[unable to retrieve full-text content]The youth chapter of the PLR (FDP) has successfully collected enough signatures for an initiative to raise the official retirement age in Switzerland to 66 years old, reported RTS. On 16 July 2021, initiative organisers submitted 145,000 voter signatures as part of the formal process of launching a referendum in Switzerland.
Read More »Quantitative Easing: A Boon or Curse?
Central banks’ massive Quantitative Easing (QE) programs have come under scrutiny many times since the central banks fired up the printing press and began quantitative easing programs en masse after the 2008-09 Great Financial Crisis. However, the increase in central bank assets due to quantitative easing programs during the crisis pale in comparison to the QE programs during the Covid pandemic. As economies recovered after the Great Financial Crisis many worried...
Read More »Eurodollar University’s Making Sense; Episode 89, Part 2: Let’s Crack China’s RRR Code
[unable to retrieve full-text content]89.2 China Warns World of (Next?) Dollar Disorder. The People’s Bank of China lowers its bank Required Reserve Ratio to get money into a slowing economy. A lowered RRR means that there aren’t enough (euro)dollars flowing into China. Why? Because there aren’t enough (euro)dollars in the world. A lower RRR is a warning for the whole world.
Read More »European Unification as the New Frontier of Collectivism: The Case for Competitive Federalism and Polycentric Law
[unable to retrieve full-text content]Frankfurt, Bremen, Hamburg, Luebeck are large and brilliant, and their impact on the prosperity of Germany is incalculable. Yet, would they remain what they are if they were to lose their independence and be incorporated?”— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe1
Read More »Nassim Taleb Now Calls Bitcoin Worthless, Too Volatile to be a Useful Currency or Store of Value
[unable to retrieve full-text content]Not only does bitcoin fail to satisfy the notion of being a currency without a government, but the cryptocurrency is also not a reliable inflation hedge nor a safe haven investment, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a probability researcher and former quantitative trader, says in a recent paper.
Read More »Google challenges Swiss data cloud contract decision
Tangled in the cloud: a Federal court will now review the contract decision. © Keystone / Gaetan Bally Google has appealed a recent Swiss decision to award a cloud-computing contract to five other digital firms. The tender process has also come under criticism by defenders of data sovereignty. Google’s appeal targets the government’s decision last month to name US companies Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle, and Chinese firm Alibaba, as winning candidates to create...
Read More »Celebrating Five Years of Interest on Gold
[unable to retrieve full-text content]This month marks the five-year anniversary of Monetary Metals paying interest on gold. It was July 2016 when we offered our first Gold Fixed Income True Gold Lease. The gold lease was to Valaurum for manufacturing their flagship product, the Aurum®. It paid 3.0% interest on gold to investors (you can read the original press release here).
Read More »Do Rising ‘Global’ Growth Concerns Include An Already *Slowing* US Economy?
[unable to retrieve full-text content]Global factors, meaning that the wave of significantly higher deflationary potential (therefore, diminishing inflationary chances which were never good to begin with) in global bond yields the past five months have seemingly focused on troubles brewing outside the US. Overseas turmoil, it was called back in 2015, leaving by default a picture of relative American strength and harmony.
Read More »Forced Vaccinations in France Bring Both Repression and Protest
[unable to retrieve full-text content]In a speech to the nation just ahead of Bastille Day on July 14 celebrating the French Revolution, President Emmanuel Macron delivered a paradoxical blow to the Republic’s famous slogan: Liberté, égalité, fraternité. He announced a series of measures to speed up the pace of covid-19 vaccinations which undermine individual liberties and threaten a strong political and economic backlash.
Read More »FX Daily, July 22: Enguard Lagarde
Swiss Franc The Euro has risen by 0.08% to 1.0828 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, July 22(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: The rally in US shares yesterday, ostensibly fueled by strong earnings reports, is helping to encourage risk appetites today. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index is posting its biggest gain in around two weeks, though Japan’s markets are closed today and tomorrow. The Dow Jones Stoxx 600 is...
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