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Rising income and wealth inequality is causally linked to globalization and the expansion of Darwinian trade and capital flows. Stripped of lofty-sounding abstractions such as comparative advantage, trade boils down to four Darwinian goals: 1. Find foreign markets to absorb excess production, i.e. where excess production can be dumped. 2. Extract foreign resources at low prices. 3. Deny geopolitical rivals access to...

The Producer Price Index (PPI) or officially named “Producer and Import Price Index” describes the changes in prices for producers and importers. For us it is interesting because it is used in the formula for the Real Effective Exchange Rate. When producers and importers profit on lower price changes when compared to other countries, then the Swiss Franc reduces its overvaluation. The Swiss PPI values of -6% in 2015...

Swiss Franc The Euro stood still at 1.1684 CHF. EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, March 13(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Many see the eruption of the scandal that threatens senior government officials as yen positive because it weakens those that ostensibly want to depreciate the yen through monetary policy. The scandal involves falsifying documents to conceal a...

USD/CHF The USDCHF pair traded negatively yesterday to break 0.9488 and settles below it, which stops the positive effect of the recently mentioned bullish pattern and push the price to decline again, targeting heading towards 0.9373 initially. Therefore, the bearish bias will be expected for today unless the price managed to breach 0.9488 and hold above it again, as breaching it will extend the correctional bullish...

Switzerland’s power grid is part of a large pool of ebbing and flowing electricity spanning 25 countries, known as the Continental European (EC) power grid. © Mauro77photo | Dreamstime.com - Click to enlarge Enough electricity must be fed into it to keep it at a stable frequency. The EC’s magic number is 50 Hz. Maintaining this requires a carefully coordinated trans-national balancing act. When electricity consumption...

Lukas Reimann, a parliamentarian and member of the Swiss Peoples Party (UDC/SVP), fought to have parliamentarians paid by health companies partially excluded from government commissions dealing with health issues. © Martin Šandera | Dreamstime.com - Click to enlarge He thinks vested interests are behind high health premiums and that cartels must be broken. According to him 23 out of 25 of the members on such health...

By far, the easiest to answer for today’s inflation/boom trifecta is China’s CPI. At 2.9% in February 2018, that’s the closest it has come to the government’s definition of price stability (3%) since October 2013. That, in the mainstream, demands the description “hot” if not “sizzling” even though it still undershoots. The primary reason behind the seeming acceleration was a more intense move in food prices. Rising...

Lord, Grant us Chastity and Temperance… Just Not Yet! Most fund managers are in an unenviable situation nowadays (particularly if they have a long only mandate). On the one hand, they would love to get an opportunity to buy assets at reasonable prices. On the other hand, should asset prices actually return to levels that could be remotely termed “reasonable”, they would be saddled with staggering losses from their...

Spring is around the corner in the Northern Hemisphere, and with it, a sense of a Goldilocks moment.  Growth is sufficiently strong to see employment grow and absorb the economic slack.  In the US, the participation rate of the key 25-54 aged demographic group has risen and now stands at 89.3%, the highest since 2010.  Europe enjoys the broadest economic expansion in more than a decade, and while Japanese growth has not...

Stock Markets EM FX ended Friday on a firm note and capped off a mostly firmer week. MXN, KRW, and ZAR were the best performers last week, while CLP, CZK, and PLN were the worst. US jobs data was mixed, with markets focusing on weak average hourly earnings rather than on the strong NFP number. Still, the data did nothing to change market expectations for a 25 bp by the FOMC this month. Stock Markets Emerging Markets,...