Tag Archives: Featured

In our July 29 post titled How Gold Stacks Up Against Stocks, Property, Commodities and Big Macs! we showed readers charts of gold as a ratio to other assets and products. We discussed that gold competes with crypto and stocks for the investment dollars. It was clear that gold as a ratio of the S&P 500 Index and of the broader MCSI World Equity Index show that gold is ‘relatively cheap’ compared to these measures. But then we showed that this wasn’t the...

Overview: Record high closes yesterday for the S&P 500 and NASDAQ have done little to help global equities today.  Most of the Asia Pacific region markets, but Japan and Australia slipped ahead of the weekend while still holding on to gains for the week.  Europe's Dow Jones Stoxx 600 is threatening to snap a four-day advance, and US futures are trading a little lower. The US 10-year yield reached 1.125% in the middle of the week and is extending yesterday's...

© Sergei Babenko | Dreamstime.com In 2016, the social security office in Zurich discovered a concealed bank account containing CHF 1 million belonging to a deceased man who had received welfare payments for 13 years, reported RTS. Over the 13 years, the man had received financial hardship payments, known as supplemental benefits, and health insurance subsidies amounting to CHF 140,000. When applying for hardship payments in Switzerland, all wealth must be declared....

If you don’t mind, I am going to do what men of my age do from time to time, and that is tell you war stories—usually insufferably boring for younger people, but occasionally enlightening if you find that perhaps you are going through a similar trial. I want to talk about my own situation in 1961, ’62, ’63, when I was an undergraduate. It was a difficult time for those of us who were conservatives or libertarians, because we did not have lots of publications. We...

Bob unveils a new recurring series, in which he gives the context of infamous quotations. In this episode, he covers two allegedly shocking quotes from John Lennon, John Maynard Keynes’ “in the long run we’re all dead,” Trump on Nazis being very fine people, Dan Quayle misspelling potato, Obama’s “you didn’t build that,” and Bohm-Bawerk on Karl Marx. Mentioned in the Episode and Other Links of Interest: Wikipedia entry on John Lennon’s “more popular than Jesus”...

Overview: US interest rates and the dollar turned higher following comments by the Fed's Vice Chairman Clarida, who appeared to throw his lot with the more hawkish members. The dollar recovered from weakness that had seen it fall to almost JPY108.70, its lowest level since late May, and lifted the euro to $1.19.  Still, there has been little follow-through dollar or Treasury buying today.  The euro and yen are marginally softer, but most other major currencies post...

Auch zum der Franken kann sich der Dollar erholen und wird aktuell zu 0,9066 Franken gehandelt, nachdem er im frühen Geschäft bis 0,9036 gesunken war. Entsprechend ist der Euro zum Franken nicht weiter gefallen und kostet kaum verändert 1,0737 Franken. Am Dienstag war die Gemeinschaftswährung auf den tiefsten Stand seit Jahresbeginn gefallen. Damit dürfte auch der Druck auf die Schweizer Nationalbank (SNB), am Markt zu intervenieren, wieder nachlassen,...

The bank will face a trial over its role in Mozambique’s $2 billion (CHF1.8 billion) “tuna bonds” scandal, a fresh blow as it struggles to shake off a succession of crises that have plagued the group in recent years. The High Court judge presiding over a London lawsuit brought by creditors against Credit Suisse set a date last month of September 2023 for a 13-week trial, according to people familiar with the matter. The re-emergence of an eight-year-old scandal is a...

This wholesale transfer of risk from elites to the workers is finally becoming consequential as wealth / income / security inequality is reaching extremes that are destabilizing society and the economy. One of the most consequential financial trends of the past 50 years has been ignored to the point of invisibility. I’m referring to the transfer of risk from the top tier to the middle and working classes. This transfer of risk has been broad-based, covering the...

Sixteen months ago, in March 2020, we argued for an end to government-imposed shutdowns of businesses, schools, churches, restaurants, and events due to the covid virus: The shutdown of the American economy by government decree should end. The lasting and far-reaching harms caused by this authoritarian precedent far outweigh those caused by the COVID-19 virus. The American people—individuals, families, businesses—must decide for themselves how and when to reopen...