weaker exchange rates is over (and accelerating through the year) is probably too high relative to the SNB’s inflation aim. The Bank’s...

We are now well past the corona crisis of 2020, and most of the restrictions around the world have been repealed or loosened. However, the long-term consequences of arbitrary and destructive corona policies are still with us—in fact, we are now in the middle of the inevitable economic crisis. Proclaiming the great crash and economic crisis of 2022 is at this point not especially prescient or insightful, as commentators have been predicting it for months. The cause is...

Overview: Yesterday’s strong US equity gains failed to carry over into today’s session. Japanese and Australian shares fared the best among the large Asia Pacific market, with the Nikkei off less than 0.4% and the ASX off less than 0.25%. However, China’s markets were off more than 1%, while Taiwan and South Korea indices slumped more than 2%. India is off nearly 1.5%. Europe’s Stoxx 600 is down 1.5% and is giving back all of its gains in the past three sessions. US...

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...

Die Ökonomen der Zürcher Kantonalbank (ZKB) rechnen nach dem überraschenden Kurswechsel der SNB für das laufende Jahr und für das kommende Jahr mit einem geringeren Wachstum der Schweizer Wirtschaft als bis anhin. Neu wird für 2022 mit einem Wachstum des Bruttoinlandprodukts (BIP) von 2,7 Prozent nach bisher 3,0 Prozent gerechnet und für 2023 mit einem solchen von 1,5 Prozent nach 1,7 Prozent, wie aus einer am Dienstag veröffentlichten Publikation hervorgeht....

Every forecast or guess has one refreshing quality: one will be right and the rest will be wrong. What’s the difference between a forecast and a guess? On one level, the answer is “none”: the future is unknown and even the most informed forecast is still a guess. The evidence for this is the remarkable number of informed forecasts that prove to be as completely off-base as the wildest guesses. On another level, there is a big difference between an informed forecast...

With the acknowledged national debt now a politically and economically unpayable $30 trillion (in reality, its unfunded liabilities are far greater), Americans should start to become acclimated to the realities of the United States’ eventual, inevitable default. While it may seem unfathomable, and the results too catastrophic to imagine, in fact the likely damage to everyday Americans would be minimal in the short term and unquestionably a net plus in the long term....