Tag Archives: Featured

All of America’s bubbles will pop, and sooner rather than later. Financial bubbles manifest three dynamics: the one we’re most familiar with is human greed, the desire to exploit a windfall and catch a work-free ride to riches. The second dynamic gets much less attention: financial manias arise when there is no other more productive, profitable use for capital, and these periods occur when there is an abundance of credit available to inflate the bubbles. Humans...

Earlier this morning, there was an added wobble in European bond prices after an unconfirmed MNI report said the ECB could delay the launch of QE on Thursday and make it data dependent. While skeptics quickly slammed the story, saying it was just a clickbait by MarketNews… About this MNI story on a possible delay in ECB QE announcement: 1) No substance, including from the ECB “sources” 2) Let’s hope the story is as accurate as the previous ones — Frederik Ducrozet...

USD/CHF fails to sustain the bounce off key support-confluence including 200-HMA and 38.2% Fibonacci retracement. A downside break highlights the 61.8% Fibonacci retracement level while 200-DMA caps the upside. Failures to sustain the bounce off 200-hour moving average (HMA) and 38.2% Fibonacci retracement of latest run-up drag the USD/CHF back to the key support-confluence while taking rounds to 0.9900 ahead of Friday’s European open. Should prices slip below 0.9890...

© Mcwilli1 | Dreamstime.com Health care in Switzerland is funded by a mixture of taxes and health insurance premiums. Much of the insurance premiums paid are compulsory with no discounts offered to non-smokers. According to figures recently published by the Swiss association for smoking, the annual direct medical costs of smoking are CHF 3 billion (2015), or CHF 350 per person. This sum represents 3.9% of Switzerland’s total annual health spending. Tobacco use is the...

The thing about R* is mostly that it doesn’t really make much sense when you stop and think about it; which you aren’t meant to do. It is a reaction to unanticipated reality, a world that has turned out very differently than it “should” have. Central bankers are our best and brightest, allegedly, they certainly feel that way about themselves, yet the evidence is clearly lacking. When Ben Bernanke wrote for the Washington Post in November 2010 announcing somehow the...

Turkey central bank meets September 12 and is expected to cut rates 275 bp.  With Erdogan talking about single digit rates and inflation, it’s clear that rates are headed significantly lower.  At some point soon, we think the risk/reward for investing in Turkey will send investors fleeing for the exits.POLITICAL OUTLOOK President Erdogan sacked central bank Governor Murat Cetinkaya on July 6, ostensibly for not cutting rates quickly enough.  In early August, several...

Swiss Franc The Euro has fallen by 0.19% to 1.0932 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, September 13(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: The markets are digesting ECB’s actions and an easing in US-Chinese rhetoric. Next week features the FOMC meeting and three other major central banks (Japan, Switzerland, and Norway). The US equity rally that saw the S&P 500 edge closer to the record high set in late July...

© Ppvector | Dreamstime.com Recent figures show an annual 4.2% rise in the number of vacant homes in Switzerland, extending a trend that started 10 years ago, according to the Federal Statistical Office. At the start of June 2019, there were 75,323 vacant homes, representing 1.66% of Switzerland’s total stock of homes. However, high vacancy rates in some regions masked low ones in others. While cantons such as Solothurn (3.40%), Thurgau (2.65%), Jura (2.59%), Aargau...

If Mario Draghi wanted to wow them, this wasn’t it. Maybe he couldn’t, handcuffed already by what seems to have been significant dissent in the ranks. And not just the Germans this time. Widespread dissatisfaction with what is now an idea whose time may have finally arrived. There really isn’t anything to this QE business. But we already knew that. American officials knew it in June 2003 when the FOMC got together to savage the Bank of Japan for their lack of...

© Mr.siwabud Veerapaisarn | Dreamstime.com In 1998, GDP per person in Switzerland was CHF 59,693. Recently published statistics put the figure at CHF 80,986 in 2018, a rise of 36%. When Swiss GDP per capita is expressed in globally comparable US dollar terms its rise is even greater. In US dollar terms Swiss GDP per capita grew from US$ 41,497 to US$ 82,839 between 1998 and 2018, a rise of 100%. In Germany the same figure went from US$ 27,341 to US$ 48,196, a rise of...