Tag Archives: Germany

Too much of a good thing is bad. That, in a nutshell, is an important insight that Hyman Minsky offered about the financial sector, but has broader application. The low volatility that has been a characteristic of the capital markets for the past few years spurred financial innovation to profit from it. A broad range of financial instruments constructed to profit from continued low volatility, such as exchange-traded...

Swiss Franc The Euro has risen by 0.41% to 1.1566 CHF. EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, February 06(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates After the dramatic fall in US equities, Asian equities followed suit. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index fell 3.4% following Monday’s slide of 1.7%. European bourses gapped lower and spent most of the morning moving higher, though large gaps...

In the NZZ, Monica Rüthers writes about the history of the border between Konstanz (in Germany) and Kreuzlingen (in Switzerland). Shoppers have been crossing the border for ages although governments have tried to prevent this with varying fervor. Exchange rate regimes have affected which goods are bought, where.

It is not easy to recall another week in which there were so many potential changes to the broad investment climate. The relatively light economic calendar in the week ahead may allow investors to continue to ruminate about some of those developments. Here we provide thumbnail assessments of the main drivers. China The PBOC modified the way the reference rate is set.  Currencies are allowed to trade in a band around...

A new report from the Institute for Science and International Security has found that 49 countries violated sanctions on North Korea to varying degrees between March 2014 and September 2017. You will find more statistics at Statista 13 governments including Cuba, Egypt, Iran and Syria were involved in military violations, which as Statista’s Martin Armstrong notes, includes either receiving military training from North...

Bitcoin - Plan Your Exit Strategy Now - Maybe With Gold Made money in bitcoin? Well done. Don’t wait until the stampede starts. Here’s what you must do now. by Dominic Frisby in Money Week So there I was on Sunday afternoon, doing what it is one does on a Sunday – very little in my case – and a notification comes up on my phone: “Bitcoin rises over 10% to $11,800”. Bitcoin in USD (1 Year). Source: CoinDesk On a Sunday. When every other market is closed. It’s bad enough that bitcoin is making...

Summary: Coalition talks will resume in the coming days, and failing this a minority government is more likely than new elections. The is a general agreement among the political elites, and a hubris of small differences. The rate differentials and cross currency swaps show the incentive structure for holding dollars is increasing. Talks to forge a new coalition government in Germany passed the self-imposed...

Today Credit Suisse released its latest annual global wealth report, which traditionally lays out what has become the single biggest reason for the recent “anti-establishment” revulsion: an unprecedented concentration of wealth among a handful of people, as shown in Swiss bank’s infamous global wealth pyramid, an arrangement which as observed by the “shocking” political backlash of the past year, suggests that the lower...

In The Guardian, Philip Oltermann speculates about a new romanticist era in Germany, exemplified by Simon Strauss’ “Sieben Nächte.” Caspar David Friedrich: Winter Landscape, 1811.

European GDP rose 0.6% quarter-over-quarter in Q3 2017, the eighteenth consecutive increase for the Continental (EA 19) economy. That latter result is being heralded as some sort of achievement, though the 0.6% is also to a lesser degree. The truth is that neither is meaningful, and that Europe’s economy continues toward instead the abyss. At 0.6%, that doesn’t even equal the average growth rate exhibited from either...