Tag Archives: Featured

Austria is still investigating massive corruption scandals involving far-right politicians, including Heinz-Christian Strache (Left) and the late Jörg Haider (Right), seen here in 2008. (Keystone) Swiss asset managers are involved in some of Austria’s biggest corruption scandals, according to the SonntagsZeitung newspaper. The paper writes that in ongoing cases involving far-right politicians Jörg Haider, Karl-Heinz Grasser and Heinz-Christian Strache, the trail...

Fruiting vegetables such as tomatoes are 17% cheaper – © Maksudkr | Dreamstime.com Swiss prices fell by 0.1% in November 2019, the sixth time in 12 months. But not everything is cheaper. Prices fell in December 2018 (-0.3%), January 2019 (-0.3), July (-0.5), September (-0.1), October (-0.2%) and November 2019 (-0.1). When combined with the low inflation experienced in the other 6 months the 12-month price drop is -0.1%. Not everything has gone down in price however....

EM has had a good month so far as market optimism on a Phase One trade deal remains high.Yet November trade data due out this week should show that until that deal is finalized, the outlook for EM remains weak. Deadline for the next round of US tariffs is December 15 and so talks this week are crucial. Lastly, three major EM central banks are expected to cut rates this week, underscoring the downside risks to growth. AMERICAS Mexico reports November CPI Monday,...

Not every square inch of the planet earth is suitable for a housing development. Flood plains are not great places to build homes. A grove of trees adjacent to a tinder-dry national forest is not ideal for a dream home. And California’s chaparral ecosystems are risky places for neighborhoods. This is nothing new. While people many Americans who live back East may imagine that something must be deeply wrong when they hear about fires out West, the fact is things are...

© Tatsiana Hendzel | Dreamstime.com Swiss import duties on a number of industrial products might disappear if a plan put forward by Guy Parmelin, Switzerland’s economic’s minister, is approved by the National Council, Switzerland’s parliament. The changes are expected to benefit businesses and consumers by around CHF 860 million a year. On the other hand, the government will miss out on collecting roughly CHF 500 million a year of revenue from import duties. Products...

Pascal Jaussi presents the Swiss Space Systems vision in 2013. (Keystone / Sandro Campardo) The company Swiss Space Systems (S3) received financial backing from a fictitious bank as it unsuccessfully fought against bankruptcy, according to media reports. S3, which promised simulated space flights to the public, collapsed in 2017 amid much controversy. The Tages Anzeigerexternal link and 24 Heuresexternal link newspapers reported on Thursday that S3 was given fake...

Eurostat confirmed earlier today that Europe has so far avoided recession. At least, it hasn’t experienced what Economists call a cyclical peak. During the third quarter of 2019, Real GDP expanded by a thoroughly unimpressive +0.235% (Q/Q). This was a slight acceleration from a revised +0.185% the quarter before. The real question, though, is whether the business cycle approach means anything in this day and age. I don’t think it does, and that’s a big part of why...

There it was sticking out like a sore thumb right in the middle of what should have been the glory year. Everything seemed to be going just right for once, success so close you could almost feel it. Well, “they” could. The year was 2014 and the unemployment rate in the US was tumbling, the result of the “best jobs market in decades.” Real GDP in that year’s two middle quarters was pretty near 5% in both. What wasn’t to like? As GDP-measured output was spiking, so,...

Swiss lawmakers have been tasked with getting the new furniture to fit into the financial and corporate landscape. (© Keystone / Gaetan Bally) The Swiss parliament will soon get to grips with merging the current financial system with new blockchain architecture. This is a bit like refitting your whole house to make sure the swanky new furniture and fittings blend in. Switzerland has deliberately chosen to not to tear the whole house down and build it again in a new...

Whereas inflation is expected to be dormant next year, our expectation of real GDP growth of just 1.3% in the US in 2020 could put upward pressure on equity volatility. Since monetary policy tends to lead volatility by two and a half years, the Fed’s turn toward quantitative tightening in 2017 is also continuing to exert upward pressure on volatility levels for now. But there are also countervailing forces at work. Although there is not a perfect correlation,...