Maurice Jackson of Proven and Probable Interviews Jayant Bhandari Maurice Jackson of Proven & Probable has just conducted another interview with Jayant Bhandari, who is known to long-time readers as a frequent guest author on this site. Jayant Bhandari Below is a video of the interview as well as a link for downloading the transcript of the interview in PDF form. But first here is a list of the topics discussed:...
Read More »Facebook rejects most information requests from Swiss authorities
© Klevo _ Dreamstime.com Over the first three months of 2018 Switzerland’s authorities made 80 requests for Facebook user data, however two thirds of them were rejected, according to the newspaper SonntagsBlick as reported in 20 Minutes. When the requests were urgent the response rate rose to two thirds of requests. Reto Nause, responsible for security in Bern, is unhappy with the social network’s response record....
Read More »Public transport enjoys another record year among tourists
On board the Gotthard Panorama Express (Keystone) Foreign visitors spent 6.4% more on Swiss Travel System tickets in 2018 than in the previous year. Sales rose to over CHF130 million ($131 million). 2018 is thus the sixth record year in a row, the Swiss Federal Railways saidexternal link on Tuesday. Chinese guests were the top foreign users of public transport, with sales of CHF20.3 million, an increase of 14.9%. They...
Read More »Apple’s Rotten Core
Entering commoditized, fiercely competitive low-margin services cannot substitute for the high-margin profits that will be lost as global recession and saturation erode iPhone sales. Apple has always been equally an enterprise and a secular religion. The Apple Faithful do not tolerate heretics or critics, and non-believers “just don’t get it.” So the first thing any critic must do is establish their credentials as a...
Read More »Brexit and Learning To “Live With Boom and Bust Economic Cycles”
Generations of people have learned to live with boom and bust economic cycles. Years of relative plenty were followed, as night follows day, by grief including high unemployment and forced emigration on a large scale. In fact, if you go back much beyond the late 1960s, it would not be too cynical to say the cycles were often more about going from bust to really busted, as for decades the country was hit by crippling...
Read More »FX Daily, March 29: Equities Bounce While Bonds Pullback to End Q1
Swiss Franc The Euro has keep position 0.00% at 1.1194 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, March 29(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: The global growth scare may be subsiding. It had been fanned by the ECB and Fed statements and projections. Poor US jobs growth reported in early March and the poor flash EMU PMI late in the month contributed. The slowdown in China...
Read More »Swiss Rail shares bumper profits with passengers
© Erix2005 | Dreamstime.com In 2018, Swiss Rail made a profit of CHF 568 million, 42.5% more than in 2017. Part of the rise was due to higher than average spending on maintenance in 2017. It is worth noting that Swiss Rail receives a large sum from taxpayers every year. In 2018, the company received CHF 3.5 billion of public funding, CHF 2.7 billion of it booked as income. Without this large lump of taxpayer help Swiss...
Read More »Watchdog confirms illegal activity by cryptocurrency firm Envion
The company is in the middle of bankruptcy proceedings handled by the Zug bankruptcy office. An investigation by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) has revealed the that Zug-based cryptocurrency venture Envion unlawfully received deposits from at least 37,000 investors. Envion unlawfully accepted over CHF90 million ($90.5 million) in its Initial Coin Offering (ICO) without the necessary statutory...
Read More »Is the World Becoming Wealthier or Poorer?
There is nothing intrinsically profitable about either robotics or AI. At the request of colleague/author Douglas Rushkoff (his latest book is Team Human), I’m publishing last week’s Musings Report, which was distributed only to subscribers and patrons of the site.) The core assumption of Universal Basic Income (UBI) and other plans to redistribute wealth and income more broadly is that the world is becoming wealthier,...
Read More »Dépossession. Des politiques monétaires mortifères…
L’économie du pays est promise à un effondrement. Il suffit pour s’en convaincre de voir la quantité de surfaces commerciales disponibles. En Suisse, près de 1200 entreprises ont fait faillite entre janvier et février! L’information du jour est un non-évènement, puisque annoncé de longue date sur ce site. Par ailleurs, elle ne semble intéresser personne à Berne, dans les « agglomérations », ou autres »Régions »....
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