Tag Archives: Featured

For the first time since we began publishing this Report, it is a day late. We apologize. Keith has just returned Saturday from two months on the road. Unlike the rest of the world, we define inflation as monetary counterfeiting. We do not put the emphasis on quantity (and the dollar is not money, it’s a currency). We focus on the quality. An awful lot of our monetary counterfeiting occurs to fuel consumption spending....

Swiss Franc The Euro has risen by 0.12% at 1.1277 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, December 18(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: The 2% slide in the S&P 500 to new lows for the year yesterday hit Asian and European equities today. Bond yields are lower, and the dollar is softer against most major currencies. The dramatic equity losses and some disappointing...

Pension funds strengthen their reserves in 2017 17.12.2018 – The pension funds can look back on a positive investment year: The net result from investments doubled in 2017. Thus, the reserves could be strengthened and any shortfalls could be reduced. This is evident from the definitive results of the Pension Fund Statistics 2017 of the Federal Statistical Office (FSO). Net investment income increased to 64.1 billion...

A Swiss plane taking off from Zurich British Secretary of State for Transport Chris Grayling is set to sign an agreement with Switzerland on Monday to ensure air services continue to operate between the two countries after Brexit. Britain is due to leave the European Union on March 29, but uncertainty over how, or even if, Brexit will happen has increased the possibility of the country exiting without a deal on...

The English language headline for China’s National Bureau of Statistics’ press release on November 2018’s Big 3 was, National Economy Maintained Stable and Sound Momentum of Development in November. For those who, as noted yesterday, are wishing China’s economy bad news so as to lead to the supposed good news of a coordinated “stimulus” response this was itself a bad news/good news situation. If the Communist State...

Swiss Franc The Euro has fallen by 0.20% at 1.1258 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, December 17(see more posts on EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: Activity in the global capital markets is subdued as investors move to the sidelines as the year-end approaches. The Federal Reserve headlines the holiday week that also features a Bank of England a Bank of Japan meeting. Only...

The last FOMC meeting of 2018 is at hand. After hiking rates three times in 2017, the Fed signaled that four hikes were likely this year and with a widely expected move on December 20, it would have fully delivered, though many steps along the way, skeptical investors had to be led by the nose, as it were, to minimize the element of surprise. The famous dot plot of the Summary of Economic Projections has long shown that...

Employees over the age of 50 are considered more expensive in the labour market, partly due to higher social security contributions. A people’s initiative, allowing workers over 50 to sue for age discrimination, will be launched soon, the NZZ am Sonntag reported on Sunday. According to Heidi Joos, the CEO of Avenir 50 plusexternal link, one of the organisations behind the project, this proposed constitutional provision...

Capital garners the gains, and labor’s share continues eroding. That’s the story of the 21st century. The middle class, virtually by definition, is not prepared for downward mobility. A systemic, semi-permanent decline in the standard of living isn’t part of the implicit social contract that’s been internalized by the middle class virtually everywhere:living standards are only supposed to rise. Any decline is...

  Stars in the Night Sky The U.S. stock market’s recent zigs and zags have provoked much squawking and screeching.  Wall Street pros, private money managers, and Millennial index fund enthusiasts all find themselves on the wrong side of the market’s swift movements.  Even the best and brightest can’t escape President Trump’s tweet precipitated short squeezes. The short-term significance of the DJIA’s 8 percent decline...