Tag Archives: newsletter

Hey! It’s just an IRA. What is there to know? You put money in and it’s a tax deduction, you get to take it out after 59 ½ without paying a penalty, and at 72 the IRS makes you take some out. What else could there be? In reality, there’s a lot more. Besides being able to contribute $6,000 every year, or $7,000 if you’re over 50, IRAs make up one of the major sources of retirement savings in the United States. The Investment Company Institute says there was more than...

REMINDER: Our zoom conference “The National Security State and the JFK Assassination” continues this Wednesday at 7 pm Eastern. To attend the conference, just register at our conference page. A zoom link will be sent to you. We are now moving into the medical-evidence portion of the conference. Our first presenter will be Douglas Horne, who served on the staff of the Assassination Records Review Board and who is the author of the watershed 5-volume book Inside the...

Swiss Franc The Euro has fallen by 0.25% to 1.1053 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, April 5(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: Many financial centers in Asia and Europe remain closed for the extended holiday. Although several markets that were open were higher in the Asia Pacific region, India was an exception as a record contagion sent stocks down the most in five weeks.  US futures are pointing higher, led by...

Coveted stuff: a jab of Covid-19 vaccine, in this case from Pfizer/BioNTech. Keystone / Klaus-dietmar Gabbert As of this week, Switzerland can no longer import Covid vaccines from the European Union (EU) without a special license. Officials in Bern have asked to be granted an exception to the stricter conditions. According to the SonntagsBlick newspaper, at the end of March the EU removed Switzerland – along with 16 other countries – from a list of states not subject...

There’s an old saying on Wall Street that one should “buy the rumor, sell the news”, a pithy way to express the efficient market theorem. By the time an event arrives, whatever it may be, the market will have fully digested the news and incorporated it into current prices. And then the market will move on to anticipating the next event, large or small. What prompts this review of Wall Street folk wisdom is the most recent employment report. The BLS reported Friday,...

Inequality is America’s Monster Id, and we’re continuing to fuel its future rampage daily. What’s changed and what hasn’t in the past year? What hasn’t changed is easy: 1. Wealth / income inequality is still increasing. (see chart #1 below) 2. Wages / labor’s share of the economy is still plummeting as financial speculation’s share has soared. (see chart #2 below) What’s changed is also obvious: 1. Money velocity has cratered. (see chart #3 below) 2. Federal...

The $2 trillion (CHF1.89 trillion) infrastructure investment programme unveiled by Biden on Wednesday is intended to help improve the ailing national power grid, water systems, schools, bridges and road networks. Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved US President Joe Biden’s major infrastructure plan is raising high hopes for Swiss firms in the construction and building industry. Although first contracts are expected to go to local firms, experts...

Buyers know there will always be a greater fool willing to pay more for an over-valued asset because the Fed has promised us it will always be the greater fool.I realize nobody wants to hear that most of their “wealth” is nothing more than wispy Cloud Castles in the Sky that will dissipate in the faintest zephyr, but there it is: that which was conjured out of thin air will return to thin air. . I’ve assembled a few charts that reflect the illusion of financial...

As I write, the Democratic Congress is contemplating various measures designed to alleviate poverty levels in the United States. They include: the doubling of the minimum wage; the expansion of child credits. Let’s review both. The Minimum Wage Hike Congress intends to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15. This makes various assumptions: first, that minimum wage workers themselves are indeed poor. This is wrong: they come from families with a median...

As the price of food soars in Brazil, many Nestlé employees there are struggling to feed themselves. Keystone / Peter Klaunzer The Swiss multinational is celebrating 100 years in Brazil but its poorest workers face food voucher cuts amid rising food prices caused by the pandemic. After a century of doing business in Brazil – Nestlé’s fifth largest market with CHF2.79 billion ($2.94 billion) in sales in 2020 – the Swiss food manufacturer faces the discontent of trade...