Tag Archives: newsletter

20 Minutes. Because of negative interest, even a savings account earning 0% interest is earning too much reckons the bank’s boss. Source: Facebook Migros Bank - Click to enlarge Soon many banks will be passing on some of the cost of negative interest to their clients, reports 20 Minutes. Migros Bank will need to seriously consider doing the same in 2017. The bank’s boss Harald Nedwed told the NZZ am Sonntag that the...

Surface Temperatures Plunge – the Great Pause Continues Last year’s El Nino phenomenon temporarily provided succor to climate alarmists, who were increasingly bothered by the “Great Pause” – the fact that the tiny amount of warming experienced since the last cooling cycle ended in the late 1970s had apparently stopped. Despite trace amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere continuing to climb, mother nature decided to disobey...

How many hours must you work to buy a new iPhone? It varies dramatically around the world, reflecting disparities in productivity and purchasing power. According to a recent report by UBS that aims to measure well-being by estimating how many minutes workers in various countries must work to afford either an iphone, a Big Mac, a kilo of bread or a kilo of rice, the average worker in Zurich or New York can buy an iPhone...

Speculators appeared mostly interested in reducing exposure in the run-up to the US jobs data and the Italian referendum. They liquidated gross longs in the currency futures market and covered shorts. Of the eight currencies we track there were two exceptions, the Japanese yen and the Swiss franc. Swiss Franc Speculators were net short CHF in January 2015, shortly before the end of the peg, with 26.4K...

Summary: FOMC meeting is the last highlight of the year. OPEC and non-OPEC producers strike a deal: optics good and that can lift prices further in near term. Italy will have a new Prime Minister, the fourth unelected PM. Provided that the Federal Reserve delivers the widely tipped and expected 25 bp hike in the Fed funds target range, the key to investors’ reaction will be a function of the FOMC statement and...

Stock Markets After the ECB meeting, we saw curve steepening in the eurozone. This is on top of curve steepening in the US since the elections. While we are nowhere near the magnitude of the 2013 Taper Tantrum, these yield curve dynamics remain negative for EM bonds and EM FX. EM equities are a different matter, supported in part by the continued post-election rally in DM equity markets. Higher commodity should also...

The following is the list of “Russian Propaganda sites”, as published by PropOrNot. Several articles by the Washington Post refer to this list. Many sites on that list are based on libertarian ideas and Austrian economics. Those are in favor of a free market economy, they reject central banks, the big state and the establishment. Examples are davidstockmanscontracorner.com beforeitsnews.com lewrockwell.com...

© Katatonia82 | Dreamstime.com - Click to enlarge Switzerland’s Federal Council is looking at a proposal to make pension payments compulsory for self-employed workers in the same way that they are for salaried workers. In Switzerland there are three elements to pensions. A universal state pension, funded from social security payments, a second element, known as a second pillar, which is a pot built up from sums...

Richemont’s plan to slash 210 watchmaking jobs in Switzerland is sending shockwaves from Geneva to some of the country’s remote mountain villages, the cradle of high-end watch manufacturing. In Le Sentier, a town perched in the middle of the Jura mountain range, straddling the border between France and Switzerland, some 400 people protested Thursday against plans to cut the workforce of Vacheron Constantin and Piaget....

In case you missed it, The Washington Post’s criminally careless publishing of “fake news” about purported “Russian propaganda” created a backlash -and the Post’s attorney-approved bleating to sidestep responsibility for publishing “fake news” failed to calm the waters. Here’s The Washington Post’s “fake news” article in case you missed it: Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts...