Tag Archives: Featured

Monday, April 26, marked World IP Day. In cooperation with the Property Rights Alliance (PRA), the Austrian Economics Center celebrated it by signing its annual coalition letter, addressed to the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Director-General Daren Tang. Property rights benefit businesses, both big and small, start-ups or companies with a long tradition. This, in turn, enriches society as a whole. The COVID-19 pandemic has cost us too much. As a response...

The difference between physical gold investing and ETF investing was stark in the first quarter 2021 according to the World Gold Council’s Gold Demand Trends data released last week. Before focusing in on investment demand below a few notes on overall gold demand in the first quarter. Total gold demand in the first quarter of 2021 was down 4%. However, because gold production and gold demand (jewellery, bar and coin etc.) are decentralized around the globe, and no...

A Swiss pensioners' cycling group at Solothurn, Switzerland, on July 26, 2018. © Keystone / Christian Beutler Around half of all people stop working before the official retirement age in Switzerland, according to new federal data. This content was published on May 4, 2021 - 13:32 May 4, 2021 - 13:32 RTS/sb On Tuesday, the Federal Statistical Office (FSO) reported External linkthat in 2019 between 40-50% of people started receiving their pension from their...

Sentiment amongst Swiss households is improving. The results of the April survey show that expectations regarding general economic development in particular are becoming more positive. The likelihood of households making major purchases has also risen. Download press release Consumer sentiment back to pre-crisis level(PDF, 2 pages, 257...

Authored by Matthew Piepenburg via GoldSwitzerland.com,Recently, my colleague, Egon von Greyerz, and I had some unabashed yet blunt fun calling out the staggering levels of open hypocrisy and policy desperation unleashed by former Fed Chairman, Alan Greenspan.Poor Alan was an easy target of what I described as the “patient zero” of the reckless interest rate suppression and unbridled monetary expansion policies of the Fed which have always led to equally reckless...

The bureaucrat is not only a government employee. He is, under a democratic constitution, at the same time a voter and as such a part of the sovereign, his employer. He is in a peculiar position: he is both employer and employee. And his pecuniary interest as employee towers above his interest as employer, as he gets much more from the public funds than he contributes to them. This double relationship becomes more important as the people on the government’s payroll...

Authored by Nick Dunbar of Risky FinanceWhen the family office Archegos Capital abruptly imploded in late March, prompting $50 billion in block trades and $10 billion in losses at Credit Suisse, Nomura, UBS and Morgan Stanley, many bank analysts were taken by surprise. Last week, many of these analysts sounded frustrated listening to Credit Suisse’s earnings call in which senior management skirted round without giving any real detail about the disaster.“Do you think...

In this issue of “All Inflation Is Transitory, The Fed WIll Be Late Again.“ Market Review And Update All Inflation Is Temporary The Fed Should Be Hiking Now Portfolio Positioning #MacroView: No. Bonds Aren’t Overvalued. Sector & Market Analysis 401k Plan Manager Follow Us On: Twitter, Facebook, Linked-In, Sound Cloud, Seeking Alpha Catch Up On What You Missed Last Week   Market Review & Update Last week, we said: “The market is trading well into...

This week, saw 13,465 new Covid-19 cases in Switzerland, down 5% from a week before (14,110) continuing the 5% slow down in growth of new numbers experienced last week. © Andrii Kozlytskyi | Dreamstime.comThe 7-day average is currently 1,924, dipping below the level of 2,000 for the first time since 11 April 2021. By 30 April 2021, 10.8% of Switzerland’s population was fully vaccinated, up from 9.6% a week earlier. This week, the number of doses administered...

The US dollar traded heavily most of last week but rebounded ahead of the weekend, with some month-end flows impacting.  The Japanese yen was a notable exception.  The rise in US yields helped lift the greenback nearly a percent against the yen.  The Fed's standpat stance in light of the surging economy and signals the Norwegian central bank and the Bank of Canada seemed dovish.  The contrast carried the Norwegian krone and Canadian dollar to new three-year highs...