According to Jordan Peterson, left-wing totalitarians are characterized by an ideology in which group identity is paramount. I will demonstrate that this is a misconception. Historically, socialists have fought against feudalism and capitalism in the name of emancipating the individual from any kind of group or class identity. The totalitarian tendencies of socialist thinking stem from its insistence on using the state as an instrument to destroy all group identities...
Read More »Portofino Technologies Raises US$50M to Scale Its HFT Crypto Infrastructure
Digital asset trading technology provider Portofino Technologies has raised over US$50 million in equity funding from Valar Ventures, Global Founders Capital and Coatue to scale its technology across the full crypto infrastructure value chain. The company, founded by former Citadel Securities executives Leonard Lancia and Alex Casimo, builds high-frequency trading (HFT) grade technology for institutions and Web3 projects that require digital asset liquidity....
Read More »The Greenback Firms to Start the New Week, Stocks Slide
Overview: The busy week is off to a slow start as Japan is on holiday and the UK and Canadian markets are closed to honor Queen (Australia will commemorate with a holiday on Thursday). Nevertheless, the sell-off in equities continues and the US dollar is firm. Most of the large markets in Asia fell. India is a notable exception. Its benchmark rose for the first time in four sessions, helped by bank shares and Infosys. Europe’s Stoxx 600 is off for the fifth...
Read More »Wages, Unemployment, and Inflation
Our economic system—the market economy or capitalism—is a system of consumers’ supremacy. The customer is sovereign; he is, says a popular slogan, “always right.” Businessmen are under the necessity of turning out what the consumers ask for and they must sell their wares at prices which the consumers can afford and are prepared to pay. A business operation is a manifest failure if the proceeds from the sales do not reimburse the businessman for all he has...
Read More »The Truth about American Inequality
Economist and Mises Institute Associated Scholar Robert Ekelund recently teamed up with former US Senator Phil Gramm and John Early to write The Myth of American Inequality: How Gernment Biases Policy Debate. The book was released this month by Rowman and Littlefield Publishers. In it, the authors explore some of the many ways that the debate over inequality in the United States is based on bad research, bad data, and a variety of other misconceptions. I recently...
Read More »Swiss electricity data reaches government with major delays
The government plans to examine concrete and binding measures to save electricity in the coming weeks. © Keystone / Christian Beutler The Swiss government lacks up-to-date information on national electricity production and consumption, according to the Swiss Federal Office of Energy. This is due to the lack of digitalisation of the electricity companies. The lack of information was a focal point of Sunday news report amid rising concerns over an energy crunch in...
Read More »Swiss National Bank meet this week, a 100bp rate hike on the table – CHF impact
SNB monetary policy meeting preview The SNB policy decision is due on Thursday (see for timings) Via MUFG Bank: CHF has been the top performing G10 currency so far this month as it has strengthened sharply against both the EUR (+2.2%) and USD (+1.5%). It has regained upward momentum against our equally-weighted basket of other G10 currencies after a period of consolidation at higher levels between July and August. The CHF’s renewed upward has once again coincided...
Read More »Week Ahead Preview: FOMC is the highlight
But there are a whole bunch of other central banks announcing policy, including the BoE, SNB, Norges Bank, Riksbank, BCB, SARB, CBRT MON: Japanese Respect for the Aged Day; EZ Construction Prices (Jul), Canadian Producer Prices (Aug), German Producer Prices (Aug). TUE: Chinese LPR, Riksbank Policy Announcement, RBA Minutes (Sep); Japanese CPI (Aug), EZ Current Account (Jul), US Building Permits/Housing Starts (Aug), Canadian CPI (Aug). WED: FOMC & BCB Policy...
Read More »The Dollar may Stabilize Ahead of the FOMC
Verbal intervention proved sufficient to keep the US dollar below JPY145, but the greenback gained broadly. It rose to new two-year highs against the dollar-bloc and Chinese yuan ahead of the weekend and to levels against sterling not seen since 1985. The elevated price pressures, while the labor market stays tight (weekly jobless claims fell for the fifth consecutive week and reached four-month lows), have encouraged the market to look for a higher terminal Fed...
Read More »Competition authorities probe Novartis over suspected patent abuse
The Swiss competition commission (COMCO) has opened an investigation into suspected unlawful use of a patent to reduce competitive pressure by Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis. The probe, which is in collaboration with the European Commission, is looking into whether the company used unlawful means to ward off competition for its own dermatological treatments. COMCO conducted an early morning raid at the company’s Basel headquarters on September 13 in connection...
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