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The Swiss National Bank is expanding its data offering with respect to Switzerland’s financial accounts. It will now publish quarterly as well as annual data, and the time to publication will be shortened from ten to four months. Today the SNB is releasing quarterly data for the period from Q4 2014 to Q2 2020. Annual data are available for the period 1999 to 2013. The data can be accessed in the form of charts and configurable tables on the SNB’s data portal...

30.10.2020 – Turnover adjusted for sales days and holidays rose in the retail sector by 0.3% in nominal terms in September 2020 compared with the previous year. Seasonally adjusted, nominal turnover fell by 3.6% compared with the previous month. These are some of the findings from the Federal Statistical Office (FSO). Real turnover adjusted for sales days and holidays rose in the retail sector by 0.3% in September 2020 compared with the previous year. Real growth...

What the political class and the Financial Nobility don’t yet grasp is that ALICE will never go back to her insecure, low-wage job, ever. Meet ALICE: Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed, at least she was employed until the pandemic presented impossible choices between taking care of her children and their education, and her aging parents, and keeping her demanding, low-wage job. Though it doesn’t fit in with the cute mythology of “capitalism” that...

Hildebrand Keystone/Peter Klaunzer The Swiss government has nominated Philipp Hildebrand, a former head of the country’s central bank, to lead the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). “His experience in the highest levels of the private and public sectors, both in Switzerland and internationally, make him the ideal candidate for this prestigious position,” Economics Minister Guy Parmelin told a news conference on Wednesday. “This candidacy...

Journalistic propaganda is a powerful instrument of indoctrination. Without evidence, foul ideas can easily penetrate mainstream discourse. For instance, recently it has become fashionable to posit that slavery is America’s original sin. To sensible people, this is a risible claim, because there is nothing particularly American about slavery. But revisiting the history of slavery in non-Western societies in Asia and Africa would do little to change the minds of...

Swiss Franc The Euro has fallen by 0.11% to 1.0681 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, October 29(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: The spreading virus that is shutting down large parts of Europe, while the US is reluctant to return to lockdowns and refuses to have a nationwide requirement for masks in public hit risk assets yesterday. The S&P posted its largest decline in four-months yesterday (~3.5%), and...

The Dollar Index is a popular way to think about and trade “the dollar.”  However, it has become less relevant as a reflection of the dollar’s performance or representative of trade, capital flows, market capitalization.  Economists often use a trade-weighted basket, and the Federal Reserve’s real broad trade-weighted index is an input in official and private-sector forecasts. As an alternative, we present Bannockburn’s World Currency Index (BWCI).  It is...

© Ilzekalve | Dreamstime.com Levels of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies wane quite rapidly after infection, researchers from Imperial College London have found. The team, which measured SARS-CoV-2 antibody levels in 365,000 people between June and September saw a decline of 26% in the number testing positive for antibodies. At the start, antibodies were found in 6.0% of those tested with prick blood tests. During September the percentage was 4.4%, a drop of 26% over roughly 3...

© David Herraez | Dreamstime.com On 28 October 2020, Switzerland’s Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) reported 8,616 new cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection over 24 hours, bringing the total to 135,658. Close to half of Switzerland’s laboratory-confirmed cases have been reported over the last two weeks (66,954). In addition, over the last two weeks, positivity – the percentage of tests coming back positive – has risen from 14% to 32%, a positivity rate higher than the...

Why did Murray Rothbard embrace populism and why did he think it could work to limit the power of the state? In short, Rothbard believed that a small elite had seized the power of the state to fleece and oppress the majority. Rothbard was in part basing his ideas on the historical narrative of the Democratic populists of the nineteenth century who formed the party of sound money, low taxes, and decentralized power. This laissez-faire party also managed to win a lot...