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I had the privilege of joining the set of anchors Julie Cchatterley, ScarletFu, and Joe Weisenthal on the set of “What’d You Miss” today. The unrehearsed discussion took an unexpected turn when Joe asked about the low volatility. The anchors were patient and gave me time to provide a sketch of the thesis of my book, Political Economy of Tomorrow, where I suggest a under appreciated factor in the low price of capital is...

Those who see governments banning ownership of bitcoin are ignoring the political power and influence of those who are snapping up most of the bitcoin. To really understand an asset, we have to examine not just the asset itself but who owns it, and who can afford to own it. These attributes will illuminate the political and financial power wielded by the owners of the asset class. And once we know what sort of...

Who President Trump ultimately picks as the next Federal Reserve Chairman doesn’t really matter. Unless he goes really far afield to someone totally unexpected, whoever that person will be will be largely more of the same. It won’t be a categorical change, a different philosophical direction that is badly needed. Still, politically, it does matter to some significant degree. It’s just that the political division isn’t...

Left: the first IKEA store located in Älmhult in Sweden, near the residence of the company’s founder (nowadays the store is a museum); right: a Task Rabbit car. - Click to enlarge Amassing Unproductive Debt Last week, we discussed the marginal productivity of debt. This is how much each newly-borrowed dollar adds to GDP. And ever since the interest rate began its falling trend in 1981, marginal productivity of debt...

A Swiss Post apprentice serves a customer in Basel Switzerland has the second-best labour market for young Europeans behind Denmark, according to a ranking of over 30 countries. Denmark came top, followed by Switzerland, Austria, Germany and the Netherlands in the latest KOF Youth Labour Market Index, which analysed the year 2015. The ranking is produced annually by the Economic Institute (KOF) at the Federal Institute...

Earlier this summer, Tezos smashed existing sales records in the white-hot IPO market after the company’s pitch to build a better blockchain for cryptocurrencies made it one of the buzziest ICOs in the world. As we noted at the time, the company capitalized on that buzz by courting VC firms and other institutional investors with a $50 million token pre-sale. After the company opened up selling to the broader public,...

The Swiss consumption indicator by UBS shows improvements. The indicator is still distant from the highs in 2012. At the time stronger growth in Emerging Markets and the weaker franc helped the Swiss economy. The UBS consumption indicator rose to 1.56 points in September, signalling consumption growth slightly above the long-term average. The indicator was supported by significantly higher expectations in the retail...

See the introduction and the video for the terms gold basis, co-basis, backwardation and contango. Chart Patterns The prices of the metals dropped $20 and $0.39, a downhill slide interrupted on Thursday by speculation fueled by some economic data (as we covered in our special report), and which resumed on Friday. A look at the price charts of both metal shows what could be head and shoulders patterns. The left...

Claim-Less Delirium Yesterday, the Department of Labor announced that initial jobless claims dropped. Quite a lot. So naturally, markets reacted. The stock market began to rise. The euro rose, at least for a while. Unemployment Claims Index, Aug 1998 - Oct 2017Initial weekly unenjoyment claims over the past 20 years. Can you say “contrary indicator”? - Click to enlarge The most recent palpitations in this measure...

Yannis Varoufakis L’ancien ministre grec Yannis Varoufakis vient de sortir un livre, « Conversations entre adultes. Dans les coulisses secrètes de l’Europe (Les Liens qui libèrent, 530 pages, 26 euros) », dans lequel cet économiste anticonformiste relate son expérience de ministre des finances de sept mois, janvier-juillet 2015, dans le gouvernement d’extrême-gauche de Alexis Tsipras. Il y partage notamment son vécu...