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Any city whose lifeblood ultimately depends on hyper-globalization and hyper-financializationwill no longer be viable. The human migration from the countryside to cities has been an enduring feature of civilization.Cities concentrate wealth, productivity and power, and so they’re magnets to talent and capital, offering newcomers the greatest opportunities. Cities are efficient, packing population, productivity and wealth creation into small areas.Slums and sweatshops...

Introduction With my talk, I would like to accomplish three goals: First, I want to explain some sound and time-tested basics of monetary theory. Second, I would like to point out why it is important to have a free market in money; that the battlefront of our time is not between, say, bitcoin, stable coins, gold, and silver, but between government-monopolized fiat monies and a free market in money. And third, I hope to strengthen your conviction that we need a free...

Consumer spending continued to rise in the spring, but may dampen as the price of goods picks up. © Keystone / Christian Beutler Switzerland’s economic output slowed to 0.3% between April and the end of June, compared to the first quarter of the year. The manufacturing, construction, trade and financial services sectors all showed signs of weakening in the face of energy shortages and rising inflation. The State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (Seco) reported a...

Overview: While the US dollar appears to be consolidating its recent gains, the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan remain under pressure. Officials seem more concerned about the pace of the move than the level it has reached. New and large fiscal initiatives that the new UK government has floated has failed to change sentiment toward sterling, which is the second weakest major currency today after the Japanese yen. The yen’s weakness did not prevent new losses in Japanese...

Appreciating cultural nuances is difficult without understanding the stories that provide insight into a society’s soul. Stories reflect a nation’s values, aspirations, and ideals. Songs, poems, and literature illuminate the tastes of citizens and even political and economic preferences. Economist and polymath Deidre McCloskey in her bourgeois trilogy argues that the evolution of a promarket rhetoric was central to the wealth explosion in the West. Indeed, economists...

CEO Keith Weiner returns to popular radio show Turning Hard Times into Good Times hosted by Jay Taylor. Jay argues that the U.S. government hates gold because its rising price shines the light on the destruction of the dollar caused by the Federal Reserve’s printing press used to finance massive government deficits. The detractors of gold have long suggested that owning gold doesn’t make sense because it doesn’t pay interest. Keith and Jay discuss why...

Car sharing firm Mobility is providing 50 Honda electric cars for this innovative project. © Keystone / Christian Beutler An innovative pilot project testing the potential of electric cars to stabilise the power grid has been launched in Switzerland. For one year, the power of 50 electric vehicles will be fed back into the grid from their batteries when they are not running, car-sharing company Mobility which leads the project said on Tuesday. The “V2X Switzerland”...

A decline in the yearly growth rate of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) to 8.5 percent in July from 9.1 percent in June has prompted many commentators to suggest that inflation has likely peaked. If this assessment is valid then it is held Fed policy makers are unlikely to push for an aggressive interest rate tightening in the months ahead. Before one decides to agree or disagree on the likely interest rate policy of the Fed there is the need to ascertain what do we...

The BitMEX cryptocurrency exchange wants to reincorporate from its present location in the Seychelles. Keystone Troubled cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX is charting its revival in Switzerland after the platform and its three co-founders were prosecuted in the United States. When not covering fintech, cryptocurrencies, blockchain, banks and trade, swissinfo.ch’s business correspondent can be found playing cricket on various grounds in Switzerland – including the...

The company has faced a string of scandals and mounting legal costs. It is currently undergoing what it calls a transition phase with a new CEO. © Keystone / Melanie Duchene Embattled Swiss bank Credit Suisse is planning to cut around 10% of its workforce as part of a major cost cutting drive, according to several media reports. Reuters reported on Thursday that someone with direct knowledge of the matter indicated that 5,000 positions are expected to be slashed,...