Tag Archives: Featured

The rapid testing will be done by health workers from nose or mouth swabs. Keystone / Denis Balibouse Swiss drug firm Roche says it is to launch a new Covid-19 antigen test before the end of the year, allowing faster, higher-volume testing. One of the most potent use cases could be at airports to ease the severe restrictions on air transport. “These fully automated systems can provide test results in 18 minutes for a single test, with a throughput of up to 300 tests...

Surgical masks © Belish | Dreamstime.com Only 4 out of the 16 masks sold in Switzerland that were tested passed all three tests conducted by a textile testing company, according to RTS. The testing, which included tests for air permeability, splash resistance and filtration, was conducted in laboratories run by Testex in Zurich and Vienna at the behest of RTS. Testing followed the standards recommended by the Swiss National Covid-19 Science Taskforce. There are...

Virus restrictions across Europe continue to sour sentiment; the dollar is benefiting from the risk-off backdrop The stimulus package is deader than Elvis; Fed manufacturing surveys for October will start to roll out; weekly jobless claims will be reported; Chile is expected to keep rates steady at 0.5% The unofficial deadline for Brexit has likely been extended; the two-day EU summit in Brussels starts today; Israel reports September CPI Australia reported September...

Understood properly,  inflation is not a general increase in prices but is an increase in the money supply “out of thin air” which brings about the impoverishment of wealth generators. When inflation is seen as a general increase in prices, then anything that contributes to price increases is called inflationary. In this framework, not only does the central bank have nothing to do with inflation, on the contrary, the bank is regarded as an inflation fighter. But, on...

Today we are taking our weekly look at the charts for gold and silver. Corvid 19, the US Election and US Financial Stimulus talks have given gold plenty to digest over the last week. On a short term basis gold has been taking a lot of signal from the fortunes of the stock markets and increased hopes of agreement of a financial stimulus package gave a boost to both stock markets and the gold price. Gold ran in to significant resistance and failed to close above the...

Swiss Franc The Euro has risen by 0.02% to 1.0712 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, October 16(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: It was like deja vu all over again. First, the market reacted immodestly to headlines indicating there was little chance of pre-election fiscal stimulus in the US. It was hardly new news. Then the market seemed to react with surprise that there was no last-minute breakthrough in the...

Das Eidgenössische Departement für Wirtschaft, Bildung und Forschung WBF hat eine Änderung des Anhangs 3 der Verordnung vom 27. August 2014 über Massnahmen zur Vermeidung der Umgehung internationaler Sanktionen im Zusammenhang mit der Situation in der Ukraine (SR 946.231.176.72) publiziert. Am 14. Oktober 2020 hat das Eidgenössische Departement für Wirtschaft, Bildung und Forschung WBF die Liste der in diesem Kontext sanktionierten Personen, Unternehmen und...

Donald Trump’s poll numbers were looking increasingly unhealthy at the time of writing, but at least the cocktail of drugs administered to the coronavirus-stricken President appears to have worked. This is encouraging news in the fight against the virus and a considerable achievement for Regeneron, whose founders increased their stake in the company after a French pharma group pulled back earlier this year. At this point, markets are increasingly taking on board...

© Anton Anton | Dreamstime.com In parts of Switzerland contact tracers can no longer cope with the rising numbers of cases, according the newspaper SonntagsZeitung. Contact tracers have the task of identifying who has been in contact with people testing positive for SARS-CoV-2, contacting those people and requesting they test and self isolate in order to break chains of infection. The tracing team working for the canton of Zurich is so overloaded it is delegating its...

Former Credit Suisse boss Tidjane Thiam apparently never felt at home in Switzerland. After losing a power struggle with Chairman Urs Rohner, he left the bank in February. © Keystone / Walter Bieri A recent story from the New York Times implied that the resignation of Ivory Coast-born Tidjane Thiam at the helm of Credit Suisse earlier this year had racist undertones, and he was the only Black CEO among the world’s biggest banks. How does the banking world –...