Tag Archives: newsletter

We have spilled many electrons on the topic of capital consumption. Still, this is a very abstract topic and we think many people still struggle to picture what it means. Thus, the inspiration for this week’s essay. Enterprise Car Service Suppose a young man, Early Enterprise, inherits a car from his grandfather. Early decides to drive for Uber to earn a living. Being enterprising, he is up at dawn and drives all day....

A visitor to Switzerland: Carlos Ghosn attending the 2018 World Economic Forum, WEF, in Davos, Switzerland Canton Zurich’s public prosecutor is assisting the Japanese authorities in an inquiry related to bank accounts associated with Carlos Ghosn, the former leading auto executive. Tokyo prosecutors sent a request for legal assistance to Switzerland in January, a spokesperson for the country’s Federal Office of Justice...

As an economic system, even the most committed socialists had come to realize it was a failure. What ultimately brought down the Soviet Union wasn’t missiles, tanks, and advanced air craft, it was a simple thing like bread. You can argue that Western military spending forced the Communist East to keep up, and therefore to expend way too much on guns at the expense of butter. Even if that was the case, the Soviet system...

Has the SNB started to intervene The weekly site deposit data from the Swiss National Bank showed a small uptick but with some perspective, it’s a notable turn. Bloomberg highlights the bump and what looks like a bid to keep EUR/CHF above 1.10. I don’t think SNB is going to make a strong stand at 1.10 but expect them to cushion any falls in the pair unless there is a big run on risk assets. SNB Sight Deposits...

Swiss Franc The Euro has fallen by 0.13% to 1.1037 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, July 29(see more posts on EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: Unrest in Hong Kong and disappointing earnings reports from South Korea weighed on local equity markets, and the MSCI Asia Pacific Index fell for the third consecutive session. European equities are edging higher in tentative trading....

Lucerne, with its iconic Chapel Bridge, is a major tourist attraction for visitors who often don’t spend the night in the city. One of the most popular destinations in Switzerland is reviewing its tourism strategy and mulling introducing coach fees in a bid to curb traffic woes and other disruptions caused by the large number of tourists it welcomes. The vast majority of visitors to Lucerne, whose tally surpasses 9...

In a surprising announcement on Friday morning, the European Central Bank said the 21 signatories of the 4th Central Bank Gold Agreement (CBGA) “no longer see the need for formal agreement” as the market has developed and matured, and as a result the signatories “decided not to renew the Agreement upon its expiry in September 2019.” For readers unfamiliar, the first CBGA was signed in 1999 to coordinate planned gold...

There is little doubt that the Federal Reserve will ease monetary policy at the conclusion of the FOMC meeting on July 31. We never thought the chances of a 50 bp move were anything but negligible, though even at this late stage, the market appears to be pricing in about a one-in-five chance. Although a minority, and maybe worth a dissent or two (Rosengren? George?), we are sympathetic to those Fed officials that do not...

With these speculative and risk management skills accessible only to the wealthy, no wonder only the wealthy have gained purchasing power in the 21st century. Let’s start with an excerpt from a recent personal account by the insightful energy/systems analyst Ugo Bardi, who is Italian but writes his blog Cassandra’s Legacy in English: Becoming Poor in Italy. The Effects of the Twilight of the Age of Oil. “I am not poor....

The Swiss Federal Court is based in Lausanne - Click to enlarge The Swiss Federal Court is to decide on Friday whether Swiss bank UBS should handover data on its French clients to Paris tax authorities as part of a crackdown on suspected tax evasion. The decision has been described as key for Swiss banking circles. In May 2016, the French tax authorities requested administrative assistance from the...