Tag Archives: Featured

The Omicron variant may be less fatal than the earlier versions, but it is disrupting economies. The surge in the Delta variant well into Q4 in the US and Europe was already slowing the recoveries. Investors will likely take the high-frequency real sector data with the proverbial pinch of salt until January data available beginning later this month. While the tribalist approach, exemplified by “team transition” and “team permanent” debates about inflation, the...

Sentiment indicators like PMI’s are nice and all, but they’re hardly top-tier data. It’s certainly not their fault, these things are made for very times than these (piggy-backing on the ISM Manufacturing’s long history without having the long history). Most of them have come out since 2008, if only because of the heightened professional interest in macroeconomics generated by a global macro economy that can never get itself going. What PMI’s do have going for them is...

Die erste Woche des neuen Jahres nähert sich dem Ende. Und für den BTC lief der Start ins Jahr 2022 nicht zufriedenstellend. Zu Beginn der Woche stieg die Hashrate deutlich an, so dass viele Experten ein Kursplus erwarteten, doch letztlich ging es um weitere 10 Prozent im Wochenvergleich runter. Bitcoin News: Bitcoin mit schwachem Start ins neue Jahr Arcane Research sah einen Anstieg der Hashrate zum Jahresbeginn, der sogar das Allzeithoch aus Mai 2021 überstieg....

Over the years observers of Turkish politics have become somewhat inured to erratic swings in policy coming out of Ankara. Particularly since the political reforms of 2017, his high degree of control over the primary functions of the state mean President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan faces few hurdles to executing abrupt changes he views as correct or necessary. This lack of any effective institutional check to his authority is, at present, leading the country off an economic...

Taxi or not, employer or not: Uber is a disputed concept in Switzerland. © Keystone / Christian Beutler The latest cantonal ruling on the US ride-hailing firm comes as a national framework to determine the status of gig economy workers in Switzerland is still lacking. The rulingExternal link by the Zurich social insurance court, published on Thursday, says that the “marked subordination” in the relation between Uber and its drivers means that it is one of dependence...

Confederation and cantons to receive distribution of CHF 6 billion According to provisional calculations, the Swiss National Bank will report a profit in the order of around CHF 26 billion for the 2021 financial year. The profit on foreign currency positions amounted to just under CHF 26 billion. A valuation loss of CHF 0.1 billion was recorded on gold holdings. The net result on Swiss franc positions amounted to over CHF 1 billion. The allocation to the provisions...

As investors increasingly incorporate digital assets into their portfolios, the crypto custody landscape continues to grow and mature. As of late-2021, around US$230 billion worth of digital assets, or about 9% of the total US$2.5 trillion cryptocurrency market, were being stored on the technology solutions of eight crypto custodians, separate research by The Block Research and Blockdata found. Coinbase stood as a leader in the space with some US$100 billion worth of...

Privately owned e-bikes are used to replace cars more often than for sharing schemes. Keystone / Laurent Gillieron Shared e-scooters and e-bikes can have a negative effect on the climate, a Swiss study has found. This is because such services generally replace trips with normal bicycles, rather than cars. Many big cities, including Zurich, have schemes to rent and share e-bikes and e-scooters to relieve urban traffic and help reduce CO2 emissions. But until now it...

For those of us who value liberty, these past two years have been a bad dream. It seems like we fell asleep in early 2020 and woke up in 1984! They said that if we just put on a mask and stayed home for two weeks, we’d be able to return to normal. The two weeks came and went and instead of going back to normal they added more restrictions. These past two years have been a story of moving goalposts and “experts” like Anthony Fauci constantly contradicting themselves....

There were a few surprises included in the BLS JOLTS data just released today for the month of November (note: the government has changed its release schedule so that JOLTS, already one month further in arrears than the payroll report, CES & CPS, will now come out earlier so that its numbers are publicly available for the same monthly payrolls before the next CES & CPS get released). Not really about the JOLTS figures themselves, though there are...