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Illusory Riches, Obvious Impoverishment I address this essay to two groups. One group is those among the liberty movement, who believe that there’s nothing wrong with inequality. These are often Objectivists, who unknowingly defend a regime that artificially suppresses working people. The other group is those among the Left who still call themselves liberals. They say they don’t like inequality, but nevertheless...

© Andrey Popov | Dreamstime.com - Click to enlarge Le Matin. After nearly ten years of European Union opposition to preferential company tax deals, Switzerland’s government agreed in 2014 to do away with such arrangements. Under current rules Swiss cantons can offer preferential tax rates to certain companies, mostly multinationals with most of their activity abroad. In Geneva, these special rates mean certain...

Swiss Franc The Swissie has remained very strong against a much weaker pound but the outlook is still very shaky. The principal reason for the changes are of course the election of Donald Trump which has sent some big ripples through financial markets. The Swiss Franc did strengthen significantly as we saw uncertainty ahead of the election but following the result it was more the pound making headway with some big...

See the introduction and the video for the terms gold basis, co-basis, backwardation and contango. Big News The big news this week is that Donald Trump was elected to be the next president of the United States. Whether due to his comments about restructuring the government debt, tariffs on imported goods, or other economic concerns, many expected news of his election to push up the price of gold. They were wrong....

Introduction by George Dorgan My articles About meMy booksFollow on:TwitterFacebookGoogle +YoutubeSeeking AlphaCFA SocietyLinkedINEconomicBlogs Summary: US election results accelerated forces that were already present. Interest rates have appeared to bottom, fiscal stimulus in Canada and Japan already evident, and divergence between US and EMU/Japan monetary policy. US stimuli may reach when the economy...

Swiss Franc Currency Index and the Trump Reflation Trade The Swiss Franc Index rose sharply, shortly after the U.S. elections. But then the Trump reflation trade came. Trump may fulfills the wet dreams of many economists. With tax cuts he might extend the U.S. fiscal deficit up to 10% per year. This resulted in: Gains on U.S. stocks and other dollar-denominated assets. In particular by yield-seeking Japanese pension...

Comment on Swiss Franc by George Dorgan My articles About meMy booksFollow on:TwitterFacebookGoogle +YoutubeSeeking AlphaCFA SocietyLinkedINEconomicBlogs Swiss Franc EUR/CHF - Euro Swiss Franc, November 11(see more posts on EUR/CHF, ). - Click to enlarge FX Rates The forces unleashed by the US election results continue to drive the capitals markets. The combination of nationalism, reflation and...

Where you are born makes a big difference to the chances of getting a job when you leave school. In 2015, youth unemployment rates in some OECD countries such as Greece (49.8%), Spain (48.3%) and Italy (40.3%) were all close to 50%. In others such as Germany (7.2%), Austria (10.6%) and Switzerland (8.6%), youth unemployment was far lower. Why? The Young Workers Index 2016, an annual report by PWC, offers some...

Introduction by George Dorgan My articles About meMy booksFollow on:TwitterFacebookGoogle +YoutubeSeeking AlphaCFA SocietyLinkedINEconomicBlogs Summary: US 10-year rate premium is the largest in 2.5 years. US 2-year premium is the most since Q4 2008. Japanese investors likely will be buying foreign bonds, while foreigners may see opportunities in Japanese stocks after being large sellers in the first 9...

Share of World GDP A Brave New World is coming? Perhaps. We had a recent discussion with a group of people in the hopeless business of doing long term forecasting. This made us think about what the world will look like over the next 20 to 40 years. A pretty thankless task, but the bottom line is without a damn good war, Asia will be the way of the future. As an experiment, assume, as most long term forecasters do,...