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‘You don’t have dozens and dozens of people employed on your Russia desks if you are not making money in Russia,’ says one senior private banker in Switzerland Keystone / Yuri Kochetkov January used to be a big month for Swiss bankers and their Russian clients. Many of the Moscow elite had made a tradition of coming to the Alps for the orthodox new year, skiing with their families, then catching up with their financial consiglieri. In St Moritz, one banker recalls...

Etwas überraschend hebt die SNB den Leitzins deutlich an. (Shutterstock.com/Distinctive shots) Die Schweizerische Nationalbank (SNB) hebt etwas überraschend den Leitzins deutlich an. Das letzte Mal hat sie das vor 15 Jahren getan, zu Beginn der Finanzkrise im September 2007. Die Nationalbank erhöht den SNB-Leitzins und den Zins auf Sichtguthaben bei der SNB um 0,50 Prozentpunkte auf -0,25%, wie sie an ihrer geldpolitischen Lagebeurteilung am Donnerstag bekannt gab....

If the March gasoline/oil spike hit a weak global economy really hard and caused what more and more looks like a recessionary shock, a(n un)healthy part of it was the acceleration of Euro$ #5 concurrently rippling through the global reserve system. This much was apparent right from the start, with financial markets gone haywire three months ago (mid-March seasonal bottleneck), and then more of the same into April right to now. The updated TIC data for the month of...

Der Zweiklassengesellschaft kommt im sozialistischen Denken eine wichtige Funktion zu. Eingriffe in das Privateigentum bis hin zur kompletten Enteignung – gern auch als „Vergesellschaftung“ begrifflich verschleiert – erscheinen vor diesem Hintergrund in anderem Licht. Karl Marx‘ widerlegte Zweiklassen-Theorie Nach Marx stehen sich Arbeiter und Kapitalisten mit ihren jeweiligen Interessen diametral gegenüber. Demnach beuten die Kapitalisten als Eigentümer der...

The most dangerous words in monetary policy and economics are “this time is different.” Argentine politicians’ big mistake is to believe that inflation is multicausal and that everything is solved with increasing doses of interventionism. The consumer price index in Argentina experienced a year-on-year rise of 58 percent in April 2022, which means 2.9 percentage points above the variation registered last March. A real catastrophe. Inflation in Argentina is more than...

Overview: Most equity markets in the Asia Pacific region lost ground today. China’s Shenzhen, Hong Kong, and India were notable exceptions. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index is at its lowest level since June 2020. Europe’s Stoxx 600 is forging a base ahead of 4000 and is trading quietly with a small upside bias. The French stock market lagging after Macron lost his parliamentary majority, is raising questions about his reform agenda. US equity futures are firm, but the...

After more than a decade of chained stimulus packages and extremely low rates, with trillions of dollars of monetary stimulus fueling elevated asset valuations and incentivizing an enormous leveraged bet on risk, the idea of a controlled explosion or a “soft landing” is impossible. In an interview with Marketplace, the Federal Reserve chairman admitted that “a soft landing is really just getting back to 2 percent inflation while keeping the labor market strong. And...

Remax-Schweiz-Chef Rainer Jöhl ordnet im Interview ein, was der Zinsentscheid der SNB für den Immobilienmarkt bedeutet. Wie werden sich die Preise für Schweizer Wohneigentum entwickeln, nachdem die Schweizerische Nationalbank (SNB) am Donnerstag die Zinsen erhöhte? Rainer Jöhl: Wohneigentum ist ein Investitionsgut und es muss langfristig beurteilt werden. Vier Punkte sind wichtig. Erstens: Die Geldpolitik der Nationalbank hat während der letzten Jahrzehnte zu einer...

At his last press conference, Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell made a bunch of unsubstantiated claims, none of which were called out or even questioned by the assembled reporters. These rituals are designed to project authority not conduct inquiry, and this one was perhaps the best representation of that intent. Powell’s job is to put the current predicament in the best possible light, starting by downplaying the current predicament. From there, to try to get the...

The dramatic moves in the money market were investors discounting the acceleration of the tightening cycle among the major economies. Japan is the outlier as the central bank clings to the idea that the rise in price pressures will not be sustained. Other central bankers can talk about being data dependent, but some data are more important than others. Price data and inflation expectation measures are more important than real sector reports. Even after news of the...