Tag Archives: newsletter

At a press conference at 5pm on 16 March 2020, members of the Federal Council presented a list of further restrictions designed to slow the spread of the Covid-19 virus, that will become active from midnight tonight. A video of the conference can be viewed below. [embedded content]Alain Berset, Switzerland’s interior minister, called on the population to follow the rules. To date a significant number of people have not been following them, he said. Following these...

Vor 11 Jahren befand sich die Welt, nach dem Platzen der Immobilienblase und der Peilte zahlreicher Banken, in einer drastischen Wirtschaftskrise. Diese entstand aufgrund zu niedriger Zinsen und zu viel billigem Geld. Gelernt haben die Notenbanker aus dieser Krise offensichtlich äußerst wenig. Trotz einer zehnjährigen Boomphase, insbesondere in Deutschland, sind die Zinsen historisch niedrig und werden weiter gesenkt. Die Welt wird stetig mit immer mehr Geld...

Ibuprofen belongs to a family of drugs known as non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. On 14 March 2020, Olivier Véran, France’s health minister Tweeted that taking anti-inflammatory medicine “could be an aggravating factor” for those infected with Covid-19, and recommended paracetamol for those with a fever. Link to Twitter postLater, Switzerland’s Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH), said that observations have been made in individual cases, but this is not...

This is why it’s imperative to go big now, and make plans to sustain the most vulnerable households and small employers not for two weeks but for six months–or however long proves necessary. That governments around the world will be forced to distribute “helicopter money” to keep their people fed and housed and their economies from imploding is already a given. Closing all non-essential businesses and gatherings will crimp the livelihood of millions of households and...

There’s a lot to be said regarding the Fed’s surprise announcements—including its Sunday surprise of $700 billion in renewed QE and the complete elimination of all reserve requirements for banks—but here let me just focus on one element: the tendency for Fed officials and all the pundits to treat injections of “liquidity” as if they don’t count as much when distorting the economy. I’ve seen some analysts literally call the Fed’s repo operations “free” as opposed to...

We got hate mail after publishing Silver Backwardation Returns. It seems that someone thought backwardation means silver is a backward idea, or a bad bet. “You are a *&%#! idiot,” cursed he. “Silver is the most underpriced asset on the planet,” he offered as his sole supporting evidence. He doesn’t know that backwardation means scarcity, not that a commodity’s price is too high. Since we wrote that on March 2 (our Reports are always based on the prior Friday’s...

Swiss Franc The Euro has fallen by 0.01% to 1.0541 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, March 16(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: The Federal Reserve and central banks in the Asia Pacific region acted forcefully, but were unable to ease the consternation of investors. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand cut key rates by 75 bp. The Bank of Japan appears to have doubled its ETF purchase target to JPY12 trillion, and...

Die EZB, die US-Notenbank, die kanadische Notenbank, die Bank von England, Japans Notenbank und die Schweizerische Nationalbank wollen dazu bestehende US-Dollar-Devisentauschabkommen nutzen, wie auch die SNB am späten Sonntagabend ankündigte. Die sechs Notenbanken vereinbarten, zusätzlich zu bereits angebotenen Kreditgeschäften mit einwöchiger Laufzeit nun auch wöchentlich die Weltleitwährung mit einer Laufzeit von 84 Tagen in ihrem jeweiligen Zuständigkeitsbereich...

Subtract their immense debts and they have negative net worth, and therefore the market value of their stock is zero. To understand why the financial dominoes toppled by the Covid-19 pandemic lead to global insolvency, let’s start with a household example. The point of this exercise is to distinguish between the market value of assets and net worth, which is what’s left after debts are subtracted from the market value of assets. Let’s say the household has done very...

SWISS International Air Lines has been forced to reduce flights to the US and other parts of the world. (© Keystone / Gaetan Bally) A United States ban on travellers from Europe has been condemned as “incomprehensible” by leading Swiss manufacturing association, Swissmem. The Swiss-American Chamber of Commerce has also weighed in, saying firms would seriously suffer if borders remain closed for longer than a month. The US is Switzerland’s second-largest trade...