Tag Archives: Featured

The water on which the power plant floats helps cool the solar panels thus improving their efficiency. Keystone / Valentin Flauraud A floating solar power plant and a transport project using renewable hydrogen are among the winners of the 2021 Watt d’Or prize. Awarded annually by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy since 2007, the goal of the Watt d’Or is to “showcase outstanding products or services in the energy sector”. The 2021 winners, selected from 64 projects,...

Switzerland was named a currency manipulator by the US Treasury in December 2020. © Keystone / Gaetan Bally For many foreign exchange traders, the US Treasury’s decision to designate Switzerland as a currency manipulator last month comes nearly six years too late and with a good dose of irony. The Swiss National Bank threw currency markets into full-blown chaos in January 2015 when it unexpectedly abandoned its cap on the franc’s value, within days of a senior...

Hundreds of small alpine businesses rely on the fund for support. © Keystone / Christian Beutler A Swiss fund that supports small businesses in alpine regions bailed out 100 firms last year that were affected by the coronavirus pandemic. Schweizer Berghilfe (Swiss Mountain Aid) doled out an extra CHF2 million ($2.26 million) to support Covid-hit enterprises. Volunteers put in 15% more hours evaluating and processing the extra demand for financial support, the...

Joan Wallach Scott, a historian who is a professor emerita at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, has come up with a most valuable insight. She is decidedly not “one of us,” but her insight makes her sound as if she might be. She says, the notion of the judgment of history rests on a progressive linear view about the necessary superiority, in every domain, of the future as compared to the past, but also—crucially—about the state as the political embodiment...

California’s government has become infamous for abusing its citizens, from steep taxation to burdensome regulations to arbitrary covid impositions. But less noticed is how it is also trying to abuse other Americans as well. As reported in a December 28 Los Angeles Times editorial, the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration (CDTFA), which oversees sales and use tax collections, is trying to retroactively impose sales taxes on out-of-state retailers as far...

Swiss Franc The Euro has risen by 0.23% to 1.0823 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, January 6(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview:  One of the two Georgia Senate contests remains too close to call, but the market appears to be pricing in a Democrat sweep. The 10-year yield has punched above 1% but has offered the greenback little support. Yesterday, the dollar-bloc currencies rose to highs since early Q2 2018 and...

In a bleak year for the car industry, there was one bright spot: an unprecedented rise in the number of alternative propulsion vehicles sold, including electric cars and hybrid models. © Keystone / Martial Trezzini The Swiss automobile industry registered its worst result in over 40 years, as the number of new cars hitting the road in 2020 fell by a quarter compared to the previous year. A total of 236,828 new cars were sold last year, the import association Auto...

The fast spreading strain of the SARS-CoV-2 virus discovered in the UK has now been detected in seven Swiss cantons, according to the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH), reported RTS. So far 28 people in Switzerland have tested positive for the new UK strain, said Virginie Masserey of the FOPH. The strain has been detected in Vaud, Geneva, Valais, Bern, Zurich, St-Gallen and another canton. Some of those infected had travelled from the UK or been in contact with...

In mid-December 2019, before the world had heard of COVID, China’s Central Economic Work Conference had released a rather startling statement for the world to consume. In the West, everything was said to be on the up. Central banks had responded, forcefully, many claimed, more than enough to deal with that year’s “unexpected” globally synchronized downturn. This view had been punctuated by Fed Vice Chairman Richard Clarida, among many others, who in early January...

Here’s looking at you, Federal Reserve–thanks for perfecting ‘legalized looting’ and neofeudalism in America. The problem with pushing a pendulum to its maximum extreme on one end is that it will swing back to the other extreme minus a tiny bit of friction. America has pushed wealth/income inequality, unfairness and legalized looting to the maximum extreme. Now it will experience the swing back to the other extreme. This will manifest in a number of ways, one of...