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Swiss Franc The Euro has risen by 0.05% to 1.0809 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, February 3(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: Equities have charged higher, and the greenback is mostly firmer. News that Draghi may become Italy’s next Prime Minister has boosted Italian bonds. The PBOC unexpectedly drained liquidity, and this may have deterred buying of Chinese stocks, a notable exception in the regional rally....

Sometimes you can count on the manipulation conspiracy theorists to get it exactly wrong. Not just a little bit wrong, nor halfway wrong. Not even mostly wrong. Totally wrong, backwards. Michael Crichton, in talking about the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect said this: “You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s [Gell-Mann] case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding...

Swiss Franc The Euro has risen by 0.15% to 1.082 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, February 1(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: Global equities are snapping back today, while the greenback retained the strength seen last week that was attributed to safe-haven flows. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index snapped a four-day decline led by Hong Kong, South Korea, India, and Indonesia. Europe’s Dow Jones Stoxx is up around...

British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, at a farm in Wales in 2019, where he was canvassing support for his post-Brexit farming policy. Afp Or Licensors Britain argues that Brexit will make British agriculture greener. SWI Swissinfo.ch looks at how successful EU agricultural policies have been, and how they compare with Switzerland’s approach. One of the arguments Brexiters pushed forward was that the United Kingdom would be greener after Brexit. They argued hefty...

Zurich, 1 February 2021 – UBS has successfully completed the pilot phase of its new multibanking function and is now gradually rolling out the offering across Switzerland. UBS Multibanking will now also give SMEs full transparency over all their accounts and allow them to execute payments debited from accounts with third-party banks directly in UBS E-Banking. UBS is the first and so far the only Swiss bank to offer such a comprehensive payment function. Andy...

01.02.2021 – Retail trade turnover adjusted for sales days and holidays showed nominal growth of 3.5% in December 2020 compared with the same month of the previous year. Seasonally adjusted, nominal turnover grew by 2.2% compared with the previous month. Despite the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the whole of 2020, provisional results show nominal growth of 0.1%. This positive growth consists of contrasting developments in the sectors with some strong turnover...

Our Nobility’s assessment of risk and their war-gaming of vulnerabilities are fatally deficient.Many people have heard of Nassim Taleb’s black swan but fewer understand how few events qualify as black swans. Per Wikipedia, a black swan is an unpredictable or unforeseen event, typically one with extreme consequences, an event that is beyond what is normally expected of a situation and has potentially severe consequences. Black swan events are characterized by their...

This week conservatives are celebrating national “School Choice Week.” According to the website of this celebration, “School choice means giving parents access to the best K-12 education options for their children. These options include traditional public schools, public charter schools, magnet schools, private schools, online academies, and homeschooling.” The “school choice” concept, of course, encompasses “school vouchers,” a program that conservatives have long...

As many countries face their second or even third lockdowns (Germany, Austria, Israel), others (Switzerland, the United States) have done what they can to escape such repetitions. Much of the discussion about this drastic move involves its costs. As Covid-19 became pandemic in early 2020, most countries opted for a similar set of measures. They implemented social distancing, slowed down the traffic of people in public spaces and eventually put a stop to large...

Like Switzerland, Iceland – whose leaders are pictured here with German Chancellor Angela Merkel – is not a member of the European Union and has no current plans for a future membership. Keystone / Str With Brexit done, Switzerland is hoping it can restart negotiations on its framework agreement with the European Union. The experience of other non-member states offers some valuable lessons on how it can engage with Brussels, though no blueprint exists. SWI...