Tag Archives: Featured

◆The world is having serious doubts about the once widely accepted presumption of American exceptionalism. The era of the U.S. dollar’s “exorbitant privilege” as the world’s primary reserve currency is coming to an end. In the 1960s French Finance Minister Valery Giscard d’Estaing coined that phrase largely out of frustration, bemoaning a United States that drew freely on the rest of the world to support its overextended standard of living. For almost 60 years, the...

To support biodiversity, forests need dead trees as well. Though it has more than it used to, Switzerland could use more deadwood. Urs-Beat Brändli, WSL Despite threats such as drought and insects, Swiss forests are better equipped to handle natural hazards than they were a decade ago. There’s also more diversity in terms of the types of trees found in Swiss woodlands, according to the forest inventory report presented on Wednesday. Detailed monitoring since 1983 has...

Sometimes the news drives the price action, but sometimes the price action drives the news.  If the initial rally in US stocks after the FOMC meeting had been sustained and if the dollar had continued to decline, observers would drawing a different conclusion. Because of the sell-off in risk assets, many observers are blaming the Fed’s pessimism. I do not see it that way. The median Fed GDP forecast for this year and next is above the OECD’s newest forecasts, for...

Concerns about still rising infection numbers and a second wave ofCovid-19 have contributed to today’s downdraft in risk assets; for now, the weak dollar trend is hard to fight Despite delivering no change in policy, the Fed nonetheless sent an unequivocally dovish signal; stocks have not reacted well to the Fed; weekly jobless claims and May PPI will be reported Peru is expected to keep rates steady at 0.25%; Brazil inflation data supports a 75 bp cut next week The...

. Come on, Jay, you can always goose stocks back to new highs after the election. Indulge me for a moment in some backroom speculation. It’s absurdly obvious that the unelected, permanent, ever-expanding National Security State, a.k.a the Deep State, and its Democratic Party allies have been attempting to torpedo Donald Trump since the 2016 election took them by surprise. (Imagine doing everything that worked so well in the past and failing at the last minute. Ouch....

Last Friday, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics released new unemployment data. The report surprised many because it showed a decrease in the unemployment rate, while many observers had expected an increase. According to the official headline (seasonally adjusted) number, the unemployment rate was 13.3 percent in May. That was down from April’s rate of 14.7 percent. This data point was seized upon by commentators who insist that there will be a “V-shaped” recovery....

The Václav Klaus Institute urging the Czech Government to reject the dangerous Ursula von der Leyen´s plan It is rather rare that I share articles on my channel that are not from my own pen. The following article is therefore an exception and for good reason. It is written by none other than the former President of the Czech Republic Václav Klaus, with whom I have a long-standing relationship, based on great respect and many shared values. The arguments he presents...

Swiss Franc The Euro has risen by 0.32% to 1.0698 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, June 12(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: The nearly three-month rally in risk assets ended with high drama with a stomach-churning almost 6% slide in the S&P 500 yesterday. Follow-through selling was seen in the Asia Pacific region, but most markets recovered from their lows, and although losses were still recorded, the...

Even with big sales, prices on Zurich’s Bahnhofstrasse are still some of the highest in the world © Keystone / Walter Bieri Three Swiss cities – Zurich, Bern and Geneva – are among the ten most expensive in the world for expatriates, according to the annual Cost of Living survey by consultants Mercer. Hong Kong remains at the top of the list of 209 countries for the third year in a row. Six of the top ten are in Asia, three in Switzerland and one in the United...

(Disclosure: Some of the links below may be affiliate links) Having a side hustle is a great thing to increase your income. But you need to be careful about doing it legally. If your side hustle is getting serious, you need to make sure you are respecting the law. If you are just selling a few things you do not need anymore, you probably will not have any problem. But if you have a side hustle that generating a more serious amount of money, you need to do it right....