Tag Archives: Featured

In a landmark ruling that sent a clear message to other banks battling misconduct investigations in French courts, a Paris court on Wednesday found UBS guilty of having actively helped some of its wealthy French clients hide money from French tax authorities in undeclared Swiss bank accounts, and ordered the bank to pay a $5.1 billion fine. The fine represents a record sum in France, and isn’t too far below the $6...

Swiss Franc The Euro has fallen by 0.12% at 1.1337 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, February 20(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: The US dollar is narrowly mixed against the major currencies, but the strongest currency today is the Chinese yuan, following reports that US wants China to keep the yuan stable and not offset US tariffs with currency depreciation. The...

The Swiss Franc has been boosted during early morning trading as investors find the latest Trade Balance data supportive of the economy, with the Trade Balance data coming in showing a surplus of CHF3bn. The strength of the Swiss economy is its exports; in watches, chocolate and specialized industrial engineering. The franc has risen marginally and this could represent a stronger Swiss franc down the line as investors...

Europe is awash in credit exhaustion, and so is China. The signs are everywhere: credit exhaustion is global, and that means the global growth story is over: revenues and profits are all sliding as lending dries up and defaults pile up. What is credit exhaustion? Qualified buyers don’t want to borrow more, leaving only the unqualified or speculators seeking to save a marginal bet gone bad with one more loan (which will...

Some recent factors supporting gold are fading. However, while gold could sag in the short term, medium-term prospects look better. Last year ended on a very strong note for gold demand, with a significant increase in jewellery and investment demand in the fourth quarter (see chart), leading to strong price performance (7.7% in US dollar terms in Q4). There was also a sharp increase in central bank demand in 2018,...

It is easy to think of government interference into the economy like a kind of friction. If producers and traders were fully free, then they could improve our quality of life—with new technologies, better products, and lower prices—at a rate of X. But the more that the government does, the more it burdens them. So instead of X rate of progress, we get the same end result but 10% slower or 20% slower. Some would go so...

Swiss Franc The Euro has fallen by 0.08% at 1.1345 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, February 19(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: Activity in the global capital markets is subdued as investors await fresh developments. New wording for the Irish backstop apparently is being drafted. US-China trade talks resume. No decision has been made on US auto tariffs, but...

We do not like Purchasing Power or Real Effective Exchange Rate (REER) as measurement for currencies. For us, the trade balance decides if a currency is overvalued. Only the trade balance can express productivity gains, while the REER assumes constant productivity in comparison to trade partners. Who has read Michael Pettis, knows that a rising trade surplus may also be caused by a higher savings rate while the trade...

Interview de Vincent Held, auteur du Crépuscule de la Banque nationale suisse, par Orbis Terrae, Bernard Antoine Rouffaer,    janvier 2019 L’ouvrage de Vincent Held aborde une série de sujets brûlants : la politique d’affaiblissement du francs suisse menée par la Banque nationale suisse (BNS), l’imbrication de cette politique avec celles des banques privées suisses, la politique d’acquisition d’obligations d’Etat en...

The Swiss National Bank (SNB) has named Raghuram Rajan as this year’s speaker for its Karl Brunner Distinguished Lecture Series. Professor Rajan has made outstanding contributions to both economic practice and economic research on the global stage. His roles have included Governor of the Reserve Bank of India from 2013 until 2016 and Chief Economist at the IMF between 2003 and 2006. He has held a professorship at the...