Tag Archives: newsletter

  The War on Moles OUZILLY, France – The farther you get from the big city, or the international press… the closer you get to reality. The myth and claptrap disappears as distance shortens. Imagination gives way to fact. Gone is global warming, for instance. Instead, you find – as we did when we drove to Nova Scotia for a summer holiday in the 1990s – that it will be “75 degrees in Halifax again today… No relief in...

It’s tough to pay for an Olympics when 95% of your supposed “wealth” has vanished. In the modern era (1896-present), the Olympics have only been cancelled in wartime: 1916 (World War I), 1940 and 1944 (World War II). But world war is not the only circumstance that could derail the Olympics; a global crisis in energy, finance or geopolitics could send the risks and costs of the Olympics beyond the reach of most...

  Mining Stocks, Gold Prices and Commodity Price Trends Gold has gone up >400% over the last 16 years. Ironically, it is hard to find a gold mining equity exhibiting similar performance. In retrospect, if one invested in gold, one not only made much better returns, one also took a relatively insignificant risk in comparison to owning equities—equities can go to zero while it is hard for a commodity to fall much...

Swiss Franc Switzerland Trade Balance (See more posts for Switzerland Trade Balance) Click to enlarge. Source Investing.com FX Rates The US dollar is mostly little changed against the major, as befits a summer session. There are two exceptions. The first is the New Zealand dollar. Comments by the central bank’s governor played down the need for urgent monetary action and suggested that the bottom of cycle may be...

Exports and Imports YoY Development In July 2016, Swiss exports declined due to two working days less. Adjusted for this difference, exports were up 7.9% YoY (in real terms: + 2.4%) and imports 11.8% YoY (in real terms: + 8.2%). Exports and Imports MoM Development  Compared with June 2016, seasonally adjusted exports rose by 3.5% (in real terms: + 5.5%). Thus the positive trend that began in mid-2015 continues....

On a new website, Aleksander Berentsen rejects the Swiss Vollgeld initiative. As an alternative, he suggests the Swiss National Bank should offer transaction accounts for everybody, in line with proposals I have made earlier (see here (2016), here (2015), here (2015)). In the Handelszeitung (here and here), Simon Schmid reports....

Swiss Franc As usual, when discussions about rate hikes go on, then both the dollar and the euro gain against the Swiss Franc. Click to enlarge. Federal Reserve Last week, some market participants were giving more credence to what seemed like dovish FOMC minutes than to NY Fed President Dudley’s remarks that accused investors of complacency over the outlook for rates. Yesterday, Vice-Chairman of the Federal Reserve...

Lastly, a brief word about next week.  I will not post my usual piece on macro considerations on Sunday.  Here, though, is a brief thumbnail sketch of the top five things I will be watching:   1.  Yellen at Jackson Hole at the end of next week:  To the extent that she shares her assessment of the economy, I would expect to largely echo the broad sentiment expressed by NY Fed President Dudley. Click to enlarge. 2....

18.08.2016 09:15  – FSO, Labour Force (0353-1607-60) Swiss Labour Force Survey in 2nd quarter 2016: labour supply 1.6% increase in number of employed persons; unemployment rate based on ILO definition rises slightly to 4.3% Neuchâtel, 18.08.2016 (FSO) – The number of employed persons in Switzerland rose by 1.6% between the 2nd quarter 2015 and the 2nd quarter 2016. During the same period, the unemployment rate as...

What happens if the Deep State pursues the usual pathological path of increasing repression? The system it feeds on decays and collapses. Catch-22 (from the 1961 novel set in World War II Catch-22) has several shades of meaning (bureaucratic absurdity, for example), but at heart it is a self-referential paradox: you must be insane to be excused from flying your mission, but requesting to be excused by reason of...