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According to commentators in the mainstream press and various federal officials, inflation is like the coronavirus. It spreads around the world, hitting different countries in different ways. Sometimes a country will  experience only mild symptoms and sometimes more severe symptoms, like what happens with Covid. Now that the inflation virus has hit America, the mainstream media, along with public officials, are coming up with all sorts of remedies to address the...

Tom Woods’ bestseller Meltdown placed the blame for the financial debacle of 2008–09 on the government’s counterfeiter, the Federal Reserve. It was the Fed’s policies that created the problems, although most economists and economic talking heads didn’t see it that way. The Fed’s loose monetary policies funded the meltdown and became the “elephant in the living room” most pundits couldn’t see. Woods was right, of course; putting a monopoly counterfeiter in charge of...

In 2022, Social Security recipients got a 5.9% cost-of-living adjustment (COLA). That was the largest increase in 40 years. The COLA coming in 2023 may be even bigger. Social Security calculates cost-of-living increases based on changes in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) from September to September each year. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the CPI-W has increased 9.4% from March 2021 to March 2022. So,...

In recent years, Switzerland’s blockchain and digital asset ecosystem has matured rapidly and grown into one of the world’s leading blockchain hubs, a position that’s asserted by its expanding workforce and a rising number of foreign companies setting up operations locally. A report by Home of Blockchain.swiss, a new public-private promotion initiative for the Swiss blockchain industry, looks at the state of the Swiss digital asset market, sharing findings from a...

Die Bored Apes gehören zu den bekanntesten NFTs. Ihre Popularität wird derzeit genutzt, um einen Immobilienmarkt aufzubauen, der sich im virtuellen Meta-Universum befindet. Der dazugehöroge Discord-Server wurde jedoch zum Ende der letzten Woche gehacked – ungefähr 380.000 US-Dollar gingen verloren. Crypto News: Bored Apes Meta Projekt gehackedOffenbar schickten die Betrüger Phishing-E-Mails an Mitglieder des Servers, auf die einige der Nutzer reinfielen. Die Betrüger...

Overview: The jump in US interest rates helped lift the greenback to new 20-year highs against the Japanese yen and pushed the euro back below $1.07. US equities saw initially strong gains pared and this set the tone for today’s activity. Most of the equity markets in the Asia Pacific region fell, but Japan and China. Europe’s Stoxx 600 is giving back more than half of yesterday’s 0.9% gain. US futures are off about 0.5%. The US 10-year yield is off a couple of...

May 2022’s payroll estimates weren’t quite the level of downshift President Phillips had warned about, though that’s increasingly likely just a matter of time. In fact, despite the headline Establishment Survey monthly change being slightly better than expected, it and even more so the other employment data all still show an unmistakable slowdown in the labor market. What’s left open for argument and concern is now a matter of how much of a downside there might end...

On 2 June 2022, Switzerland’s parliament adopted two motions to accelerate the adoption of solar panels. Photo by Los Muertos Crew on Pexels.com The first motion aimed to allow private individuals to earn better returns on the electricity they produce. Under the proposal they would be able to sell electricity to other individuals, municipalities and cantons without paying heavy network charges. 140 versus 48 voted in favour of this plan. A second change compels the...

There was a time when the advocates of socialism argued that it would lead man to material abundance, whereas free-market capitalism would lead only to increasing misery and would ultimately collapse under its own internal stresses. You don’t hear that too much these days, and for good reason. A century of empirical evidence has shown the contrary—that the free market leads to increasing wealth and material freedom, while socialism leads us only to poverty, state...

Finland and Sweden’s recent decision to apply for North Atlantic Treaty Organization membership is a major win for the military alliance, but a far more dubious one for these two countries. NATO badly needs a success at this moment, since neither the economic war on Russia nor the conflict in Ukraine seems to be going the West’s way. Whether officially adding two more Nordic countries would have a real military advantage for NATO remains to be seen, but at least it...