Tag Archives: Featured

The Chinese government was serious about imposing pollution controls on its vast stock of automobiles. The largest market in the world for cars and trucks, the net result of China’s “miracle” years of eurodollar-financed modernization, for the Chinese people living in its huge cities the non-economic costs are, unlike the air, immediately clear each and every day. A new set of relatively strict pollution controls was added in the second half of this year. As is...

In the early 1920s, Ludwig von Mises became a witness to hyperinflation in Austria and Germany — monetary developments that caused irreparable and (in the German case) cataclysmic damage to civilization. Mises’s policy advice was instrumental in helping to stop hyperinflation in Austria in 1922. In his Memoirs, however, he expressed the view that his instruction — halting the printing press — was heeded too late: Austria’s currency did not collapse — as did Germany’s...

Just in time for more discussions about repo, the Federal Reserve delivers. Not in terms of the repo market, mind you, despite what you hear bandied about in the financial media the Fed doesn’t actually go there. Its repo operations are more RINO’s – repo in name only. No, what the US central bank actually contributes is more helpful data. Since our goal is to use that data to produce the best possible, most accurate interpretation of the facts, the depth and...

Swiss Franc The Euro has risen by 0.04% to 1.0945 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, December 17(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: Efforts by a UK Prime Minister emboldened by a strong electoral victory to ensure that trade negotiations with the EU are not extended as the divorce has encouraged further profit-taking on sterling. After testing the $1.35 area on the exit polls last week, sterling had returned...

US Dollar Index erases daily recovery gains ahead of American session. European equity indexes stay in the negative territory. Coming up: Building Permits, Housing Starts and Industrial Production data from US. The USD/CHF lost its traction in the last couple of hours and retraced its daily recovery gains pressured by the sour market mood and the broad USD weakness. As of writing, the pair was down 0.02% on the day at 0.9818. The USD recovery during the early trading...

In October of this year the bank cleared Credit Suisse CEO Tidjane Thiam of snooping on former wealth management boss Iqbal Khan in an episode that saw suicide, scandal and espionage invade the secretive world of Swiss private banking. (© Keystone / Ennio Leanza) A senior Credit Suisse human resources executive was tailed by private investigators in February, the Neue Zuercher Zeitung (NZZ) newspaper reported on Tuesday. The Swiss bank was rocked by a highly damaging...

[embedded content] Commuters got their first proper taste on Monday of what’s been hailed as the largest cross-border regional rail network in Europe, the Léman Express. The network, which opened officially on Sunday, is the result of decades of planning and almost eight years of construction work. It offers a fast cross-city rail link from Geneva’s central train station to Annemasse in France. The regional cross-border network is much bigger, extending across...

Gone are the days when Black Friday dominated the retail calendar. While it used to be a somewhat fun way to kick off the holiday shopping season, it had morphed into something else entirely in later years. Scenes of angry shoppers smashing each other over the few big deals stores would truly offer, internet clips of crying children watching in horror as their parents transformed their local Walmart into Thunderdome. Two shoppers enter, one shopper leaves…with the...

Anyone who thinks this bogus “deal” has resolved any of the issues or uncertainties deserves to be fired immediately. Here’s a late-night TV parody of a trade deal: The agreement won’t be signed by both parties, though each might sign their own version of it, and the terms of the deal will never ever be revealed to the public, which includes everyone doing any business in the nations doing the “deal.” How is this “deal” not a pathetic parody of a real deal? A real...

Japan has not recovered fully from the lost decade of the 1990s. The Asian financial crisis was exacerbated by the dot-com crash and then a few years later the global economic collapse. Tokyo has tried everything to combat anemic growth and deflation, and resolve the zombification of the Japanese economy through an immense buildup of government debt and a dramatic loosening of monetary policy, including subzero interest rates. This has become known as...