Tag Archives: newsletter

A meeting a a regional job centre, or RAV, in German, here in Thun (staged picture) (© Keystone / Gaetan Bally) The Swiss unemployment rate fell to 2.3% in 2019, according to the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO). That’s the lowest yearly rate for almost 20 years. SECO said in a statementexternal link on Friday that 106,932 people were registered with regional job centres in 2019, 9.5% less than in the previous year. The only blip: the rate rose to a...

Discussions about the incentive effects of taxes can be misleading. The focus is usually on the tax rates imposed. But one’s incentives are not best measured by tax rates, but by how much value created for others (reflected in consumers’ willingness to pay) is retained by the creator, which I refer to as take-home income. These two variables — tax rates and take-home income — are reciprocal in the sense that the higher the marginal tax rate, the smaller the take-home...

Dank der hohen Ausschüttungsreserve stellt die Nationalbank zusätzliche Ausschüttungen an Bund und Kantone in Aussicht. Die Schweizerische Nationalbank (SNB) wird für das Geschäftsjahr 2019 nach provisorischen Berechnungen einen Gewinn in der Grössenordnung von 49 Mrd. Franken ausweisen. Wie die SNB am Donnerstag mitteilte, entfiel der Löwenanteil des Gewinns mit rund 40 Mrd. Franken auf Fremdwährungspositionen. Auf dem Goldbestand resultierte ein Bewertungsgewinn...

The Fed announced on Thursday it is adding another 83 billion in "in temporary liquidity to financial markets" And, in a development that will surprise no cynic anywhere, the Fed also noted it "may keep adding temporary money to markets for longer than policy makers had expected in September." Specifically, this was another move to shore up and bailout the repo market, which has required the Fed's ongoing revival of quantitative easing (but don't call it...

It will be Trump’s first trip outside the US since becoming only the third American president to be impeached (Keystone) US President Donald Trump plans to attend the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in the Swiss mountain resort of Davos this month, making up for an appearance he cancelled during last year’s US government shutdown. White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham confirmed on Wednesday that Trump would attend the annual forumexternal...

I’m going to go back to Mexico for the third day in a row. First it was imports (meaning Mexico’s exports) then automobile manufacturing and now Industrial Production. I’ll probably come back to this tomorrow when INEGI updates that last number for November 2019. For now, through October will do just fine, especially in light of where automobile production is headed (ICYMI, off the bottom of the charts). Mexico is, as I’ve been writing this week, the presumed...

Christine Lagarde. Photo Credit: European Parliament On December 12, Christine Lagarde introduced her goals and vision in her first rate-setting meeting as the new President of the ECB. On the actual policy front, there were no surprises. She remained committed to the path set by her predecessor, Mario Draghi, and kept the current monetary stimulus unchanged. The central bank kept its deposit rate at the present record-low -0.5%, and pledged to continue its €20...

Swiss Franc The Euro has risen by 0.06% to 1.0813 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, January 10(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: The first full week of 2020 is ending on a quiet note, pending the often volatile US jobs report. New record highs US equities on the back of easing geopolitical anxiety is a reflection of greater risk appetite that is evident across the capital markets. Asia Pacific equities mostly...

USD/CHF portrays buyers’ exhaustion despite the absence of losses since Tuesday. December month low will be the key to watch. USD/CHF trades mostly unchanged around 0.9730 while heading into the European session on Friday. The pair formed a Doji candlestick on the daily (D1) chart by Thursday’s end after recovering for the two consecutive prior days. Considering the candlestick formation indicating the reversal of the previous trend, coupled with the pair’s sustained...

Union federation chief Pierre-Yves Maillard and vice-president Vania Alleva, on Thursday. (Keystone / Marcel Bieri) Switzerland’s largest trade union group has repeated its warning that any framework deal reached with the European Union must respect measures to protect wages from cross-border competition. At the annual conference of the Swiss Trade Union Federationexternal link on Thursday, the objective of keeping wage measures in place was hammered home by group...