Tag Archives: newslettersent

– Art Market Bubble Bursting?– Russian Billionaire Takes 74% Loss On “Investment”– $85 Million Gauguin Bought By Dmitry Rybolovlev in 2008– Christie’s auctioned the work at its evening sale in London– Global art sales plummet, but China rises as ‘art superpower’– China soon to dominates global art and gold market–  Art price volumes doubled since 2009– As currencies debase super rich seek out stores of value– Gold...

Summary: Pity imports, they are misunderstood. Imports create jobs directly and indirectly. Restricting US imports would likely also curb exports. The mercantilist inclination by the Trump Administration makes it seem as if exports are good and create jobs and imports are bad and cost jobs.   This is simply not true.  This assessment is not based on newfangled thinking about trade.  Rather Adam Smith argued...

If the economy is repeating the after-effects of the latest “dollar” events, and it does seem more and more to be that case, then analysis starts with identifying a range for where it might be in the repetition. New orders for durable goods (ex transportation) rose 4.3% year-over-year in January 2017 (NSA, only 2.4% SA), the highest growth rate since September 2014 (though not meaningfully faster than the 3.9% rate in...

Virtue-signaling doesn’t signal virtue–it signals decline and collapse. There are many reasons why Imperial Rome declined, but two primary causes that get relatively little attention are moral decay and soaring wealth inequality. The two are of course intimately connected: once the morals of the ruling Elites degrade, the status quo seeks to mask its self-serving rot behind high-minded “virtue-signaling” appeals to...

(originally published on Seeking Alpha at end of October 2016) The current article will take a closer look to the incredible rise of the Swiss National Bank stock and suggest why taking a short position could be the right trade at this level. The Swiss Central Bank: Mandate and Monetary Policy According to the Swiss Federal Constitution (Art. 99) the Swiss Central Bank is an independent institution with the mandate to...

Swiss Franc EUR/CHF - Euro Swiss Franc, February 27(see more posts on EUR/CHF, ) - Click to enlarge FX Rates The late recovery in US equities before the weekend did little good for Asian markets. Nearly all the Asian equity markets moved lower, led by the 1.0% decline in Japan’s Topix.  It was the third successive loss for the Topix, which is the long losing streak of the year so far. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index...

Neuchâtel, 27.02.2017 (FSO) – In the 4th quarter 2016, total employment (number of jobs) rose by 0.3% in comparison with the same quarter a year earlier (+0.2% with previous quarter). In full-time equivalents, employment in the same period grew by 0.1%. The Swiss economy counted 3,800 more vacancies than in the corresponding quarter of the previous year (+7.8%). The other indicators also showed positive growth. These...

Debunking a Lie Don Watkins of the Ayn Rand Institute wrote an article, The Myth of Banking Deregulation, to debunk a lie. The lie is that bank regulation is good. That it helped stabilize the economy in the 1930’s. And that deregulation at the end of the century destabilized the economy and caused the crisis of 2008. As of early 2015, Dodd-Frank had imposed altogether 27,670 new restrictions, more than all other laws...

In response to a FOIA request the US Mint has finally released reports drafted from 1993 through 2008 related to the physical audits of the US official gold reserves. However, the documents released are incomplete and reveal the audit procedures have not been executed proficiently. Moreover, because the Mint could not honor its promises in full the costs ($3,144.96 US dollars) of the FOIA request have been refunded....

By EconMatters In this Video, we discuss the fact that Central Banks have basically morphed into Hedge Funds with similar risky investing strategies, except they buy without any regard to the underlying fundamentals of the assets they are buying. When did the Swiss Citizens say it was the proper role for the Swiss National Bank to be buying US Stocks? How is this stimulating the Swiss Economy? Central Banks have really...