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Mars 2009, le gouverneur de la Banque populaire de Chine M Zhou Xiaochuan revint  dans le cadre d’une conférence intitulée Reform the international Monetary System sur la vision de Keynes au sujet du bancor.Pour lui, le système centré sur le dollar américain et les taux de changes flottants, plus ou moins librement, devrait être repensé. Bancor: À l’occasion du sommet de Bretton Woods en 1944, deux plans de création de...

A recent report shows a 2% drop in average Swiss beer consumption in 2016. Over the last 20 years it has dropped 4% to 54.9 litres per person. On its own this would be no cause for alarm, however in 2016, the number of breweries in Switzerland rose by 21% to 753. Since 2011, the number is up 118% from 345. The website bov.ch lists 794 breweries in Switzerland so it is possible that the number has grown further since...

Dozens of Swiss outlets sell their goods and services for bitcoin The traditional favourite snack of late night revellers – the currywurst, or curried sausage – has just entered the digital world. It can now be paid for using the cryptocurrency bitcoin in Switzerland. The Wurst & Moritz company has responded to repeated demand from customers to spend their hard-earned bitcoins in its restaurants in Zurich and Bern....

Crazed Decision The Los Angeles City Council’s recent, crazed decision* to replace Christopher Columbus Day with one celebrating “indigenous peoples” can be traced to the falsification of history and denigration of European man which began in earnest in the 1960s throughout the educational establishment (from grade school through the universities), book publishing, and the print and electronic media. Christopher...

Of all the high frequency data the Personal Savings Rate is probably the least reliable. It is subject to both regular and benchmark revisions that can change the estimates drastically one way or the other. One step up from that statistic is the figures for Construction Spending. The initial monthly estimates don’t survive very long, and lately they have been quite weak in the first run only to be revised sharply...

​ Swiss Franc The Euro has fallen by 0.28% to 1.1393 CHF. EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, September 08(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates The US dollar has been unable to find any traction as US yields continue to move lower. The US 10-year year is slipping below 2.03% in European turnover, the lowest level in ten months. The risk, as we have noted, is that without...

© Tomasz Markowski | Dreamstime - Click to enlarge When 10-year mortgage interest rates fall to 1%, home ownership becomes a very attractive alternative to renting. A recent report on home ownership shows why home ownership remains out of reach of the average Swiss household despite very low interest rates. The report, by Credit Suisse, says that despite the strong desire for people to own their own home, fewer and...

– Physical gold is “the true currency of the last resort” – Goldman Sachs– “Gold is a good hedge against geopolitical risks when the event leads to a debasement of the dollar” – Trump and Washington risk bigger driver of gold than risks such as North Korea– Recent events such as N. Korea only explain fraction of 2017 gold price rally – Do not buy gold futures or ETFs rather “physical gold in a vault” [is] the “true...

BRI, banque des banques centrales Tel Atlas soutenant le monde, les banques centrales portent sur leurs épaules le marché financier. Cette réalité demeure largement occultée, mais elle détermine pourtant massivement l’avenir de nos économies. Nous avions déjà évoqué ce sujet l’année dernière (Les banques centrales commencent-elles à nationaliser l’économie ?). Il importe d’y revenir car de nouveaux chiffres...

During the middle 2000’s, one more curious economic extreme presented itself in an otherwise ocean of extremes. Though economists were still thinking about the Great “Moderation”, the trend for the Personal Savings Rate was anything but moderate, indicated a distinct lack of modesty on the part of consumers. In early 2006, the Bureau of Economic Analysis calculated that the rate had been negative for all of 2005. It...