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After firing a raft of senior employees including its head of risk, Lara Warner, Credit Suisse has been struggling to move past a series of major risk-management failures that together could cost the bank $10 billion, or more, though the final tally of losses from the Archegos blowup isn’t yet known as the bank weighs whether it should cover some client losses associated with the “low risk” trade-finance funds that collapsed earlier this year. Following reports that...

One of the stark developments since the initial shock of the pandemic has been the aggressiveness of the US monetary and fiscal response. This was also true in dealing with the Great Financial Crisis. The divergence then and now had shaped the investment climate. On a per-capita basis, the pandemic struck the US harder than in most other high-income countries, and some see the wide disparity of income and wealth as a contributing factor. In any event, the vaccine...

May 8th 2021THE IMPLOSION of Archegos Capital, a New York-based investment firm, in April splashed egg on many faces. Banks that had lent it vast sums to bet on volatile stocks have revealed over $10bn in related losses in recent weeks. America’s leading investment banks, barring Morgan Stanley, were largely absent from the big casualties, though. Instead the grim league table featured foreign champions. Most notable, because of its huge loss of $5.4bn, was Credit...

Despite their hollow bleatings about ‘doing all we can to achieve full employment’, the Fed’s policies has been Kryptonite to employment, labor and the bottom 90%–and most especially to the bottom 50%, the working poor that one might imagine most deserve a leg up. As wealth and income inequality soar to new heights thanks to the Federal Reserve’s policies of zero interest rates, money-printing and financial stimulus, the Fed says its goal is to create more jobs....

People must still compete for resources in a socialist economy. In fact, the competition is intense. On the other hand, thanks to markets, basic necessities—and even basic luxuries—are now more more accessible than ever. Original Article: "How Markets Have Delivered More Economic Equality​" This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon. Narrated by Michael Stack. [embedded content]...

With five weeks to go before Swiss vote on two initiatives aimed at drastically cutting the use of pesticides, more than 50% appear to be in favour of both initiatives, according to RTS. © Dusan Kostic | Dreamstime.comOne of these initiatives, the clean drinking water initiative, aims to tie access to Switzerland’s generous farm subsidies to forgoing pesticide (and antibiotic) use. The second aims to ban the use of synthetic pesticide use more broadly after a 10 year...

This week, saw 10,639 new Covid-19 cases in Switzerland, down 21% from a week before (13,465) continuing the slow down in growth of new numbers experienced last week (-5%). The 7-day average is currently 1,519. “We have good reasons to be optimistic,” said Patrick Mathys, head of the Swiss National COVID-19 Science Task Force at a press conference in Bern on Wednesday. According to Mathys, there is a good chance that this downward trend will continue over the next...

Consumer sentiment among Swiss households is improving, according to Switzerland’s economic affairs office (SECO). © Rosaria De Marco | Dreamstime.comIn April 2021, the consumer sentiment index climbed back to -7 points after reaching a low of -40 in early 2020. The level of -7 is close to the pre-crisis level of early 2020 and close to its long term average of -5. The primary reason for the rise in consumer sentiment is a significant improvement in...

The certificate will be available to anyone who has been vaccinated, has recovered from or has recently tested negative for coronavirus Keystone / Laurent Gillieron A system for issuing a forgery-proof Covid-19 certificate on request will be available by the end of June to anyone in Switzerland who has been vaccinated, has recovered from or has recently tested negative for coronavirus. The Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) said in a statementExternal link on...

Are stocks “cheap,” or is this just another bullish “rationalization.” Such was the suggestion by the consistently bullish Brian Wesbury of First Trust in a research note entitled “Yes, Stocks Are Cheap.” To wit: “The Fed remains highly accommodative, there are trillions of dollars of cash on the sidelines, vaccines have reached over 50% of Americans, and the economy is expanding rapidly. Some valuations have been stretched, but the market as a whole remains...