Tag Archives: Featured

Chinese President Xi Jinping If it was The Wall Street Journal or other US financial media outlets, for the last several weeks, pumping headlines via “people familiar with the discussions,” about how President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping could have a phase one trade deal signing event at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January. It turns out, after all the optimism of a potential signing event at Davos between Trump and Xi — it was just...

When I was asked to write an article about the impact of negative interest rates and negative yielding bonds, I thought it was a chance to look at the topic from a broader perspective. There have been lots of articles speculating about the possible implications and focusing on their impact in the short run, but it’s not very often that an analysis looks a bit further into the future, trying to connect money and its effect on society itself. Qui Bono? Let us begin...

It’s almost Christmas time again, and that means its time for White House politicians and staff to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on Christmas decorations and events for the White House. Parties and pricey decor have, unfortunately, become “tradition” at the White House where the holiday season has become an excuse for the staffs of the White House and the First Lady’s staff to put on a wide variety of “social” events which are really just public relations...

The logo of FINMA, the Swiss financial watchdog (© Keystone / Gaetan Bally) The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority FINMA says it will have an independent auditor investigate Swiss bank Credit Suisse “in the context of observation activities”. “The observation activities carried out by Credit Suisse raise various compliance issues,” FINMA said in a statement on Friday eveningexternal link. “FINMA’s ongoing investigations of this matter will now be stepped up...

Geopolitics has moved from a slow-moving, relatively predictable chess match to rapidly evolving 3-D chess in which the rules keep changing in unpredictable ways. A declining standard of living in the developed world, declining growth for the developed world and geopolitical jockeying for control of resources make for a highly combustible mix awaiting a spark: welcome to the era of intensifying chaos and the rapid advance of new weapons of conflict as ruling elites...

The Revolt Against Reason It is true that some philosophers were ready to overrate the power of human reason. They believed that man can discover by ratiocination the final causes of cosmic events, the inherent ends the prime mover aims at in creating the universe and determining the course of its evolution. They expatiated on the “Absolute” as if it were their pocket watch. They did not shrink from announcing eternal absolute values and from establishing moral codes...

When Colleen Graham heard a story of investigators looking into Credit Suisse for spying on its recently departed head of wealth management, something sounded familiar. She had recalled, years prior, when she was working on a JV between the bank and Palantir Technologies, a “striking tall blonde” had followed her in Manhattan after she refused to sign off on how revenue from the JV would be booked. She filed a complaint in 2017 alleging the bank had taken retaliatory...

World Class Entertainer in the Cross-Hairs Christmas is no time to be given the old heave-ho.  This is a time of celebration, redemption, and excess libation.  A time to shop ‘til you drop; the economy depends on it. Don’t get us wrong.  There really is no best time to receive the dreaded pink slip.  But Christmas is the absolute worst.  Has this ever happened to you? Well, believe it or not, this is precisely what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her Democrat...

Eric Nelson, a Professor Government at Harvard, has published this year a brilliant and imaginative book, The Theology of Liberalism (Harvard University Press, 2019). Nelson, it should be said, is no leftist, despite what you might expect from his Harvard affiliation. To the contrary, he is a conservative and favors, though not to the fullest extent, the free market and private property rights. I hope to address on future occasions his penetrating and original views...

The capital markets will turn increasingly quiet in the week ahead as the Christmas holiday thins participation. If this is the season of goodwill, investors are lapping it up. Global equity markets are finishing a strong year on a high note.  Record highs were recorded in the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Stoxx 600. The MSCI Emerging Markets equity index is at its best level since August 2018. Risk assets are doing well, while interest rates have backed up. The CRB...