Tag Archives: Featured

Flooding the financial system with “free money” only restores the illusion of stability I updated my How Systems Collapse graphic from 2018 with a “we are here” line to indicate our current precarious position just before the waterfall: For those who would argue we’re nowhere near collapse, consider that over 20% of the Federal Reserve’s $2 trillion spew of free money went directly into the pockets of America’s billionaires: $434 billion by the latest estimates,...

In an attempt to maintain the lockdown and their authority over our lives, politicians, health experts, and the mainstream media have been misusing some unusual analogies to describe the current economy. By using these analogies, our political overlords hope they can continue to keep the economy shut down, force companies to produce what the government forgot to purchase before the virus hit, and toss out trillions of dollars of handouts and bailouts to their...

Inflation is typically defined as a general increase in the prices of goods and services—described by changes in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) or other price indexes. If inflation is a general rise in measured prices, then why is it regarded as bad news? What kind of damage can it inflict? Mainstream economists maintain that inflation causes speculative buying, which generates waste. Inflation, it is maintained, also erodes the real incomes of pensioners and...

© Octavian Lazar | Dreamstime.com Over the last week there have been an average of 15 new SARS-CoV-2 cases a day. The first confirmed case in Switzerland was recorded on 24 February 2020. In the week that followed the number of new daily infections rose to 31. Another week later the number of new daily cases was 192. The daily new case number then took another 14 days to rise to a peak of 1,464 cases on 23 March 2020 before declining. By 1 May 2020, 39 days later it...

Sika has more than 300 plants worldwide (Keystone) The French building materials and distribution group Saint-Gobain has announced the sale of its 10.75% stake in the capital of the Swiss chemical manufacturer Sika. Saint-Gobain said in a press releaseexternal link on Tuesday that it would dispose of “of its entire stake in Sikaexternal link of approximately 15.2 million shares, representing 10.75% of Sika’s share capital”, without mentioning any financial amount....

◆ GoldCore are delighted to publish the 14th edition of the annual “In Gold We Trust” report, “The Dawning of a Golden Decade” by by our friends Ronald-Peter Stoeferle & Mark J. Valek of Incrementum AG. Gold prices should rise to over $5,000/oz and may rise as high as $9,000/oz in the coming decade and by 2030, according to the respected report. Gold is “on everyone’s lips again” and “we are now in a new phase of the bull market”. The question that now occupies...

Tensions between the US and China continue to rise; the dollar is finding some traction Fed Beige Book contained no surprises; NY Fed President Williams said the Fed is “thinking very hard” about targeting yields; weekly jobless claims are expected at 2.1 mln vs. 2.438 mln last week Germany reports May CPI; ECB is likely to ease next week; BOE continues to show its dovish colors; Poland is expected to keep rates steady at 0.5% Japan’s Cabinet Office maintained its...

The decentralised SwissCovid app is the first in the world to use the OS updates from Apple and Google.  (Keystone / Laurent Gillieron) Authorities have released the source code of the SwissCovid app to the public to allow experts and hackers to detect any risks to privacy before the official launch. The source code of the decentralised contact tracing app DP-3T, developed by the two Swiss federal institutes of technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich) and Lausanne (EPFL)...

© Scaliger | Dreamstime.com Switzerland’s Federal Council plans to lift all travel restrictions and re-establish free movement of persons across the Schengen area no later than 6 July 2020 and possibly as early as mid June, it announced today. If the epidemiological evolution allows, restrictions on entering, working and living in Switzerland will be lifted for all Schengen states from mid-June and no later than 6 July, said the government. The Schengen area, which...

By Ilan Solot and Kieran Chard We apply the five-factor model used to analyse lockdowns and openings in developed markets and in Latin America to Asian Markets. It evaluates the restrictions imposed by different countries in the region, how they compare in terms of severity of lockdown, and where they are heading in the spectrum of reopening. The scale we use measures grade restrictions from 1 (open) to 4 (closed) across the following five factors: (a)...