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UBS is being tried for illicit activities in France between 2004 and 2011. (Keystone) A sweeping investigation into UBS bank, accused of tax fraud and money laundering, comes to trial in Paris today. The bank risks a fine of up to €5 billion (CHF5.7 billion). The trial is set to begin on Monday after years of investigations into the Swiss bank’s French activities, as well as aborted negotiations in which authorities...

The way forward is to replace the entire system of reserve currencies with a transparent free-for-all of all kinds of currencies. Over the years, I’ve endeavored to illuminate the arcane dynamics of global currencies by discussing Triffin’s Paradox, which explains the conflicting dual roles of national currencies that also act as global reserve currencies, i.e. currencies that other nations use for global payments,...

The Most Comprehensive Collection of Charts Relevant to Gold is Here Our friends from Incrementum (a European asset management company) have just released the annual “In Gold We Trust” chart book, which collects a wealth of statistics and charts relevant to gold, with extensive annotations. Many of these charts cannot be found anywhere else. The chart book is an excellent reference work for anyone interested in the...

Swiss Franc The Euro has fallen by 0.10% at 1.1393 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, October 09(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: The small gains in China’s Shanghai Composite and the yuan is helping sentiment today. News that Italy’s budget watchdog may reject the government’s fiscal plans has helped stabilize Italian assets initially, but renewed pressure...

Avant-propos: Voici un argumentaire très intéressant que nous livre Olivier Crottaz. Les caisses de pension et autres fonds d’investissement venus de l’étranger se sont engouffrées dans l’autoroute de l’industrie immobilière, construite par la BNS. Du sur mesure donc qui pour l’instant n’a pas tant profité aux Suisses. En Suisse, seulement 37,5% des ménages sont propriétaires de leur logement. Ainsi l’a voulu la...

Blame the German automotive industry for the fall in manufacturing orders. Recent German soft and hard data in the manufacturing sector has been surprisingly weak. Data released today showed that the final manufacturing PMI fell to 53.7 in September, from 55.9 in August. Factory orders rose by 2.0% month-on-month (m-o-m) in August, having contracted for six out of the seven previous months. The increase in August...

Marc ChandlerMarc Chandler - Click to enlarge The combination of divergence and the US policy mix is underpinning the dollar and I was invited to share my views on CNBC’s Squawk Box earlier today. It dovetailed nicely Matthew Diczok (from Merrill Lynch) views on Fed policy and US interest rates. In addition, I note the troubled spot Europe finds itself with German industrial output unexpectedly falling for a third...

Swiss Data Protection Commissioner Adrian Lobsiger say the Finance Ministry has failed to heed his earlier demands. The Swiss Data Protection Commissioner has issued a legal complaint against the Finance Ministry for sending the names of bank employees, lawyers, accountants and other third parties to the United States to assist with tax evasion investigations. The Swiss Supreme Court has already issued a ruling that...

A Month with a Bad Reputation A certain degree of nervousness tends to suffuse global financial markets when the month of October approaches. The memories of sharp slumps that happened in this month in the past – often wiping out the profits of an entire year in a single day – are apt to induce fear. However, if one disregards outliers such as 1987 or 2008, October generally delivers an acceptable performance....

Last week, we shined a spotlight on a crack in the monetary system that few people outside of Switzerland (and not many inside either) were aware of. There is permanent gold backwardation measured in Swiss francs. Everyone knows that the Swiss franc has a negative interest rate, but so far as we know, Keith is the only one who predicted this would lead to its collapse (and he was quite early, having written that in...