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The World Economic Forum has been forced to roll up its plans once again. Keystone / Jean-christophe Bott The Covid-19 pandemic has severely disrupted plans to hold the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) main annual meeting in Davos for a second year in a row. On Monday, WEF said it would defer the gathering of influential global business and political heads from the planned date in January to an undefined time in early summer. WEF organisers said the spread of the Omicron...

As someone who teaches public finance (better termed the economics of government), I can’t count how many times I have heard politicians promise “comprehensive” reforms to some major problem. But what such efforts actually produce is always different from what is promised, because such achievements are beyond government’s competence. The more comprehensive the “reforms” (say, measured by the number of pages in a bill), the more adverse incentives undermining social...

Listen to the audio version of this article here! In the last Supply and Demand update, we discussed some different theories which attempt to explain what causes the gold and silver prices to move. We mentioned the: “…attempt to hold up a famous buyer of metal, while ignoring the thousands of not-famous sellers who sold the metal to said famous buyer.” Since then, Ireland has bought gold for the first time in over a decade. And predictably, most voices in the gold...

But when the Fed’s fundamental powerlessness is revealed and the buy-the-dippers have been forced to liquidate, the true meaning of “mild” contagion will become apparent. Since I’d rather not be renditioned to a rat-infested, freezing cell in an unnamed ‘stan, I’m circumspect about viruses in general. (The WiFi signal is probably weak due to all the masonry walls and metallic torture devices, and as for the food–grilled rat, anyone?) My essay Virus Z: A Thought...

 The best that mankind ever knew: Freedom and life are earned by those alone Who conquer them each day anew. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe1 According to many economists, we need the state to provide public goods.2 The assertion seems to be so crystal-clear that it is not even worth discussion in the mainstream. One typical and popular example of public goods in Germany is the case of dikes or levees. In Vahlens Kompendium der Wirtschaftstheorie und...

UBS maintains that the evidence presented in court was insufficient to show guilt. Keystone / Sebastian Gollnow Switzerland’s largest bank, UBS, says it will once again appeal a fine handed out by a French court for tax evasion offences. On December 13, a Paris appeal court confirmed a previous ruling that UBS was criminally guilty of assisting French tax evaders but reduced the penalty from €4.5 billion (CHF4.7 billion) to €1.8 billionExternal link. The bank, which...

How vulnerable is your personal supply chain? For the average American, the answer is: very. Americans consider abundance and ready availability as birthrights so basic they’re like the air we breathe. The idea that shelves could become bare and stay bare is incomprehensible. yet that is the world we’re entering, for a number of complex reasons. One is that the world added not just another billion humans (now 7.9 billion), but one billion middle-class consumers,...

Während sich die Situation in der Türkei zuspitzt, sinkt die BTC Hashrate um etwa ein Fünftel. Damit haben wir eine geopolitische Marktlage, die den Preis anschieben sollte, aber gleichzeitig ein bearishes Signal, welches einen weiteren Kursabfall ankündigt. Bitcoin News: Bitcoin Hashrate sinkt um 20 Prozent Die Lira ist gestern um weitere 8 Prozent abgestürzt – damit hat die türkische Staatswährung in diesem Jahr bereits mehr als 50 Prozent seines Wertes verloren....

The price of the euro in terms of the US dollar closed at 1.135 in November, against 1.156 in October and 1.193 in November last year. The yearly growth rate of the price of the euro in US dollar terms fell to –4.8 percent in November from –0.7 percent in October. Some commentators are of the view that the US dollar is likely to weaken against the euro (i.e., the price of the euro in US dollar terms is likely to increase). The reason for this is the massive US...

The central bank meeting cycle is over. Most of the important high-frequency data has been released until early January. The US debt ceiling has been lifted, avoiding an improbable default. A year ago, there was a sense of optimism, with a couple of vaccines being announced and monetary and fiscal stimulus boosting risk-appetites. Populism, which had been in the ascendancy after the Great Financial Crisis, seemed to be retreating in Europe and the United...